Doctor Who and the Tale of Four Parts
Another thought for the episodic fiction ponderings pile:
Old-school Doctor Who from the BBC seemed to have a good formula. Unlike the more recent regeneration, the original series told stories stretched over a handful of hour-long episodes, usually four to six in number. And, although plot details from previous tales might come up again, each new story tended to start from an abruptly new premise. Accordingly, for a podcast, a single tale might not fit into a single half-hour or hour long narration - but a convention of splitting stories up into four or five parts might work.
This also has some implications for the overall framework, if we're really following the Doctor Who conventions: The series, as a whole, is really more about the central character and hangers-on than a coherent arc of plot. I wonder if there's some variant of this that can work for me?