Public Broadcasters vs. Open Access: The RTVE Controversy

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters the last
word in podcasting news.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
This is the Pod News Weekly Review with James
Cridland and Sam Sethi.

James Cridland (00:11):
I'm James.

Sam Sethi (00:11):
Cridland, the editor of Pod News, and I'm Sam Sethi,
the CEO of True Fans.

Today.
What are the Spanish doing toopen RSS?
Is podcasting taking over TVand how much money can you make
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Speaker 2 (00:34):
From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly
Review.

Sam Sethi (00:38):
James, this is an interesting week.
The backlash to Stephen Colbertseems to be that there's a lot
of people writing about what isthe future of TV, radio and
podcasting, so I want to startoff with a story that you had
from a Spanish broadcastercalled RTVE.
They're blocking Antenapod.

(01:00):
What's this one about?

Yeah, so they are blocking a bunch of
different podcast apps, butAntenapod is one of those, and
what they are trying to do isthey are trying to get you to
use the RTVE website and the appbasically, basically, what
they're trying to do.
So, very similar to the BBC,very similar to other public

(01:21):
service broadcasters in Europe.
They've done it in aparticularly shoddy way, though,
in that what they've done isthey have a RSS feed which is
published everywhere, whicheverybody can access, and then,
obviously, the RSS feed is themenu.
It links you to the food, inthis case, the audio, but the
audio is something that they areblocking depending on user

(01:44):
agent, and they've blockedAntenapod for some reason.
It's not very clear why they'veblocked Antenapod.
If you change the user agent tosomething else, then it
downloads fine.
So they've clearly blockedAntenapod.
They're blocking other apps.
They've basically said many ofthose platforms were making
money from our content, but theyhave agreements with Apple and

(02:07):
with Spotify and with YouTube,who are, oh yes, making money
from their content.
So I'm not quite sure what'sgoing on, other than it's yet
another public servicebroadcaster that is really quite
keen that the public doesn'tactually get to hear their
broadcasts, which I've neverreally fully understood.

Sam Sethi (02:31):
Okay.
So how are they making money's?
Look at antenna pod.
They are a free app.
They're open source.
How's antenna pod making money?
They're not full stop.
I just want to clarify.
They're not right.
I just want to be clear.
They're not yes, there's.

There's no advertising in there.
It's free to download.
More than that.
So I wrote a long time ago.
I wrote a piece on the Pod Newswebsite all about the unwritten
contract between podcastpublishers and apps, and it was
basically saying that if you'rea decent app, you promise to do
this, and if you promise to dothis, then you expect this from
a podcast publisher.

(03:03):
And that's basically what theunwritten contact is.
Yeah, exactly, and Antenapod isdoing everything right,
including, by the way, setting aproper user agent, which is the
thing that RTVE or RNE RNE isthe name of the radio station,
rtve is the name of thebroadcaster.
That user agent is the thingthat they are using to block

(03:26):
Antenapod, because they're doingit correctly.
Amusingly, if they looked atyour website at TrueFans and
they went well, we don't likethat very much they couldn't do
anything about it because, ofcourse, your website just uses
the user agent of the browser,at least in a browser window,
and they can't block those,because otherwise they block

(03:47):
everybody's browser.

Sam Sethi (03:49):
Getting it wrong sometimes means you get it right
.

So it's an utter mess.
I mean, I wouldn't mind, butyou know, rtve has, you know,
has trousered a lot of moneyfrom the Spanish taxpayer.
I think the last time I lookedit was somewhere like 1.2, 1.3
billion euro.
One of the things that theSpanish government told RTVE not
to do was you can no longercarry advertising, and so all of

(04:17):
the money comes straight fromthe Spanish government.
There's even in the law, inSpanish law.
There is a particular clause inthere that says that RTVE must
be universally available.
You know, available to everyone.
And, of course, if you reallywant to dive deeply, the R&E

(04:38):
audio app, the Apple podcast app, the Spotify app none of those
are available on, you know,devices that aren't either Apple
or Google.
So it's just very irritating.
But it's one of the many publicservice broadcasters, both in
Europe but also in Canada, whohave done really weird things in

(05:00):
terms of access to their audio.
So it's, you know, it's thisvery strange.
Yeah, it's this very strangetime where you've got the old
guard who are desperatelythinking oh my goodness, we need
to stay relevant.
How do we stay relevant?
Well, we have to force peopleto download our own apps and
we're going to stop our contentbeing available everywhere else.

(05:22):
I mean, fine if they want to dothat, but please don't break
RSS while you do that by stillpublishing RSS but just making
the audio not work.
I mean that's a really badexample.
Rtve tell me that that's, for atechnical reason, not good
enough, and RTVE also tell methat they are going to look into

(05:43):
Antenapod and whether or notAntenapod can actually get their
content in future.
But it's a mess, isn't it?

Sam Sethi (05:50):
It is, but just for clarity again, just for my
purpose.
So you can go to the website,you can stream it, but they're
blocking downloads as well,aren't they?

No, you can go to the website.
Website.
I mean, if you can see the RSSapp, which anybody can, then
most people will be able todownload that audio perfectly
happily just a normal MP3.
It's just that they arespecifically looking and going
is this a download request fromthe Antenapod app?
Oh it is, in which case we'llblock it.

(06:19):
Well, you know and why?
They've never actuallyexplained that to the folks who
run Antenapod.
So it's a real mess.
But you know, you might remember, previous stories in this
series have included the BBCblocking apps, specifically
Google Podcasts, because theydidn't fully understand how

(06:39):
Google Podcasts worked.
Radio Canada had a lawyer whowas so inept he was sending
legal demands to podcasters totake down content that wasn't
even his, and Danish radio havealso been removing shows from
Open RSS in favour of its ownapp.
So they're not the first.
Doubtless they won't be thelast.

(07:00):
But yeah, but it's a bit of amess and it's just a typical
arrogant public broadcaster viewof our content is so excellent
we are going to force you todownload our own app and
unfortunately, the world doesn'twork that way anymore.

Sam Sethi (07:17):
No, it doesn't.
But coming back to the BBC, thesounds app is going to close
for non-UK audiences next week.
Isn't this the same thing?
This is the King Canute.
The Sounds app is going toclose for non-UK audiences next
week.
Isn't this the same thing?
This is the King Canute thing.
We're going to hold back thetide of time and technology.
We're going to close ranks.
We're gatekeepers.
We're going to have everythingwithin our walled gardens and,

(07:38):
you know, hell to everyone else.
Really, what does the BBC thinkthey're going to achieve by
closing down everything elseoutside the UK?

Well, the BBC has obviously international
radio in the BBC World Service.
You can still hear that on theBBC app and you can hear that
elsewhere as well.
It's also got Radio 4, which isall speech.
But what it also has, of course, course, in the uk is it's got
radio one and radio two, whichplay lots of music and six music

(08:08):
and one extra and all of thosethings, and local radio and
everything, everything elsecan't say I've actually heard
any of those radio stations youjust mentioned for about a
decade no, well, you know, yeah,well, well, there we are.
But there are, there are lots ofpeople who do, and, and so all
of those radio stations allcarry music, which, of course,
is not the BBC.

(08:29):
The BBC doesn't own the music,and so there has always been
this sort of unwritten rule forstreaming radio stations weirdly
only for streaming radiostations that basically says
you're fine to broadcast aroundthe world online as long as you
don't market your radio stationsoutside of the area that you're
fine to broadcast around theworld online as long as you
don't market your radio stationsoutside of the area that you're
licensed for and as long as youdon't earn any money from those

(08:52):
radio stations outside the areathat you're licensed for.
So as soon as you startmarketing to listeners in the US
, or you start earning moneyfrom listeners in the US, then
all of a sudden you've got topay US music rights, and the
same goes for Australia, and thesame goes for Norway, and the
same goes for, you know, spainand everything else.
And so what the BBC has done isthey've got themselves into a

(09:16):
little pickle where, all of asudden, bbc studios the
commercial side of the BBC wantsto earn an awful lot of money
from non-UK audiences and hasrealised that it can't link to
any of the BBC's domestic radiostations anymore, because if it
does so, then it's thenpromoting those stations from a

(09:38):
website with ads on it, and soall of a sudden it means that
all of those radio stations willhave to pay music rights in
every single country across theworld, which the BBC can't
afford to do.
So it's a bit of a total mess.
And what the BBC has done reallyweirdly is if you want to keep
on listening to Radio 2, forexample, which plays music for

(10:01):
30-something females, if youwant to listen to that radio
station, great, but you won't beable to listen on a BBC app at
all, but you will be able tolisten on other apps.
So if you want to go and findTuneIn or something, that'll
still have Radio 2 on itglobally, but you won't be able
to get it from the BBC's appsbecause then the BBC might have
to pay some music licensing fees.

(10:22):
So it's a total, utter mess andthe BBC might have to pay some
music licensing fees.
So it's a total, utter mess.
And they've miscommunicatedthis all the way for the last
six months or so and they'recontinuing to miscommunicate all
of this, you know, as we go.
But yeah, it's a very, verystrange old thing.
But yes, that's the bizarrenessof what's going on with the BBC

(10:44):
right now, and what they'vealso done is closed down all of
the catch-up radio.
So the only way that you canlisten to time-shifted radio now
outside of the UK is to listento these things called podcasts,
which is, you know, I suppose,a thing.

Sam Sethi (10:57):
Yes, now, on the back of that, james.
Then they have their annualreport and account.
So clearly, the strategy mustbe telling us yay, this closing
down and locking down, this isall working wonderfully for them
, isn't it Well?

yes, I'm not sure it's working particularly
well for them.
No, exactly.

Sam Sethi (11:14):
I think that's called sarcasm.

Yes, no.
So if you look at total timespent which, as you know, is the
stat that I care about totaltime spent on the BBC Sounds app
has not increased at all in thelast year 17.3 million hours a
week.
Total plays has increasedslightly, but not very much, and
certainly total audience.
Well, it's gone up a little bit.

(11:38):
The reason why it's gone up alittle bit is that last year
they cocked up and they got thewrong figures, so they've
restated last year's figures asa little bit lower.
And now they're saying and theygot the wrong figures, so
they've restated last year'sfigures as a little bit lower.
And now they're saying and weget more than that now.
So that's nice, but thoselisteners that they do have are
getting older, so you know.
So there might have been anincrease in users, but actually

(11:59):
they've shed some youngaudiences and have got more old
people tuning in, which is not along-term strategy.
So, yeah, so they've got all ofthat going on.
Plus, the BBC is also justsuddenly thought oh, we should,
maybe in the US we do quite well, so maybe we should put the

(12:20):
entire BBC website behind asubscription wall, which is what
they've done.
So if you want to visit bbccomin the US, then all you get now
is a big screen saying, hey, youshould subscribe.
I think it's $6.99 a month foraccess to the slightly beige
news that the BBC ends up making.

(12:42):
So, yeah, it's just.
It seems to me like a, you know, like a slow march to
irrelevance, to be honest, butthat's the way that the BBC is
thinking.
So there we are.

Sam Sethi (12:54):
Well, I guess they've got pressure right.
So we here in the UK pay a tax,a radio tax, fundamentally a TV
tax, for you know the licensethat we have, but the
government's putting that underpressure.
They can't put it up.
They are losing talent left,right and center, all over the
place, and they're losing what Iwould say is a lot of content

(13:17):
rights as well.
You know most of the thingslike sport and it's gone from
them.
We've got, you know, otherchannels, so there isn't really
much that attracts you back intothe BBC, as in content, and
they can't put advertising.
You talked about them having topay money out to music rights
holders.
I think they're under so mucheconomic pressure from different

(13:40):
angles I don't really know whatthey can do.

Yeah, they are.
I mean, they are, of course,this is exactly what they want
you to think, because they're inthe middle of the renegotiation
of what that licence fee isgoing to be, and so they need
kind of to paint a bit of ableak picture, because, at the
end of the day, everybody in theUK or most people in the UK
maybe not you, sam, but mostpeople in the UK love the BBC

(14:04):
and thinks that the BBC does areally good job.

Sam Sethi (14:06):
Oh no, I would be gutted if the BBC went away.
It's like the NHS.
I think it's what makes Britainone of the things that I love
about, but I think they arebeing politically used as a pawn
and I think the pressure onthem maybe they need to become a
commercial entity.
I don't know the answer to thequestion, but increasing the BBC

(14:29):
licence will not be somethingthat people want.
You can't opt out of not havinga BBC licence.
You can, illegally, of course,but you're not meant to.
So it's a mandatory tax, so Idon't know where to go with it.

Well, you kind of can, in that the BBC licence
is legally yours to pay if youconsume the BBC's television
content.
Weirdly, radio is free, but theBBC's television content, if
you consume that in any way,shape or form now that is
consuming it both live andconsuming it on demand through
the iPlayer.
If you're doing either one ofthose things, then you are

(15:03):
liable for the licence fee.
But it's kind of an honestything, if you like, in that
nobody's checking whether or notyou've actually paid a licence
fee to get a TV TV detectorlicence vans.
Yeah, the TV detector licencevans which have never really
worked and which certainly won'twork now.
They never exist.
Now they never exist.

(15:27):
Yeah, so it's.
I mean, you know, the other wayof doing it is either the BBC
takes advertising and no onewants that, not even the
commercial broadcasters, becausethat will absolutely get rid of
all of their income.
So the commercial radio and TVbroadcasters don't want the BBC
to take advertising.
A subscription probably won'twork.
Advertising A subscriptionprobably won't work.
Certainly you won't get 95% ofthe UK paying it.
So that's an issue.

(15:48):
And then you have a look atwell, what are the other options
?
Well, the other options are agovernment grant.
Come back to RTVE.
That's what RTVE gets in Spain.
It's a government grant ofhere's an amount of money direct
from the government and go awayand run your services from that

(16:10):
.
It's the way that the ABC workshere in Australia.
It's the way that a fair amountof other things work.
And the reason why we've gotthis TV licence malarkey is that
government has never reallywanted to just give tax to the
BBC and so we've got this sortof strange thing that kind of
works for the BBC, because thenthey can say that they're
independent of government andall of that.

(16:30):
But yeah, it's a difficultthing.
I think a government grant, bythe way, is the right thing to
end up doing, and I think theway of doing that is to actually
set it so that it is as as misswhat's the word I'm looking for
.
I don't want it in joined inwith who the government of the
day is.

(16:51):
So some way of setting theamount of money that the bbc
gets, that isn't just thegovernment of the day turning
around and going.
You hate us and you're sayingall these mean things about us.
You can only get half the moneynext year, which has happened
for a ton of other broadcasters.
So some way in law to make thatwork.
But I'm sure that there's a wayin law to make that work

(17:13):
somehow.
Well, is NPR the equivalent ofthe BBC?
Kind of is, but it kind ofisn't.
So NPR is a producer ofprogrammes.
It doesn't own any radiostations, so it's a producer of
programmes that go on to some ofits member stations, which are
all independent.
Npr gets a little bit of moneyfrom the….

Sam Sethi (17:35):
Gets a lot less money right.

Well, it's only really got….
Npr itself has only really gota very small amount, less than
1% of all of the revenue thatNPR got from government.
Now Donald Trump has got rid ofthat money.
I understand 1.1 billion.
Well, it's 1.1 billion, but it's1.1 billion for all of public
television which NPR is not, andall of public radio which kind

(18:03):
of NPR really isn't.
Npr's got a very small amountof that money Now.
Wnyc in New York or the radiostation in Chicago or the radio
station in San Francisco or inLA those radio stations get
direct money from that same potof $1.1 billion, but that's

(18:24):
different money to the moneythat goes to NPR.
So it's all a little bit sortof messy and complicated and
clearly it's bad news for them.
Clearly we're seeing storiesfrom individual public
broadcasters in the US sayingwe're going to have to fire a
ton of people.
So yeah, so that's.
It's not good news coming out ofthe US either.

(18:47):
You know, and frankly I meanthe media is in a bad place
anyway, regardless of justlooking at the public
broadcasters.
I mean commercial broadcastersare really struggling.
I was talking with onecommercial broadcaster who was
saying that total revenues forthem are down 15% this year so
far.
Others are talking about evenlarger numbers.

(19:09):
So it's really hard for themtoo.
So it's you know, it's adifficult place to be, which is
why it's interesting seeing howpodcasting is continuing to
succeed right now and continuingto get more of the money.

Sam Sethi (19:24):
Quick question because it's just top of mind in
the revenue that commercialoperations get, Do you watch any
adverts, James?

I do not.
No, no, no.
Nor do I.
Why is that, james?
Because I'm rich enough and soI pay to get rid of them on
YouTube.
I don't watch very muchon-demand commercial TV here, or
even live commercial TV here,and so I'm either consuming the
public broadcaster or I havepaid to get rid of them?

Sam Sethi (19:58):
Yeah, that they don't seem to have an answer to.
Is that the advertisers whowant to reach the ABC1s, the 18
to 40 or 55-year-olds.
I'm outside of that bracket now.
You're in it and I'm CDE now.
I think I'm old, old man.
No, cde, old man.

No, you're definitely not CDE.
You drive a Range.

Sam Sethi (20:21):
Rover.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
I'm OAP, am I?
You're definitely still ABC1.

Definitely still ABC1.
Interestingly, I only learnedthat ABC1, by the way, abc1 and
C2DE those are things in the UKand no one else understands
whenever you talk about it.
Abc1s are educated people whoare richer than everybody else
and are better educated,essentially, and C2DEs are, you

(20:48):
know, manual workers, peoplethat left school at the age of
16, you know, et cetera, etcetera, on a very broad brush
basis.
Nothing to do with age, though,and so you can be old or young
and fantastically rich orfantastically not it's
fantastically rich orfantastically not, but I only
mentioned that.

Sam Sethi (21:08):
Moving on, I only mentioned that because,
fundamentally, if you have asituation where advertisers are
trying to get into podcasting TV, whatever radio, and the
advertisers are getting blockedout because people are paying to
block them out, then there is aproblem there.
Now again, I just we've talkedabout that before, but I just
wanted to mention it in the inthe light of commercial revenues

(21:29):
.
Now, ofcom, which is the UK'sregulatory body for radio,
they've announced a report.
it's TV as well, isn't it?
They've announced a report thisweek and one of the things that
stood out to me was Ofcom warnstraditional public service TV
is endangered.
So, on the light of what we'vetalked about with Spanish RTVE

(21:51):
and the BBC, what did Ofcom haveto say?

Well, so they've made a number of
recommendations.
So they have to do this everytwo years, which is interesting.
It's part of Ofcom's.
You know, the laws that madeOfcom exist is that every couple
of years they have to release areport on the broadcasting
ecosystem in the UK.
And this time round they'vereleased this thing which

(22:17):
basically says public service TVis in a really bad shape.
And public service TV in the UK,by the way, is all of the big
legacy broadcasters you know BBC, Channel 4, channel 5, itv.
They all have public servicebroadcaster things that they
have to do.
So kids TV or news, aparticular amount of news and

(22:40):
all this kind of stuff.
They're told to do all of thosethings so that they get access
to the spectrum essentially.
And what Ofcom is saying isthat they're in trouble.
Ofcom is saying that you know,if TV goes away, if broadcast TV
goes away, then we need moreclarity on what that means for
the media.
I'm sure the media would agreethere.

(23:02):
They're saying thatbroadcasters must work more
together and with global techfirms to survive.
And then they say urgent stepsmust be taken to ensure that
public service media content iseasy to find and discover on
third party platforms which isinteresting because that goes
back to the RTVE conversationthey are pulling all of their

(23:24):
content off third partyplatforms.
Yet in the UK, the UK regulatoris saying no, you should be
easy to find and discover onthese platforms, one of them
being YouTube.
So they're basically mysuspicion is that they will be
talking to YouTube and basicallysaying you must now have X

(23:48):
percent of all of the contentwhich is on your website or in
your algorithms or whatever itis, must be from a public
service broadcaster.
I suspect that that's whatthey're going to try and do.
Good luck with that.
But you know because I meanOfcom only 10 years or so ago,
ofcom are the people that runthe electronic programme guide

(24:11):
on your TV.
So when we first got satelliteTV and it first had this
beautiful electronic programmeguide and where all of the
channels were and there was theBBC and there was Sky and there
was BBC News and blah, blah,blah.
Ofcom is the regulator for thattoo, and there are lots of
rules around where TV stationscan appear in that electronic

(24:35):
programme guide.
So just the same way they'retrying to, they're realising
that the electronic programmeguide itself is going away and
that more people are consumingthis stuff through third-party
platforms like YouTube.
So now they're going well, weshould be regulating that as
well.
So there's quite a lot of Goodluck.

Sam Sethi (24:53):
Trying to keep relevant.
Good luck getting YouTube toagree to that.
Yeah, right.

Yes, but you know, I mean I can see where
Ofcom is coming at that.
There's a very good podcast foryou to go and have a listen to.
It's the Media Club with MattDeegan.
That has a special episode withsomebody from Ofcom, Christina
Nicolotti-Squires there's a nametalking about what some of
their recommendations are.

(25:18):
But, yeah, fascinating to watchthat going on at the same time
as what we've just seen from theSpanish broadcaster as well.

Sam Sethi (25:27):
Yeah, just one other story related to this before we
move on.
The BBC is about to launch adaily news podcast called the
Global Story, and they've got areporter in the US and a
reporter in the UK and it willdebut in September.
But this is available both inthe UK on the BBC Sounds, but

(25:48):
outside the UK on bbccom and theBBC app.
So they've suddenly made thissuper open and everywhere.
So is this going to be theirfuture strategy?
Are they going to unlock thesounds and put more open, or is
this just a one-off?

Yeah, so pretty well, every podcast that the BBC
produces is availableeverywhere.
It's available on ApplePodcasts, it's available on
Spotify, it's available on allof these, but delayed in some
cases.
All of these services Delayed ina very small amount of cases
and my suspicion is that delaywill go away, because you know
how will you force me todownload the BBC Sounds app when

(26:22):
I can't anymore?
So my suspicion is that thatdelay will go away.
I mean, I did ask the BBC backin February what the plan was
there.
I didn't get much of an answerand pretty well everything that
I asked them they've changedtheir mind on anyway.
So the global story, thisparticular show if you're

(26:42):
listening in the UK, you willhear that show as it's made.
If you're listening outside ofthe UK, it'll have advertising
on it advertising at thebeginning, the middle and the
end, as all of the BBC shows do.
And apparently it's a brand newshow called the Global Story.
So let's not talk about the onethat they launched a couple of

(27:03):
years ago, which was, oh yes, abrand new daily news podcast
called the Global Story, whichthey quietly got rid of in March
.
So it's coming back.
It's absolutely not debuting.
That's exactly what their pressrelease said Debuting it's not
debuting, but the plan with thisnew, revamped version is that
it'll be, by the looks of it,run editorially by the BBC in

(27:27):
the US, not the BBC in the UK,and it'll have both US and UK
folk doing it, and some of theUS people are ex-NPR and ex-The
Daily, which is interesting.
I think that tells you quite alot about where the future of
the BBC is.

Sam Sethi (27:43):
Anyway, let's move on , james.
Well, I say let's move on, butit's more of the same really,
because the Telegraph in the UKis explaining how podcasts are
taking over TV.
What did they say?

Well, yes, so this was an article in the
Telegraph and then there wasanother article in the New York
Times, both talking about TV andpodcasting, the Telegraph
claiming that the bleeding well,rather writing down about the
bleeding of audio shows intotelevision poses a new threat to
traditional broadcasters, saysthe Telegraph, who hates the BBC

(28:18):
and hates everything that theBBC stands for.
So that's probably the reasonwhy they ended up going there.
The New York Times wasinteresting because they had
anecdotes from their readerssaying how they watch podcasts
and most of them said it's onthe telly while I'm doing
something else.
It's almost as if it'ssomething for the ears when the

(28:40):
eyes are busy.
It's almost that.
So I should get some stickersmade.
That would be nice.
Yeah, so Did you put atrademark at the end of that
thing?
So some really interestingstuff going on there.
And, of course, edisonResearch's Podcast Consumer 2025

(29:01):
study came out yesterday andagain said a lot of stuff about
video podcasts.
Over half of the US has nowwatched a video podcast 37% have
watched one in the last monthand so video podcasts are
definitely a thing, albeit, youknow, it's kind of you know

(29:22):
where does a podcast stop andwhere does a TV show start.

Sam Sethi (29:25):
Well, I think video podcasts are the new TV I just
do.
That's my opinion.
I mean, the report said I thinkpodcasts could become the kind
of new basic cable television.
I think I agree with them and Ithink live podcasting, if we
get it right, could be the newradio.
I mean, we've talked about formany years me watching my
teenage children, who are now intheir twenties, how they
consumed video content onYouTube and it's like in the

(29:49):
corner they're listening to itand then they'll just look at it
occasionally.
We've talked about YouTubesaying that you know smart TVs
are their biggest platform.
I think you know we just haveto get used to the idea that the
younger generation is consumingcontent in that way and we
talked about the BBC reportwhich is getting older and a

(30:09):
different demographic and theyare using traditional gatekeeper
models because that's whatthey're used to, whereas the
younger generation consume it ina very different way and I
think people are getting tounderstand that Now.
I think also on the back ofthat, you did your Radioland
report, which is a radionewsletter that you do, and one
of the things that it's came outin that report, which may be

(30:32):
going back to what we saidearlier, but I think I don't
know if it's the same reportpart, but it showed it had a
declining and aging medium.
You know, can you?

is that what it?

Sam Sethi (30:42):
what you said in that report?

sorry yeah, I mean, you know I was again.
I was looking through the BBCannual report, which has lots,
lots and lots and lots ofinformation, and, yes, you know
pointing out a couple of themore interesting bits of data
from that report.
So you know pointing out thattotal time spent listening to
the app was static and thattheir audience was getting older

(31:06):
.
There's also some veryinteresting data in there around
what people are listening to intheir app, for example and this
again is radio rather than TV,but what people are listening to
live speech and live music ismuch the same, but then
on-demand speech is about 10times as big as on-demand music

(31:29):
radio shows.
So virtually nobody islistening to on-demand music
radio shows, even though that'sactually all of the bother and
all of the hassle that you'recurrently hearing online from
people complaining about theirapp going away.
So it's a really interestingset of data that.

(31:49):
So if there's one thing thatthe BBC does very well, it's
that annual report, which has alot of information in it.

Sam Sethi (31:56):
Now related to this, Jack Sylvester, who is the
producer of Diary of a CEO withStephen Bartlett, put out a post
on LinkedIn that said the Diaryof a CEO just hit a wild
milestone.
We're now reaching 3 millionpeople every single day and I
thought, wow, that is amazing.
But then I wanted to comparethat to TV audiences and to

(32:18):
things like Stephen Colbert andmaybe Medea San and stuff like
that.
So I had a quick look aroundthe one show which is BBC's, one
prime time programme show whichis bbc's one time one prime
time program gets around threemillion every night.
That's its prime time show sixo'clock on the bbc or 6 30 I
never watch it but anyway.
But when you look at that,stephen colbert gets 2.47

(32:40):
million, kimmel gets 1.75,fallon 1.25, seth myers gets 900
under a million.
So you look at Diary of a CEOat 3 million and that is bigger
than all the network main TVlate night shows combined not
combined, you know, in their owninterest, yeah, but I know,

(33:01):
yeah, I know, I know what youmean and it's such.

and you know again, what is that 3 million
and what is that you know?
And what is that 3 millionnumber from Diary of a CEO and
what is the 2.4 million?
I think it was from StephenColbert 4 million, by the way.
Yeah, well, yes, yes indeed.
But they're measuring differentthings, because Stephen Colbert

(33:26):
is measuring people watchingthat TV show for a minimum of
whatever it is these days fourminutes, eight minutes.
But whatever it is a minimum offour minutes or eight minutes
on a live broadcast TV channelit doesn't measure all of the
people who are consuming clipsof that show on YouTube.
It doesn't measure any of thatother information.

(33:48):
It's just purely a livebroadcast number, which is a
very different figure to the onethat Jack Sylvester at Flight
Studio has published about Diaryof a CEO, because that's
essentially the number fromYouTube.
And how long do you have towatch a video on YouTube?
Less than a second for you toactually count.

(34:09):
And so you know that isprobably an algorithm of oh, you
know, I've just finishedwatching this mad person talking
about some weird medical claimand then all of a sudden it
skipped over to somebody doingmuch the same on diary of a CEO.
Oh, I don't want to watch that,I'll watch something else,

(34:29):
guess what.
You've just been counted as aviewer in that particular case.
So, yeah, I mean, you know he,you know Jack's posted this
lovely thing saying you know,let me put that into perspective
it's filling the O2 arena 150times.
It's the population of Wales.
It's the amount of podcaststhat existed in 2024.
Yeah, except no, because you'renot measuring the same thing.

(34:54):
It's not a real people number,but of course it's a number that
you can see in the YouTubestudio thing, isn't it?

Sam Sethi (35:02):
So yeah, I just thought it was interesting that
again, maybe it's just me tryingto see is this a trend?
Are we extrapolating where thegatekeepers, the CBSs, the ABCs,
are losing audience, the BBCaging audience, rte in Spain
closing down, and then theconverse of that is podcasting

(35:23):
and video podcasting growing.
I mean, the call to StephenColbert has been very loud this
week.
Just go and run and start yourown channel.
You look at Mehdi Hassan, whowas dropped from CNN and he went
and started his own Zateo andhe's absolutely gangbustering it
now.
You look at Tucker Carlson, oneof the best interviews he did
with Ted Cruz.
You know, this week, mehdiHassan sitting with 24 far-right

(35:47):
racists.
I mean it was just amazingwatching that and listening to
it.
Again, this is where I find mostof the you know, the real good
content coming from.
It's not mainstream media.
I don't watch mainstream TV,nor the news.
I consume it through racistpolitics and newsagents.
This is where I am.
I think this is where mostpeople are going to.

(36:09):
I think it older people who arestaying, you know, in the
mainstream.
I turn it on at six o'clock andI watch coronation street after
and then emmerdale, and thenthey just watch the linear
schedule that you talked aboutfrom offcom.
I think we're seeing a massiveshift in trend, and I can see
kim or fallon and the othersgoing.
Hang on a minute.
I could probably make moremoney doing what these guys are
doing now.
You know Megyn Kelly's workedthis out.

(36:30):
I just think Fox and the othersare going to really struggle,
and especially when they'regetting sued every five minutes
as well, by the way.
So I don't know.

Well, yes, yeah, absolutely.
And you know, and look, I meanI read something that there's
been a plethora of stuff at alltalking about Stephen Colbert.
I mean, more frankly, morearticles than Stephen Colbert
has viewers, which I findparticularly confusing, but
anyway, but you know, and one ofthem was saying, look, you know
, as someone that was going tosell books as an author, yes,

(37:03):
I'm sad about Stephen Colbertgoing, but actually I sold far
more books on some smallpodcasts that just had a more
focused audience and I thought,well, that probably tells you
quite a lot that actually, youknow, the Late Show, for all of
its glitz and glamour, was, yes,only reaching two point

(37:23):
something million, but alsoactually wasn't really moving,
you know, that country forwardin terms of going to watch a
movie or going to buy a book orwhatever it ended up being,
because it was reaching so fewpeople.
Now, and I think you know that,with also the fact that it was

(37:44):
clearly losing quite a lot ofmoney.
You know is an issue there aswell.

Sam Sethi (37:48):
I think what was it?
40 million to make 200 staffand it was at a loss.

No, it was losing 40 million.

Sam Sethi (37:55):
Sorry, it cost 100 million to make and yeah, and it
had 200 staff but somebody saidvery wisely during covid all of
those late night shows managedto do it from home with a
skeleton staff and they've beentrained.
So actually, if they all wentback home or to a small studio
with a skeleton staff of, let'ssay, eight or ten, they could

(38:17):
still deliver the same valuecontent without all of the
extras.

It'll be interesting to watch, I think
yeah, but it but it, but itwasn't it.
I mean it was a prettydepressing watch.
And yes, absolutely you canmake a lot of media things
cheaper by making them worse.
And you know there is there's aquestion mark on.
You know what would happen toStephen Colbert's show if,

(38:42):
instead of 200 people, he had150?
I think there's an absolutelyvalid question mark to ask, you
know, to ask yourself there, butcould you still produce that
sort of show if you had fivepeople?
You know doing it.
No, I don't think so,especially from home.
So I, I, I, I kind of you knowthe the.
It would be very easy just toturn around and say, well, let's

(39:04):
just make it from a, you know,from a backlot somewhere in in
the middle of in the middle ofArkansas, but it's not, it's not
going to be the same thing, isit?

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Sam Sethi (39:53):
Okay, james, let's move on.
Okay, we haven't got a jingle,but it's the YouTube time.
The YouTube reports that wereout this week a guy called Nick
here blogged about.
There is no real alternative toYouTube for video on the
internet.
I'm sure PeerTube would saydifferently, and I'm sure others
would as well, but really andSpotify probably would argue

(40:16):
with that- yeah, yeah, yeah.

But for a creator is, I think, the point
that he was making.
For a creator, yes, peertube,lovely, great, brilliant, okay,
thanks.
But for a creator who wantstheir stuff viewed and found,
peertube, lovely, great,brilliant, okay, thanks.
But for a creator who wantstheir stuff viewed and found,
peertube, I'm afraid.
No, sorry, everybody's going toYouTube.
And so he's absolutely right.
He ended up saying if someonedoes not like how their podcast

(40:39):
host is behaving, they can movetheir show, but this is not the
case for video.
Arguably, you could say Spotifyversus YouTube, maybe, but even
then I don't think really thatSpotify is a good alternative.
So, yes, well, okay, I mean Ithink he's got a point.

Sam Sethi (40:57):
Yeah, and I know that the Podcast Standards Project
and various podcasting Tiddoapps and hosts are working to
try and provide an alternative,but that isn't fully baked out
yet.
Now YouTube also, on their blog, posted the new rules of
podcasting.
Top takeaways from our talkwith John Ushair and YouTube's
Steve McClendon lovely man thathe is I thought this was really

(41:19):
interesting looking at some ofthe key takeaways.
The first one was the line isblurring.
Every podcaster is a creator.
I agree I don't think allpodcasters now are single audio.
I mean lots are and lots willremain.
But I think many of the topfive percent, whatever the
number you want to call, I think, are multi-screened now.

(41:41):
Their audio, their video I meanI look at most of the video
podcasts that I consume.
They are, are also audio andyou know they're not single
function.
The other one is video isn'tjust an option, it's your engine
for discovery.
Just what you said two secondsago.
You know if you, if you aredoing video, you better be on
YouTube If you're audio only andI think this is a little bit

(42:03):
naughty, but if you're audio itmakes discovery way harder.
They said.
I think you know that's just avideo platform saying you know
you can only be video first, butagain, what do you?

think, yeah, I think, two salespeople from
YouTube telling us why YouTubeis the future for all of
creation is very exciting, butyou know, how much does YouTube
care about podcasting?
How much would YouTube care ifpodcasting fell over tomorrow
and stopped?
They wouldn't, because they'vestill got enough content from

(42:37):
coming in elsewhere.
And that's my, you know.
My worry about YouTube'scurrent infatuation with
podcasting, in a nutshell, isthat they see us as being lots
of free content for them to selladvertising with, and that's as
far as they go.
And so, of course, they'regoing to turn around and say, oh
, every podcaster is a creator,every creator is a podcaster.

(43:00):
Well, yeah, fine, but at theend of the day, you just want
more free content and you wantcontent that is successful and
works well.
And hey, guess what?
That's a podcast.
So, yeah, I kind of get that.
They talked a bit aboutthumbnails and how important
thumbnails are, and they thentalked about something which I

(43:23):
do agree with, but again, thisis algorithms, talking about
YouTube giving your backcatalogue a second life, and
YouTube is very good.
Its algorithm is very good atsurfacing older content, and so
what YouTube's recommendationengine can do is it can get more
people listening to some ofyour older shows, and I would

(43:44):
agree in terms of that.
The way that most podcast appswork is that they are
specifically driven for thenewest show.
That's where shows appear inpodcast apps and there's very
little ways of finding oldershows in there, and that's not
something that's clever in termsof YouTube, that's something

(44:06):
that's bad in terms of podcastapps, and we kind of need to fix
that somehow.

Sam Sethi (44:10):
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
The last one was SteveMcClendon.
I thought this was quiteinteresting.
He said YouTube is committed tomaking the platform the best
place for podcasters.
Okay, that's words.
Let's see the actions.
And we're trying to makepodcasts shine, especially on
televisions, which is their bigpush, I guess.
And he pointed out to thelaunch of the official podcast
charts as a new way to measureand celebrate success.

(44:32):
It was interesting that thesecharts are driven by watch time,
and again we talk about listentime in podcasting and it's good
to see that they're using watchtime as a metric.
So, going back to what you saidabout the diary of a CEO, one
second requires a play orwhatever, which generates that
three million and I remember wequestioned their one billion

(44:53):
plays as well, based on you knowhow much of that.
But if they're focusing onwatch time as a metric of their
charts, then clearly you have towatch more to get higher.
That's a good thing, isn't?

it.
I mean, yeah, I mean it's goodin terms of them because that's
the way that they will earn moremoney as well, because
obviously, the more you watchand use the YouTube platform,
the more that you can putadvertising in there.
So I think it's interestingthat their chart and they say
the podcast charts there's onlyone.
So let's be really clearthere's only one.

(45:27):
It's for the US, but you cansee it if you like, and that's
all fine.
By the way, would you like toguess who the number one is?

Sam Sethi (45:35):
Rogan no, no, okay, go on then.
Yeah, no idea, go on.

All right.
The number five is Kill Tony.
Number four, the Diary of a CEO.
Number three, the Midas TouchPodcast.
Number two, the Joe RoganExperience.
And number one is Call HerDaddy, oh.

Sam Sethi (45:52):
I was going to say Mel Robbins, okay, yeah.

No, she is nowhere in here that I can see.
Weird.

Sam Sethi (45:59):
Strangely, she was number one everywhere a little
while back.

Yes, no, I thought so too.
There are some very strangeones as you go a little bit
further down.
Quite a lot of these, of course, is the definition of a podcast
, so it comes back to that.
But yeah, you know.
So I can certainly understand,you know their point of view in

(46:23):
terms of making sure that, yeah,that they are pushing total
time spent as their chart.
I mean it doesn't help by thefact that it then says most
popular podcast shows on YouTube, most popular, longest watched,
surely, but anyway Well, how doyou?
measure popularity?
Well, yes, I suppose so.
But I mean, that figure is nicebecause it also ties into a new

(46:45):
piece of data from Nielsen, wholooks at all of the on-demand
streamers, and YouTube is againthe biggest.
But now just posted a newrecord 12.8% of all usage of TVs
in the US.
12.8% is to YouTube.
That's a pretty astoundingnumber.

(47:05):
Now, apparently it usually goesup at this sort of time and the
it usually goes up at this sortof time, and the reason why it
goes up at this sort of time isthat kids are out for holidays
and they are spending a lot oftime with their smart TVs and
other things watching YouTube.
So that probably explains alittle bit of that, and Netflix
has also gone up as a result.

(47:26):
But yeah, 12.8% of all TV usagein the US is quite a thing.

Sam Sethi (47:33):
And it goes back to that comment about cable TV
networks.
If they're losing the likes ofColbert and the others and TV
usage increasing on apps likeYouTube, then it makes sense for
those people to go independentand push out to that platform as
their new means of monetisingtheir content.
It does.

It does, and also on the other side, you can
also look at if you were to lookat podcasting, openrss and all
of that where does the moneycome from?
Is not that easily apparent toa creator?
Whereas if you look at YouTube,you go, oh that's fine, if
we're big enough, youtube willpay us some money.
And so I don't think we've goteven the story rights to

(48:14):
creators in terms of OpenRSS,because OpenRSS, of course, is
not built to earn money.

Sam Sethi (48:19):
Now moving on then well, literally moving on then
Patreon and other paywalls.
It started off the reason I putthis story in the script, james
, was it started off with areport that you put that there
was a women's running podcastthat wanted to use Discord as a
discussion area and that's howit would get paid subscribers.
And I was like God, that'sweird.

(48:40):
Why would you do that?
I mean, you know, I know thepodcast dance project has got a
Discord chat thing and I hate.
But most people I think we'vesaid on this show as a trend and
when I say most that's notprobably the right adjective
most are looking towards patreonor memberful or paywall sites.

(49:00):
And what was interesting for mewas that there was a guy called
joe budden who, again, I've notlistened, but he is saying he's
earning more than $1 millionper month on Patreon from
podcasting.
So when you're asking where'sthe money coming from, I think,
again, if we go back to what wesaid earlier, those people that

(49:21):
can afford to not have advertsdo not get adverts, but the
people who want quality contentare now willing to pay for it
and it seems that Patreon,memful and others are getting
the money.

Yes, but this is a very so.
This is in the US, particularly, although you know, it'll be
interesting to understand fromGirlhanger what's going on in
terms of their.
I think they use SupportingCast for their tools, so it'll
be interesting to find out whatthey're doing there, but
certainly in the US.
Yes, you're right.

(49:56):
I mean Joe Budden saying thathe's earning more than a million
dollars a month on Patreon.
By the way, he's not justsaying that the New York Times
have seen his figures, as indeedPatreon have, because Patreon
were the people who sent me thestory and said look, look, how
big we are and you know.
And Patreon ended up saying,look, you know.
The reason why Joe Budden hasreleased these numbers isn't

(50:19):
just because he's very proud.
He also wants to point out thatit's possible for creators to
maintain control over their IPand audience, stay independent
and still build massive,sustainable businesses on
Patreon.
So perhaps the Patreon, or thevalue for value because that's
basically what this is the valuefor value side of podcasting is

(50:41):
something that we should bepromoting more, rather than just
advertising and just sit backand the sponsors will come.

Sam Sethi (50:48):
Yeah, yeah.
And look we've been talkingabout just sit back and the
sponsors will come.
Yeah, yeah.
And look, we've been talkingabout the funding tag and the
adoption of it and that'slinking out to say patron.
I think we talked about, and Isaid I think Spotify will soon,
though, work out that actuallythe SOA, the Spotify Open Access
, which was their way around theapple tax, is actually not

(51:09):
smart, and they will actuallycut ties with the sites like
patreon, because they'll sayactually that's money that's
sitting on the table, that we'vebeen giving away, that we can
now take.
So I think patreon right now isin a goldilocks moment.
Right that they they are, youknow, allowing creators to earn
significant revenue, the fundingtags pointing to them and

(51:31):
Memful and others.
They're doing very well withSOA and other things, but I
think they are and I've said itbefore, they're my target.
They're the type of companythat I want to go after.
I think advertising drivenpodcasting is under significant
pressure because I think I'vesaid on numerous cases, I don't
think the metrics of measurementare very good currently and I

(51:53):
think people are willing nowmore to pay for quality content
and I think content creatorsdon't want the interruption of a
Casper mattress in the middleof their show when that
interrupts the flow.
So I think again I'm justlooking at trends here.
I think we're seeinggatekeepers on mainstream media.

(52:14):
I think the pressure's on them.
I think we're also seeing apressure now on content creators
to earn money.
But the interesting thing withSubstack, which is the opposite
to Patreon well, it's not theopposite, but it's an
alternative, which is theopposite to Patreon Well, it's
not the opposite, but it's analternative.
I think they're the reallyinteresting one to watch for me
because they are buildingcustomer portals or creator

(52:34):
portals, which is what AdamCurry was talking about, which
anyone who's listened to theshow will know he's called the
Rachel Maddow problem.
It's this destination endpoint.
So YouTube is not a destinationendpoint.
Spotify is not a destinationendpoint, because you can't
brand it, you can't own the URL,you can't create your home on

(52:55):
the web.
You know getyourowncom, but theZateo media network run by
Mehdi Hassan, runs on Substack.
They had a newsletter, but ifyou look at it now, it's
Zateocom, which is actually aSubstack platform, and they've
got their merch and they've gottheir donate and they've got
their podcasts and they've gottheir blogs and they've got

(53:16):
their newsletter and it is that,I think, is the future
personally for me, where I thinkthis is all going.
Creators are going to aggregateall their audio video and news
and everything and events andeverything, and he does live
podcasting from there as well.
I think it's a reallyinteresting platform.

Yeah, it's, I mean it's definitely interesting
.
Doing it under your own dot com, of course, makes the most
amount of sense, and whether ornot you use Substack under the
hood or supporting cast or otherpeople, then you know all of
that makes sense.
I think you know Substack is.
You know I mean it's a slickerWordPress in many ways and yeah,

(53:58):
and I think it's.
You know it's certainlyinteresting.
But you know, I mean obviouslythe best way to do it, if you
possibly can, is to haveeverything using your own code
on your owncom yeah, you know,that certainly helps.

Sam Sethi (54:10):
We won't see that you can do.

No, indeed, I can, I can do that and many
other people can't.
So, yes, totally get that.
By the way, patreon is not isnot cheap either.
So they've, they've.
They've just announced theirnew prices, and this is prices
for new creators.
So if you jumped on a long,long time ago, then you're still
paying the prices then, but ifyou're a new creator, from
August 4th you'll be paying.

(54:34):
10% of all of the revenue thatcomes in goes straight to
Patreon, which is stillconsiderably lower than Apple
charge apple charge but you knowwell, is it because patron had
to pay apple, if you remember,30 percent increase, yeah, but

(54:54):
there that that goes.
That's not patreon paying that,that's the, that's the creator
that ends up paying that yeah,so it's a double whammy, isn't
it?

Sam Sethi (54:59):
you're saying, patrons, prices have gone up and
now you've got the tax on.
Indeed, yes, so you've got thatyou you've got that too.

So, yeah, you know, interesting to see how
Patreon is doing, but certainlyinteresting, you know, to see
Joe Budden, who is the LinkedIn,basically saying look, I only
promote stuff that I'm a fan of,and that's a lovely, unique

(55:35):
place to be Jordan and I'm verypleased that you only promote
things that you're a big fan of.
At the end of the day, there'salso money to you know, to earn
for your family and everythingelse, and I can't imagine that.
You know Alistair Campbell andRory Stewart.
You know massive, big fans ofNordVPN, for example, or Fuse

(56:02):
Energy or whoever else theiradvertisers are.
So I do think that there's, youknow, yes, obviously don't
promote awful stuff Also.
Yeah, there is, there is a bitof there's a bit of realism in
that too.

Sam Sethi (56:16):
But also Stephen Bartlett, please don't promote
your own products and then don'tdeclare your investment.
Anyway, yes, and the last thingI want to send to Tao, because
you mentioned it WordPress.
I think Automatic are a companythat is I don't know what
they're doing right.
Pocket Cast plus Tumblr plusWordPress.
It all should be aggregatingtogether and be symbiotic.

(56:40):
It's not.
It's and I've had conversations, I won't say who with, but you
know they're not talkinginternally, let's put it that
way, and I think that's a missedmissed opportunity.
Well, there we are.
Sam Sethi has spoken and, yes,everyone's just skipped past.
So, anyway, moving on.

I'm not going to do this next one now, as soon
as you say everybody has skippedpast.
Dear listener, he was justabout to embark onto the secure
RSS conversation.
Well, okay, now I might.
Oh no, here we go.

Sam Sethi (57:16):
Okay, no, no, I'm not going to do the whole thing.
So the whole thing, what I willsay is that hosts are foolish.
Right, they are missing out onmassive amounts of money.
You said it on podbiz withnorma jean belenki.
Uh, you're on that show and yousaid why aren't hosts offering
newsletters?
Why aren't hosts doing thesesort of things?

(57:36):
I I'm saying to host, whyaren't you providing premium and
freemium content through thesame rss feed, which is what
secure rss is all about.
It's why you allowing patreonto take the money or member for,
or supporting cast or whateversub stack hosts should be
allowing you to host with themand then say oh, by the way,

(57:59):
here's your premium capable andwe'll deliver all of that
through the same rss feed.
So we'll give you your blogs,we'll give you your events,
we'll give you your blogs, we'llgive you your events.
We'll give you your premiumcontent and your freemium
content and keep your audiencein one place at one time.
Don't ask them to make a secondaccount on another platform
where you have no control as ahost.
You've lost total control oncethey go to Patreon.

(58:20):
You are no longer controllingyour customer and I can't get my
head round how hosts areostrich-like burying the heads.
They've missed the boat onvideo.
I genuinely think YouTube's gotthat one.
They've missed the boat on manyother things and sadly I think
you know, they're going to missthe boat on this one as well.

(58:41):
I think Patreon and Memo4 willtake the lion's share of the
money.
By the time the hosts wake upto what Secure RSS can and will
deliver, it'll be gone.

Well, and there we are.
Sam has spoken.
Maybe this is a good time toremind you that our sponsor,
Buzzsprout, does offer quite alot of that kind of stuff.
Not all of it, but quite a lotof that kind of stuff.

Sam Sethi (59:04):
No, they have all of the components.
They have wallets, they havesubscriptions, they have all of
that, that there, but they'renot putting it all together in
one way.

No, well, I think that's the, that's the
thing they're missing.
That'll be the thing thatobviously needs apps to do and
everything else.
But yes, totally, totally getthat.
But if you do want to supportus, we don't do supporter only
shows.
But if you do want to supportus, weeklypodnew do
supporter-only shows.

Sam Sethi (59:28):
But if you do want to support us, weeklypodnewsnet
that would be very nice, and Ithink you've got a Patreon as
well for Pod News Daily.
So there you go.

Well, yes indeed .

Speaker 2 (59:35):
Podcast events on the Pod News.

Weekly Review.
Well, it's always nice whensomebody wins an award for the
work that they've done aroundpodcasting, but it's not a
podcasting award.
So congratulations to TomWebster, who has won a CMI award
, the Content MarketingInstitute, and he ended up
winning an award for the workthat he's done at Sounds
Profitable for best datastorytelling at the Content

(01:00:00):
Marketing Awards.
That's his second award at thatevent.
He first won with EdisonResearch back in 2019.
So congratulations, tom.
I think that's a brilliantthing.
It's good that you are tellingthe story of podcasting, so
that's definitely a good thing.
And there was a nice eventrecently, the Higher Ed PodCon,

(01:00:20):
which was all about universitieswho are talking about
podcasting and all of that kindof thing.
Greg Wasserman, who works forrsscom, was botha founding
sponsor and also ended upspeaking, and he's recapped the
event online, which isworthwhile reading.
Other events going on Veryquickly.
The Be here Indie Audio Awardshave been launched.

(01:00:42):
They are recognising thecontribution of the indie audio
community.
It's not just podcasting, it'sother bits of audio as well.
It's run by a UK company calledBe here, which is an audiobook
producer, and you can enter thatuntil the end of September, and
the Signal Awards has extendedits entry deadline until August
the 1st.

(01:01:02):
I never judge any of theseawards because it's so much hard
work To find out, aren't I, youare about to find out?
Because it makes it's so muchhard work and to find out,
aren't I, you are about to findout, because it looks like
you're one of the judges.

Sam Sethi (01:01:12):
How exciting, yeah yeah, I've never done this
before, so it'll be good, yeahjudging is always a good thing.

James Cridland (01:01:17):
So, and what I find?
I find it's it's bothfascinating because you hear
some really good stuff, and alsovery depressing because you
hear some really bad stuff.
So it's and you're there.
Why have you entered this foran award?
It's awful, which is alwaysfascinating, but still.
But there we are and PodcastMovement 2025 is coming up,

(01:01:43):
which I got through the postearlier on this week.
Stop me and claim yours.
It's a nice PodNews sticker,but it's not just a PodNews logo
.
There's something more excitingthere to go on with, so that
should be fun.
They've made their keynotespeaker announcements.
They've actually just put mostof the schedule up now.
If you have a swap card accountwith Podcast Movement, you can

(01:02:04):
already see it in there, sothat's a good thing.
One of the speakers is GabrielSoto from Edison Research, who
will be sharing some new data,and another one of the speakers
is Jack Davenport, who'sco-founder of Goalhanger, which
is the UK's biggest independentpodcaster.
He will be talking about a lotof exciting things from the UK.
What they need is a is ahandsome british person to ask

(01:02:26):
him a ton of questions.
I'm not going, oh, sorry aboutthat.
So, uh.
So that should be fun, but oh,they've asked you.
Oh well, you know, I mean,maybe we'll.
We'll have to wait and see,won't we?
But uh, yeah, maybe.
But something else which isgoing on at that very event

(01:02:46):
podcast movement is that thereis is that they've listed all of
the private meeting rooms,which is interesting, so you can
actually go and see what theprivate meeting rooms are and
who will be secreting themselvesin private meetings.
Interestingly, Spotify does notlook as if it has a private
meeting room yet, but one personthat does, or one company that

(01:03:08):
does have a private meeting roomis.
But one person that does, orone company that does have a
private meeting room, is thePodcast Standards Project for
the first time.
So, instead of meeting in arestaurant, they are going to be
meeting in their own privatemeeting room, which doubtless
will be the dullest room thatyou've ever seen, but at least
it'll be quiet.
So that'll be good andapparently open meetings for
everybody, as well as membermeetings as well, and what

(01:03:29):
they've done is they've alsopublished on their blog post a
nice picture, which includes you, mr Sethi, wearing a very fancy
shirt, from some of thediscussions that happened in
London at the podcast show.
Yeah, sort of sneakingoccasionally.
Yes, so that was a fine thing.
The only other one that I willmention is Radio Days Asia,

(01:03:50):
which is on September the 1st tothe 3rd in Jakarta in Indonesia
.
If you're down this way, thenwhy not come along?
You get money off Radio DaysAsia and indeed, podcast
movement, if you want to.
You can find out more about howto do that in the Pod News
newsletter as well, and theirfirst set of keynote speakers
has just been announced RonBatyong, who's a good man, who's

(01:04:12):
the CEO of Podcast NetworkAustralia, mike Russell from
Creator Magic in the UK alsodoes jingles and things.
Chitra Prastuti from KBR Mediain Indonesia, and some handsome
English guy will also be there.
So that should all be fun.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

Annie Tech Stuff very quickly.
Let's just give a nice mentionto Pocket Casts.
They now properly supportserial shows, so they are sorted
correctly in the correct ordernow, and all of that, and
congratulations to Evo Terra,who wrote a blog piece all about
that about a year and a halfago, and Pocket Casts have
implemented all of that stuff.
So many congratulations to them.

(01:04:53):
Many congratulations to you aswell, sam, because you are now
properly in the Apple App Storeand the Google Play Store.

Sam Sethi (01:04:59):
Yeah, painful, painful, yes, but we got there
and, as I said last week, thenice thing about it is I don't
need approval now for newfeatures that I add because of
the way that we built it with aPWA, so yeah, excellent also, by
the way, we support the serial.
We did that first because weworked well, yes, of course you
do.

You didn't do that first, I do, I do like to
do that first.
Well, we didn't do it first?
We?

Sam Sethi (01:05:21):
did before pocket cars and okay, yes, let me put
it that way our favorite time ofthe week.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
It it's the Pod News Weekly Review.
Inbox.

Yeah, so many different ways to get in touch
with us.
There's fan mail, there's supercomments, there's boosts or
email as well no boosts for thefirst time ever.
No boosts for the first timeever.
No fan mail either.
So we just need to say thankyou to you for listening.
Please do get in touch, though,if you'd like to.
Weekly at podnewsnet is anemail address if you'll find

(01:05:52):
that easier, and thank you toJohn McDermott, James Burt, to
Rocky Thomas, to Rachel Corbettand many others for being our
excellent power supporters.
We're now on 21,.
If you'd like to join thoseWeeklypodnewsnet.
What's happened for you thisweek?

Sam Sethi (01:06:05):
Sam dot pod news dot net.
What's happened for you thisweek, sam?
Well, pulled my hair out, butgot the google play store app
done and we did a demo of hls,or low latency hls, now working
from everything from 320 up to4k, so that's all good.
And we're pushing ahead withsome of the plans around hosting
, so that's all good.

Yeah, that's what we've been working on
excellent and you're a busy,busy man, taught doing business
conversations with all kinds ofpeople.
Yes, I know.
So I will probably leave you todo those conversations with all
kinds of people and I will wrapup, if you like.
Thanks, james, and that's itfor this week.
There you go, all of ourpodcast stories taken from the
Pod News daily newsletter atpodnewsnet.

(01:06:44):
You can support this show bystreaming sats.
Yes, you can.
You can give us feedback usingthe Buzzsprout fan mail link in
our show notes.
You can send us a super commentor a boost, or you can become a
power supporter like the 21people that already do that at
weeklypodnewsnet, and thank youto all of you for that.
Our music is from TM Studios,our voice over is Sheila D, our

(01:07:05):
audio is recorded using CleanFeed, we edit with Hindenburg
and we're hosted and sponsoredby Buzzsprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
Get updated every day .
Subscribe to our newsletter atpodnewsnet.

Sam Sethi (01:07:19):
Tell your friends and grow the show and support us
and support us the Pod News.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
Weekly Review will return next week.
Keep listening.

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