The Frandley Vale Podcast Festival has cancelled its main stage after concluding that recordings of podcasters discussing the festival were drawing more listeners than the festival itself drew attendees.

The festival, held annually in the village of Frandley Vale, had booked forty stages across three days this year. On Friday evening the organising committee met in the back room of the Boot and Bell and voted to close the largest of them, citing what the minutes describe as "an unsustainable relationship between the thing and the accounts of the thing."

"The stage costs us a marquee, a sound engineer and a licence," said the festival director, Mrs Doreen Ashplant. "A man standing outside the marquee with a microphone costs us nothing and reaches more people. We would be foolish to keep doing the expensive half."

The new format

Next year's festival will admit only attendees who commit, in writing, to sitting in a designated chair and recording their thoughts about the festival into a handheld device. No talking will be permitted on the site. The chairs will face a wall.

Mrs Ashplant said the silent format had not been popular with everyone. "Some vendors objected, because you cannot sell an artisan candle to a person who is forbidden from speaking. We have offered them the opportunity to record their disappointment, which several have taken up, and which tested very well."

The festival's own commentary team, nine local podcasters who have discussed the festival since its founding, will also attend. They will record their thoughts about the attendees recording their thoughts. Mrs Ashplant confirmed the team had asked to be considered attendees for the purposes of the wall-facing chairs, and that a tenth chair had been added.

"It is important that they are present, silent and observed," she said. "Their reflections on the reflections are the part of the festival that people actually value, and we are pleased to be able to host it in person at last."

What happens next

Tickets for the silent chairs will be allocated by application, and applicants will submit a short recording describing why they deserve a seat. The recordings will be reviewed by a panel of judges drawn from previous years' silent attendees, who will assess each application as content.

Villagers opposed to the plan have been offered a designated field in which to complain aloud. Mrs Ashplant said the field had been wired for sound since Tuesday, and that early complaints were already outperforming the festival's traditional programme.

"It has been a difficult year for the village," she said. "We are grateful to everyone who has spoken about it."