Last week I finally over-subscribed myself to podcasts.

It had been a long time coming; I was already spending more hours each week podcasting than I was working, a situation only made possible by my chronic insomnia. I already had 25 subscriptions to podcasts that were either weekly, twice weekly or, worst of all, daily. I had recently made the foolish New Year’s Resolution to listen to the entire archive of ‘In Our Time’ broadcasts, of which there are apparently more than 800. Something had to give, and indeed, it gave.

One of the things I enjoy about podcasting is the sense of time well spent. A walk to the shops becomes an educative experience; a bout of sleeplessness turns into a window of discovery. Free from the constraints of traditional programming, addictions and obsessions – from politics to football to music – can be indulged ad infinitum.

Unfortunately, I’m not the sort of person who can dip in and out of these auditory worlds. If a show is daily, I listen to it daily. I do not skip episodes or purge content if I’ve had a busy week and fallen behind.

No. I am a podcaster’s ideal consumer. Once you have my attention, I’m an ever-present – the sort of person who has generally listened to the latest edition before the podcast’s own newsletter has announced its availability.

So what happened last week?

Well, I made the mistake of subscribing to a podcast that wasn’t really a podcast at all. In fact, it was a mediocre TV programme disguised as a podcast, and it was enough to make me re-evaluate my behaviours and enact sweeping changes to my podcasting routine. Thanks to the misguided efforts of one errant media conglomerate, a number of more worthy podcasts have also fallen by the wayside.

Two lessons need to be learned, for everyone’s benefit. Firstly, radio pre-dates television. It is not simply television sans the images, and media companies should not flout this convention as they battle it out for audience attention in today’s bewilderingly dense content landscape. There is already far more audio content out there than it is possible for even the most ardent, obsessive (and presumably unemployed) podcast enthusiast to consume. Do your content properly or don’t bother doing it at all.

Secondly, media companies have got to stop incessantly pushing other podcasts onto the loyal audiences of their existing shows.

To be clear, while I don’t enjoy the fact that the Peter Crouch podcast is currently advertised at the end of every BBC Five Live podcast, I can live with it. What I’m turning against is other shows turning up uninvited in my subscription feeds.

Such tactics are destined to backfire. Remember when U2 inserted its new album into every iTunes user’s library without permission? Bono truly is the master of inventing new ways to get on everyone’s tits.

Not so long ago I subscribed to Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist Histories. After a few weeks it pushed a ‘bonus episode’ of Broken Record: Liner Notes for the Digital Age into my podcast directory. I took this in my stride, largely because presenter Rick Rubin has a very calming voice. A short while later, Revisionist Histories decided to feed me a further bonus episode of Tim Harford’s Cautionary Tales, and I began to get annoyed.

I like Tim Hardford. I like cautionary tales (my life is one!). But I don’t want to be force-fed either of these things.

Gladwell’s company is called Pushkin Industries – a name that perhaps reveals more than it intends. The podcast world is being industrialised, and yet there is scant thought being given to the basic limitations of the format. Again, no one can possibly listen to more than a fraction of a percentage of the total podcast universe. Push the content too hard and episodes will simply be deleted, the goodwill of the audience will be eroded and everything will feel just that bit less special.

Last week I said goodbye to ‘You Must Remember This’, ‘The Red Agenda’, ‘The Greatest Game’ and the ‘BBC Global News Podcast’. Please don’t make me part with anything else.