February 10, 2025 • 20 mins
James chats with David Bodycombe on how he produces video for Tom Scott's Lateral podcast.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The Pod News Weekly Review with Buzzsprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting.
Welcome back to the Pod NewsWeekly Review and, as you'll
know by now, hopefully or maybeyou won't know but every Monday
or so, we put full versions ofinterviews that we carry in
(00:21):
Friday's Pod News Weekly Reviewright in here, and we're very
pleased to welcome onto the showDavid Boddickham.
Have I pronounced your surnamecorrectly, David?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
That's right.
I suppose it should beBoddickham if you want to do the
Welsh, because it's meant to bea bit like a Welsh valley.
But we say Boddickham, that'sfine.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Excellent, and you're a Managing Director of L of
labyrinth games limited, whichsounds very exciting.
What does that actually mean inin uh in normal real life?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
it is a call back to the very first show that I
worked on, which was a britishgame show called the crystal
maze.
So labyrinth games game and Idevised games for the labyrinth,
games for the crystal maze and,uh, that's been my sort of
overarching company name eversince and I've worked in a
number of various uh medium,from tv to radio to escape rooms
(01:15):
to, well now, podcasts.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So yes, and one of the podcasts that you're doing
is lateral with tom scott, whichis on my Overcast queue, so
every so often, tom Scott divesinto another 25 minutes of that.
I enjoyed listening to it thelast time when I was walking
around Munich in the sunshine,which was a very lovely and
(01:40):
slightly weird thing we havequite a lot of German fans
actually, so you would have beenin good company.
Well, there you go, and ofcourse the ad breaks for all of
a sudden, speak German whenyou're doing that.
So that was a very peculiarthing.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yes, or very clever technology.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yes, that's exactly it.
So you emailed right at thebeginning of the year, weekly at
PodNewsnet.
Thank you for doing that, and Ithink one of the reasons why
you had emailed is we were a bitsort of grumpy about video and
in fact, I may have said what isthe point of video on a podcast
(02:17):
?
Now, lateral with Tom Scott,you've been making video for
socials and that sort of thingvideo for socials and that sort
of thing and you sent this verywell put together email
basically saying why video isactually a good thing and why I
shouldn't be talking it down.
What were you saying there interms of the benefits of adding
(02:42):
video to a podcast, particularlyone with four different voices
as yours has?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yes, well, we come from a slightly different
background because our host, tomScott, is a famous YouTuber, so
, of course, when we launch apodcast featuring him,
everybody's going oh, that meansthat it's going to be in full
video, right, and um, we said,well, we'll see how it goes, and
we actually found that shorteryoutube clips work better for us
(03:12):
, but the the in terms of thebenefits of what the video
brings.
It's a case of uh, we are apanel game and so, like watching
people's reactions is a goodthing.
That, uh, if you have fourpeople's voices, we try and
introduce them slowly at thestart so people get to know who
(03:32):
is who, but some people do findit difficult uh, perhaps if
they're neurodivergent orwhatever uh to uh and keep track
of the conversation.
Sometimes, um, and also, just,we have a lot of people who
English isn't their firstlanguage, and so being able to
see and hear words spoken incontext, with the you know,
(03:54):
knowing who's saying what and towhom, and with the facial
expressions, it all adds up tohelping understand what's going
on.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, and that's an interesting point that you just
made about right at thebeginning you're quite slow to
introduce.
You actually hear a good amountof words from one person before
you move on to the second andto the third guest, which is
something that, as a listener,I've spotted, but I didn't
realise the thinking behind that.
(04:24):
That's really interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, it's a technique that I borrowed.
Slash stole from Radio 4 panelgames.
I actually used to appear along time ago on a BBC panel
game called Puzzle Panel and wewould bring a puzzle to ask the
others, and Lateral's got quitea lot in common with that, and
(04:47):
being able to introduceeverybody slowly, without the
immediacy of having to crashinto in YouTube terms, straight
into the content is fairlyimportant for us, so that we
know who's who.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Yeah, that's really interesting and in terms of the
transcripts that you produce,you're not just running an
automated transcript engine andjust throwing those in, are you?
You're actually spending thetime doing transcripts properly,
as I know that Tom Scott hasalways done transcripts are very
(05:26):
important.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Uh, we hire a professional uh transcript uh
service called caption plus whodoes all of our uh captions.
We publish full transcripts onour website so that if you can't
access them anywhere else, atleast they're there.
But uh, we also burn them intoall of our socials and uh, once
uh the transcripts tag becomes awidely accepted thing, that we
can attach our files to our VTTfiles or whatever they are, then
(05:51):
we'll gladly do that.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yes, either VTT or SRT.
I'm trying to push for just VTTbecause it's easier and it
works on a browser, but we'regoing to dive into the more
tedious side of that I noticed.
So you come from a TVbackground and I think one of
(06:15):
the things that I was saying inmy typical sort of over
simplistic way is Cheaptelevision was the word that
stuck in my mind.
Yes, and normally I say shittelevision, but I decided I
wouldn't say that on the podcastI would say cheap television.
What's your sort of view of onthat if you were to do this?
(06:37):
And obviously Tom has done alot of different puzzle games
and panel things on his YouTubechannel and some of those are
very fancy and have all of theCGI added to them and everything
else.
Why not just make David?
If I can be so rude, why notmake it properly?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Well, if I was to make a tv show properly, um, it
would involve 10 times morepeople, uh, probably 20 times
the budget, and it the lead timeis just massively longer.
Uh and uh.
The thing that's great abouthaving access to either youtube
or podcasts or spotify, whateveryou a creator-led commissioning
(07:24):
process where we can just say,look, we think this is good,
we're going to put it out there.
We don't need any commissionersto tell us, oh, that needs to
be a little bit more orange.
Um, I've literally had thathappen to me sometimes.
Uh, we can just say, look, wethink this is great, and we'll
listen to feedback from peoplewho consume the show.
Um, by whatever means, but wewill take our view as to what we
(07:48):
think is good.
Um, so it's just, everything'sjust so more efficient.
Um, I think the problem with umformats that are regularly
repeating I think they workreally, really well as podcasts
because people expect them aslike a weekly friend On YouTube.
I don't think they work so well.
(08:09):
I think people have triedquiz-type formats, panel game
formats on YouTube, and whathappens is people watch the
first one or two and then theysort of go, oh, what's new?
And they don't really have anybrand loyalty.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
That's interesting.
I mean I use YouTube, I pay forYouTube so I don't see any ads
on there, but that also meansthat I can download everything,
and so I will typically useYouTube on the not insubstantial
amount of travelling that I endup doing, and quite a lot of
the shows on there that I'vefound are actually panels and
(08:46):
panel games and things like that, mostly stolen from the
television.
I should say but yeah, butthat's interesting.
So you're saying that thehabitualness, if you like, of a
podcast means that formats workmuch easier than perhaps on
(09:09):
YouTube, where you're findingnew audiences all the time,
which, of course, interestingly,is one of the reasons why
podcasters love the idea ofgoing on there in the first
place, because you're findingnew audiences all the time.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, I mean.
What's addictive to me as aproducer is I have access to all
the statistics and I can seeall the numbers going up, some
faster than others, but it'svery addictive to go like the
hard work that we're putting inis showing results.
Here and on a TV show I turn up, I write questions or devise
(09:46):
games or whatever help with theformat and it might be
successful.
It might not be so successful,but I don't really have any part
of the IP and so I work forhire on those sorts of things.
So, yeah, what's great aboutpodcasting is that you know if
you want to have a break or doit as regularly as possible.
(10:11):
We choose to stick to a veryregular weekly format schedule
because it just helps with the.
Really we don't have to explainoh, we're going away and now
we're coming back.
Yes, it's just runs likeclockwork.
And also with us we can becausewe're not a topical show we can
(10:32):
batch record.
So we actually do a veryintensive for podcasts 16 shows
over four days.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
So we do two in the morning, two in in the afternoon
for four days in a run, andthat means that tom is then free
to spend like his next threemonths traveling to europe to
look at dams and escalators andwhatever else he does.
Uh, while I get on with uhediting this show, uh well, I
send off to get edited andcoordinate everything and get
(11:05):
the next set of shows ready.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
So I've got two questions out of that.
I'll come back to the editingquestion, but firstly, what is
Tom actually doing at the moment?
Because he's not making hisYouTube videos, or at least he's
not releasing them.
Ah, maybe he's making them, buthe's making them more slowly.
Now, what's he actually doing?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
First of all, he's, first of all, he's really
enjoying his time off.
That's the first thing he'senjoying.
He's planning and scheming somethings.
You may see an announcement inthe next mumble months, but I
can't say exactly.
But yeah, in the next mumblemonths, but I can't say exactly.
But yeah, he's starting to getthe itch to do things.
(11:47):
I don't think it'll be back tothe weekly videos.
I think he's put a tin hat onthat.
But yeah, he will be back.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
There's some very clever reuse of that material on
Facebook at the moment, where Iseem to be served a young Tom
Scott video every single week onFacebook for some reason.
I don't fully understand what'sgoing on, but in terms of
editing you mentioned editingthere I saw someone from the
(12:18):
Australian BroadcastingCorporation, the ABC, and they
were talking about a brilliantpodcast that they make that
comes out every week called Areyou Listening, and what they do
with that is they film the wholething in video and then it's
got lots of archive material inthere as well, but they send it
to two different editing teamsand one set of people edit it
(12:41):
editing teams and one set ofpeople edit it for audio, one
set of people edit it for video.
Does it make it harder to editif you know that there is video
there as well?
Speaker 2 (12:53):
So I got this wrong when, when Tom started, he said
oh well, what we'll do is we'lljust completely edit the shows
in such a way that audio andvideo are going to be in
lockstep, and that way we've gotthe whole audio, we've got the
whole video and the show canexist in whatever form in the
(13:13):
future.
It doesn't matter which versionyou listen to.
And now that we're on spotifyand you have to flick between
the video and the audio, thenthat's actually been a very good
decision for us.
So, yes, I mean that isdefinitely a editorial downside
in that you either have to say,um, the audio is going to have
(13:38):
some pregnant pauses in it,which for us as a sort of a
stinky panel show isn't too bad,or your video is going to have
jump cuts in it.
So if you've watched somethinglike the Rest is Entertainment
in video, you sort of go oh wow,they've really got a lot of
jump cuts in here when they'vecut out a lot of the fluff in
the chat.
So we've got a brilliant editorcalled Julie has it in dublin
(14:01):
who, uh, she sort takes a viewbetween the two.
Yes, there'll be like any majordead ends will get chopped out,
but not for really very much,but there might be like one or
two moments where there's like apregnant pause that ideally
you'd want to take out but wecan't do it because it would
ruin the continuity of the video.
But it works 95 better than Ithought it would do yeah, no,
(14:25):
that's.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
That's really interesting, and I and I think
it's that spotify, you know, hasdriven us um and, to be fair,
youtube music will have drivenus to do much the same sort of
thing as well.
In in making sure that theaudio track for the video is is
just what you get, which is avery different world, I think,
than you know, certainly the waythat the ABC are doing it.
(14:48):
But if you're a public servicebroadcaster, you perhaps have a
little bit more cash to splashon these sorts of things.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
But I think if, if you've got the audio and you've
got the video, at least you youcan recut it with a, with
manually or with the help of aiin the future, you're you're
future-proofed.
And if people just suddenlydecide that you know, we all
have to be watching these thingson, uh, in in like a 90 second
(15:16):
blips or 30 minute long form orwhatever, you don't have to
predict the future.
As long as you've got the rawmaterial, we can recut it, yeah
yeah, yeah, which which makes abunch, a bunch of sense.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
There was a really interesting just finally, there
was a really interesting umlinkedin post from josh liston
that we uh also linked to, Ithink, last week.
Um, he posted four reasons toput your audio show on youtube,
and what he was basically sayingis look, non-technical people
are out there.
Non-technical people reallywant to have a listen to your
(15:49):
shows and, frankly, youtube ison pretty well anything with a
screen and with a speaker, andso, therefore, it's just easier.
People understand how YouTubeworks.
Youtube doesn't change veryoften, particularly on their TV
apps and things like that, sopeople just understand how the
(16:10):
thing works, and I think there'scertainly something to be said
for that as well.
You also, of course, havecomments and thumbs up and those
sorts of things on YouTubewhich you don't necessarily do
on other platforms, so I thinkthat that was interesting.
He did say, though, the caveatthis is, josh, the caveat I
(16:32):
often hear about audio onYouTube is the extreme drop off
rate, which I believe is real,but I would say he says that the
dropoff rate for almost allcontent posted to YouTube is
extreme.
I don't know whether you seeall of the stats.
You were talking about statsearlier.
Do you see an extreme drop-offrate for the shows that you're
(16:58):
putting there or the clips thatyou're putting there?
Speaker 2 (17:01):
So that is exactly what happened to us.
We put up the first episode onYouTube in full and what
happened is, yeah, we had amassive drop off.
Only about 15% of peoplewatched the entire thing,
because people are not expectingon YouTube to sort of sit down
and watch a 45 minute video.
So we went oh, this is going toreally tank our recommendation
(17:26):
from YouTube, because ifYouTube's going, oh God, only
15% of people are staying withthis video.
This can't be a great channel.
So what we did was we said look,let's for now do video clips.
So what we did is we put up ourbest two or three questions
which last about six, sevenminutes and put those up on
(17:48):
YouTube, sort of either as ataster for people who don't want
to listen to the entire showand also as like an advertising
for finding the show and then,if you like that, maybe you'll
come across the full show,whereas the retention rates on
the podcast are huge.
(18:09):
I mean, I think at the end,maybe 80, 85% of people have
listened right to the end of thefinal question.
So, yeah, so there's thedifference 14% or so, I think it
was on the video and 85% on theaudio.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
But that's an amazing tip of yours to look at doing
short form content as well inthe same channel, because that
actually helps therecommendation engine get more
comfortable with the quality ofthe video that you have.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, I mean we're not huge fans of the way that
YouTube has implemented podcastsand the way it's got these
static weird things with the RSSand so on.
And also YouTube pays less thanthe podcast on Spotify.
So we yeah, we use it as aentry point, but we're still the
(19:02):
main way of consuming the fullpodcast so far is going to be
via podcast and Spotify.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Well, it's an excellent podcast.
It's called Lateral, you canfind it in all of your favourite
podcast players and you'vefilmed all of them in video.
Does that mean that at somepoint in the future,
particularly on Spotify, whichwill be supporting video in full
?
Does that mean that, slowly andsurely, we'll begin to see some
(19:35):
of the videos of the olderepisodes?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So we had the foresight to edit as we went
because, uh, we needed them forclips anyway.
So we just asked for the wholeshow to be done.
So I'm pleased to say that allwhatever it is 120 plus episodes
are already now in full,full-length video on spotify.
So so knock yourself out.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
That's very cool.
Well, David, thank you so much.
I appreciate it.
Lateralcastcom is where to gofor more information about that
particular show.
Is there anything else thatyou're particularly excited of
right now?
Speaker 2 (20:17):
No, not really.
You do your own show as well,don't you?
Speaker 1 (20:18):
No, not really.
You do your own show as well,don't you?
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Well, I do.
I do my own podcast with myfriend, Justin Scroggie, called
TV Show and Tell.
It's about the TV industry.
I've got all the really nutsand bolts about how TV is made.
So yeah, give that a try.
Tv Show and Tell.
It's called.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Excellent, David.
Thank you so much for your time.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Thank you very much.
The Pod News Weekly Review with Buzzsprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting.
Welcome back to the Pod NewsWeekly Review and, as you'll
know by now, hopefully or maybeyou won't know but every Monday
or so, we put full versions ofinterviews that we carry in
(00:21):
Friday's Pod News Weekly Reviewright in here, and we're very
pleased to welcome onto the showDavid Boddickham.
Have I pronounced your surnamecorrectly, David?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
That's right.
I suppose it should beBoddickham if you want to do the
Welsh, because it's meant to bea bit like a Welsh valley.
But we say Boddickham, that'sfine.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Excellent, and you're a Managing Director of L of
labyrinth games limited, whichsounds very exciting.
What does that actually mean inin uh in normal real life?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
it is a call back to the very first show that I
worked on, which was a britishgame show called the crystal
maze.
So labyrinth games game and Idevised games for the labyrinth,
games for the crystal maze and,uh, that's been my sort of
overarching company name eversince and I've worked in a
number of various uh medium,from tv to radio to escape rooms
(01:15):
to, well now, podcasts.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So yes, and one of the podcasts that you're doing
is lateral with tom scott, whichis on my Overcast queue, so
every so often, tom Scott divesinto another 25 minutes of that.
I enjoyed listening to it thelast time when I was walking
around Munich in the sunshine,which was a very lovely and
(01:40):
slightly weird thing we havequite a lot of German fans
actually, so you would have beenin good company.
Well, there you go, and ofcourse the ad breaks for all of
a sudden, speak German whenyou're doing that.
So that was a very peculiarthing.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yes, or very clever technology.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yes, that's exactly it.
So you emailed right at thebeginning of the year, weekly at
PodNewsnet.
Thank you for doing that, and Ithink one of the reasons why
you had emailed is we were a bitsort of grumpy about video and
in fact, I may have said what isthe point of video on a podcast
(02:17):
?
Now, lateral with Tom Scott,you've been making video for
socials and that sort of thingvideo for socials and that sort
of thing and you sent this verywell put together email
basically saying why video isactually a good thing and why I
shouldn't be talking it down.
What were you saying there interms of the benefits of adding
(02:42):
video to a podcast, particularlyone with four different voices
as yours has?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yes, well, we come from a slightly different
background because our host, tomScott, is a famous YouTuber, so
, of course, when we launch apodcast featuring him,
everybody's going oh, that meansthat it's going to be in full
video, right, and um, we said,well, we'll see how it goes, and
we actually found that shorteryoutube clips work better for us
(03:12):
, but the the in terms of thebenefits of what the video
brings.
It's a case of uh, we are apanel game and so, like watching
people's reactions is a goodthing.
That, uh, if you have fourpeople's voices, we try and
introduce them slowly at thestart so people get to know who
(03:32):
is who, but some people do findit difficult uh, perhaps if
they're neurodivergent orwhatever uh to uh and keep track
of the conversation.
Sometimes, um, and also, just,we have a lot of people who
English isn't their firstlanguage, and so being able to
see and hear words spoken incontext, with the you know,
(03:54):
knowing who's saying what and towhom, and with the facial
expressions, it all adds up tohelping understand what's going
on.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, and that's an interesting point that you just
made about right at thebeginning you're quite slow to
introduce.
You actually hear a good amountof words from one person before
you move on to the second andto the third guest, which is
something that, as a listener,I've spotted, but I didn't
realise the thinking behind that.
(04:24):
That's really interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, it's a technique that I borrowed.
Slash stole from Radio 4 panelgames.
I actually used to appear along time ago on a BBC panel
game called Puzzle Panel and wewould bring a puzzle to ask the
others, and Lateral's got quitea lot in common with that, and
(04:47):
being able to introduceeverybody slowly, without the
immediacy of having to crashinto in YouTube terms, straight
into the content is fairlyimportant for us, so that we
know who's who.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Yeah, that's really interesting and in terms of the
transcripts that you produce,you're not just running an
automated transcript engine andjust throwing those in, are you?
You're actually spending thetime doing transcripts properly,
as I know that Tom Scott hasalways done transcripts are very
(05:26):
important.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Uh, we hire a professional uh transcript uh
service called caption plus whodoes all of our uh captions.
We publish full transcripts onour website so that if you can't
access them anywhere else, atleast they're there.
But uh, we also burn them intoall of our socials and uh, once
uh the transcripts tag becomes awidely accepted thing, that we
can attach our files to our VTTfiles or whatever they are, then
(05:51):
we'll gladly do that.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yes, either VTT or SRT.
I'm trying to push for just VTTbecause it's easier and it
works on a browser, but we'regoing to dive into the more
tedious side of that I noticed.
So you come from a TVbackground and I think one of
(06:15):
the things that I was saying inmy typical sort of over
simplistic way is Cheaptelevision was the word that
stuck in my mind.
Yes, and normally I say shittelevision, but I decided I
wouldn't say that on the podcastI would say cheap television.
What's your sort of view of onthat if you were to do this?
(06:37):
And obviously Tom has done alot of different puzzle games
and panel things on his YouTubechannel and some of those are
very fancy and have all of theCGI added to them and everything
else.
Why not just make David?
If I can be so rude, why notmake it properly?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Well, if I was to make a tv show properly, um, it
would involve 10 times morepeople, uh, probably 20 times
the budget, and it the lead timeis just massively longer.
Uh and uh.
The thing that's great abouthaving access to either youtube
or podcasts or spotify, whateveryou a creator-led commissioning
(07:24):
process where we can just say,look, we think this is good,
we're going to put it out there.
We don't need any commissionersto tell us, oh, that needs to
be a little bit more orange.
Um, I've literally had thathappen to me sometimes.
Uh, we can just say, look, wethink this is great, and we'll
listen to feedback from peoplewho consume the show.
Um, by whatever means, but wewill take our view as to what we
(07:48):
think is good.
Um, so it's just, everything'sjust so more efficient.
Um, I think the problem with umformats that are regularly
repeating I think they workreally, really well as podcasts
because people expect them aslike a weekly friend On YouTube.
I don't think they work so well.
(08:09):
I think people have triedquiz-type formats, panel game
formats on YouTube, and whathappens is people watch the
first one or two and then theysort of go, oh, what's new?
And they don't really have anybrand loyalty.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
That's interesting.
I mean I use YouTube, I pay forYouTube so I don't see any ads
on there, but that also meansthat I can download everything,
and so I will typically useYouTube on the not insubstantial
amount of travelling that I endup doing, and quite a lot of
the shows on there that I'vefound are actually panels and
(08:46):
panel games and things like that, mostly stolen from the
television.
I should say but yeah, butthat's interesting.
So you're saying that thehabitualness, if you like, of a
podcast means that formats workmuch easier than perhaps on
(09:09):
YouTube, where you're findingnew audiences all the time,
which, of course, interestingly,is one of the reasons why
podcasters love the idea ofgoing on there in the first
place, because you're findingnew audiences all the time.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, I mean.
What's addictive to me as aproducer is I have access to all
the statistics and I can seeall the numbers going up, some
faster than others, but it'svery addictive to go like the
hard work that we're putting inis showing results.
Here and on a TV show I turn up, I write questions or devise
(09:46):
games or whatever help with theformat and it might be
successful.
It might not be so successful,but I don't really have any part
of the IP and so I work forhire on those sorts of things.
So, yeah, what's great aboutpodcasting is that you know if
you want to have a break or doit as regularly as possible.
(10:11):
We choose to stick to a veryregular weekly format schedule
because it just helps with the.
Really we don't have to explainoh, we're going away and now
we're coming back.
Yes, it's just runs likeclockwork.
And also with us we can becausewe're not a topical show we can
(10:32):
batch record.
So we actually do a veryintensive for podcasts 16 shows
over four days.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
So we do two in the morning, two in in the afternoon
for four days in a run, andthat means that tom is then free
to spend like his next threemonths traveling to europe to
look at dams and escalators andwhatever else he does.
Uh, while I get on with uhediting this show, uh well, I
send off to get edited andcoordinate everything and get
(11:05):
the next set of shows ready.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
So I've got two questions out of that.
I'll come back to the editingquestion, but firstly, what is
Tom actually doing at the moment?
Because he's not making hisYouTube videos, or at least he's
not releasing them.
Ah, maybe he's making them, buthe's making them more slowly.
Now, what's he actually doing?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
First of all, he's, first of all, he's really
enjoying his time off.
That's the first thing he'senjoying.
He's planning and scheming somethings.
You may see an announcement inthe next mumble months, but I
can't say exactly.
But yeah, in the next mumblemonths, but I can't say exactly.
But yeah, he's starting to getthe itch to do things.
(11:47):
I don't think it'll be back tothe weekly videos.
I think he's put a tin hat onthat.
But yeah, he will be back.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
There's some very clever reuse of that material on
Facebook at the moment, where Iseem to be served a young Tom
Scott video every single week onFacebook for some reason.
I don't fully understand what'sgoing on, but in terms of
editing you mentioned editingthere I saw someone from the
(12:18):
Australian BroadcastingCorporation, the ABC, and they
were talking about a brilliantpodcast that they make that
comes out every week called Areyou Listening, and what they do
with that is they film the wholething in video and then it's
got lots of archive material inthere as well, but they send it
to two different editing teamsand one set of people edit it
(12:41):
editing teams and one set ofpeople edit it for audio, one
set of people edit it for video.
Does it make it harder to editif you know that there is video
there as well?
Speaker 2 (12:53):
So I got this wrong when, when Tom started, he said
oh well, what we'll do is we'lljust completely edit the shows
in such a way that audio andvideo are going to be in
lockstep, and that way we've gotthe whole audio, we've got the
whole video and the show canexist in whatever form in the
(13:13):
future.
It doesn't matter which versionyou listen to.
And now that we're on spotifyand you have to flick between
the video and the audio, thenthat's actually been a very good
decision for us.
So, yes, I mean that isdefinitely a editorial downside
in that you either have to say,um, the audio is going to have
(13:38):
some pregnant pauses in it,which for us as a sort of a
stinky panel show isn't too bad,or your video is going to have
jump cuts in it.
So if you've watched somethinglike the Rest is Entertainment
in video, you sort of go oh wow,they've really got a lot of
jump cuts in here when they'vecut out a lot of the fluff in
the chat.
So we've got a brilliant editorcalled Julie has it in dublin
(14:01):
who, uh, she sort takes a viewbetween the two.
Yes, there'll be like any majordead ends will get chopped out,
but not for really very much,but there might be like one or
two moments where there's like apregnant pause that ideally
you'd want to take out but wecan't do it because it would
ruin the continuity of the video.
But it works 95 better than Ithought it would do yeah, no,
(14:25):
that's.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
That's really interesting, and I and I think
it's that spotify, you know, hasdriven us um and, to be fair,
youtube music will have drivenus to do much the same sort of
thing as well.
In in making sure that theaudio track for the video is is
just what you get, which is avery different world, I think,
than you know, certainly the waythat the ABC are doing it.
(14:48):
But if you're a public servicebroadcaster, you perhaps have a
little bit more cash to splashon these sorts of things.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
But I think if, if you've got the audio and you've
got the video, at least you youcan recut it with a, with
manually or with the help of aiin the future, you're you're
future-proofed.
And if people just suddenlydecide that you know, we all
have to be watching these thingson, uh, in in like a 90 second
(15:16):
blips or 30 minute long form orwhatever, you don't have to
predict the future.
As long as you've got the rawmaterial, we can recut it, yeah
yeah, yeah, which which makes abunch, a bunch of sense.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
There was a really interesting just finally, there
was a really interesting umlinkedin post from josh liston
that we uh also linked to, Ithink, last week.
Um, he posted four reasons toput your audio show on youtube,
and what he was basically sayingis look, non-technical people
are out there.
Non-technical people reallywant to have a listen to your
(15:49):
shows and, frankly, youtube ison pretty well anything with a
screen and with a speaker, andso, therefore, it's just easier.
People understand how YouTubeworks.
Youtube doesn't change veryoften, particularly on their TV
apps and things like that, sopeople just understand how the
(16:10):
thing works, and I think there'scertainly something to be said
for that as well.
You also, of course, havecomments and thumbs up and those
sorts of things on YouTubewhich you don't necessarily do
on other platforms, so I thinkthat that was interesting.
He did say, though, the caveatthis is, josh, the caveat I
(16:32):
often hear about audio onYouTube is the extreme drop off
rate, which I believe is real,but I would say he says that the
dropoff rate for almost allcontent posted to YouTube is
extreme.
I don't know whether you seeall of the stats.
You were talking about statsearlier.
Do you see an extreme drop-offrate for the shows that you're
(16:58):
putting there or the clips thatyou're putting there?
Speaker 2 (17:01):
So that is exactly what happened to us.
We put up the first episode onYouTube in full and what
happened is, yeah, we had amassive drop off.
Only about 15% of peoplewatched the entire thing,
because people are not expectingon YouTube to sort of sit down
and watch a 45 minute video.
So we went oh, this is going toreally tank our recommendation
(17:26):
from YouTube, because ifYouTube's going, oh God, only
15% of people are staying withthis video.
This can't be a great channel.
So what we did was we said look,let's for now do video clips.
So what we did is we put up ourbest two or three questions
which last about six, sevenminutes and put those up on
(17:48):
YouTube, sort of either as ataster for people who don't want
to listen to the entire showand also as like an advertising
for finding the show and then,if you like that, maybe you'll
come across the full show,whereas the retention rates on
the podcast are huge.
(18:09):
I mean, I think at the end,maybe 80, 85% of people have
listened right to the end of thefinal question.
So, yeah, so there's thedifference 14% or so, I think it
was on the video and 85% on theaudio.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
But that's an amazing tip of yours to look at doing
short form content as well inthe same channel, because that
actually helps therecommendation engine get more
comfortable with the quality ofthe video that you have.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, I mean we're not huge fans of the way that
YouTube has implemented podcastsand the way it's got these
static weird things with the RSSand so on.
And also YouTube pays less thanthe podcast on Spotify.
So we yeah, we use it as aentry point, but we're still the
(19:02):
main way of consuming the fullpodcast so far is going to be
via podcast and Spotify.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Well, it's an excellent podcast.
It's called Lateral, you canfind it in all of your favourite
podcast players and you'vefilmed all of them in video.
Does that mean that at somepoint in the future,
particularly on Spotify, whichwill be supporting video in full
?
Does that mean that, slowly andsurely, we'll begin to see some
(19:35):
of the videos of the olderepisodes?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So we had the foresight to edit as we went
because, uh, we needed them forclips anyway.
So we just asked for the wholeshow to be done.
So I'm pleased to say that allwhatever it is 120 plus episodes
are already now in full,full-length video on spotify.
So so knock yourself out.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
That's very cool.
Well, David, thank you so much.
I appreciate it.
Lateralcastcom is where to gofor more information about that
particular show.
Is there anything else thatyou're particularly excited of
right now?
Speaker 2 (20:17):
No, not really.
You do your own show as well,don't you?
Speaker 1 (20:18):
No, not really.
You do your own show as well,don't you?
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Well, I do.
I do my own podcast with myfriend, Justin Scroggie, called
TV Show and Tell.
It's about the TV industry.
I've got all the really nutsand bolts about how TV is made.
So yeah, give that a try.
Tv Show and Tell.
It's called.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Excellent, David.
Thank you so much for your time.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Thank you very much.
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