A few weeks before the recent HearSay Audio Arts Festival in Kilfinane, Ireland, I got a message from Diarmuid McIntrye, the festival’s director saying he wanted me to do “a once off talk - I’m thinking provocation but also reflection.” Diarmuid explained that the festival programming would follow an arc, from grief and loss (it would be an understatement to say the audio industry…and the world in general…has experienced quite a bit of both since the last HearSay in 2019) and then segue into optimism and hope over the following days. He asked me to speak at the opening event on the first night in Kilfinane’s “Old Church.” So I went to church, literally and figuratively, about where our industry is at and the moment we are in.

I thought it was worth sharing with you all as well.

[BRIEFLY: SEE YOU IN LONDON?] Even though I’ve been home from Ireland for about 16 hours, I’ll be heading back across the Atlantic next week to be at The Podcast Show in London. I’ll be lurking around on Wednesday and Thursday. If you are there, please say hello. I really enjoy when readers say “hi” when we are in the same place at the same time.

[A HOMILY ON THE STATE OF THE AUDIO INDUSTRY] Even though the cemetery may be located next to the church, it is a tradition in Irish funerals to walk around town for a bit, stopping by the departed’s work place or home or other places associated with them before ending up graveside.

Diarmuid told me he was concerned how present all the recent loss in the audio industry (jobs, projects, funding, etc) was to those planning to attend. He felt the best way to help people see beyond this was to borrow that funeral structure and name the loss, name the feeling, and then move forward. I was asked to give a talk in the Old Church in Kilfinane before that walk.

The following is what I shared with those attending:

When Diarmuid asked me to do this talk, he wanted me to share some thoughts about where our audio world finds itself at the beginning of this festival and my beliefs about where things are heading. About two weeks ago, Jesse Baker and I were recording a podcast episode when the host said that he no longer says “I think” or “I believe” because he realized that no one cares what he thinks or believes. Instead he says, “What my experience has shown me…” I think this is brilliant, so today I’m not going to share what I think or believe, but share what my experience has shown me.

When I was asked to do this, my first response was it needed to be here, in the Old Church.

How many of you are here in Kilfinane for the first time?

Well, this building is referred to as the “Old Church.” What’s referred to as the “New Church” is St Andrews, which you’ll probably walk past during the festival. What I find charming is that the New Church has been called the “New Church” since it was built…150 years ago. It was called “new” when Queen Victoria was on the throne and Rutherford B. Hayes was the U.S. President. This Old Church, oddly also once called St Andrews, actually isn’t all that much older than the New Church, but this church was Church of Ireland and the New Church is Catholic.

Regardless, I wanted to do this talk here because the residents of Kilfinane have been coming here for hundreds of years, to mark the best and worst moments of their lives.

Anyone who has ever traveled with me knows that I love to visit churches. I go into churches almost everywhere I go. I sit in them and take them in. You can really feel a sense of the people who have used that place as a marker for all the milestones of their lives. They marked births there, first communion and confirmation to mark the transition into adulthood, marriages, the baptism of their own children, and their deaths. With the cycle repeating over and over and over again.

A piece of scripture that often gets quoted in places like this at these moments is found in Ecclesiastes 3:1: “To everything there is a season.”

And when I think about the current state of the audio world…

my experience has shown me this:

We are in one of those cycles of seasons.

We’ll come back to that in a moment.

When people come to churches to mark their milestones they do it in a variety of ways. Sometimes with prayer, sometimes with ritual, and sometimes with song.

So I’m going to start this with a song too.

That’s Dinah Washington, with her 1953 song “TV Is The Thing This Year.” We’ll end the song there. The rest of the song goes deep into double entendre. Dinah calls the TV repair man to come fix her television, then declares she wants him to twist her dials…it kind of goes downhill from there.

But the line I care about is in the chorus, “Radio was great; now it’s out of date. TV is the thing this year.”

That was 73 years ago.

At the time, people thought the Bright Shiny Thing called TV would kill audio.

The talent left. The attention left. Who needed audio anymore?

Sound familiar?

Radio was left behind. And then something unexpected happened.

Stations had hours to fill… so they brought in kids to play R&B records.

And that—accidentally—became the birth of rock and roll.

So what looked like an ending… was actually the beginning of something new and arguably bigger.

When Diarmuid asked me to give this talk, he told me he was moved by the sense of loss and grief that attendees had voiced in advance of the festival. Since the last time we met in April of 2019, so much has changed. And that helps explain why this moment feels the way it does. Personally, we all lived through a really scary and uncertain time with COVID. Many of us have experienced loss. Real loss. Including our work. In my country we all got excited when we got rid of the bloated orange baby man. But then somehow the bloated orange baby man came back. We’ve had wars and economic upheaval. The world seems unsettled and fragile–and the audio industry definitely feels unsettled and fragile too.

I wrote a book once about ghosts.

While working on it, a question I put to a lot of people was “How come so many ghost experiences happen at night?”

I got back a surprisingly consistent answer: It’s because at night things are still, dark, and silent.

The ghosts are actually around us all the time–but we only notice them in those still, quiet moments.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons I hear headphones, pumping noise into my head all day long. I’m trying to keep from what’s in the silence.

With that in mind, I’d like to pause for a moment of still and silence, to acknowledge the loss and grief we have brought with us.

[PAUSE]

Professionally we’ve seen a lot of loss. Back during the last HearSay in 2019, we were all on a podcast-fueled sugar high. Jobs were popping up daily, with good salaries and interesting work. Companies had recently spent over a billion dollars buying other companies in podcasting. It seemed that every week new and exciting things were happening in audio. These were our salad days. And back then, we were very clearly in one kind of season. Now, the audio world is in another.

I can’t do much about any loss you have experienced–outside of to say I’m sorry and it sucks and I’m mostly sorry that these things happened at a time of such turmoil in the world and in our industry. But I do hope that tonight I can help reframe your thinking about the moment our industry is in and what happens next in this cycle, and what you can do about it.

Personally, I don’t spend a lot of time lamenting the salad days of audio and podcasting. For two reasons, the first is that those glory days that we all mourn: money: flowing, jobs: abundant, projects getting green lit, everyone’s attention on podcasting. When this festival first started in 2015, Edison Research said 21% of U.S. adults listened to podcasts every month. By the time we last gathered here in 2019, it was over 30%—and it felt like it was only going one direction. Bigger. Every. Year.

And I should take a minute to apologize for being both very podcast centric and very American centric in my remarks. First off, the data is more abundant about US listening and has been available longer. Also, podcasting has been the focal part of the audio industry for almost two decades and its fortunes raise and lower all boats in the broader audio world.

So by 2019, things were lit. On fire. Everything felt like it was going up, up up.

But here is the problem, more of it than we want to admit wasn’t real.

We saw a mirage…and we were naive enough to believe it.

We saw people coming into podcasting excited about the medium—creating jobs, writing checks, greenlighting projects, and pumping up the industry. But it wasn’t real.

These people were not believers in the power of audio, they were believers in The Bright Shiny Thing. They weren’t chasing podcasting’s potential. They were trying to bask in the warmth of the current Bright Shiny Thing.

If you don’t believe me, here is something to consider.

In 2022–the peak of podcasting’s robustness–right before things started to get weird–The Hollywood Reporter ran a feature titled “The Top 40ish Most Powerful People in Podcasting.” It featured photos and short bios of the people really “moving the needle” in the exploding world of podcasting. There was talent in that list, along with platform execs, those running networks, and heads of podcasting for large media companies.

The list is actually bigger than 40–there are 62 people listed: 26 talent and 36 executives. The talent side has been remarkably stable over time, but of those 36 executives–the people running the industry–the most powerful people in podcasting–according to The Hollywood Reporter in 2022–how many of them do you think are still working in those roles in podcasting today?

That number is shockingly small. That number would be about 6.

84% of those who were considered the industry’s leaders and game changers–just four years ago–are now gone–completely out of the industry.

And that shouldn’t be surprising. Four years before that list was published, very close to the time of the last HearSay Festival, how many of those 36 executives were already working in podcasting?

About 1 in 4 of them. Everyone else on that list came into podcasting, made a bunch of noise, talked big–and then left.

They didn’t behave like people who believed in the long-term power of audio. And what they left behind was damage. To projects. To jobs. To momentum.

But maybe the harder truth is this—we wanted to believe them.

We saw their enthusiasm for our work and thought it was directed at us. In truth, it wasn’t.

In the first book of Kings, Chapter 22, King Ahab gathers four hundred prophets and asks whether he should go to battle at Gilead. The prophets all unanimously advise him to go, declaring that the Lord will grant him victory. But they were false prophets.

There were so many of them, all saying the same thing, that Ahab believed them without questioning the motives about why they encouraged him to go. In chapter 22:6, it tells of “hundreds of voices, all saying the same thing… all confidently wrong.”

Or perhaps a better passage would be Exodus 10:14-15, :The locusts covered the face of the whole land…until the land was darkened…and nothing green remained.”

Fun fact: do you know what those departed former-powerful podcasting people are doing now? Over half of them are now working in AI.

Most of these people went from 2022 Bright Shiny Thing to 2026’s Bright Shiny Thing.

And while we are on the subject, I’d love it if for the next three days we can agree not to say the letters “A” and “I” together, unless, of course, someone asks you to spell out “raisin” or “eclair” or something. Hey, it’s HearSay–it could happen.

I mentioned there was a second reason I don’t get too wrapped up over the podcasting and audio’s reset over the past several years.

Because if this moment isn’t random—if it’s part of a cycle—then the question isn’t what we lost. The question is: what is this moment trying to teach us?

Here is the thing about hardship and grief: it is painful, but it is often your best teacher. You learn to live with the moment. And eventually, you learn how to use it.

My experience has taught me this: endings are beginnings. And you are ready for the new beginning when you recognize what the ending was trying to teach you.

If your spiritual side believes that everything happens for a reason, then it is on you to figure out what this moment is trying to teach you.

Romans chapter 5:3-5–something probably read many times in this room over the centuries, says, “We rejoice in our troubles, knowing that trouble produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”

So if that’s true… if hardship produces something—if this moment is actually shaping us— then the question becomes:

Who does this moment belong to?

Because here’s what my experience has shown me…

The Bright Shiny Thing people? They don’t stick around for this part.

They weren’t built for it. Plus, they’re already gone.

They go where things are easy. Where things are loud. Where things look like they’re only going up.

But this part—this quieter, harder, uncertain part—this is where the people who actually care about the work… stay.

This is when the people who believe in audio—not as a trend, but as a craft—do their best work.

And if trouble produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope–it is the work that is the hope.

The work of the person sitting next to you. Your work. Our work.

What will take us through this cycle and up into the next? Well, it’s you.

But it isn’t entirely you.

There is one group attached to the audio industry that didn’t get a memo about the audio industry recession or reset or reckoning or whatever you want to call it.

That’s the audience.

During all the tumult of the last several years that we’ve felt professionally, during that time the audience has only grown. Remember that number of Americans who listen to podcasting? It went from 2% to 21% to 30% in 2019. Today… over 40% listen every month. And nearly 70% of Americans have listened to a podcast. Ever.

While all of this turmoil was happening to us… they didn’t leave.

They grew. The problem wasn’t that no one was interested in listening. The problem wasn’t the audience at all. It was everything surrounding that audience.

And we’re starting to see this show up in some research. Listeners say they love podcasting, but then, many say something like, “But…what happened to all the good stuff?”

But you know what else my experience has told me…that you, in your hearts, already know all this.

When I first sat down to write this talk, the first line I wrote was this next one:

Why are we here?

Why did we come here when every piece and talk you will hear over the next few days could be shared on a Zoom call, a Substack, a Slack channel, or linked in an email?

Why did we come from all around the world here, to Kilfinane, a community of 700 people where there are five pubs yet they still haven’t figured out how to have consistent cell phone signal. Why have we come here?

Well, I have news for you.

Even though it is the reason we told everyone we wanted to be here, it isn’t because this is an audio festival. I think it is pretty safe to say we didn’t come for the audio.

We came to be a community.

We came to support each other. To inspire each other. We came to hear something we all love and care about–so much that many of us have devoted our working lives to it: craft and story, the power of the human voice…and the power of listening.

We came to do it together. Because that is the fuel we need to move forward.

Subscribe now

Recently, Apple Podcasts made its announcement about supporting video podcasts, and for reasons not to explain right now–but happy to later–video in Apple Podcasts is only slightly less of a shit sandwich than what Spotify is doing. And I explained this to my creative partner Jesse Baker and told her how much of a bad deal this was for creators and how completely divorced these efforts are from any understanding of what actually makes podcasting work.

If Dinah Washington was alive, she might sing instead, “Audio was great, now it’s out of date. YouTube is the thing this year.”

Right?

Jesse looked at me and said, “I think we just have to accept that people don’t care about the things we care about: the grace of an edit, the pacing, the craft of sound.”

And I said, “I refuse to accept that!”

And when it came time to figure out how the two of us were going to find time to come to HearSay, we had to move a lot of mountains to make this possible. Our families are dealing with a lot this week so that the two of us could come to Kilfinane, because I felt it was so important for us to be here for the moment that’s about to happen right now.

I would like every single person in this room to say, “Jesse, we care about it too.”

[PAUSE FOR THEM TO DO IT.]

We are all united. Our collective experience has shown us…the power of listening. The power of playfulness in our work. The power of the unexpected moment. The power of connection. We come from many places–and many of us do very different work in audio. But we all share that understanding.

A passage spoken many times in this room over the centuries is Matthew chapter 18:20 “When two or three are gathered together, I will be in the midst of them.”

Well, here we are.

Turns out… ‘the thing this year’ is always going to be the thing this year.

And it always will be.

But what lasts… is this.

Now, before we wrap up, I want to share a prayer I have for all of you.

Over the next several days you are going to listen to a lot. You will hear some breath-taking work. You will hear from some sharp minds. You will be excited. You’ll be moved by what you hear. You may hear something in another language, but you will still feel it. And let’s be honest, you’ll hear some weird shit too. You don’t have to love everything, because you won’t. You won’t necessarily get everything either–and that’s okay. Great work isn’t for everyone.

You will also meet new friends. You will connect deeper with others. You will appreciate so much.

But this isn’t my prayer for you. My prayer for you is not that you find inspiration–because I know that’s going to happen. I want you to do a revolutionary act.

My prayer for you is that you will BE the inspiration.

And I’m not talking about HearSay being a place to brag or show off your work. I’m talking about being inspiration by encouraging each other.

My experience has shown me that I can learn something from anyone–and the way I show gratitude for that is to go up to them and tell them that I enjoyed their work or what they had to say. And you should do that as many times as possible this weekend.

My prayer is that you will spend the next few days being an unbridled enthusiast for the work of the others here. Let go of ego and let go of cool.

Well, we all work in audio, so we let go of being cool a long time ago.

But, anyways… don’t just say that you liked it, but tell them a sentence or two why. Strike up a conversation in the pub. Chances are one of you has solved a problem before that the other is experiencing–or have an idea that inspires one from them too. Trust me. It will mean the world to them.

And these connections are not just feel good. Ariana Martinez, who is here, has worked at our company on projects. We first met Ariana here at HearSay, when we saw them do a presentation of their work. One of the biggest shows I ever worked on was an NPR show called Invisibilia. The two original hosts of that show met when they were both standing on the sidewalk outside of the Third Coast Festival.

That’s the thing about hope and possibility—it doesn’t just magically show up out of nowhere.

It shows up in small moments.

In a sentence you say to someone. In the way you listen. In the way we show up for each other.

My experience has shown me…that when you have hope and possibility in your heart, your best work is always ahead of you. And the fuel for that hope and possibility isn’t a clever Pro Tools edit…it is each other.

Now, before we move on the next thing in our agenda tonight, I want to close the same way they closed a lot of moments in this building, I’m going to share the peace with you–and afterwards I want to hear that big old “Amen.”

So here we go: May the peace of the Lord of Audio be with you and remain with you, always.

Amen.

Okay, that’s it for today.

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

[BRIEFLY: SEE YOU IN IRELAND?] On Wednesday, I’m heading to Kilfinane, Ireland for the HearSay Festival–and I’m getting really excited about it. Looking through the WhatsApp group, there are at least three former Mag Noise staff also going–plus a lot of favorite people from around the audio industry. When I’m not sitting in a session, I’ll be camped out in the back room of the pub on the north side of the main street. If you are going, please make a point to come up and introduce yourself.

[WHAT ANGINE DE POITRINE CAN TEACH US ABOUT PODCASTING] On February 5th of this year, YouTube put a video from KEXP at the top of my recommendation list. It was from their great in-studio concert series–suggested for me the day it came out.

I took one look at it and passed. I had never heard of the band and the only thing I could tell was that the band members were wearing costumes, which could be really great, or really NOT great–and I was just too busy to have time to spin that wheel.

But YouTube kept recommending it, in the top slot, for the next few days–then I finally gave in and watched. Two minutes into the video, I knew this was something that was going to be massive. Despite my enthusiasm, I think I still kinda underestimated it.

As of today, that video has been viewed more than 13 million times in the last three months on YouTube and more than 6 million more views on Instagram. And when you add on all the shorts, cuts of the individual songs, and the thousands of reaction videos to people watching the original video, I’m sure the number of people viewing that concert is easily several times the 13 million views of the original video.

I’m talking, of course, about Angine de Poitrine, the Quebecois duo who go by Khn (guitar/bass) and Klek (drums), who describe themselves as a “microtonal dada Pythagorean cubist rock orchestra” performed by extraterrestrials who are 333 years old. The concert came out on the verge of the release of their second album, Vol. II.

Since then, Angine de Poitrine has gone from having a modest 20,000 listeners a month on Spotify, to now more than 2.5 million listeners per month–and in a matter of less than 10 weeks.

This band has become such a thing for people that if you search “Angine de Poitrine” in Google, the search result page comes up with black polka dots. Seriously. Please try it.

When you watch (if you are short on time, here is a link to the most-viewed/most-shared song in their short set), you are immediately taken in by the weirdness, but once you get over the oddness of the whole thing, you pretty quickly are blown away by the guitarist’s fluency with a double-necked guitar/bass and complex pedal/looping setup. Once you spend a bit of time taking this in (and/or watch the thing dozens of times as I have), you come to appreciate that it is actually the drummer who makes all this work. Many of the songs are in odd time signatures, and change time signatures multiple times, yet the drummer’s precision and ability to yank the song back into something accessible and fun to hear is just dynamite.

A joy addendum to this video is reading through the comments.

Here are some of my favorites:

“Best thing I’ve seen since yesterday when I watched it last time.”

“The weird part starts at 0:00.”

“I’ve never had a band go from ‘this is too complicated for me’ to an absolute banger in less than three seconds.”

“My wife will appreciate exactly none of this.”

“So now I’m supposed to just go on with my life?”

And the best one, “Take that AI.”

It’s that last comment that I want to spend some time with today.

Subscribe now

If you’d like to read some great thinking on the virality of Angine de Poitrine, Steve Pratt of The Creativity Business wrote a great piece that you’d enjoy and get a lot from.

For us today, I’m less interested in their virality as to what they can teach podcasters at this odd juncture in our evolution.

Just last week, Ashley Carman from Bloomberg reported (gift link) that as many as 39% of new podcasts are AI-generated. In talking to creators and network execs alike, there is a tremendous amount of angst about AI and its potential disruptive impact on podcasting and digital audio. But, as I’ve written before, I don’t lose too much sleep over this. Inception Point AI co-founder told Ashley that people who are dismissive of their 10,000 active AI-generated shows “Are upset because they know this is the future.” Sure. That’s exactly right. It both surprises me–and doesn’t–that someone working in AI understands so little about it.

To me, in audio, AI is a perfect example of “can” versus “should.” Can you use an AI voice to narrate an audiobook? Sure, you can. In fact, once the tech really started to sound like a human being, this was the first place my mind went. Producing an audiobook takes a lot of time. There are the grueling dozen-plus hours that the writer or hired narrator spends in a sound booth reading their 100,000+ word manuscript, then editing afterwards. Compared to podcasting, the cost per hour is actually cheap–but it’s been historically hard to shortcut, which makes scaling it very difficult. Then along comes AI and that weeks-long grinding process is shortened to minutes, with a fractional cost. Many bean-counting dimwits would green light that immediately (and many did). But anyone who has given any thought to the audience’s experience knows that the performance of an audiobook is often as important to the audiobook listener as the original text itself. If you look on services like Audible, Kobo, or audiobooks.com, you’ll see that customers rate narrators right alongside the book rating. Audiobooks customers follow narrators and will listen to books just because a favorite narrator is voicing it. If you’ve ever heard an AI-narrated audiobook, you hear a lot of strange inflection, mispronunciation, and strange cadence. So can you use AI to narrate an audiobook, sure, you could. But should you do it? Not if you want to keep your customers who care and are invested in the medium.

In podcasting, can you use AI? Absolutely. But should you? Now, I’m betting you are going to think I’m going to say “no.” I’m not.

There are plenty of smart uses for AI in podcasting. Many, actually. For example, I’ve found that using AI to draft/revise show notes is really smart. I’m not talking about one click or one prompt drafts, but if you train an LLM to understand your goals, writing style, teach it best practices, and also tune it for SEO optimization, it can help you write a great first draft or offer you feedback on one you’ve written (with all these things in mind).

But while AI is great for some applications in our work, it is terrible for others, including creating the actual content.

Seth Godin said something I think about a lot when conversations turn to AI. “AI in every field, does mediocre work faster and better and cheaper than humans can. For your mediocre record producer, your mediocre writer — AI is a threat, because it can do it faster for less.”

So why doesn’t the AI rush concern me? Because I don’t aspire to do mediocre things.

If you make a mediocre thing, be very scared. One way to safeguard your work from AI is to make something that it can’t do. And that’s where we circle back to Angine de Poitrine.

AI is very good at imitation of things that already exist. It is very good at taking a rote thing and doing a lot of imitation or iterations of that rote thing, at scale. For example, James Cridland recently wrote about an AI-created Top 40 station that is shockingly, remarkably similar to a Top 40 station you might hear in your local market (though James describes it as AI-hosted by a voice akin to a “tediously dull Casey Kasem - think NPR presenting a top 40 chart.” (Ouch!)

If you’ve listened to a lot of radio lately, you can definitely understand both why broadcasters are scared of AI and why AI has such an easy time doing a convincing imitation of their rote formula.

So how do you safeguard against being AI’s next target? Be like Angine de Poitrine.

In describing them once, I said that Angine de Poitrine was the most punk band I’d seen in some time, simply because they refuse to follow the rules. They break everything.

AI can only follow the rules, not create new ways to break them.

I think that is why so many people love this out-of-nowhere band so deeply, because the band has probably ignored every piece of advice anyone has ever given them. Why do they do this, this way? Because it is fun. Because it feels good. And that is completely infectious. People who see and hear Angine de Poitrine can feel this and are overjoyed that something this ridiculous and this fun exists in their boilerplate risk-adverse world. Just like podcasting, and arguably more so, music is experiencing its own lull of creative freshness and invasion of AI-driven slop. Then, out of nowhere, comes Angine de Poitrine.

That’s why this is so popular.

And how can you establish such a relationship with your current and future audience: be that unpredictable, surprising, and delightfully odd version of what you do.

I’ve often told people who are struggling to find a way out of a rut my three-word strategic mandate for creatives: “Make surprising choices.”

Make surprising choices big and small in almost anything you do. Not stupid, wild things like reading your copy in Mandarin or something–just give the audience something, ANYTHING, that they didn’t expect. Delight them with a meaningful surprise.

And they will love you for it.

Because here’s the thing: AI isn’t coming for your job. It’s coming for work that isn’t distinctive enough to matter.

If what you make can be easily predicted, it can be easily replicated.

So don’t try to outrun AI. Make something it can’t follow. Just like our friends in Angine de Poitrine.

Okay, that’s it for today.

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

Here is one of the paradoxes of the Audio Insurgent: when I write about public radio (a subject that is a decreasingly niche segment within the niche of spoken-word audio) those dispatches end up attracting the most page views, and not by a little bit.

Recently I got a note from a reader named Matt, saying:

“I really love your newsletter, but I wanted you to know why I’m canceling my subscription. You used to talk about public radio frequently and I found those very inspiring and helpful. You don’t write about it anymore, so I’m taking a break.”

Matt is right (and Matt, you are welcome back any time). There are two primary reasons for this.

But first…

[A BIT OF NEWS ABOUT ME] When Jesse Baker and I are traveling for work, she’ll often say something like, “Okay, I’m going to give you ten minutes to talk all you want about pens, and that’s it for this trip.” Paid subscribers to The Audio Insurgent know that I offer them a handwritten bespoke dispatch sent just to them. This is all part of a larger project I’ve been working on for the past three years. And now I can share it with you.

I’m writing a new book.

When I first started my quest to improve my handwriting, I just thought it would be an exercise in re-learning how to write, but better this time. Boy, was I wrong. Not only wrong about the work involved, but the role this effort would play in my life.

It has evolved into a memoir/self-help book called LONGHAND. Don’t rush to Amazon quite yet, I have to finish it first. I was really surprised by the reception it got from publishers and I landed with a great editor at Henry Holt and Company (who, herself, has crap handwriting too). It is slated to come out late next year.

This will be my fifth book and my second memoir. As many of you know, my last book was about podcasting, but this is a return to form for me of writing books about subjects I know nothing about when I start. The whole thing is kinda crazy in the best way possible. And you’ve been warned about asking me about cursive, penpals, fountain pens, ink, how paper is made, or why it’s interesting that both Virginia Woolf and Kurt Cobain crossed their “t”s with an upward slant in their suicide notes. These are not short answers.

And before we move on, here is a fun fact about pens: If we all quit disposable pens and wrote with fountain pens, not only would it be cheaper in just a few years of use, but in that period of time, we would have saved an amount of plastic waste equal to the weight of the central span of the Golden Gate Bridge!

[“YOU REACH THE POINT WHERE YOU JUST HAVE TO ACCEPT THAT PUBLIC RADIO REALLY ISN’T INTERESTED IN SAVING ITSELF”] In conversations and correspondence recently, a few have pointed out that while I once wrote regularly about public radio, it seems I don’t anymore.

Mostly true. It may surprise you to learn that The Audio Insurgent has been rattling around inboxes for six years. But it’s been almost a year since I wrote suggesting that public radio can learn a lot about public service by using a universal metric based on attention. In the preceding two years, I only wrote dispatches on public radio twice. Once was laying out the case for federal funding of public broadcasting today. Nine months before that I published an open welcome letter to (then) new NPR CEO Katherine Mayer. The whopper of my Audio Insurgent writing on public radio was my three-part (1, 2, 3) strategic framework for public radio that I wrote in October of 2023. Mostly before that, I wrote the Frequency Boost column for Current for several years building out some concepts for public radio. And there’s a ton more going back to when I left public radio a decade ago.

That’s a lot of writing. So…why have I mostly stopped?

Two reasons: first, I was very worried that any constructive criticism of public radio (by me or others) could be misused during the CPB rescission battle. I spoke with a number of media writers during those months, and I spoke about the mission of public radio, which I still think is as relevant and important today as it was when the Public Broadcasting Act was signed into law in November, 1967. I avoided saying anything critical.

Secondly, the writing I link to above totals 40,000 words–and as I mentioned, there is a lot more that I’ve written than what I link above. My book on podcasting was 80,000 words. So apparently my next book isn’t about handwriting, I’ve unconsciously been writing a book about the future of public media for almost a decade. Why don’t I write more? Well, I’ve said quite a bit already.

But here is the thing.

Over the past few days, I re-read everything I linked to above…and I wouldn’t change a single thing. It all still holds. It is as relevant and actionable today as it was when I wrote it. That’s far less about the resilience of what I wrote than it is about how stuck public radio has been over the past decade, arguably the past three decades.

When the Internet started to become an every day presence in American life back in the late 90s, public radio lost its collective shit. This was the existential threat that no one saw coming, yet everyone had feared. Streaming and podcasting didn’t exist in any real, practical form yet, but everyone knew this was the direction things were heading. After an incredible volume of bluster, handwringing, and hyperbole, public radio stumbled onto a collective future vision: public media organizations (it became passe to refer to yourself as “public radio”--even though that’s what the audience still calls it) were going to be digital and focused on local, specifically for many stations: local news. Since then, the bluster, handwringing, and hyperbole has never abated, and public radio has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in this future vision. And in the process, they took the audience they already had for granted and, basically, stopped paying a lot of attention to the data that the audience was giving them about their interests and use of their service.

And, today, there is not a single station in the country that has made sufficient progress. Back in the 1990s, 100% of public radio’s audience and revenue were tied to broadcast. Today, despite three decades of effort and ginormous investment, no single station has reduced their dependency on broadcast by more than 10%. Most stations today still lean on broadcast for 90%+ of their audience engagement and revenue (some major market stations remain as high as 98%).

To me, that’s just stunning.

So, I’ve said a lot–and despite some seismic things happening in the industry, the advice is still spot on–and we are all still standing in pretty much the same place.

I was talking about this with a friend, who is always a bit shocked that I still care about public media (because I still deeply believe in the mission and its potential, even today). He looked at me and said what became the title of this piece today, “You reach the point where you just have to accept that public radio really isn’t interested in saving itself, or it would have taken change more seriously.”

Hey, want one of those handwritten bespoke dispatches? Become a paid supporter of The Audio Insurgent!

Subscribe now

The friend who said that has never worked full time in public radio, but has done some consulting in the industry. He knows the industry, but doesn’t share my optimism.

“There is no lack of understanding, but they keep doing studies that all tell them the same thing, and yet they never do anything about it.”

I mean, he isn’t wrong. It’s a harsh take, but not unfounded.

But the question here, to me, is if this is state–or fate?

TLDR: It isn’t fate.

So why has this actually happened? It isn’t because public radio’s leadership and station leaders aren’t competent and capable. They are just as passionate about their mission and organization as any generation of leaders has been. It has much more to do with getting caught in the day-to-day—especially now, in the wake of CPB rescission. What’s missing, generally, is a real centering on audience.

When I hear public media leaders talk about the state of audience, ratings, and legacy platforms, I hear a very strong decline-centered narrative, with one station CEO infamously saying that “radio is dead.” Really?

When you look at audience behavior—and the attitudinal markers in dozens of qualitative studies—a somewhat different story emerges.

Public radio isn’t dead to them (though, arguably, public radio is pretty much the last radio they listen to any more). Public radio is a part of their lives, still. It and its mission are still deeply important to them.

Do they listen less? Yes. But that’s more because public radio has been stagnant–largely unchanged in any meaningful way–for a generation, not because the audience are no longer interested in listening.

Radio isn’t dead, it is evolving. But public radio, in real and meaningful ways, isn’t.

So why did I stop writing about public radio? I stopped writing about this not because it’s hopeless—but because the answer hasn’t changed. Yet that doesn’t mean the opportunity is gone.

I wasn’t being flip when I mentioned that what I’ve written still holds. If you are reading this and wondering, “Okay, well, what should we do then?” Read. The. Linked. Posts. Above. It’s all there, the entire playbook–from national organizations all the way down to production assistants at local stations.

In closing, let me say that at one time, public radio’s biggest competition was other radio stations. Public radio stations measured their public service by the percentage of time listeners spent listening to their station as compared to all other radio stations. But that logic doesn’t hold any more. Public radio’s competition–its biggest existential threat–isn’t other radio stations. It isn’t podcasting or streaming or Spotify or YouTube or any other platforms.

Public radio’s biggest competition and threat…is itself.

If public radio fails, it will not be because the opportunity disappeared. It will be because it chose not to pursue it.

I still believe in the mission. I just don’t believe the outcome is guaranteed, either way.

Okay, that’s it for today.

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

I had originally written a post that was supposed to come out a few weeks ago…then Apple Podcasts made their video announcement and I needed to re-write the whole thing. Today’s dispatch is all about the podcast conversation du jour.

But first…

[SHORT THING 1 OF 3: WE ARE HIRING] In the context of the main subject of this dispatch, these may be seen as deeply ironic. So be it.

Magnificent Noise needs a part time video editor to join our team. We’ve outgrown our current systems and workflow for the video side of projects and need someone to join us and help mold this role into potentially something bigger.

You can apply at this link.

[SHORT THING 2 OF 3: BIFURCATION OF PURPOSE] If you aren’t subscribing to Ben Robins’ The Sound Insights Report, fix that right now. In a recent post, Ben cuts through one of podcasting’s most tiresome current debates—whether video is “killing” audio—and replaces it with something far more useful. Drawing on new listener data, agency performance reports, and platform trends, Ben argues that podcasting isn’t facing a format war but a bifurcation of purpose. Video is increasingly the discovery engine—the spectacle layer optimized for algorithms, living-room screens, and shareable clips. Audio, meanwhile, remains the conversion engine—the intimate medium where trust is built and action happens. If you care about where podcasting is actually heading (and not just what people on LinkedIn are yelling about), this piece offers a clear framing: video is the front door; audio is the home. It’s a useful way for creators, brands, and platforms to think about what they’re really trying to achieve with podcasting, and how both platforms contribute.

MY POV: Just another point to illustrate that the emergence and rise of video does not necessarily mean the defeat/death/reduction of audio. For many years, I used to tell radio people “You don’t have to hate broadcast to love digital.” I find myself saying the same thing now in the audio vs. video debate, because it really isn’t audio vs audio, it is audio AND video.

Worth a read.

[SHORT THING 3 OF 3: HEARSAY] Many people have heard me wax poetically of the magic of the Hearsay Festival. There hasn’t been one since the pandemic, but I attended three beforehand and every one was amazing.

So I’m happy to report, it is coming back this spring.

If you aren’t aware, it is an audio festival that takes place in the fantastic middle-of-nowhere mountain town of Kilfinane, County Limerick, in Ireland. The festival takes over the town of 700, with festival venues in the front room of the library, the chapel in the local convent, and even people’s homes. And it is all about audio in all its powerful forms. You’ll hear amazing narrative, documentary, audio art, and even a bunch of deliciously weird stuff too. If you really want an immersive and fun way to fall in love again with audio in all its forms, this is the place. I really can’t express how wonderful this is. There are no nametags, the day’s schedule is printed each morning in a shop window, and cell reception sucks there, so get used to being unattached from the outside world. There are two pubs in town, where I basically encamp myself and spend hours meeting and connecting with people. So fun.

And, mostly because it is happening in a tiny town, there is a cap on how many people can attend. So if this sounds appealing to you, you should grab one of the last remaining tickets while you can.

[WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?] Something unexpected happened a few weeks ago that made me realize that we’d come to a change point in podcasting. And, no, it wasn’t Apple Podcast’s Presidents Day video announcement. It was the debut of The Atlas Ink Podcast from one of my favorite stationery stores, Chicago’s Atlas Stationers.

Why was this such a big deal to me? Well, not only was I excited for one additional place to hear talk about fountain pens, but I was really confused as well. The hosts (also Atlas’s owners) were so proud to call what they’d made a “podcast”--yet it was missing most of the trapping that we associate with a podcast…even a video podcast. No mics or headphones, which is how most listeners identify a video podcast as a podcast. But stranger yet, there was no RSS feed…nor was there an audio version of The Atlas Ink Podcast. It was just two people sitting on opposite sides of a table having a fairly stilted and awkward conversation (give them a break, they are new–their hearts are in the right place, though).

I found myself thinking: have we diluted podcasting so much in our rush to expand it that the only thing necessary to call a podcast a podcast is…the act of labeling it as a podcast?

I could feel my mind melting over this one.

To be fair, Atlas Stationers did end up reconciling this about three weeks later–now there is an audio version and an RSS feed. But they set those up on February 24th, 8 days after the Apple announcement–so my mind was melting over other things and I forgot to notice the sudden podcastiness of this mind melting podcast.

While it is safe to say we are now fully in the “Pivot to Video Era” of podcasting’s evolution (which, frankly, is probably going to go as well as every single other media “pivot to video” of the past), I think one of the most interesting, and least discussed, elements of this time is not how the medium is changing, but how that evolution is changing what it means to be a “podcast producer.”

Subscribe now

Can you get hired today in podcasting without at least some semblance of video skills? Looking at the job descriptions I see, that would be a challenge.

So what does the video-on-the-brain-ness of this moment mean for our creative workforce? Do you pivot as well, or do you lock and load on increasingly hard-to-find audio-only work? In short…

What do you want to be when you grow up? An audio producer…or a podcast producer?

For a few years, we’ve been able to think these are the same thing, but I think we’ve reached a point where they are no longer the same job. We’ve expanded the definition of a podcast so broadly that the label now precedes the format. And once that happens, the job of making one changes too.

When I think of an audio producer, I think of someone working in an audio-first medium—radio, podcasts, audiobooks—focused on intimacy, narrative, and craft. The work is about what happens in the listener’s head.

A podcast producer, increasingly, is…something else (or, at least…something more). The job spans audio, video, and social platforms. It is as much about packaging, distribution, and growth as it is about making the thing itself.

Spend five minutes looking at podcast job descriptions right now and this becomes obvious. Video isn’t a bonus skill anymore. It’s table stakes.

That shift has real implications, especially for people early in their careers or trying to stay relevant in the middle of one. If you’re coming up in this business now, you’re not really choosing between formats—you’re choosing between skill sets. One path asks you to go deeper: to refine your ear, your storytelling instincts, your sense of pacing and structure. The other asks you to go broader: to think in terms of platforms, formats, and how something moves through an ecosystem. Both are valid. But they reward different things. And increasingly, they are being hired, evaluated, and compensated differently.

As this shift has been unfolding over the past two years, there have been a number of times where various Magnificent Noise employees have grumbled about having to learn video skills. I always respond with “Well, your next job is going to expect you to know these things, so isn’t it great that I’m paying you to learn them now?”

To be honest, that is how I personally have embraced this moment: I’m learning. I find my heart beats faster when I have to figure out things I don’t know (and there are A LOT of things that I don’t know). The emergence of video in podcasting has provided me (and our company) permission to learn, build new skills, and expand what we can offer to clients.

I’ve looked at it much as I view my shadow career as a writer: it is something I love doing that tickles a different part of my brain…and has the benefit of making me better at what I do most of the time.

But that’s the thing about where podcasting is today…it isn’t just a matter of “adding a new skill”--it is about fundamentally changing what the thing is.

But once you get past the change in skill demand, there’s a part of this that I find genuinely encouraging.

Remember what Ben Robins laid out: If video is becoming the front door to podcasting, then audio is still the place people choose to stay. It’s where attention deepens. It’s where trust is built. It’s where the work actually happens.

That hasn’t changed. If anything, THAT is where the real skill lies. And that will become MORE in demand.

So maybe the real question isn’t whether you choose to become an audio producer or a podcast producer. Maybe it’s whether you understand what each of those roles is actually for.

Because in a world where everything can be called a podcast, the people who understand the power of audio—real audio, intentional audio—are only going to become more valuable.

I guess where I’m landing on this is that fewer and fewer people know how to make something that lives in someone’s head. That’s not a limitation. That’s an advantage.

So it might be worth asking yourself—especially if you’re early in your career, or rethinking it midstream: What do you actually want to get good at?

Because those are becoming two very different answers—with two very different skill sets. It is absolutely possible to do both (hell, this is what I’m trying to do). But it’s far more important to understand what those skills are in service of.

If you are in the empathy business…
If you are in the making the world both bigger and smaller business…
If you are in the audience service business…
If you are in the building community and connection business…
If you are in the elevating voices that need to be heard business…

Then yes—the tools are changing. The expectations are changing. The jobs are changing.

But the work itself?

That part hasn’t changed at all. And if you understand that, you’ll know exactly what to get better at.

Okay, that’s it for today.

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

Most of us have moments where we wonder what would happen if we got another shot at something. Sometimes the first attempt went well and we imagine repeating or improving on it. Other times it went badly and we replay it in our heads, convinced we’d do it differently now. In theory, experience is supposed to be useful that way. In practice, though, very few people actually get the chance to try the same thing again.

I recently had a conversation with Hillary Frank, host and creator of The Longest Shortest Time, a podcast about parenthood and reproductive health that she first launched in 2010 and relaunched at the beginning of 2025. I wanted to talk to her because she’s done something that very few podcasters have done: she’s launched the same show twice, in two very different eras of podcasting.

Let’s get to it…

[THE LONGEST SHORTEST TIME(S)] The first time Hillary Frank launched her podcast, very few people even knew what a podcast was. It was the early 2010s during podcasting’s frontier days—when Roman Mars was Kickstarting 99% Invisible and the medium felt wide open. Lots of people saw the possibility, but very few people were actually trying to make it happen. The show had a great run during those years (gathering a significant following while paying for itself), but then Hillary put the show on pause. Last year, long after the venture capital gold rush, the consolidation, the layoffs, and what many are calling the podcasting recession, she relaunched the show a second time.

When she announced she was bringing it back, my first thought was “I wonder how it is the same or different?” So I asked.

Hillary’s experience illustrates something I think is essential for everyone in our industry to understand: how fundamentally the business of making podcasts has changed, even when the creative work remains largely the same.

Hillary started The Longest Shortest Time completely on her own in 2010. She’d been freelancing in public radio for a decade, had just had a baby, and wanted to keep her foot in the door professionally. But it was also personal.

“I had had a really rough childbirth and recovery and wanted to be connected with other people who were willing to talk about early parenthood in a real way,” she told me. “So I started making episodes. I did it in a way that nobody would advise me to do now, which was I put them out whenever I could. I didn’t have a cadence. So over the first three years I put out 20 episodes and I made them while my daughter was napping, basically.”

Three years in, she decided to either make it her job or set it aside. And like so many well and ill-intentioned people do, many discouraged her. She launched a Kickstarter with a goal of $25,000. Many told her she wouldn’t be able to do it—including, as she put it, “people who are like, from our world, who should be supportive of independent people like me.”

Despite the skepticism, she raised $35,000, combining listener contributions with matching grants from brands like Medela and diapers.com. That success led to a partnership with WNYC, which gave Hillary her first producer and some marketing support. A year and a half later, she moved the show.

And that’s when things really changed.

“The last time I was in regular production, I was in partnership with Stitcher,” Hillary explained. “I had really all the support I needed, financially, to pay me a decent salary and to cover a small staff: primarily a full-time producer that was employed by Stitcher. I was independent. But I had engineering support. I had marketing support, I had a story editor. All of that was covered by Stitcher. So I had not only financial support, but I also had institutional support.”

Her ad inventory was consistently sold out. And despite people in the industry telling her she’d never be financially successful with a show about parenthood, she proved them wrong. “I was like, ‘Well, but aren’t moms the most coveted audience for sponsors?’ And that turned out to be true. And so the show was one of the first self-sustaining shows in podcasting. And I’m really proud of that.”

She saw the show through a few evolutionary steps, then put it on pause in 2019.

Fast forward to early 2025. Hillary decided to bring the show back. She’d been consulting and working on some other projects for a few years, but projects kept disappearing due to layoffs, and the work felt unstable. She also felt called back to the subject matter. Her daughter was now a teen—and there were important conversations around reproductive health that needed to happen.

“I will bring it back and I will have a slightly renewed focus for the show and it’ll be great.”

Despite all the pull backs in podcasting, she was pleasantly surprised that she had her pick of companies that wanted to partner with her. But what they were offering was completely different.

“What people were offering was really ad sales deals. So, you know, a revenue share split,” she said. “I had a minimum guarantee before. So I got money up front, and regular, monthly income that could support me. And now the situation is, people are offering revenue shares.”

Despite the financial struggles, the show is STILL sold out. She’s just making far less for it now. And her income is based entirely on ad sales, so the amount fluctuates.

As Hillary adds, “Advertising rates are lower than they were before. What counted as a download is not what counts as a download anymore. So the amount that I can make per episode is very different. And I’m getting no production support. And so if I want to have production support, I need to pay somebody out of pocket.”

She paused. “And I don’t have enough yet to even support me.”

The payment terms are also different. “The way you get paid is at best 60 days after your episode airs and that’s like the best case scenario. Often it’s four months after.”

And she’s doing almost everything herself now—booking, cutting tape, marketing, uploading episodes. The only support she has is a friend doing mixing at a reduced rate and someone who volunteers a couple hours a week to cut ads and narration, and QC episodes.

“It’s a struggle.”

If you were a paid subscriber to The Audio Insurgent, you would have had this dispatch in your hot little hands days ago—you are late to the party! If you value this writing, you need to make it possible with a small contribution—unless you’d like to be bombarded with ads and paid content (an option I dislike as much as you do)—just click the link below to upgrade.

Subscribe now

“It’s really hard to get noticed if you’re not a celebrity and it’s hard to make money if you’re not a celebrity.”

Beyond the economics of the second launch of the show, there are structural challenges that weren’t there before, too.

“It’s harder to develop audience than it was last time around,” Hillary told me. “There’s a lot more podcasts, but what they’re doing is very different than what I do. Most of them, especially in the parenting space, are chat shows either unedited or very lightly edited. So they’re like chat shows that come out more than once a week and I can’t keep up with that pace if I’m going to keep the show what it is and what I think people love about it.”

One thing I was surprised to hear from her: Hillary thinks, despite the changes in podcasting’s profile and expansion of who listens, the audience for her show seems largely unchanged—very similar people, still engaged, still valuing the stories. But one thing that has changed: Hillary’s relationship with that audience.

The show has less direct contact now. During her first run, she had a producer who managed a lot of this and ran Hillary’s social channels. Today, on her own, the limited amount of time she has is mostly focused on interacting with paid members on SupportingCast rather than through open social media and website comments.

I asked her if that was good or bad.

“It’s like good and bad,” she said. “I think I’m shielding myself from toxic messaging. If I’m making the show by myself, I have to preserve my mental health and my energy. And so by shielding myself, I’m also shielding myself from a lot of the great interactions too.”

I asked Hillary if, given the challenges of this year, she could go back in a time machine to right when she was about to make the decision to bring the show back, would she advise herself to do it or not?

“I would say go for it, but I would also say it’s not gonna be the same as it was, and it’s not gonna be easy.”

“I’m glad I brought the show back,” she said. “I am really proud of the episodes I’ve been doing, and I think that I’m contributing to conversations around reproductive health that really need to be had. And I have a platform to do that and I’m really happy to be doing that. I don’t know how sustainable this is, and I am giving it a go to see.”

I asked if she still feels hopeful.

“I don’t feel as hopeful as I did when I was starting back up. It’s just harder to see the path forward.”

But she also said, she’s been at this junction before. “Do you remember back in like 2007? 2006? When [public radio] shows were shutting down like Weekend America and Day to Day. I had been making my living freelancing for shows like that. I was actually a contract editor at Weekend America when it got shut down and it was devastating. And I was like, ‘Alright, well. I’m not gonna have a future in audio.’ So I started looking for jobs in advertising. And then podcasting showed up and it offered me a new way forward. And so, in a lot of ways, things are feeling not very hopeful, but I keep wondering, is there gonna be a new way forward?”

While I first wanted to chat with Hillary because I thought it would illustrate how different things were, I didn’t expect to walk away with such a clear-eyed summation of where podcasting is right now: the easy money and institutions with money to spend that emerged during podcasting’s growth years (along with the guaranteed salaries, the production teams, the marketing departments, the story editors)--that’s gone. What’s replaced it is a return to DIY production, but with the added challenge of competing in an exponentially more crowded landscape where the economic incentives favor high-frequency, low-production-value content.

Hillary is still making the show. She’s still reaching people. She’s still doing important work. But her story is also about what sustainability looks like in podcasting when the “dumb money” era is over, when contraction has stripped away infrastructure, and when the “build it and they will come” optimism of podcasting’s early days runs headfirst into the reality of a spreadsheet.

And here’s something really important to take away from Hillary’s experience: she’s proven people wrong before. Multiple times. She was told she couldn’t raise money on Kickstarter. She did. She was told a parenting podcast couldn’t be financially successful. It was. She built something from nothing, twice.

So one lesson from this: don’t listen to people telling you what you can’t do. 😉

But that aside, it’s telling that even someone with that track record is finding the current landscape punishing in ways that have nothing to do with the quality of the work or the connection with an audience.

Since we spoke late last year, Hillary has continued to experience some headache-inducing setbacks (a bot locked her out of her social channels for discussing reproductive health)–and scored some wins. She’s earning a bit more now, and is channeling that into hiring some very part time help (she’s taking applications if you are interested).

HIllary’s experience reveals what “sustainability” actually looks like in this new era. And in figuring out how to make it work this time, she’s probably showing the rest of us what podcasting looks like on the other side of all this.

Okay, that’s it for today.

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

When I do consulting for organizations about podcast strategy and podcast making, I often say that I’ve been part of the creation of more than 200 podcasts, radio programs, and streaming projects. During those projects, I’ve made every possible mistake you can imagine, some…many times. After a while, you start thinking, “Gee, maybe there’s a smarter way to do this.” Thus, the birth of much of my consulting advice.

Today’s dispatch features a list you can rip and reuse that addresses something I did improperly for years (and likely you have been screwing this up too): prepping guests for the tech and logistics needs of a contemporary podcast recording.

And yes, including a lot of advice for getting better looking video.

It’s been a while since we did a “tools you can use” dispatch, so without further ado…

[PREPPING YOUR GUESTS] With the growth of video in podcasting, and with podcast guests and producers continuing to prefer remote recording, our industry needs to do a better job of working with the guests in advance of interviews to get the best quality audio and video to match the importance of their contributions.

Most current practices are kind of lazy, archaic, still too audio-based, and your guests may not say so…but it is super stressful for them.

So I created something I’d like to share with you to help.

Let me explain how we got here and why it matters.

If you are curious about what that picture is…it’s Deepak Chopra’s ear.

Most people who are relatively new to podcasting don’t realize that a lot of the tools they use every day are surprisingly new. While it was kinda possible to do remote recording before the pandemic, it was during that time, as people scrambled around, that services like Riverside and SquadCast really took off (Zencastr did exist before the pandemic, but it was often kind of a pain to get it to work).

Those early days of the pandemic were a free-for-all, with producers trying all kinds of ridiculous ideas to capture semi-decent audio from hosts and guests, including FedEx-ing equipment, kludging a bunch of adapters and cables to get audio into a computer, and, like Deepak and I did, hacking FaceTime on an iPhone to record tracking for the early pandemic show we made called Now For Tomorrow (surprisingly, the audio sounded remarkably good, although I also captured 20 minutes of video pretty much exclusively of Deepak’s ear).

Back then, no one cared about capturing video. And it was crazy times – so we were all just happy to capture anything on tape, almost regardless of how it sounded or what it took to capture it. Just get it.

In the years since, remote recording has taken deep root, yet we still do little more than send a URL to guests. Sure, the default invite suggests the guest use Chrome, but what if they don’t already use Chrome? Or don’t know how to install it? We basically leave them on their own.

But that’s just the beginning of the stress. Once the guest joins, they are excited and nervous, and we bark instructions at them about the boominess of the room and where they are pointing their mouth. And now with video, we bark a whole lot more about getting them to sit in better light. It just starts things off with the worst kind of energy.

Over the years, I’ve written a few sets of instructions for guests and talent to help them do everything from building pillow forts (like this pic, sent by a host to get my approval), set up USB microphones (a relatively new concept at the time), how to operate a Zoom recorder (the audio hardware, not the conferencing platform), and how to upload the contents of an SD card to Dropbox.

But with the hardware and tech in a constant state of evolution–the instructions got stale very quickly. And frankly, most of us just stopped doing it. Give them the URL and just capture it, then fix it in post.

Over the past few months, I’ve been writing and editing a set of contemporary instructions that dispenses with the pillow fort instructions and focuses on what’s most important for setting everyone up for success. If video has taught me anything as a podcaster, it’s that capturing the best quality in the moment is really critical to ending up something you’ll be happy with later. You can’t EQ-away crappy lighting.

And since I believe that one of the reasons The Audio Insurgent exists is to share, I’m going to give those instructions for you to use in your work.

Before I do so, many of those who advise me don’t like when I do things like this, arguing that it is akin to doing someone’s homework for them. So what I’d ask is that if you use this as a resource for your team, make sure you acknowledge to them that it came from The Audio Insurgent.

Subscribe now

So here it is. I tweak this every time I open it, including when I opened it to share here. If you are reading this at some point in the future, know that there is probably an updated version of this. If you are a paid subscriber to The Audio Insurgent, I’ll send you the latest version just for asking.

Important notes:

• It includes a number of things you’d likely never think of (like making sure the guest’s computer is plugged in) that cause issues all the time. Don’t be tempted to exclude these. Remember, sure, you are an audio pro, but the guest isn’t.

• You’ll see mentions of a pre-interview tech check. This is increasingly becoming a default practice for us. It is always a good use of time and worth the effort for everyone.

Enjoy.

Remote guest recording information and instructions

Hello! We are looking forward to having you as a guest on our show.

This will be both an audio and video recording and what follows will help you get ready. After reviewing, if you have any questions or concerns, please let us know and we’ll work with you to get everything set up for a stress-free interview.

Since this will be a remote interview, we wanted to run through some very simple tech requirements, best practices, and preferences for our show. We not only want to share your story and ideas, but we want to make sure you sound and look your best as well.

And most importantly, this should be enjoyable for you too. If anything goes wrong during the session, we’ll pause and fix it—no problem.

The following may initially seem like a lot–but it isn’t difficult, just comprehensive. And we’ll help you through every step.

Where to record and the equipment you’ll need

The technology we’ll use takes advantage of the camera you normally use on your computer, as well as a USB microphone, in order to get a really great quality recording–much better than you see on Zoom or video conferencing. And it all works through a web browser.

Location:

If you’ve done a number of remote media interviews before, you probably already have a location that you like to use. If this is new to you or you’d like some advice, here are some factors that can help make your side of the recording look its best.

• Choose a quiet room with minimal echo.

  • If possible, turn off HVAC systems, fans, air purifiers, or appliances.

  • Silence phones, notifications, and smart speakers in the room.

  • If the room sounds “echoey,” soft furnishings (curtains, rugs, pillows, couches) help more than people realize.

• Lighting tips:

  • Pick a location that’s well lit, but does not receive bright direct sunlight.

  • Make sure any light is in front of you (shining on your face) or to the side.

    • Do not pick a location with lighting behind you or directly above you.

    • If you own a ring light or light cube to improve the lighting at your location, make sure it is set to be brighter than any room light or natural light in the space. Make sure to position this light just above eye level pointing towards your face, slightly off center.

• What is behind you matters:

  • Make sure you are ideally a minimum of 4-6 feet away from anything behind you (a wall, shelving, or bookcases). Otherwise it can look like you’re pressed right up against the background.

  • Review what appears on your computer camera to make sure that any items or information seen is something you are comfortable being seen by the public.

  • Avoid cluttered or reflective backgrounds.

  • Make sure to turn off any technology that blurs your background or puts a virtual background behind you. While these are fine in a business environment, they look terrible in a podcast recording.

• Camera and monitor positioning:

  • Make sure the camera is at eye level. If it is too far above or below eye level, it will not be very flattering!

    • Distance from the camera: Frame yourself and adjust your camera distance/placement so your shoulders and the upper third of your torso are visible.

    • Make sure you position your camera and monitor so that when you’re speaking, you’re naturally looking toward the camera. Looking toward the camera helps create direct connection with the audience.

    • It’s fine to glance at the screen when listening.

• What to wear:

  • In short, wear what makes you feel comfortable and presents your best self. With today’s technology, much of the old advice people hear about on-camera appearances (such as don’t wear stripes or patterns, etc.) no longer applies. However, you should remember that thousands of people will be seeing you, so you should present yourself well. Our host will be wearing stylish “business casual” clothing. There is no need to overdress or be formal.

  • That said, it is often a good idea to avoid white clothing, as many videos are subtitled and that can be difficult to overlay on top of white clothing.

• Sit in a comfortable position and try to minimize movement.

  • Sudden gestures and shifting can cause blurring or autofocus hunting on some webcams.

• And finally,

  • Make sure to plug your computer into power before the session.

  • Let others in your home or office know you’re recording.

  • If pets or kids are present, plan accordingly. If an interruption happens (and they do happen), we can easily edit it out, but it will be less stressful if others know you’re recording.

Required hardware:

Any recent model laptop or desktop computer (purchased within the last 3-5 years) has the tech specs and power to do well for this recording.

While most computer cameras will work well for our recording, we greatly prefer that you use an external USB microphone instead of your computer’s built-in microphone.

If you don’t own a USB microphone and would like two recommendations, we suggest:

• A Rode NT-USB microphone (very reasonably priced and great quality)

• Or a Shure MV7+ USB microphone (more expensive, but the best quality USB mic)

• Alternatively, either wireless (like AirPods) or wired headphone mic is acceptable if a dedicated mic isn’t possible.

We also ask that you wear headphones for the recording (either wired or wireless). It will prevent delays in hearing and being heard, improve audio quality, and eliminate echo.

Required software:

For the recording (and test set up beforehand), you’ll simply click on the link we sent you.

• Use a supported browser: Chrome (preferred), Firefox, or Microsoft Edge. Apple’s Safari is a great browser, but doesn’t work well with the recording platform we use.

  • If you don’t have Chrome installed on your computer, here is a link. It is very simple to download and install.

• Do not use Incognito/Private browsing mode.

• Close all other apps and browser tabs, especially those that might use your microphone or camera.

• Temporarily disable VPNs, browser extensions, content blockers, and firewalls.

• Allow browser Notifications from Riverside so recordings can process correctly.

  • You won’t receive notifications unless Riverside detects an issue.

Test Session

We’ll set up a time, usually a day or two before the scheduled recording, to do a quick tech and location check with one of our producers. During that time we’ll go over everything mentioned above: location, lighting, mic, headphones, and web browser connection. We’ll make sure everything is working properly, configured correctly, and looks and sounds great.

If it is more convenient, we can do this test recording with an assistant, colleague, or team member.

• Please use the same computer, browser, and location for the test session and the recording.

During Recording

While the interview is going on, your computer is capturing the highest possible quality audio and video and uploading it in the background. You don’t need to worry or pay attention to this at all. However, sometimes what you see during the interview may look a little pixelated. Don’t worry, what’s being recorded in the background is significantly higher quality than what you hear or see during the live call.

• Feel free to have water nearby; just avoid ice or noisy containers.
  
  

After Recording

• This is probably the most important part of all. When the interview is finished, don’t leave right away. All the uploading that’s happening in the background needs a minute or two to catch up.

• Keep the Riverside window open until your upload reaches 100% (or shows “Upload Complete”). We’ll let you know when it is okay to leave–though that often only takes a few minutes at most.

That’s it. Hope this is helpful to you. Again, it wasn’t until a guest I knew gave me a heads up that I even considered how challenging and frustrating this can be to someone who doesn’t do it very often.

Your job is to capture them at their best–to make sure their story, ideas, and contribution is top-grade. And a bit of handholding during the process can get them (and you) set up for the best.

Okay, that’s it for today.

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

But before we get to our feature presentation…

[NIEMAN LAB PREDICTIONS FOR 2026] It was a bumper year for Nieman Lab predictions, with 50 more than previous years. That’s a lot of views into the future. What do they foretell? A lot of AI this and that. This reminds me of the early days of the Internet, when people would predict all kinds of crazy shit, because few really had any idea where things were heading. For the past nine years, I was invited to submit a prediction, and this year wrote about a phrase that’s also been thrown around a lot, the “HBO of podcasting.”

[BEST OF 2025] It was really exciting to see the show we create with Atmos included on the Apple Podcasts “Top Podcasts of 2025” list. The Nature Of also happens to be the only independent podcast on this year’s list. The show is a great example of keeping things simple so the complexity can be embedded in its ideas and the resulting conversation. At the surface, this show is a series of interviews and conversations. But what is contained in those conversations, and what it draws out in your own head, that’s where it gets very uniquely good. Lots of shows claim to make you think differently about what’s discussed, but this show actually delivers on that notion. And Willow has grown into a fantastic host. The show is a total joy and it’s nice to see it recognized.

Which then leads us to our main topic today, awards. Someone might accuse me of being hypocritical about awards, seeing that I just pointed out recognition for one of our shows.

But that’s also the point. The Apple Podcasts list was a total surprise. We didn’t apply. We didn’t lobby. We didn’t work any connections to make it happen. We didn’t get our friends, colleagues, and listeners to vote for us. We just got an email congratulating us. It happened organically. Something that’s pretty rare in the awards space.

Let’s continue…

[THE AWARDS PARADOX] The recent debacle surrounding the inaugural nominations and finalists for the new Golden Globe Award for podcasting has had me thinking—again—about awards.

Even the people who are closest to me often get this wrong: they think I hate awards. I don’t. Awards can be exciting. Awards can be something to brag about. Awards can be validating.

But it is equally true that a surprising number of them are more than a bit scammy, and often an expensive distraction and waste of time for the creators who pursue them.

I know I hold a contrarian and skeptical view here. So much so that I haven’t applied for awards for our projects in years, and I often discourage clients and partners from investing time and resources into them. My argument is simple: awards can be emotionally real while also being strategically irrelevant.

Those who feel otherwise argue that awards create tangible value. They suggest that winning raises a show’s profile, builds credibility, attracts better guests, generates press, and opens doors for creators and networks alike. But this is where the argument loses me. Can anyone demonstrate where that has actually happened? Where a previously unknown or underrecognized podcast wins an award and the benefits are more than circumstantial or subjective?

I’m not talking about how it felt. I’m talking about outcomes. Convincing evidence would be objective and measurable: a clear before-and-after change in audience behavior; earned media that isn’t just an awards roundup; a contract, check, or opportunity directly tied to the win. I’ve asked this question of many people over many years, and I’m still waiting to see that evidence. Winning feels good—and bragging feels good—but does anything actually change about a show’s prospects?

More after the jump

Introducing The Analog Dispatches of The Audio Insurgent - Only For Paid Subscribers

You get to read this for free, but it isn’t free to make–writing these dispatches and responding to your queries takes up a lot of time. But you can make it worth it by becoming a paid supporter of The Audio Insurgent for as little as $5.

To go along with my fascination with writing instruments, ink, and paper–I’ve created something to offer to my paid supporters: a hand-written bespoke dispatch of The Audio Insurgent, written to only one person. One of a kind. You can even pick the topic–or just leave it to me to write about whatever is on my mind at that moment.

Here’s a picture of the first one:

Yes, it is kinda goofy…and kinda hella cool to create and to receive. If you’d like yours, just hit the button below to upgrade to a paid subscription at any level–they start at just $5.

Plus, you’ll be supporting this newsletter and encouraging me to do more writing on digital audio. Also, you’ll be the first to get these dispatches–sometimes days before anyone else. Info on how to get your Analog Dispatch is in the welcome note when you upgrade.

And thanks.

Subscribe now

Okay, so back to awards.

It’s important to say that there are awards that credibly signal excellence. The Peabody Awards, the Gracie Awards, the duPont-Columbia Awards, and a handful of others genuinely convey “best of the best.” Notably, their entry fees are often surprisingly reasonable. These awards tend to be selective, transparent, and widely understood. They mean something.

But once you move beyond that small tier, podcast awards quickly drift into a different space. Many of the largest awards outside that group are run as for-profit entities. Entry fees can run hundreds of dollars per submission, sometimes topping $1,200, with little transparency around judging criteria nor who is actually making the selection. Then there are the bottom feeders: awards that require creators to lobby friends and listeners to vote, often through registration systems that harvest personal data, on top of already steep entry fees. All of this, just to be one of two hundred people invited to give a five-word acceptance speech.

At that point, it’s worth asking a simpler question: if many awards don’t reliably change outcomes for creators, who are they actually for? Often, the answer isn’t the audience…and not always the winners either. Awards primarily serve the institutions that grant them. They generate revenue, create marketing funnels, build mailing lists, and reinforce the awarding body’s relevance inside the industry. None of that is scandalous, or even universally wrong. But it does mean the value exchange is frequently misunderstood by creators, who often assume awards exist to elevate their work, rather than to sustain the organizations behind them.

The biggest problem with award submissions, though, is the opportunity cost that almost no one talks about. Entry fees are the visible part, but rarely the most expensive. The real cost is time: pulling clips, tailoring language for judges, chasing deadlines, spreading focus across categories. That time comes from somewhere—usually from development, audience growth, or simply making the work better. There’s also a quieter cost. Once creators start thinking about how something will play to a jury rather than to an audience, priorities shift. And taking your eye (and your obsession) off the audience almost never works out in the long run.

So why does belief in awards remain so strong? Part of it is inheritance. Podcasting absorbed its awards mythology wholesale from film, television, and journalism—industries built on scarcity, gatekeepers, and centralized distribution. Podcasting works differently, but the story stuck. And then there’s the human part. Creative work exists in a fog of delayed feedback and ambiguous success. Awards offer clarity, even when that clarity is artificial. They turn uncertainty into a verdict. That feeling is real…and powerful enough to keep the myth alive.

None of this is an argument that awards are pointless or should be avoided on principle. There are moments when they make sense. For some shows, selective participation in a small number of high-profile awards can reinforce reputation rather than chase it. The key word is selective. Awards that are difficult to win, transparent in their criteria, and broadly recognized tend to mean something. The rest deserve far more skepticism than they usually get.

Before submitting, it’s worth stopping to ask a few unromantic questions: Who is this award actually for? What would winning materially change about our podcast’s prospects? What does it really cost—not just in money, but in time, focus, and creative energy?

Awards don’t make shows successful. At best, they reflect success that’s already happened. At worst, they distract creators from the only thing that reliably does: making work audiences actually want to spend time with.

Okay, that’s it for today.

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening. And happy holidays!

--Eric

Today is one of those dispatches. This may seem like a light topic that can easily be brushed off–but hang in there with me. This is a bigger deal than you might think.

So, let’s go…

[SHOULD SHOWS HAVE PRODUCTION CREDITS IN THEM?] Let me say up front: People deserve to be credited, publicly, for their work. It is an important acknowledgment of the person’s contributions, it provides transparency on works of journalism, and it is just the right thing to do.

However, I’d argue that at the end of a radio program or the concluding moments of a podcast episode are not the right place to put them. In fact, I think it’s pretty easy to establish that it’s actually harmful.

Take a look at this chart:

It is a retention curve for a random episode of one of Mag Noise’s shows, as measured through the Bumper Dashboard. It answers, across the three major platforms that provide retention data, what percentage of listeners who hit play are still listening over the course of an episode. So, using that chart, you can tell that about 60% of Spotify listeners, 50% of Apple podcast listeners, and 17% of YouTube listeners and viewers were still engaged 25 minutes into this 41-minute episode. But I bet your eyes went straight to the cratering that starts to happen about 38 minutes into the episode.

What happened?

The credits started to roll.

And if you look at retention graphs for pretty much any show, you’ll see the same thing happening on almost every episode. The credits start…and the audience vanishes.

This should surprise no one. Every streaming platform gives you the option to skip credits at the beginning or end of an episode. The lights come up in the movie theater because most everyone leaves after the credits start to roll. I mean, everyone appreciates Mitchell Andrew Lillian’s masterful key grip work on Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. But most people aren’t interested in sitting there until his name scrolls by.

But these production credits are harmless, right? Why is this even a question?

The problem
When a listener finishes an episode, what do you want to happen next? You want them to hear the next unplayed episode from your show. That’s so obviously the goal that most podcast players are designed to do it automatically. Ideally, the original episode ends and the next episode’s opening hooks them before they even think to reach for their phone.

But when credits start rolling, you break that spell. The listener’s hand goes to their device, and suddenly they’re making choices—maybe to scroll, switch shows, or stop listening altogether. You’ve lost momentum and you’ve lost control.

Something similar happens in radio as well. When a show starts running production credits at the end of the episode, it’s a clear signal for the listener to scan other options, switch to something else, or move on. You are practically telling them to go away.

[Continued after the jump…]

Introducing The Analog Dispatches of The Audio Insurgent - Only For Paid Subscribers

You get to read this for free, but it isn’t free to make–writing these dispatches and responding to your queries takes up a lot of time. But you can make it worth it by becoming a paid supporter of The Audio Insurgent for as little as $5.

To go along with my fascination with writing instruments, ink, and paper–I’ve created something to offer to my paid supporters: a hand-written bespoke dispatch of The Audio Insurgent, written to only one person. One of a kind. You can even pick the topic–or just leave it to me to write about whatever is on my mind at that moment.

Here’s a picture of the first one:

Yes, it is kinda goofy…and kinda hella cool to create and to receive. If you’d like yours, just hit the button below to upgrade to a paid subscription at any level–they start at just $5.

Plus, you’ll be supporting this newsletter and encouraging me to do more writing on digital audio. Also, you’ll be the first to get these dispatches–sometimes days before anyone else. Info on how to get your Analog Dispatch is in the welcome note when you upgrade.

And thanks.

Subscribe now

That’s why I tell production teams their hardest and most important job isn’t just to make a great episode—it’s to get the listener to listen again. That’s the real measure of success. So don’t give them cues to leave; give them reasons to stay.

Almost every time I consult with networks and their podcasts, we spend the first several sessions talking about structural issues–the things they do, often without realizing it, that make the show difficult to connect to or stay engaged with. And most creators don’t realize how much self-inflicted tune-out they create with their choices. But once we make changes to address them, the change in listener behavior is pretty clear and immediate.

You don’t control what is going on in a listener’s life, but you have a lot of control over how much they enjoy the experience of escaping that life to spend time with you.

And while we are at it, I also often advise people to give a lot of thought to postroll ads and promos. Networks tend to pack a lot of lower-tier ads or free promo exchanges at the end to prevent clutter inside their episodes. This is well-intentioned, but hearing three minutes of ads and promos, in a place where there is almost no demonstrable audience, is following a bad practice (production credits) with an even worse one. Nobody wins.

The solution
So, we’ve said that it is important to credit a creator’s work, but also said it can be damaging to list the production credits at the end of an episode. So, where should the production credits go then?

Almost anywhere else.

Show notes. A web page. Even “meet the staff” posts on social media. Almost any other way to credit the fine work of your colleagues provides the same level of clarity and acknowledgment without the collateral damage, and–frankly–will be seen by more people.

Eric is a hypocrite
There are some keen observers who will point out that Magnificent Noise shows contain production credits. I know this because every time I advocate for something in these dispatches, I get at least one person, sometimes many more, writing to point out the time in my decades-long career where I have not practiced what I’m preaching. (Seriously, after a recent dispatch I got an email from a guy pointing to a conference presentation I gave in 1997 where I advocated for something different. I replied, “Dude, that was over a quarter century ago.”)

I would say, in my defense, that I’ve been advocating to reduce or eliminate radio production credits for a long, long time (ask any of my former teams and clients) but often settle for what we do in our podcasts today: a very short list of the team, no titles, that is designed to convey the information as quickly and unobtrusively as possible.

That said, I’m planning to try to move even further away from production credits. I’ve just been seeing these credit-induced evaporations on these retention graphs so consistently for so long that I can’t deny this is something we need to take seriously.

This may seem like a tiny thing, but it isn’t. Every show wants growth, but lasting growth doesn’t come from chasing hacks—it comes from removing the little barriers that make listening harder. Each small fix compounds. Together, they turn a show people occasionally sample into one they stick with.

Okay, that’s it for today.

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

Welcome to Dispatch #81 of The Audio Insurgent. I was recently in Madrid, Spain speaking at Podcasting Days 2025 and today’s dispatch is largely a text version of my talk there.

After I gave my talk, a journalist from El Mundo interviewed me about podcasting today and asked me a question I’ve never been asked before.

“When did you know that podcasting would grow to become what it is today?”

The answer came to me immediately.

“The first time I ever listened to a podcast over twenty years ago, I knew we’d be in the place we are today,” I said. The journalist seemed kinda shocked, like he was expecting me to say it was just a few years ago, if at all. “It was clear to me from the very first time I listened. I knew this would be massively popular with listeners and I knew that it would be disruptive to the audio industry in the best possible way.”

“That’s also the reason I remain very optimistic today,” I continued. “Because that original vision for where I knew this would go still isn’t fully realized yet.”

I’d never thought of it that way, but it’s true. I not only knew that when I heard my first podcast, but I’ve seen that same mix of wonder and eureka on so many faces when they first discovered podcasting.

When Podcast Days asked what I wanted to talk about, I said that when people get up on a stage at a podcast conference, all they want to talk about is what is new and changing. I’d like to do the opposite–I’d like to talk about what isn’t—and probably never will—change.

So, as I was saying…

[WHAT IN PODCASTING NEVER CHANGES] I speak with people who make podcasts across the industry almost every day–along with those who sell them, build an audience for them, and try to make businesses around them.

And this year, in particular, I’ve heard a lot of angst and anxiety over the state and direction of podcasting. Almost all of them comment on how much podcasting is changing. More than one of them has wondered aloud if podcasting can even be called “podcasting” anymore or if we need to come up with a new term for it–or protect the term from interlopers making videos or restricting their shows to specific apps or platforms.

What are some of these changes that have everyone so concerned?

• YouTube and the rise of video podcasts.

• The decline of narrative podcasting.

• The dominance of celebrity.

• Decreasing ad revenue.

• A lack of investment money.

I might reluctantly add “AI” to this list. Reluctantly because AI will have a seismic effect on…well, everything…except no one seems to have any clear, solid idea exactly how AI will actually disrupt podcasting content (I could write an entire newsletter just on this). But the list above are (kinda) real changes, true. But are they existential-level changes?

Actually, no. Not at all.

During the 2009 financial crisis, Warren Buffett was on a car ride with one of his staffers, who was lamenting how much the world seemed to be upside down. Thanks to the economic turmoil, everything seemed to have changed. The staffer worried aloud if the world would ever recover.

Buffett asked his staffer, “What was the most popular candy bar in 1962?”

The staffer didn’t know.

“Snickers,” Buffett answered.

“What is the best-selling candy bar today?” Buffett asked.

The staffer again couldn’t answer.

“Snickers,” Buffett said again.

End of conversation.

Buffett’s candy-bar story reminds me of another business parable I often turn to and share—one that’s still told at Amazon today. During the Q and A session, a man asked Jeff Bezos what he thought was going to change in the next ten years. Bezos replied, “I almost never get asked the question, ‘What’s NOT going to change in the next ten years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two.”

He then went on to talk about that, at Amazon, there were three things that never change: great selection, great price, and great customer service. Whenever the shiny new thing arrives that gets everyone excited, worried, or upset–simply ask “Does this impact our ability to offer great selection, great price, and great service?” If it does, embrace it. If it doesn’t, don’t allow it to become a distraction.

This story gets quoted a lot when new disruptive technologies come into play–and it is often used as a divining rod to help decide if an idea or project is worth pursuing. When you focus on these three, seemingly odd ideas like buying a fleet of trucks or piloting drone deliveries don’t seem so odd anymore.

So let’s swing back to podcasting.

Are there things that never change about podcasting? When podcasting was invented in 2000 and took root in 2004, when it exploded following Serial in 2014, went stratospheric in 2020, or when it reset in 2023–are there constants throughout all that?

Yes.

I believe there are four things that have never changed in podcasting, and likely never will.

First thing that will never change: Listeners want a good story
I often say that even though there are millions of podcasts in the world, there are only two kinds of podcasts in the world: podcasts that tell stories and podcasts where people have conversations. And actually, the best conversations are people telling stories…so maybe there is only one type of podcast.

This is the glue that keeps listeners listening…and coming back.

Second thing that will never change: Listeners crave community and a sense of belonging
Know it or not, every podcast in the world is the voice of a niche. Even huge podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience or Radiolab are the voice of a specific type of person with a particular interest or worldview. Going all the way back to podcasting’s origins, the earliest shows were chat shows for people interested in very specific tech topics. It can be as literal as a podcast focused on 17th century fabric or Dallas area real estate agents or adult adoptees–or it can be more topical, like people interested in unsolved crimes or a sports team or new movies. The podcast is the hub of the community. And as we’ve seen, this often takes on a life outside of the podcast itself. On dating apps, it’s common to list favorite podcasts–so people can find other members of this invisible community. Sometimes the community isn’t so invisible–with self-organized groups on Facebook or Reddit just for show fans.

Podcasting is a social media. This may not be front of mind for them–but listeners live it.

Third thing that will never change in podcasting: Listeners see podcasting as a solution to a problem
There can be all kinds of listener problems, such as “I’m bored,” “I want to laugh,” “I want to learn something new,” “I want to know what’s going on with something I care about,” “I’m lonely,” “I want to escape,” “I want to have my mind blown,” “I want to get angry,” or many others. Listeners turn to podcasting to solve a problem, sometimes a problem they don’t realize they have or aren’t consciously trying to solve. When the podcast solves that problem, they stay and come back again. When it doesn’t, they move on.

And the final thing that will never change in podcasting: Listeners love surprises
It could be an unexpected twist or an idea that blows their mind–but listeners come for the talent or topic or ideas they are interested in, but stay for what they didn’t expect.

Think about the last time you read something or heard something or watched something and then told someone else about it. You might have given an overview of the story–but where do you focus your praise? On the surprises.

Nothing on the planet is as soul-sucking as a predictable podcast episode. When I’m listening to a show, I often mentally pause a minute or two into the episode and map out where I think the episode is going. Too often, it follows exactly as I thought it might. That sucks so much. But when you come up with something I couldn’t see coming, 🤌.

So that’s basically the list I see of things that never change:

• Listeners want a good story

• Listeners crave community and a sense of belonging

• Listeners see podcasting as a solution to a problem

• Listeners love surprises

Beyond that, not much.

But what about video and celebrities and all the HUGE changes to podcasting?

To be honest, I see most of them as cyclical things that wax and wane. For example, to some people, it seems that YouTube and video podcasting have exploded out of nowhere. These people haven’t been doing a good job of paying attention. It’s worth noting that when podcasting first started, it was as much or more a video medium as an audio medium, as so many very early podcasts originated as streaming shows (does anyone remember RealVideo?). Audio took an early lead for two reasons. The first was practical: file size. Downloading video files took a lot of time, while audio files, often 1/10th of the size, were quicker to download. Second, a lot of audio creators were quick to recognize the opportunity and came in loaded with great material. Plus, watching videos on a portable device back in 2004 was kinda the equivalent of watching video on your watch today: possible, but not enjoyable. The audio podcasts grew so quickly that it kind of eclipsed video podcasting. The rise of YouTube seemed to be the death blow for video podcasting, but, frankly, it instead proved to be a lifeline. The recent rise of video podcasting is more of a full circle moment than something that’s disruptive. And just like 20 years ago–not everything works in video form. And that’s okay.

The death of narrative, which we’ve discussed here before, isn’t really a death, but an evolution. Every medium becomes fixated on celebrity when its networks run out of ideas. And advertising is the most cyclical of all these “existential” changes–and it isn’t even the first time podcasting has been on the advertising down cycle (this is also the reason I so often preach about the lack of wisdom in being over-dependent on ad revenue).

I also want to note that what you should take away from this is not that Eric says nothing changes in podcasting. Lots of things change. I look at Magnificent Noise, and the business we are today is very, very different than the business we launched in 2018 (maybe that’s one reason we’ve stuck around all this time) and the work we do is fundamentally different than the work we focused on seven years ago. But what I’m saying is that a lot of these changes that we see in 2025, and have seen throughout the history of podcasting, are much more confined to the surface than we realize. The fundamentals? They rarely change. If anything, they just come into clearer view.

[A CLOSING MOMENT OF ZEN: THAT’S THE POWER IN THE PLUS!] I took a lot of airline flights over the past six weeks…and watched a ton of movies. This ad ran as a pre-roll for everything I watched on every flight. And to be honest, I got a little obsessed with this ad.

Or more specifically, how little it actually says. This pair talks for 30 seconds…and it is so full of empty words that it took me about six views to actually figure out what this firm does (that is, beside dropping buzzwords).

When I worry about the future of audio–I worry that it will be run by people like these, who say all the right things–yet don’t have an actual idea between them. I’ve seen this in the audiobook industry for many years. I see it often in public media too. Radio seems to have stopped caring long ago, so no one seems to be too concerned about even saying the right things. Is podcasting getting there too? Take it as a note of caution.

It reminds me that when we forget why this medium exists—to connect, surprise, and solve—we start sounding like these two.

Okay, that’s it for today.

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

Welcome to Dispatch #80 of The Audio Insurgent. And welcome back from summer! This summer was definitely a strange one–I’m kinda glad to be back in the swing of things and have a ton of ideas to share with you.

Today is clearing the deck of three smaller topics, then back in a week or two with a much larger idea.

Let’s do this…

[TODAY’S FIRST THING: WE ARE THE LAZY LUDDITES] In the last 24 hours, about 14,000 people have shared this item about a new podcast network that plans to generate 3,000 AI-created podcast episodes a week–at a cost of only $1 an episode! It also garnered the headline in this morning’s Podnews newsletter. This all comes from a new podcast network called Quiet. Please Podcast Network, part of a company called Inception Point AI, fronted by former Wondery COO Jeanine Wright. In the article, Wright refers to critics of this kind of content as “lazy luddites.” She added, “Because there’s a lot of really good stuff out there.”

I’m not sure what “good stuff” she was referring to, and admittedly when they are putting out 3,000 episodes a week across 5,000 new shows, I can’t listen to everything. But apparently the supposed “good stuff” isn’t referring to the material I’ve heard coming out from Quiet. Please Podcast Network.

I have people reaching out to me regarding almost any article that contains both the words “AI” and “podcasting”--mostly from folks concerned that this is the dreadful doom-laden moment where AI will disrupt podcasting and bring an end to the industry (and the jobs of its workforce) the way AI has torn through a number of other industries. Last night was no different. To my knowledge, no one who was discussing this article last night or this morning actually stopped to listen to any of this network’s actual content.

So I did.

And, again, I didn’t listen to everything, but I wasted a few hours of time listening so you don’t have to.

And it's all a steaming pile of hot garbage.

I mean, it is truly, deeply, profoundly terrible. After a while, I kept listening just to see if it could get any worse–or any less appealing–or any less deeply out of touch with why audiences come to podcasting–and it did all three of those things!

Longtime readers of these dispatches know I don’t like to publicly crap on an individual person’s work. But that’s the thing—this isn’t an individual person’s work—it is all generated by a machine that doesn’t have feelings or a professional reputation to protect.

Don’t believe me on how bad this is? Try listening to this one about knitting or this chilling Christmas mystery or this show about Squanto - The Man Who Shaped Thanksgiving or this prime stinker on Hollywood Legend: Adrien Brody.

So there is a chance that I am a luddite–presumptively blowing off AI as a creative disruptor in podcasting because it blows so hard today. Others look at the way AI-generated video has established a beachhead in short form video and expect the same to happen to podcasting. But this is the way I look at it: there are three critical things a podcast needs to succeed: curiosity, passion, and authenticity. That’s fairly unique to podcasting (as opposed to other media)…and that’s basically it. It almost doesn’t matter what you are talking about or what story you want to tell or what microphone you buy or how long your episodes are. If you have those three things, and let other people who also value those same three things know your podcast exists–you can build something worth making.

Today, and for the foreseeable future, AI can fake or mimic some of the attributes present when someone has curiosity, passion, and authenticity–but it can’t create it.

AI is an amazing tool that I use and encourage others to use, responsibily and smartly, every single day. But as I’ve said to a number of creators who wring their hands over AI: if your creative work can be replaced by AI today, then your work probably sucked to begin with.

[TODAY’S SECOND THING: THAT WONDERY THING TELLS US MUCH MORE ABOUT AMAZON THAN IT TELLS ABOUT PODCASTING] About five weeks ago Amazon decided to break apart Wondery. Almost immediately, my texts and email started to light up. I even had a number of reporters reach out to me for comment. But once they heard my thoughts…none of them used my quotes in their articles.

Many of those who reached out described this as a "seismic" moment in podcasting that would change things forever. Now, it certainly was a seismic disruption for the 100 people who lost jobs (though it is important to note that a number of them will be reabsorbed into other divisions at Amazon).

But the impact on podcasting?

My general response was “In a month, no one is going to care about this and little-to-nothing will feel any different as a result of it.” Podcasting, thankfully, has grown too big for any one content company to cause seismic change (note I said “content” company—probably the two entities that could cause that level of change are Apple and Spotify).

One friend “dared” me to wait to write about this for a month, so they could see me change my mind.

So here I am…bringing this up weeks later…to prove my point.

As Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw reported back in 2021, there was tension when Amazon acquired Wondery for $300 million. Both the Audible and Amazon Music divisions wanted it. The debate went all the way up to the top of Amazon, with the decision ultimately going to Amazon Music, mostly because it planned to continue the ad-supported model used by many podcast networks. In other words, the choice was made to keep the dollars rolling at a time when podcast advertising was still exploding (over making Wondery’s shows an offering in Audible’s membership-focused business model).

One way to look at the recent changes with Wondery is that, basically, Amazon changed its mind.

It is really important to keep context in mind here. While $300 million was the largest acquisition in podcasting (to date), and–I get it–that number feels SO HUGE in the podcasting world. In the Amazon world…it really isn’t very much at all. In Amazon’s world, $300 million represents 0.01209677419% of its $2.48 trillion market valuation. That doesn’t even qualify as “chump change.” So Amazon purchases something for $300 million and tries running it one way. That doesn’t work, so they break it up and try it a different way.

To make it relative, in my family, that’s about the equivalent of a $50 decision. Do I go throwing around $50 for anything? No. But does how I spend $50 affect my overall financial picture or “mean anything” about the state of my life? Not really.

Same here. It certainly is newsworthy and interesting to follow further, but a seismic disruption? Meh.

[TODAY’S THIRD AND FINAL THING: WHAT CREATIVES DON’T UNDERSTAND ABOUT EXECS (AND WHAT EXECS DON’T UNDERSTAND ABOUT CREATIVES)] Earlier this summer I was having a Zoom chat with an impressive creator who was a friend of a friend. She reached out because of a frustration she was having. In short: she was getting nowhere on some podcast pitches she was making to companies.

“These are such good ideas,” she said. “I don’t understand why they can’t see these as great ideas.”

I told her the problem is that she was using different criteria (and language) than the execs she was pitching to.

Execs aren’t as interested in the potential or potency of a story or subject as you might think–and it definitely is not the primary driver for a green light decision that creators might expect. I mean, I get it–they are expecting the conversation to be “This podcast idea is AMAZING…let’s make it!”

But execs don’t think that way about the pitches they receive. For those that are reviewing podcast pitches, they aren’t focused on editorial merit, they are instead focused on risk.

In other words, their primary lens to evaluate is if the company invests in this idea, will they be able to find an audience and a path to earn that money back?

This is one of the primary drivers for the rush to embrace hundreds of celebrity-led podcasts. Celebrities are known entities. They have established awareness and an existing fan base. That goes far to lower the risk of the investment. The same goes for true crime. It is an established genre in podcasting. Advertisers know what to expect from it. Execs know pretty well how to market them. The risk is lower than for other non-fiction categories without the clearer paths leading to and from them.

So it almost doesn’t matter how talented your host is or how amazing the story is–merit doesn’t matter to them. Risk does. And that disconnect means that creators and execs are often talking past each other. Ask either camp what they think of the other, and after some polite platitudes, they say something like, “Too bad they don’t get it.”

It isn’t that they don’t get it–they are just speaking a different language of sorts.

So I counseled her to think about that the next time she pitches. Don’t focus so much on how incredible the story or subject or host is–those execs have dozens of incredible stories, subjects, and hosts come across their desks every week. It doesn’t matter. Instead, sell your idea by trying to lower the risk. Do that thinking for them.

And execs–when you ask creators to “Bring your best ideas”--realize that they see that mandate a different way. You should be more explicit. The creators think it is based on editorial merit, not the reality of taking that best idea into the podcast ecosystem and marketplace.

Okay, that’s it for today.

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

Those who work with me often tease me about my Ted Lasso-like optimistic view of many (okay, most) things. That’s mostly a fair observation, but I’ve come by that optimism the hard way, through a lot of personal and professional challenges and setbacks that I had to fight my way through. 

This has been a rough week for many people I care about. Those in U.S. public media have been talking about this moment for more than 30 years. Back when Newt Gingrich's Contract with America legislative agenda floated the idea of ending federal support for public media, the public–and legislators–balked at the notion. The proposal died, but afterwards, just with the simple suggestion of a threat, public radio’s public financial support and listening surged and exploded. And with it, public radio grew significantly in the years that followed. (Thanks, Newt.)

Yet even then, those in public media knew this day would eventually come.

And here it is.

I’ve struggled to figure out what I should say at this moment, so I’ve largely stayed quiet on this over the last few months.

But now, the industry is struggling to figure out what to do. And I think that’s where I’m hopefully most useful.

Rather than tell people what to do, I want to share how I believe you should frame your thinking about the future.

And podcasters, given the state of the podcasting industry, you should think like this too.

I’ve long stated that public media needs to embrace transformational change in order to find its future, both as a collective entity and individual organizations in communities across the country.

And the calculus is pretty simple: those who think transformationally will have a future; those who don’t, won’t.

Instead of just beating the drum of transformational thinking and change, I thought I’d share an example of it that I love. So this post is about a non-profit newsroom in New York City called Documented NY. It’s an inspiring story. It’s easy to understand. And best of all, what they did is immediately replicable by any public service organization, anywhere.

Here goes…

[TODAY’S THING: THIS IS WHAT TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKING LOOKS LIKE]  The story of Documented NY begins with a simple, yet profound question: 

What would happen if we stopped reporting ABOUT immigrants and started reporting FOR immigrants? 

Documented’s story isn’t about audio. It’s not even, really, about media in the traditional sense. But it’s one of the clearest examples I’ve encountered of someone who encountered existential obstacles, stopped, rethought everything, and then built a new structure from the ground up–and can prove it worked.

Documented NY was started by two journalists, Max Siegelbaum and Mazin Sidahmed. Mazin and Max were both experienced immigration reporters. Both had covered migration for major publications for years—Mazin from Beirut and Max from Cairo, back when the Arab Spring was unraveling into a migration crisis. After relocating to the U.S. for graduate school, they turned their attention to American immigration, each from different angles: Max digging into detention centers and courts, Mazin focusing on the intersection of immigration and national security.

But something felt off.

“The people that we were engaging with on a day-to-day basis never actually engaged with the journalism we produced about them,” Mazin told me, noting that many of the people he was reporting on couldn’t even speak the language of the journalism he created based on their experiences. “That disconnect often felt extractive.”

It’s a familiar issue to anyone who’s ever produced media “about” a group, but not “for” or “with” them. Even though their work was frequently cited, shared, and celebrated—there was a growing unease. Mazin and Max wanted to do more than drop into communities, gather stories, and leave.

Then came 2017 and the first Trump administration. The national press was focused on the border and Capitol Hill. But in cities like New York, where immigrants were feeling the ripple effects of federal policy in daily, local ways, coverage was sparse.

So they started Documented—not to replace national coverage, but to fill the vacuum in local reporting about how immigration policy was reshaping life in New York. They launched with the best intentions and the best practices of nonprofit journalism: accountability reporting, policy investigations, and impact tracking.

By some traditional metrics, it worked. Their work sparked legislation, prompted pension divestments from detention centers, and earned praise from peers. But there was still that disquiet.

“We were doing well in the kind of traditional nonprofit impact sense,” Mazin said, “but we weren’t doing well with the mission we had set out for ourselves.”

In short: few in the communities they covered were actually reading their work.

The goal wasn’t just to inform policy makers or drive elite media conversations. It was to serve immigrant communities directly. And that part wasn’t working. They tried translating Spanish-language versions of their stories meant for the very audiences they aimed to serve and posted them on their web site. But they still weren’t being read.

Mazin could have stopped there. He could have said, “We tried.” But instead, they transformed.

Worth noting: they didn’t set out to transform anything. They were just looking for a better way into the community. They started exploring “information needs assessment,” championed by groups like Listening Post Collective and Outlier Media.

It is really important to pause here for a moment to note that Documented wasn’t using information needs assessments to tell them what to do—they already knew what they wanted to do. They just needed help figuring out the most effective and impactful way to do it. I bring this up because too many in media use these assessments tools to identify “unmet needs” and then plan to rush into trying (and invariably failing) to address those. They forget about the passion part. No one succeeds at solving problems for audiences (or customers) without having a passion for solving that problem.

Sorry, back to Documented’s story…

The idea is simple: Documented would go to the specific immigrant communities they wanted to serve and ask, What do you actually need from a news organization? What kind of information would make your life better? What do you read, watch, and trust today?

Documented went out to weekend gatherings, markets, and other events and just talked to people about what they looked for in news. 

What they heard was humbling.

“Number one, they felt that whenever they were in the news, they were either considered a victim or a criminal,” Mazin said. 

Yet the real disconnect with the immigrant audiences they wished to serve was editorial. In short, people weren’t reading and engaging with their work because Documented wasn’t reporting on the things that were important to the community. Most immigration reporting was about policy, border activity, and a number of other high-level issues, and frankly, it all felt very removed and remote from the immigrants’ lives.

“The kind of news that they wanted to read was actionable information that could help them navigate New York City,” Mazin said. When Documented asked about the issues the community was most interested in, the number one issue wasn’t immigration policy or borders. The number one issue was…wage theft. 

It wasn’t a top policy story. It wasn’t trending on Twitter. But it was an urgent, daily injustice experienced by countless workers. So Documented sued the Department of Labor to release records of employers convicted of wage theft in New York. Documented released a database of those convicted employers as a resource for workers, advocates, and legislators.

Other top areas for the immigrant community were other service-oriented concerns: reporting on how to get a drivers license, how to get child care, or health care.

They also reexamined what ‘community’ meant. The people they spoke to weren’t interested in international news, or border news–not even New York City news. 

“To them, they wanted to know what was happening in their immigrant community in Flatbush,” Mazin said.

And the third thing, and arguably the most deeply transformational thing they learned, was platform. Instead of just posting on a web site that they couldn’t convince people to visit, they went to the places where the audience went for other information. According to Mazin, “They were mainly getting their news and information through informal WhatsApp chats.”

So Documented launched a WhatsApp newsletter—a weekly roundup of practical news and resources in Spanish. They also launched a similar Mandarin newsletter on WeChat and a Haitian Creole newsletter for the Caribbean community on NextDoor.

And that’s when things exploded.

That barely-read feed quickly became a two-way conversation. Instead of a trickle of page views–they kept seeing more and more people sign up, read, and participate. (After first meeting Mazin, I was so inspired I subscribed to the WhatsApp channel in order to see for myself–but I don’t actually speak Spanish, so, best intentions…) 

But then something magical happened. People didn’t just read the newsletter…people started to ask questions back to the journalists, shared tips with each other, converse with each other, and sent voice memos. Each newsletter wasn’t just "consumed," it became the beginning of a robust, on-going conversation with the audience. And the lines between audience, sources, journalists, and community leaders became quite porous. Now, Documented reporters are required to spend 40% of their time in the channels conversing with the community, answering questions, connecting them to resources, and looking for new story ideas.

It was all a massive and incredibly successful pivot. And all came from letting go of generations of standards of reporting on immigrants and immigration, and instead just simply asking the people how they could help.

“It’s very humbling,” Mazin says. “As a journalist you are used to using your gut to decide what is an interesting story.” But instead of deciding what stories the community should care about, Documented let the community tell them what it should cover.

Mazin told me that when other journalists reach out to him now, they often skip over the hard part. They want the how-to on building a WhatsApp newsletter—but not the self-inquiry that preceded it. They want the endgame’s playbook, not the mindset shift.

But transformation isn’t a tactic. It’s a posture.

It requires humility. It requires questioning the assumptions you’ve built your work on—especially the sacred ones, like: What is news? Who is this for? Who do I think I’m helping?

As Mazin put it: “If we want to serve a different audience than the typical people who consume news—who are fluent, highly educated, often white—then we have to start thinking differently about what we consider to be news, and what we consider to be important.”

That’s not just a lesson for journalists. That’s a lesson for anyone in audio, or public media, or any creative field that has built institutions and systems around old assumptions. For public media, those assumptions may be close to 60 years old. But for podcasting, even assumptions based on the past two or three years may prove dangerously outdated.

If we want to reach new people, if we want to thrive in a new media environment, we have to stop thinking the same old ways.

At this moment, a lot of people in audio (not just public media) are having private conversations about survival. Budget and funding cuts. Audience losses. Business model changes. The rise of video. Handwringing followed by nervously asking “What’s next?”

But here’s the thing: survival is not the same as transformation. Survival is hunkering down and hoping the storm passes. Transformation is building something new that acknowledges why the old thing broke in the first place. 

And, as Dick Trofel points out in his recent newsletter, please don’t make the mistake that many legacy newspapers did, by “trying to preserve as much of what has gone before as possible, rather than seizing the moment to reinvent a system, and many of its components.”

That past is now officially over. It is time to seek out the new.

This is what transformational thinking looks like.

Oh, and by the way, Mazin is looking for a partner to help Documented in podcasting. I told him I know a few people. 😉 If you’d be interested, you should write him.

In the spirit of disclosure, Documented NY received some early funding from Emerson Collective, one of Magnificent Noise’s clients. That’s how I first met Mazin. There are no financial ties or inducements for me to write about them. In fact, Emerson Collective doesn’t even know this is happening. But since we both have received funding from Emerson Collective, I felt it important to mention.

Okay, that’s it for today. 

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

I must confess I was feeling a bit uninspired this morning, then I went through my backlog of mail (yes, actual letters and cards…it’s a thing with me), and opened this:

That’s pretty great–and a wonderful things to say (though I’ll admit I don’t feel that way all the time). So I decided to get over my laziness for this morning and write this dispatch, which has been gnawing at me for the past two weeks.

V.--the writer of the above card–is a supporter of The Audio Insurgent. She makes a small contribution to help offset the time it takes to write these and manage the work of the newsletter (which contains no actual news).

You can do that too! Just hit the subscribe button and pick the support level that matches the value of The Audio Insurgent–it is as little as $5. The button to smash is below.

Subscribe now

And one of the perks of being a supporter is I will write a handwritten custom dispatch just for you! (And no fawning reply card is necessary–but deeply appreciated).

Onward…

[TODAY’S THING: IS REMOTE WORK HARMING THE AUDIO INDUSTRY?]  I had come in to help some of our staff with a recording at Mag Noise and overheard the host and guest talking before the interview started. The guest, a professor of business and management, casually said, “I don’t know if I could prove this, but there seems to be some correlation between likelihood of burn out and remote work.”

That thought has rarely left my head in the weeks since–and has left me with a lot of thoughts about the price we pay for being a largely remote or hybrid industry.

I remember a time, not even a decade ago, when working from home was still a pretty foreign concept–and often felt like a mischievous and deviously delicious way to spend a day. Even though it was super healthy and productive, many turned up their nose at the idea.

Then COVID happened, blah, blah, blah.

But where are we now?

Very few audio shops are fully in-person. Most are hybrid or still entirely remote, and there is little indication that there is much interest in changing that. It does afford a lot of flexibility around work, work hours, and location. And come on, who needs to be in an office to stare at a Pro Tools session all day, right?

But I’ve also held the sometimes unpopular opinion that the audio industry pays a price for that lack of in-person time, on the individual level and also on the organizational and industry level. There is a slow creep of lack of connection, shallow relationship building, and a frustrated level of skill building. Its effect is subtle…like the frog in the pot of boiling water…so slow that we aren’t noticing how much it is contributing to the creative malaise that many are feeling in radio and podcasting right now.

And I say this is a “sometimes” unpopular opinion because when I bring this up, more than a few times I get a pretty hostile reaction.

So, let’s set some foundation here and discuss a few facts.

First, I’m not an oldie advocating for fully in-person work. I have always been an advocate for hybrid work–far before it was in vogue. In fact, during my years at Audible, I caught a lot of flack for "having my staff only work four days a week.” We never worked four-day weeks. However, from the start, we always worked remote or traveled for recording trips on Fridays whenever possible. This wasn’t really to give people more time off, but the opposite: try to coordinate time away and travel so more of us could be together more often in the office.

Also, there are a number of inconvenient truths that have emerged about remote creative work.

Let’s start with one of the most well-documented: creativity and collaboration suffer.

As happens a lot, a guest on one of our podcasts got me started thinking about this. Last year, we created a show for the Stanford Graduate School of Business called If/Then. In one episode, Jonathan Levav, a professor of marketing at Stanford, shared his study of remote work and creativity. “Pairs that worked face-to-face generated 15 to 20% more ideas than pairs that worked on Zoom,” he said. What’s more, in-person brainstorming helped people consider a wider and more diverse range of ideas. “Working on Zoom was a double penalty. Fewer ideas — and a narrower set of ideas.”

Further regarding collaboration, researchers from Microsoft published an article in Nature Human Behaviour analyzing anonymized data from over 60,000 Microsoft employees during the pandemic shift to remote work. What did they discover? That “Remote work caused the worker’s networks to become more static and siloed. People communicated more within their immediate teammates…and less with others in the organization. In short: remote work made it harder to discover ideas you didn’t already have.”

These aren’t isolated examples, either. A meta-analysis of over 60 academic studies published in Organizational Psychology Review found similar effects: remote work can impair creativity, limit informal learning, and reduce “ambient belonging”—the sense that you’re part of a larger creative mission.

There’s also compelling research from another Stanford professor, Nicholas Bloom, who has been studying remote work for over a decade. His early research (pre-COVID) found that remote workers were more productive—but only when the work was routine or individual in nature. For collaborative and creative work, the benefits were less clear—and more dependent on having regular in-person connection to sustain cohesion and trust.

What does that leave us with? It means the thing we often think of as “deep focus time” (i.e., working on tape, writing, DAW and Descript editing) does benefit from quiet, solo, and often remote work time. But the upstream and downstream parts—brainstorming, refining, editing with others, getting unstuck—are where the gaps start to show. So on the individual level: less connection to colleagues (and thus, less LEARNING from colleagues), crappier ideas, and perhaps even a higher propensity for burn-out. 

Organizations should care—not just because it affects their people, but because it hurts the business too. Fewer and less compelling ideas are a big part of that, but also the lack of connection to other parts of the organization. The next Audio Insurgent will focus on the growing fissure between creatives and those on the business side of podcasting–and this Zoom-induced chasm is a substantial contributor to that. Sure, everyone avoids a commute and can work from their backyard on a beautiful day, but less compelling ideas create less compelling projects. Less collaboration and connection leads to the entire organization being less efficient and effective.

We’ve traded our commutes and shared kitchens for Slack threads and Zoom links, we may have inadvertently drained the informal connective tissue that holds great creative teams together. And I fear the effects of this will continue to grow with time. As someone who never attended a single journalism, media, or business course in college (okay, to be fair, I attended very few of any classes in college), I can attest that most people learn most things by being around other people doing that thing. They learn by seeing what to do, and what not to do, in real time and in person. They can ask questions. They can learn best practices. They can float their own ideas for real time advice, guidance, and feedback. It’s called growing…and that’s hard to do from the couch in your living room.

So, remote work is great…but also incredibly harmful…unless that harm is properly mitigated. And that’s the part I feel the audio industry is missing.

None of this is an argument for going back to five-day office life. It’s an argument for intentional thinking around time spent together. Most conversations on this start and stop on negotiating an organization’s remote work policy. But it is rare for any organization, of any size, to really talk about how to make the most of time spent together. At best, these discussions about mentoring, collaboration, coaching, and example-setting are treated as an afterthought.

So maybe the question isn’t “Remote or in-person?” Maybe it’s: “What are the moments that matter—and are we designing for them on purpose?”

Because if we want to keep growing—not just individually, but as organizations and as an industry—we’re going to need more than Slack threads and calendar links. We’re going to need real time with each other. And those who create that next great series—the one that makes you insanely jealous because you wish it came from your shop? It’ll come from a work culture that’s figured more of this out.

Okay, that’s it for today. 

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

Before we get too far along, we have a really interesting part-time temporary gig on a really great project available. See the first item below.

Okay, so I talk about a number of different audio topics in these dispatches, but most of them concern podcasting and U.S. public radio. The funny thing is whenever I write about podcasting, the public radio people grumble. And whenever I write about public radio, the podcasting people grumble.

Today is about public radio, but I’d offer that almost anyone who runs a show or network that reaches audiences across platforms stands to gain from the concept we’re going to discuss today: measuring Attention Time.

So let’s go…

[TODAY’S SHORT FIRST THING: COME WORK WITH US!]  A brief request for your attention before we talk about attention…

We have a temporary Producer opening on our team for a new energy and climate show we are producing. We need an extra brain to help finish up a small batch of episodes over the next few months. Could be a part-time gig for someone (as in doesn’t need to be a full-time commitment). What we are looking for: an experienced audio producer who can take an outline of a story with some suggestions of guests, book and conduct interviews (generally about 2), pull selects and write a story using those two interviews into a ~30 minute piece. After that, record a talk segment with the hosts that is cut down to about 10-15 minutes and included at the end. It's best if you have experience in narrative storytelling.

If you are interested, reach out to my colleague Christine Driscoll who can tell you more.

[TODAY’S MAIN THING: ATTENTION TIME]  People can tell you your work is great. They can praise it, share it, even say it changed their life.

But there’s only one way to know what someone really values: they give it their attention.

Attention is the most precious thing we have. We guard it carefully and only give it to the things we care about most. I’d argue that for many people (including me) their attention and time is worth more than money. So the real question for anyone making media is: How much of their time did they give you?

If you’re in public radio, or any audience-supported organization, this is an existential level question. Because financial contributions follow perceived value—and value is driven by consumption. And the most telling measure of consumption? Time.

Have I lost you yet? Hopefully not. Read it again, because this shit is about to get really good.

But this is also where things get a bit tricky. Public radio (and media orgs generally) reach audiences on a dozen platforms—broadcast, podcasts, newsletters, websites, social media, and events. Each has its own analytics, its own jargon: Cume, Downloads, Sessions, Views, CTR, Subscribers. None of them play nice together (let alone measure the same things).

So how do you make sense of all that? You reduce everything to a common denominator: Attention Time.

To back up half a step…public radio - or any subscription service (and at its fundamental core, public radio is like a subscription service) - follows a simple sequence (and there is a mountain of data analysis to back this up): audience financial contributions directly correlate to value. So what drives value? Consumption. How do you measure consumption? Time.

Have I lost you yet? Hopefully not. Read that again, because this shit is about to get really good.

Over the past two years, I’ve worked with about ten public radio stations—sometimes just on Zoom, sometimes working on site with staff—to help answer a deceptively simple question: “What’s working?” Which often leads to a more urgent one: “And why aren’t we making money from it?”

The answer usually comes when we stop looking at revenue and start looking at attention.

So here’s what I started doing.

Whenever a station tells me, “Our newsletters are strong but under-monetized,” or “Our podcast hit big last year but didn’t drive membership,” I suggest we back up. Forget the money for a moment. Let’s look at the attention each of those platforms is actually earning.

Because often, the issue isn’t a broken revenue model—it’s that the thing isn’t generating enough value to monetize in the first place.

The problem is, every platform speaks a different language:

• A “user session” on your news site

• A “download” of your podcast

• A “view” of your video

• A “subscriber” to your newsletter

• A “listener” to your linear broadcast
  

These are not apples to apples. So we convert them. All of them. Into time.

This simple reframing changes everything.

Because when you do, those numbers tell an unsettling story about how little progress public radio stations and organizations have made towards their digital future. 

To come to this way of thinking, I’ve been deeply influenced by three incredible pieces of best thinking on audience and measurement. The first is the work of David Giovannoni and his company Audience Research Analysis during the 1980s and 1990s, which really set the foundation for proving, statistically, that listening to public radio and giving to public radio are deeply linked. As part of that work, David came up with a simple measure, Listener Hours, which converts all listening on a station or to a program into a simple number of hours (across days and dayparts throughout a week).

The second is much more recent, as Bumper has developed their podcast audience data analysis tools focusing on Listen Time, inspired by the YouTube measure “Watch Time,” which also cleans up a lot of consumption data to focus on a real, simple number that is easy to understand and compare.

And finally, my incredibly smart friend Will Page has long advised that attention is the measure that will matter most as digital continues to disrupt established business and consumption. (Will’s book has an entire chapter on this concept and rightfully makes the case that not all attention is equal, which is a conversation for another day).

So I borrowed their principles and built a method to calculate something similar across all of a station’s platforms. Not listeners. Not clicks. Just hours of attention. It is a way to see everything together on a level playing field.

The way to do it is actually quite simple, at least theoretically. Buried in most user data are measures that measure time as well as occasions: length of user sessions, consumption rate for podcasts, listening duration for broadcast, time spent reading a newsletter, etc.

Then convert everything into hours, list them out and add them up.

Here is some anonymous data from a station to illustrate how this works:

I recently worked with a station—let’s call it XX Public Radio—that wanted help making sense of their digital efforts. During our first meeting, a senior staffer told me proudly, “We haven’t equaled our broadcast audience yet with digital, but we’re getting closer every month.”

He pointed to the numbers:

• 168,700 Cume listeners to broadcast (both FM and streaming)

• 67,000 monthly user sessions on the local news site

• 12,000 podcast downloads

• 9,000 newsletter subscribers

• 16,000 followers on social media

• 2,000 attendees at events
  

In his mind, that was a lot of people. Sure, there was some overlap. But still—tens of thousands engaging on digital platforms? That had to be meaningful, right?

Here’s the problem: those numbers reflect presence, not attention.

So we started digging.

• Of those 9,000 newsletter subscribers, about a third opened each email. They spent an average of 2 minutes reading.

• The average time spent on a social post? 2.5 seconds.

• Podcast downloads looked promising—until we looked closer: only a portion of downloaders actually listened, and those who did made it through about 60% of the episode.
  

So we did the math. We converted it all—site visits, listens, reads, posts, everything—into actual time spent. Then we compared it to the Listener Hours from broadcast.

And this is what we found:

99.94% of total audience Attention Time came from linear broadcast.

0.06% came from everything digital. Combined.

Let me say that again:

For a station that considers itself a local leader in digital journalism, that has spent the past two decades building a web presence and a robust newsroom—the sum total of its digital audience attention is less than one-tenth of one percent of its broadcast footprint.

That’s not a rounding error. That’s the reality.

And this station isn’t an outlier. I’ve done this same exercise with a number of stations in Top 20 markets, with significant digital teams and real investment behind them. The best result I’ve seen so far?

2%.

That’s the high score.

Can you run these numbers for your own organization? Yes. It takes some digging, and some math. But it’s possible. I can even help with it as well. Just yesterday, as I was finishing this up, IAB announced an initiative to pretty much look at the same question, but with a much more sophisticated (and expensive) lens. But honestly, most public radio stations and organizations would likely see the same results.

Which brings us to two questions.

First: Why can’t we seem to make money from digital? Well, now you know. It’s not a revenue problem. It’s a value problem. And not in a vague, hand-wavy way—value, in this case, is time. Your audience simply isn’t giving your digital platforms enough of it. And if you’re not generating value, of course you’re not generating revenue.

This is true whether you’re a public radio station, a podcast network, a newspaper, or a media company trying to future-proof itself. If you want a sustainable revenue strategy, you need a value strategy first. And that means measuring time and being honest about what you see.

Second: Now that you know this… what the hell are you supposed to do with it?

Well, for starters: don’t panic. And don’t get discouraged.

This isn’t a failure—it’s a starting point. Because the worst strategy is one built on false assumptions. If you’re chasing engagement or monetization without knowing where your attention actually lives, you’re building on sand.

Instead, build on truth. Audit your audience’s attention. See what’s real. See what’s working. Then ask: where do we want that Attention Time to shift over the next 1, 3, or 5 years? And what do we need to do—what stories, what programming, what products, what relationships—to earn it?

You can’t architect the future unless you know where you stand.

And once you do? The strategy gets a lot simpler. The right questions emerge. The right priorities reveal themselves. And your team can stop spinning wheels and start building toward something that actually moves the needle.

That’s the power of Attention Time. It cuts through the noise.

It gives you a map.

Hope this makes sense. It really needs to.

Okay, that’s it for today. 

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

A number of you have noted that I’ve been publishing less over the past few months. That is true. Not for a lack of things to talk about, but 2025 has been an obnoxiously demanding year for us. We had to make some staffing shuffles at the beginning of the year, which meant I had my job–and a few other jobs to do as well. But despite being busy, all is well, and I miss annoying thousands of people more regularly. So, we’ll get back to normal soon.

So–for this dispatch, it started with a revelation, followed by the search for a word. To describe this revelation, I went on a quest to find a scientific term for when a cell divides into two cells, but the two new cells are different from each other, as well as different from the original cell. They can be a little alike, but different. This led me down a rabbit hole of scientific jargon about cell modification, asymmetric cell division, mitosis, meiosis, and even parthenogenesis (one of the favorite bands of my youth, Shriekback, actually used that word in a song lyric). I now have fodder for some incredibly boring dinner conversation. The term I landed on that I thought worked best is neurogenesis. Neurogenesis is the process where stem cells divide and differentiate into various types of neurons and glial cells. A stem cell divides into other cells that can be very different from others, and from the original, yet they do carry on some commonalities. It begins during embryonic development, when the nervous system is first taking shape, but also continues into adulthood in certain areas of the brain.

“Fascinating,” I hear you thinking. “But what does this have to do with podcasting?”

Well, I think neurogenesis is a great way to understand the changes that have taken place in the past several years in podcasting. Podcasting hasn’t really changed–it has gone through podcasting neurogenesis.

Okay, so let’s divide…

[TODAY’S SHORT FIRST THING: THE NATURE OF]  Before we get to the meat of this dispatch, I wanted to shout out to a new Magnificent Noise project that we’re really proud of, excited about, and happy to see the world embracing already. It comes from our partnership with Atmos, a New York media company focused on climate and culture, trying to re-enchant people with nature and our shared humanity. 

Our new podcast with Atmos is called The Nature Of. At its heart, the show is about “spiritual ecology,” which sounds very woo woo, but it decidedly is not. Spiritual ecology is really about the interconnectedness of all things, between people and nature, animals, and the planet itself. One reason the earth is sick, from a spiritual ecology perspective, is because we are unwell too.

The show is rooted in science and puts forward the idea that nature has already solved a lot of the dilemmas that we people face and we should take a look at those solutions and take lessons from them.

The episodes are lush and meaty and accessible and surprisingly emotional. It is just so damn good. Guests include Janine Benyus on The Nature of Biomimicry and Designing Life, musician Maggie Rogers on The Nature of Rhythm and Creating at a Sustainable Pace, and our own Esther Perel on The Nature of Connection and Modern Loneliness.

I hope you’ll give it a listen.

[TODAY’S MAIN THING: PODCASTING NEUROGENESIS] I’m starting to believe our industry has outgrown the word “podcast” to clearly describe everything the industry creates. So much so we should probably have multiple names.

I’ve been struggling lately with a disconnect I’ve been feeling within podcasting, which really flares up when I’m talking with other professionals in the field. In almost every conversation, the topic of change has come up: how much podcasting has changed over the past three years. Cited evidence includes the rise of video in podcasting, “podcasting elections,” the emergence (and dominance) of influencers and celebrities in podcasting, and the evolving economics in the field.

But all the above aren’t really evidence of how much podcasting has changed, but how much one type of podcasting has changed–and how much the entire industry has turned its attention in that direction.

You see, I think the biggest story about podcasting over the past three years is a bit of podcast neurogenesis has occurred, right under our noses, and we haven’t really noticed it. I believe that podcasting has split into two different media forms, and that almost every aspect of their structure, business, and their relationship to audience is now different.

Podcasting has split into two: chatcasts and storycasts.

These are pretty self-explanatory, but let me be more specific. A “chatcast” is a recorded conversation between a host and guests or a host and the audience. A storycast is the telling of a narrative story (or stories).

This isn’t anything particularly new, but what’s new is how much they’ve grown apart. Back when I wrote my book Make Noise I said there were only two kinds of podcasts:  people chatting and people telling stories (I actually also broke it down into sub-categories: Rant, Questions and Answers, Conversation, Seasonal Narratives, Episodic Narratives, and Multiple Narratives–these still hold true today too). So what’s changed? The remarkable ways these two have differentiated from each other. Or more specifically, the last three years has been the story of the rise and dominance of chatcasts. 

While podcasting's origins clearly lie in chatcasts, much of its meteoric rise over the past 10-11 years has been fueled by storycasts. Yet, over the last three years, that power dynamic has changed back to focusing on the chatcast. As of this morning in the Apple Podcast Top 100 shows, only 13 of them are storycasts–the other 87 are chatcasts.

If you think I’m just trying to be clever here by suggesting these have established themselves as very different entities, I’m not. Look at how different chatcasts and storycasts are today:

I’m sure you can come up with other areas of distinction too.

And, of course, we have to acknowledge there will be some ways that the distinction isn’t as clear or shows that break “the rules” (and I’m referring to the rules that I just made up, of course). Some successful people have hybridized the two, for example where the host is reading a prepared story, but it has the feel of hearing a conversation (great examples would be Crime Junkie or Mr Ballen). But the bottom line is–they are growing more distinct from each other, not less. And when opportunities arise, it tends to favor one form over the other.

Keeping them all under one term is similar to describing television shows and movies under an umbrella term of something like “video.” Sure, that is true–but it doesn’t tell you much, masks all the characteristics that make each distinct, and underemphasizes the fact that TV and movies have very little in common on almost every component of their creation, structure, and distribution. 

So…who cares? Why would it be important to use two different terms for podcasts? Because when we use one large generic term, it can often lead us to wrong conclusions and steer us in the wrong direction. Video hasn’t risen as a part of podcasting, video has risen as a part of chatcasting. Film options/rights aren’t a potential revenue source for podcasting, it is a revenue source for storycasting. Think of almost any issue arising today in podcasting–and you’ll notice that they affect one type of podcast much more than the other.

And for those who have heard me talk about podcasting for a long time, no, this isn’t just a way to let go of the word “podcasting” (which I have disliked as a term since its origins), but to acknowledge that success in podcasting has always required precision. And I believe we’ve reached that point expecting one word to cover everything.

Does that mean that we are going to stop referring to Magnificent Noise as a “podcast consultation and production company”? Probably not. But will we start using language more specifically in our conversations internally and with clients? Absolutely.

Maybe you should too.

Okay, that’s it for today. 

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

I wrote this dispatch two weeks ago–then a few days ago I thought to myself, “Geez, I didn’t get a single response to that dispatch. Weird.” Then I put together that I never hit “Publish.” 

Opps.

So, after much delay…

[TODAY’S SHORT FIRST THING: CO-HOSTS] I was recently talking with my wife about one of her favorite podcasts.

This is actually quite unusual, because one of the reasons I’ve had a successful relationship with this woman for almost three decades is, primarily, because she could not care less about podcasting or radio or any of it.

She rarely listens to podcasts, but over the past few years, she has started listening to a small number of them. Then she did something that almost freaked me out. She asked me a question about the field I work in. She said, “What makes good co-hosts work?”

She explained that on some co-hosted podcasts she’s heard, there can sometimes be two (or more) hosts with very different personalities. She wanted to know what makes that work? 

I thought about it for a moment, then told her that if you created a diagram of their personalities, it only works if it is a Venn diagram, with some intersecting territory.

Then I said something that I’ve been replaying in my head since, mostly to figure out if what I said was true (and it is): “And that intersecting territory…that is the connecting tissue to the audience too.” I meant that even if they have very different personalities: one is loud, the other more reserved; one is funny and the  other is more earnest; one is dramatic while the other is more pragmatic–whatever combo they are–they share something in common. And the audience they’ll draw will also be people who share that same intersectional value, regardless of almost any other aspect of their personality.

Want to know what the audience for your new chat show will be like? Start drawing out the intersections between the hosts–and you’ll find the audience there too.

[TODAY’S MAIN THING: THE WAY THE AUDIO INDUSTRY HIRES IS UNNECESSARILY HUMILIATING, DISRESPECTFUL, AND WRONG] Many of us remember a time just a few years ago when hiring in audio was very different than it is today.

My moment of Zen on this came when I attempted to hire a young job candidate to be an Associate Producer. While she was very bright, her resume consisted of a college degree in journalism and a six-month internship on one radio show at NPR. But she had spent a lot of time learning to cut tape and was an impressive editorial thinker. We made what I thought was a generous offer to have her join Magnificent Noise.

She called back the next day and said she had a competing offer that was substantially more and wanted to know if I would match it. I asked how much the other offer was.

It was $91,000.

Again, this would be her first full time job out of college as an Associate Producer. I told her we couldn't do that and she politely told me that she was going to accept the other offer. In sharing that news with Jesse, I remarked that I was already a programming executive at NPR before I made more than $91,000. (It is worth noting that not only did the offered job not last even two years, but the company who offered her that salary is now completely out of business.)

That happened in 2019--Magnificent Noise was so new that we were still operating out of a WeWork office space and it wasn't even the height of the salad days for podcasting. But, man, times have changed since then in the audio industry, in many ways, but few more troubling than hiring and how the industry treats talent.

The audio industry has gone from recognizing, investing in, and fairly (if not generously) compensating talent to treating candidates, contractors, and freelancers as cheap commodities that can be mistreated and easily replaced.

This all follows the most basic rules of economics, right? Back in the late teens/early 20s, companies were trying to hire up so quickly that it was a sellers market. Companies were happily hiring anyone who could even passably fake their way into knowing how to make a podcast or cut digital audio. Those with experience or were highly skilled were flooded with unsolicited offers and if they did want to change jobs, they could often secure a new gig in just a few days (if not hours) with little effort. Companies often didn't even post jobs, because finding new employees often required you to go out and find them directly, then romance them with a high salary, perks, and interesting work.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, most of the time, but then everything changed, and with those changes, the power swung from supply to demand.

With massive layoffs attached to podcasting’s recession, there came a glut of people looking for work in audio and podcasting. Stories of top radio talent being lured away to podcasting and digital start-ups fizzled. When we at Mag Noise would post a job opening, before we’d get 20-30 resumes, then suddenly we’d routinely see 400-600 people apply. Now, instead of seeking out prospective employees and luring them to work with us, we were now seeing some of the industry’s best and brightest hitting us up. And in speaking to others hiring in podcasting and audio, I learned our experience wasn’t unique.

And that’s when all the bad stuff started to happen.

When we are hiring at Magnificent Noise, I talk to a lot of people seeking work. Many of them have been at it a long time. Occasionally, the conversation swings to some of their experiences looking for work in podcasting, radio, and digital audio.

And, frankly, the stories of practices at other companies are horrifying and depressing.

Not only is the work hard to get, but the way companies are treating potential employees and contractors now is embarrassing.

First off, there is the ghosting--there is a rush to get someone to interview and then...poof. No follow-up. No response. Nothing. Even worse is when the ghoster will come back out of the woodwork to offer a job that requires an almost immediate start date. Or is offered with a combination of below-market salary offer, limited or no benefits, or isn’t actually a job offer, but offering contract work at a salaried employee rate (which I've discussed before–see the “Big Operational Thing” section of this dispatch–is an unethical thing to do and contractors should not accept these arrangements).

Then there is the sticky matter of the pre-interview “homework”--sometimes hours of unpaid work to do a sample edit, writing exercise, outline an episode, provide detailed notes on an episode, or write a vision memo about a show or role. I’m often aghast at what companies ask potential producers, editors, and hosts to do as part of these homework assignments. At Magnificent Noise, we have an unwritten rule that we never create pre-interview work that would take more than an hour to do.

But the most shocking thing about these homework assignments is how often I hear from people that their feedback, pitched episode and segment ideas, or changes to a show actually end up in that very show, even when they didn’t get the job. I’ve heard dozens of these. Now, it may be a coincidence that a job candidate pitched an episode idea in their interview, and the show was considering the very same idea. I’m sure that happens, but not as frequently as I hear reports of ideas bleeding from interviews into production.

I’m sure there are readers raising their fists in the air at someone calling this out. I personally know dozens of people with similar stories–and it is such a bad look for our industry that these practices are so common. Some of these, of course, are not just a problem in digital audio and radio, but what is remarkable is how quickly companies have forgotten how to treat people.

When I am in charge of a hire at Magnificent Noise, there are a few rules that I follow:

• Communicate progress, even when it is bad news. Almost every HR or job application web site allows employers to communicate to a pool of candidates en masse. I do so. When we weed out resumes from the piles who apply, at each level of the search, I write a quick note to those not selected to let them know that they aren’t moving forward.

• Communicate the timeline. I tell those I phone screen and interview when I’ll be making decisions on who is moving forward and then I make sure I respond to them within that window. If I say, “You’ll hear from us one way or the other within a week”--I hold myself to that promise.

• Never give out false hope. Tell people the truth. A hard truth is always better than a soft lie.

• Keep the homework to under an hour of their time. I don’t ask someone to do homework unless they are a serious candidate for the job–and I don’t hesitate to give them an assignment to show their skill. But realize that this person either has a full-time job or is trying to get one and it isn’t fair to ask for a lot of their time. If you ask more than that, you should offer to pay them–because they are working. If this is all hard for you, and you want something deeper, ask them to share previous work that they’ve done that illustrates the skills you want to see showcased.

• Make the homework assignment something you can’t or won’t use in the show. Enough said on that. But if you are in a situation where there is some crossover–acknowledge it up front. And if an idea is inspiringly great, find a way to compensate them if you want to use it, or perhaps give them the job!

• Recruit for what you are offering. If you are recruiting for a position, don’t then offer a contracting gig. And if you want to hire someone as a contractor (and there is nothing wrong with that), be upfront and pay them accordingly. And don’t swindle people by offering them a contract gig at a rate that’s equal to what an employee would make.

• Be clear on the rules and stick to the rules. I try to make it clear that since I’m looking at 400-600 resumes, I can’t do 1:1 conversations, informational interviews, etc. I also discourage people from contacting me outside the process and not send people we both know to advocate on their behalf. I’m not doing this to be rude, but to be fair. I read every cover letter and resume. It’s a level playing field, and I communicate that and hold to it.

• Post your salary range. Transparency matters. In New York, we have to post the range. I think everyone should. And don’t post a full range unless a candidate can actually be hired in that range. (So many offer a range but don’t tell anyone that they can only be hired at the lower end.)

• Treat applicants the way you’d want to be treated. It isn’t hard to imagine how you’d like to be treated if looking for a job. If that’s hard to imagine, treat them the way you’d want someone to treat your partner or your kid. In short, don’t be an asshole.

If all of this is too much for you to take in: communicate and be thoughtful.

That really isn’t asking so much, is it?

Okay, that’s it for today. 

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

If you harbor some fear about many among podcasting’s leadership having lost their way, this dispatch probably won’t help you feel better. I’m sorry for that.

Last week I attended the Business Summit that precedes On Air Fest at the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn. Unlike the distinctive creator and super-fan focus of On Air Fest itself, the Business Summit is a gathering of 200 people running networks, media organizations, production companies, and other top dogs working on the spreadsheet side of the podcast industry.

My moment of Zen that day came right before the lunch break: talking to the coat check guy.

The Wythe had placed a hotel employee in the back of the room to deal with all the coats. He probably did not know nor care at all about what was happening in the rest of that room. After the morning’s 3.5 hours of presentations, talks, panel discussions, and banter about “podcasting,” I asked him, “What do you think these people were talking about all morning?”

He shrugged and said, “I don’t know…something about YouTube?”

Something about YouTube.

And the weirdest part was…he was absolutely right. More in a moment.

[TODAY’S FIRST THING: WE ARE HIRING…AGAIN!!] We keep our team at Magnificent Noise pretty tight and don’t have as many openings as other companies. But the past few months, we’ve had a lot of new needs, plus some comings and goings. Below are two terrific opportunities that are pretty rare. FYI: Both are hybrid positions, but require that you live in the NYC area.

Producer - Where Should We Begin (super rare opening to join the small team that makes this very successful and distinctive show)

Senior Producer - Becoming You With Suzy Welch (work with me to help guide and grow this bustling and exciting new show)

 If you’d like to join us or know someone who would, apply quickly!

[TODAY’S MAIN THING: SOMETHING ABOUT YOUTUBE] When I look at my notes from the On Air Fest Business Summit, an invite-only gathering of those leading the business-side of podcasting, there was one sentence I wrote that captured the event for me so well I underlined it twice: “I’d rather hear creatives talk about business than hear business people talk about creativity.”

But let me back up a bit.

I have a real love/hate relationship with these kinds of industry gatherings, so much so that I don’t attend very many. This Business Summit has its origins in a semi-annual off the record gathering that Hotpod founder Nick Quah would host for about 30 people to discuss some of the bigger issues in the earlier years of podcasting. But then podcasting exploded…and so did the list of companies and voices who should be represented in that room. 

For me, when it got big, that’s when the love/hate thing started, but perhaps not for the reasons you might assume. I liked the small, clubby aspect of the original gatherings, but knew even then that it was too small. The best part of the new larger gatherings was meeting people I didn’t know and learning about their work. I often found inspiring people who really challenged my thinking or led me to see things in a different way (including this year). The hate part was how dull, sterile, and safe much of the conversation became and the insight-to-utter-bullshit ratio of those speaking.

When friends accuse me of being grumbly about this, I invite them to go back and look at the agenda for these gatherings just 2 or 3 years ago. How many of those featured speakers and panelists still even work in podcasting today? How many of their companies are still in business? Let alone how little of what they said actually happened or proved to be true?

Plus, the start-up techno gobbledigook is so generic, they could be talking about anything. But here the lack of specificity reflects that many are speaking about nothing.

I kept a running list of words and phrases I kept hearing during the day that would be candidates for a Business Summit bingo card, including “persona-driven IP,” “extensions,” “product opportunity,” “data,” “templatized,” and “brand affinity.”

There is nothing wrong with any of these concepts, of course. But so many throw these terms around without any real ideas behind them. One friend came up to me at a break and said, “I bet you didn’t have ‘eye-tracking’ on your bingo card for a podcasting summit.” And yes, one panel discussion included a revelation that one podcast production company uses eye-tracking software to select episode art.

There was no single company mentioned more that day than YouTube. None. Not even a close second, including only scant references to Apple and Spotify (and many of those were about video on Spotify). And worst of all, almost no references to “listening.”

There were a few exceptions, three in fact. The day’s agenda included three creators and they were all fantastic: John “Mr Ballen” Allen, Recho Omondi, and Shawn Ryan. All three shared impressive and relatable stories of struggle with growth. And they’ve all been very successful, clearly several of them have been WILDLY successful. There were lessons and insights in every one of their experiences and I could have listened to each of them speak for twice the time they were allotted. Most interesting, all three clearly fall under even a more conservative definition of “podcaster,” yet all three seemed much more focused on their community and the ecosystem they’ve built across multiple platforms. They were all living embodiments of figuring out what they did, connecting to the people who love that thing, and building from there. Sure, they are podcasters, but the podcast is an anchor for an entire universe of activity. It’s impressive, healthy, and makes a lot of business sense. And best of all, their stories lacked the gobbledigook of the rest of the day because their work was focused on their passion. Each works pretty tirelessly, but they are driven by doing something they love. That is hard to quantify, but it's the key to almost every success story you’ll ever find in podcasting: media driven by passion and connection to those who share that passion. And that is exactly the thing that the “templatized persona-driven IP” crowd never seems to understand.

And what made their presentations so compelling is that they were honest and vulnerable. They were less concerned with dropping the right buzzwords and all seemed focused on sharing that their success comes from a lot of struggle, hard work, false starts, and time. Yes, time. John “Mr Ballen” Allen shared an unintentionally striking story about his struggles to find his voice and figure out what he was doing, often putting out a lot (as in hundreds) of cringey flops until, almost on a lark, he just looked at the camera and told a story. And bam, it all fell into place. When asked about the key to his success, he responded with one word, “Authenticity.” I think it was lost on many in the crowd that the lesson here is that the great idea (and the authenticity that birthed it) came after hundreds of rounds of humbling trial and error, then the good idea came. Today’s podcasting networks and organizations just want to be lemmings: copying someone else’s good idea that came after all that time and effort. But what they don’t realize is that if they want their company to succeed, the part they should be imitating is making the space and time for the trial and error part.

If you’d like some more detailed coverage of the day, here is a gift link to read Ashley Carman’s excellent summary.

[TODAY’S OTHER THING: A FOLLOW-UP OF SORTS] Since Yoseka, arguably New York’s best stationery store and definitely the largest collection of inks in the city, was just a 10-minute walk from the Wythe Hotel, I skipped lunch and a few of the break-out sessions, but I did pop into one hosted by my colleague Dan Misener of Bumper about measurement. It, as you would expect from Dan, was really insightful and interesting, as was the conversation among the attendees. 

At one point Dan asked the group what they thought the industry should be measuring and wasn’t. There was some silence for a bit, but eventually someone spoke to podcasting’s lack of ability to do A/B testing and others agreed. For those who may not be familiar with the term, it is technology that allows you to give one version of something to a group of people and another version of that thing to a different group so you can see which performed better. You are completely unaware of this, but this is so common that almost everyone who interacts with the digital world has unknowingly participated in an A/B test for something you visited online.

I spoke up and said there are ways that you can approximate A/B tests in podcasting. One is to set up a listener panel, where you curate a group of people (often hundreds or thousands of people) willing to listen or look at something and answer questions about it. Assembling such a group takes some effort, but isn’t that hard to do for almost anyone and can be scaled down as well as up. You can A/B test with that group. There is also a really rough and kludgey way you can do A/B testing by uploading a replacement audio file into Apple Podcasts so you can compare Spotify versus Apple listeners as an A/B test.

A/B tests can be done in podcasting, just not broadly in public.

For anyone who is looking for crafty and frugal solutions to figure things like this out, my friend Ben Robins has recently put out a shingle and is doing independent audience and content research that is pretty amazing. When I went to Audible to launch Audible Originals, Ben was the first person I hired. Yes, I hired a researcher before I hired my first content maker.

Ben is someone who is incredibly crafty and frugal at learning about audience profiles and their responses to what we make (or might make). If you are interested in learning more about Ben’s work and his new company, Sound Insights, you can find them here. 

Okay, that’s it for today. 

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

Let’s jump right into it…

[TODAY’S MAIN THING: THE FUTURE IS NOT ZERO]  I saw the chart below in a recent newsletter from Bloomberg and it has been stuck in my head ever since.

It is a really well-constructed chart, but if you aren’t interested in decoding, it shows the volume of movie tickets sold over the last 24 years. It is meant to illustrate that once you account for rising ticket prices, you see that Hollywood is selling about half the number of movie tickets it did a decade ago.

Now, at this point, you are either a “glass half empty” or “glass half full” kind of person. That may be a generous thing to say…as almost everyone is a “glass half empty” kind of person when it comes to cinema, or any other form of media and mainstream entertainment for that matter. To them, movie theaters are DYING. Just like television is DYING and Facebook is DYING and radio is DYING and narrative podcasting is DYING and music festivals are DYING. The truth is that none of these things are dying, they are just changing. And when you focus on the DYING part, you look past the parts that are alive…and often, surprisingly healthy and with plentiful opportunity.

And I think there is a huge lesson in this for radio and podcasting. More in a moment.

Be like Clare. Clare supports The Audio Insurgent with a paid subscription. You can do so for as little as $5 by clicking below. Encourage this incourageableness. 

And even better, you would have received this dispatch days ago if you were a paid subscriber.

Thank you!

Subscribe now

So let’s jump back to cinemas to illustrate my point. Sure, there has been a steady decline in movie tickets sold. As I mentioned, roughly half of what was sold a decade ago.

So, let’s be honest here. Does that really surprise anyone? With a pandemic, the increase in streaming, and bewildering quality increases in home viewing technology, as well as so much content available on demand, including movies that may still be showing in cinemas–did anyone ever expect that ticket sales wouldn’t go down? Of course they would.

So, conventional wisdom says that movie theaters are DYING, right? Wrong. It is just changing. Once you get your head out of the focus on decline, you’ll notice that the movie industry saw all those new platforms grow, and yet they still sold roughly 800 MILLION movie tickets in the U.S. alone last year. I don’t care what has happened in the past–that’s a lot of movie tickets. 800 million isn’t dying and it certainly isn’t dead.

If I were running a movie theater chain, I’d be asking myself about the people who bought those 800 million movie tickets–and try to learn WHY they still love coming to the theater, in order to make sure I’m optimized to deliver what my paying customers want. If things are changed, I’d want to know what’s different, what adjustments I should make, and what new opportunities change has created.

And the thing that the doom and gloom folks never see is that there is still room to grow, most likely not in the volume of tickets, which may continue to slowly go down. Instead of fixating on the number of tickets, a smart leader will focus on revenue and how to get more revenue from those people and more revenue per visit. And I’m not talking about simply raising prices (the movie industry is already doing that), but how to change the experience so that those movie theater fans have an even better experience, to make sure they come back more often and spend more on each visit. That could unlock years of prosperity and new opportunity.

It is this same philosophy that led Apple to stop reporting iPhone unit sales back in 2018–because it was the wrong metric to measure their potential success. The number of phones sold wasn’t as important as focusing on growing the revenue from each phone user. At first, people speculated the move was to hide decreasing unit sales of new iPhones. But now, six years later, Apple is the most admired and valuable company in the world.

So how does this apply to radio and podcasting?

It is kind of the same.

The “big audience” era is over–its death rattle could be heard in the early years of the pandemic, but had been coming for a long time. And, again, who actually thought we’d have all these other forms of emergent media and legacy big-audience media wouldn’t decline?

When I talk to friends and colleagues in radio and podcasting, they all fixate on decline. Of course they spend all this time worrying about it, but have zero ideas how to correct or work with it. Well, that is largely because they won't let themselves see beyond what’s in front of them. Instead they look past the audience they have, often a significant audience of deeply loyal fans, and obsess about what they think they should have (again, without really doing anything of consequence to change their trajectory). ‘Why bother?’ they imply, because their industry is DYING.

Commercial radio stopped caring about itself years ago–but is public radio in that same place? Do they just not care anymore? I’m not convinced that is universally true, though actions do speak louder than words. Public radio organizations point to digital platforms as their future, yet they’ve been saying that for more than two decades and have almost nothing to show for it. The same with their efforts in local news–lots of talk and lots of investment, and almost nothing to show for it.

There was a brilliant post that made the rounds during the holidays deconstructing radio’s performance in recent years–making a strong case that radio isn’t as diminished as people think it is (and the case is really solid). I think this is another example of where we extrapolate our own experience onto the audience. If we find times challenging, certainly the audience or our users or our customers feel this too, right? Often, no, they don’t know or care what is happening behind the curtain, even our superfans.

Podcasting has come through an existential metamorphosis over the past two years, completely reshaping itself while audiences have continued to grow, never even skipping a beat. Yet so many in podcasting think the industry (or their favorite corner of the industry) is DYING, based on what again? That the sloshing money bucket has been brought back down to Earth? That the hiring orgy has ended? Podcasting’s backend backstage industry machine has completely changed, but the platform and its relationship with listening audiences is still as rock solid as ever.

Those who lament change and reminisce for the glory days (that never really existed in the first place) miss all the opportunities today. If I was the King of Public Radio (a hereditary title, I’m sure, that a serf like myself would never be entitled to hold), I would go around slapping people upside the head and point out that there are still 27 MILLION Americans who listen to public radio each week. Instead of focusing on what once was, or how that has changed, why not focus on building deeper better relationships with that group? That audience is the size of the entire populations of Virginia, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Kentucky, combined. That’s the size of a nation. If the public radio audience were a country, it would be ranked 9th out of the 51 countries in the European Union.

And there is nothing to do with a group of people that size? You have no ideas how to better serve that group?

I am not advocating for Pollyannaism, nor am I saying that the digital future shouldn’t be a priority as well, but there is simply no point in thinking about the future if you are going to put no substantial effort into maintaining the present. And maintaining that present doesn’t mean just doing the status quo, it means figuring out how to adapt and deepen the relationships you already have.

And for podcasters, I would point out that the changed landscape is certainly challenging to do quality work, but these are navigable challenges. How do I know? There are still people doing great work; it just isn’t easy to make it happen as it once was. They figured it out, if you want to do your passion project badly enough, you can too.

My main issue with these doomy attitudes is they have a way of becoming self-fulfilling. Continue to ignore the needs and interests of contemporary audiences or fail to adjust your ways of working, and you will find that diminishment not only continues, but accelerates.

The future really does belong to those who want it most.

And one more note, I have gone back to the early paragraphs of this dispatch at least three times to add newspapers to the list of things that were DYING, then add some variation of: “...except the newspapers…because they actually are dying.” But I deleted those lines every time, because the truth is they AREN’T dying. They, too, are changing. It is like the caterpillar that goes through the metamorphosis to become a butterfly. The ones that face the most existential risk are those that are fighting or ignoring that change.

But let’s also remember sometimes the butterfly never emerges because hedgehogs, spiders, birds, and wasps think a caterpillar chrysalis tastes delicious. 

Don’t be that caterpillar.

Okay, that’s it for today. 

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

Like you, I’m clearing out a few things before checking out for the holidays. Here are a few.

Ho ho ho…

[TODAY’S FIRST THING: MY 2025 PREDICTION] 

This year’s crop of Nieman Lab “Predictions for Journalism” have dropped. Here is mine. It is about how much journalism and media in 2025 can learn from independent bookstores. I struggled with what to write about this year, but after a reporting trip to The Kings English in Salt Lake City, Utah, the dots connected for me. 

Now is the point that I say what I always say this time of year: I don’t do predictions. I think the most important function of predictions is it gives us permission to speak plainly about today. So I focus on those subjects.

The previous two years, I've written about media and journalism more broadly. Last year, I wrote words of caution about the amount of attention going towards the presidential election. In 2023, I wrote about the need for journalists to focus on people instead of power. In 2022, I wrote about large legacy media companies abandoning their ill-rendered podcast strategies (totally happened). For 2021, I wrote about podcast acquisitions ending and risk tolerance going down (still playing out). For 2020, I wrote about the coming dearth of hit shows in podcasting (that too). For 2019, I wrote about the emergence of cross-promotion to build audience (now a common practice). For 2018, I wrote about the emerging new styles of podcasts (yup). And in 2017, my prediction concerned the emerging stratification between haves and have notes in podcasting (still an issue today, perhaps more now than ever). 

[TODAY’S MAIN THING: BRINGING A TOTE BAG TO A GUNFIGHT]  Even though it has been nine years since I worked full time in public media, my social circle still really deeply intersects with U.S. public radio. So I hear a lot. 

Over the past month since the presidential election, I’ve been hearing an uptick in concerned chatter about the future of federal funding for public broadcasting. Whenever this debate comes up, I think back to an afternoon when I was sitting in my triangularly shaped office in NPR’s old Massachusetts Avenue headquarters. From there I could see the very tip of the statue on the U.S. Capitol peaking above the building across the street. I always joked that my office had “a Capitol view.” I was sitting in that office staring out the window one afternoon in late 2010 when my phone rang.

After answering the phone, the caller just screamed “LIBERAL!” and said nothing else.

All NPR phone numbers shared the same area code and prefix, and some people were calling random combinations of the last four numbers and screaming at whomever answered the call. This time, it was my turn. 

This happened in the wake of NPR’s firing of commentator Juan Williams and the network’s critics were worked up into a lather, demanding a withdrawal of federal funding and punitive measures against the network and its stations.

I informed my caller that I was, in fact (and against the trope repeated often through these debates), an NPR employee who was also a registered Republican. I could hear them stammer for a moment trying to figure out what to say, then screamed out “LIBERAL!” again and hung up the phone.

Those calls came in for a few days, the pinnacle being a bomb threat that led to a temporary evacuation of the building.

The anti-NPR fervor reached such a peak in the following months that the organization lost its head of news, its CEO, and took a lot of reputational dents, all over claims that the network had a liberal editorial bent and served an exclusive audience of liberal elites (neither of which are binarily true, btw). It became such a constant target of the right that a CNN poll in early 2011 asked respondents to estimate what portion of the federal government’s budget went to public broadcasting. The public’s response? Five percent.

If that were true, it would have been terrific. That would be $115 billion, or more than 250 times what the federal allocation actually was. Instead of five percent, the actual number was one-tenth of one percent of federal spending.

And here lies the major problem with these arguments over public funding of public radio’s public service: we have set an impossibly outsized burden on an underfunded system of stations and organizations, asking them to take on the Herculean task of providing public service to the American people on what could generously be called an unfunded mandate. And when public radio missteps, we blow it out of proportion and immediately move to punish. It’s setting public media up for a fight it can never win. It’s akin to them bringing a public radio tote bag to a gunfight.

When the Public Broadcasting Act was signed into law in November, 1967, leading to the creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and eventually NPR, PBS, and hundreds of robust public broadcast organizations, it held up an inspiring idea: that our collective freedom relies on the communication of ideas without commercial or governmental influence. The Act called for public telecommunications to “encourage the development of programming that involved creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences” and to “facilitate the full development of public telecommunications in which programs of high quality, diversity, creativity, excellence, and innovation, which are obtained from diverse sources, will be made available.”

In the ceremony marking the signing of the Act by President Johnson, he remarked that the problem with advances in communication technology was “not making miracles–but managing miracles.” Public broadcasting was seen as a means to achieve that by “broadcast[ing] good music, exciting plays…reports on the whole fascinating range of human activity.” And that it should receive support from the Government but be “guarded from Government or from party control.” Arguably that mission is just as relevant today as it was when President Johnson signed it into law fifty-seven years ago.

These ideas were shared by countries around the world, who, often earlier than the United States, put systems and funding in place to create their own public broadcasting entities to produce and distribute television and radio programming. However, other countries did it at a significantly different scale.

The United States’ $535 million investment in public broadcasting equals a per capita investment of $1.72 per American citizen.

In Germany, the public invests €6.7 billion in its stations and programming, a per capita spend equal to $86.58. In the United Kingdom, the public investment is £3.74 billion, equal to a per capita investment of $69.59. Denmark’s investment in public broadcasting is on par with that of the United States, yet Denmark’s entire national population is roughly equal to the population of Wisconsin. Danish per capita investment is more than fifty times that of the U.S. And in each of these public broadcasting systems, the broadcasters serve a vastly broader cross-section of their population than PBS and NPR do in the United States. All these countries, and dozens more, agree with the need and value of public broadcasting, but invest in their own systems at levels beyond us…and achieve results that reflect those investments.

Yet, despite the meager investment in public media, our organizations and stations accomplish quite a bit. According to Nielsen ratings data, NPR alone generates 2.8 billion hours of listening a year to just its broadcast programming. To give you some way to wrap your head around how huge a number 2.8 billion hours is, 2.8 billion hours is basically the entirety of human history, as homo sapiens first emerged roughly 2.8 billion hours ago. And listeners give that amount of attention to NPR programming every single year. And when you factor in listening hours to locally produced content at public radio stations, that number jumps to over 8 billion hours of listening, every year. 

One of the benefits of these occasional moments where public media’s funding and editorial value are brought into question is that its critics unintentionally reinforce the idea that public media is an important component of a healthy media ecosystem and democracy. By suggesting that NPR and stations don’t hold themselves up to the high standards of its mission, that’s an acknowledgement that the mission is meaningful and validates the need to protect that ideal. 

The action often proposed by its critics, defunding NPR and public radio stations, is likely to produce the exact opposite result from what they say they want: a balanced, reliable source of news, information, and entertainment for all Americans. If we are really committed to building free non-profit media accessible to all Americans regardless of their ability to pay, representative and responsible media that, according to E. B. White,  “should address itself to the ideal of excellence, not the ideal of acceptability,” then we need our financial support to match our ideals for it–or we need to have an honest conversation about expectations.

The reason I wrote this is to remind those who care about public radio of what the industry was founded to do–to see how inspiring those ideals still are today, and invite those who care to ask: is what we are doing the best articulation of those aspirations and ideals? Are we meeting the moment? 

I’m not suggesting an answer to that question, but in its defensive posture, public media rarely, if ever, goes on the offensive on these issues and leads with a concrete vision for the future that deserves any level of federal support.

There are many breathtaking moments in public radio’s local and national programming every single day. But it isn’t perfect. It is not without faults and shortcomings. We give it so little, and yet ask so much of it. Instead of punishing its perceived missteps, we need to recognize its work towards our shared belief that a well-informed public is a foundational part of American democracy. As Mr. White concluded, “Once in a while it does, and you get a quick glimpse of its potential.”

Okay, that’s it for today. 

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

The last dispatch was 4,116 words - about twice what I aim for. Plus, it is a holiday week. So here is a concept that’s easy to understand–and just as easy to implement–today!

And I want to say up front that if you are in the U.S., or live elsewhere but still celebrate Thanksgiving for some reason, I hope you have a wonderful and restful holiday. I will be sharing it with people I love, and get extra time with my dogs, so I will be right there with you. Please enjoy.

Okay so here goes…

[TODAY’S MAIN THING: THE POWER OF ONE]  A lot of people criticize those who speak on Fox News as speaking to an audience of one–the former and soon-to-be President. But from a larger point of view, talking to an audience of one is among the best audience engagement hacks that you can do right away to deepen your relationship with the audience: speak like there is only one listener.

This is a piece of advice I give a lot of new hosts and talent. In fact, I’ve written it into three different sets of feedback notes this week alone.

Don’t talk to the audience–talk to one person.

Here are some examples of how this happens.

In an interview, the host will say, “Please tell the audience about the time that you…”

Or “I’m sure the listeners would love to know…”

Or “What I’ve heard from all of you in emails, DMs, and comments is that you all like to…”

Or “My audience isn’t interested in hearing spin…”

So, let’s start off by explaining why the above is bad.

Within my professional lifetime, I’ve seen a number of complete about-faces on how to address the audience and how to address yourself.

Early in my career in public radio, I was taught an unwritten yet widely-practiced rule that “I,” “we,” and “you” references should never be heard from a reporter or on-air announcer. “You” references to the audience were considered informal, inappropriately intimate, and somewhat presumptuous and rude. “We” references, sometimes referred to as the “Royal We” were considered exclusionary (to those outside the definition of the “we”). And “I” was forbidden because, frankly, “nobody cares about you.” Public radio voices were there to serve their subject, “inserting themselves into the story” (a phrase meant to sound as pejorative as it sounds) was pulling attention away from the subject. This was so widely and deeply held that NPR reporters were discouraged from even acknowledging their presence in a scene. I remember one international correspondent once told me that they were in a town square when an explosive device went off next to them. Their editor told them they could only say that a device exploded in the town square, not that it went off next to them.

I think a great deal of the stuffiness of public radio originates from, or is tied to, this ban on first and second person references. 

Over time and with great resistance, these practices have slowly gone away.

But in the rest of the radio world, that practice didn’t really exist. If anything, the best commercial radio announcers and disk jockeys wrote the book on how to do this to create intimacy, rather than make it uncomfortable. As public radio evolved in its practices and struggled to let go of its deep formality, it was way behind the curve on how to effectively address the audience.

So as podcasting came along, many early podcasters emerged from the public radio ranks, or were total amateurs (as in non-professionals) who emulated a lot of what they heard in commercial talk radio, but frankly did it quite poorly. Between that awkwardness and lack of finesse grew the common practice of referring to the audience as a collective.

The reason this practice of addressing everyone should bother you is that it basically accomplishes nothing. It doesn’t build connections between the host, subject, and audience, it doesn’t project inclusion, and rarely is it true (Saying “I’m sure the audience would like to know…” is an assumption that implies that everyone is curious about the topic, which most likely isn’t true).

So, how do you fix it? That’s easy.

More after this jump…

Be like this reader who became a paid subscriber because they value what they read in The Audio Insurgent. It seems that everywhere you turn, someone is asking you to set-up a subscription. When that thing has value to you and you’d miss it if it went away, you gladly pay up. When I’ve asked subscribers why they decided to contribute to something they can get for free, the most common response is, “Because you asked.”

So here I am–asking YOU this time.

There are many very good places to hear today’s news about the podcasting and spoken-word industry. Here, I’m trying to do something different–create a space to understand several layers deeper, why things happen, and what the implications will be. This is a place for thought and analysis…plus my take on what it means.

If this is valuable to you, you can make sure it comes to you at least twice a month–and be among the first to read it–for as little as $5.

This reader did it. And so can you.

Subscribe now

The answer involves training talent and staff to be vigilant of when these happen in scripting or recording, coming up with a flag, then backing up and fixing it. Every time. Change the collective reference to a singular one. Sometimes it is as easy as making plural references singular. Sometimes it is making general references specific. Sometimes it is best just to remove the reference entirely.

Instead of saying “My audience isn’t interested in hearing spin…”, say “You aren’t interested in hearing spin…”

Or instead of saying “I’m sure the listeners would love to know…”, say “I’m sure our listener would love to know…”

Or instead of saying “Please tell the audience about the time that you…” you could say “Please tell about the time that you…”

Or instead of saying “What I’ve heard from all of you in emails, DMs, and comments is that you all like to…”, try “What I’ve heard from you is that you like to…”

I’ve even heard some talent very effectively refer to the singular audience as “my friend” or by a insider-term like a “Murderista” or “Chairies.” It works.

Even in these off-the-cuff examples, you can see how the revised statements are more vivid, personal, direct–and effective. They build connection–and connection not only encourages them to come back, but makes the listener feel “in the club.” Those who feel a connection are your most loyal and ardent supporters. When you start asking for subscription support, these are the people who will respond. When you do a live event, these are the people who will come. When you put out merch, these are the folks who will buy it. The long-term effects of building the vibe of speaking only to them pays off in countless ways.

This may seem like a small thing, but it isn’t.

[LAST THING: IT’S AWARD AND LIST SEASON] I am very happy to see Esther Perel (and by extension Jesse) receive a Special Achievement Award for Where Should We Begin? They deserve it.

I have a deservedly bad reputation among my staff and contributors when it comes to awards and annual “best of” lists for being an absolute buzzkill when the subject comes up. So much so that my staff roll their eyes if someone mentions it, because they know what’s coming.

Let me find a constructive way to say this: I think that people should be recognized for excellent work. I think there is excellent work happening at all levels of the audio industry and I think that, especially in tough years, being recognized for that good work can be a thrill. However, I think the current state of media awards, especially around audio, couldn’t be further from that idea. Awards are a big business. Entries can cost hundreds of dollars each–which pretty much excludes most creators, especially those who might benefit from some needed exposure. “Winning” an award often requires things like a public PR campaign to garner votes or a required purchasing of tickets or tables at the award event, which, again, can be pricey. The whole thing just feels really gross, so we generally avoid participating.

The same thing is happening with “best of” lists at the end of the year. There is nothing wrong with sharing your work with those who write about podcasting, of course. But a lot of these lists now require a lot of gamesmanship and lobbying. Some of the writers are quite open that they expect you to grovel to get on their list and even offer advice on the best ways to do it. Again, quite gross, headed in a bad direction, and not worth it. Every year Mag Noise productions end up on some of these lists. And if you see one of our shows there, you know that the list is organically generated and is an honest reflection of what that writer enjoyed, as we don’t participate in lobbying for inclusion.

Rant over. Thank you for indulging me. ;)

Okay, that’s it for today. 

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric

Today is an entire dispatch dedicated to your questions. I invited you to ask anything, and you did.

Plus, we have another job posting…a biggie…

This is a long dispatch, but I only answered a small number of the questions, so let's get straight to it…

[TODAY’S THING: ASK ERIC ANYTHING, THE DEFINITELY 2024 EDITION]  If you’d asked me a few weeks ago, I would have told you I do an annual “Ask Eric Anything” dispatch. And it is true that I did them in 2021 and 2022. But somehow, perhaps in the midst of the turmoil of 2023…I forgot.

Once I put the call out to do this again, questions poured in, which is great.

But man, the questions were so different this year, and I think it speaks to where podcasting and the people who work in it are at now. Before, the questions often tossed something catty or controversial to ask my take.

This year: all incredibly practical questions. Very meaty–but all rooted in how to do great work in the podcast industry of 2024.

Unfortunately, I can’t answer them all, but here are some of the most interesting ones:

“How do I improve my skills in narrative podcasting/radio when I’ve just been laid off…especially if I can’t land a job quickly? And - is pursuing narrative audio still realistic….? It feels like the work is frighteningly scarce.” –Tess

Oh Tess, I could write an entire newsletter just on this question. First off, I’m sorry that you lost your job. Regardless of the circumstances, that can be so disorienting and confusing and frustrating, especially in a situation like this where its hard to find a new job in the specific field you were working in. 

Every month, more and more jobs seem to be opening up, and companies are still commissioning work, but it is just a different environment for podcast hiring than it was even two years ago. It has completely flipped around from the producers/talent/job seekers having a lot of power and leverage to the current situation where the employers/companies have all the leverage.

But let’s leave that aside. I’m going to answer this two different ways: one about narrative skill and the other about jobs in podcasting.

Narrative-focused podcast jobs are more rare, that’s true, but companies are also hiring producers differently than in the past. There is much more of an emphasis on hiring for projects (even if that project is only a few months long) and less hiring of permanent staff. In some ways, podcasting is starting to mirror how many are hired in TV and film production–and I don’t see this changing anytime soon. That means that if you want to work in podcasting, you will spend a significant amount of time and energy simply looking for work. It is out there, but you may need to be less picky about projects and types of work.

As far as your narrative skills, I would encourage you to do two things. First, realize that almost ANY audio podcast is an exercise in storytelling. Even if a podcast is about ideas, conversation, or points of view–in essence, it is all done through storytelling. One of my chief criticisms of university journalism programs is they teach students how to be a good reporter, but often fail to teach them how to be a good storyteller. So, if you have skills as a narrative storyteller, they can apply to almost any audio project–and not only can you use them, but you can grow them too. Secondly, if you want to hone and practice your narrative skills, why not use them in other narrative forms? Write for a blog or online publication, make a video. Narrative is everywhere and every time you tell a story, you improve as a storyteller.

And as far as getting a job on a narrative project, telling a story over multiple episodes, I think the best way today is to network with the production houses that DO this work today–listen to the credits of narrative projects coming out of iHeart, Wondery, Sony, etc… and you’ll notice that most of them are made by small independent companies. And I can tell you that hiring at those companies is often done on a project-need basis, and the first place you look is the interesting talent who have kept in touch with you. So be that person for these small companies. Hope that helps.

“Is there realizable value in asking current listeners to follow on social media, and conversely, asking social media followers to listen? Broadly speaking, it seems that many stations have social audiences that are 10% the size of our radio audiences, and a CTA on social is a higher lift - especially if it's 'listen live' or 'donate now.' If there is no value in tying these together - why don't we let this idea go?” –Matt

This is backwards. Thinking about platforms is the wrong way to approach these questions. Instead, reverse it. Think about audience. Take the time to define the audience you want to reach and then ask yourself what platforms do they use? The answer will be very different based on the target audience. An audience expects to find you on the platforms they use, and they expect everything, on all platforms, to be a core organic content offering–not a “for appearances” or purely promotional presence on a social media platform. Plan accordingly.

If you are thinking that you are just an audio product (and your mention of “station” makes me think you work in radio)–that’s 2004 thinking, not 2024 thinking.

“What are your best recommendations for efficient audio to video workflows?” –Briana

Briana, I wish I had an answer to this question!! There is a lot of interest in it, as I received four different questions about video from you and others. Despite all the conversation, attention, and excitement about video and podcasting, I think everyone is struggling with figuring out how to do it operationally, including us. 

When we at Magnificent Noise first started to produce video as well as audio, I had what I thought was a strong idea: let’s create a combined audio and video post production process that avoids redundancy and keeps the audio and video versions locked together as far into the production process as possible. We’ve now tried this on a few projects and…to be honest…my theoretical strong idea isn’t working as well as I’d hoped.

Here is a pretty typical Magnificent Noise post-production process for an episode that’s centered on a host/guest interview (A narrative episode with lots of interviews, tape, and scripting is slightly different–and more complex–but follows much of these basics steps):

1. Recordings happen.

2. Tape gets transcribed and basic clean-up done (Producer in Descript).

3. Basic edits/outlining is figured out (Producer on paper).

4. Producer does first edit (Descript).

5. Producer shares edit with larger team for group feedback and edits (All on paper based off listening).

6. Producer does second edit (Descript).

7. Producer passes project to Sound Designer for fine tune editing, mixing, and any sound design (Pro Tools).

8. Final edits to the episode (Pro Tools).

My original idea was to load audio AND video assets into Descript as a video project–and do Steps 1-5 above as ONE file and one set of edits. Then, as the producer starts on the second edit, we split it into two: the video edit with some incredibly basic camera selections and the audio edit, which is a much finer tuned edit which you can do in audio and is often difficult/unnecessary for video. Then we bring in a video editor to work in tandem with the work with the audio mixer/sound designer. So that process would look like this (Substack won’t let me add color to text, so things that are different below are all caps):

1. Recordings happen.

2. VIDEO AND AUDIO gets transcribed and basic clean-up done (Producer in Descript).

3. Basic edits/outlining is figured out (Producer on paper).

4. Producer does first edit (Descript).

5. Producer shares edit with larger team for group feedback and edits (All on paper based off listening).

6. Producer does second AUDIO edit (Descript).

7. PRODUCER EXPORTS TO PREMIERE PRO FOR SECOND VIDEO EDIT.

8. Producer passes AUDIO project to Sound Designer for fine tune editing, mixing, and any sound design (Pro Tools). 

9. PRODUCER PASSES PROJECT TO VIDEO EDITOR FOR FINE TUNE, CAMERA SELECTION, COLOR CORRECTION, AND OTHER ENHANCEMENTS. (PREMIERE PRO).

10. Final edits to episode MADE IN TANDEM (PREMIERE PRO AND PRO TOOLS).

That seems simple, right? It shouldn’t be that difficult. But the problems with this started in Step 2. Descript can only handle certain types of video files, so we had to make sure our videos were set up correctly, which often involved a conversion pass through Handbrake or Premiere Pro. And the video files are massive, often 40-50 gb per hour per camera. So we were moving around a massive amount of data. Also, Descript can’t automatically sync files, some have to line up all the audio and video files manually. So setting up the project would often take an hour or two.

The time is greatly reduced if we abandon this and just set up the audio in Descript and the video in Premiere. We are experimenting around right now with using XML files to guide the first edits.

So, that’s where we are at. If others have figured out how to do audio and video edits smarter in tandem–and do them with a level of sophistication and emphasis on making something pretty high end, I’d love to hear about it.

But, for now, Briana, I fear we are all figuring this out in real time.

“How do you deal with it when a subject does not like the final product? I'm talking emotionally. In theory, are we journalists who are only responsible to the truth, or producers responsible to a story? ” —Anonymous 

When I read this, I thought this would be a perfect question for my Magnificent Noise co-founder Jesse Baker. So here, dear readers, is Jesse’s response:

True story: This is something I have lost a lot of sleep fretting about.  

It’s the risk we take every time we ask someone to share their story.  “Trust me” is such a powerful request. Sometimes, despite our best intentions, our editorial choices upset the people who have placed their trust in us. 

Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel requires the greatest degree of vulnerability I have ever asked of anyone to share behind a mic. Having producers sitting in and recording your therapy session with Esther is an act of bravery in itself. We allow people to be anonymous but we don’t change their voices. Yet at the end of the day, if friends or loved ones listen, chances are they will recognize who’s speaking.  Every guest has to be okay with that before we ever start rolling. 

Each recording session gets greatly compressed - it starts out as three+ hours of conversation, then is edited down. So, by definition, you have lost often more than two hours of context and detail from their story. But it’s not just reducing it in size: it’s like sculpting from a block of marble, where you knock stone away to reveal the story that needs to be told. And that involves choices about what to keep.

On rare occasions, people have called me after a session and made it clear they did not love their episodes.

In sum: when someone complains, I listen so closely and try to reply directly and candidly. Did I misrepresent myself? Did I fairly represent their story? Or did the story just not present them in the light they hoped? 

One couple did not respond to my messages after a session came out. I finally received a harshly worded note that ended with “never contact us again” - the only time in eight seasons I’ve ever had such a response. I was shocked and upset for weeks about it. Finally, I told Esther. And she said “it’s not that you did anything wrong. Or that you made poor edits. It’s that their session did not change anything for them when they got home.” And that is not something I could help them with–but it still sometimes keeps me up at night.  

One man from an early season of WSWB felt the episode’s title reflected unfairly on his actions in his marriage. After he berated me, I gently reminded him of the stories we had cut out of his session. There was one about something that happened between him and his nanny–a story that would have made it close to impossible for anyone listening to root for him or experience a trace of empathy. As a character in a novel, he would have been irredeemable. He needed to hear we had made the best choices we could for the story we were telling, yes, but also for his personal story.  By the end of the call, he thanked me. 

Okay, this is Eric again. Thank you, Jesse. And if doing this kind of vulnerable narrative work on a large show appeals to you, we are hiring a Senior Producer for Where Should We Begin. The first new hire to this team in years.

Next question…

“What do you think of companies (like BBC) 'windowing' their podcasts on their platform. Does it undermine the free RSS feed? Will it migrate audiences off established platforms (Apple, Spotify)?” –Ellen

Ellen, I picked your question because I received around six different questions on open vs proprietary access to podcasts. Your question is actually three different questions with three different answers. 

So I think there’s nothing wrong with windowing in podcasting, except that it doesn’t work.

For clarity in case this term is unfamiliar, windowing is the practice of making something available, exclusively, on a proprietary platform or app, for a period of time before it is available widely in the open podcast ecosystem. In essence, if you want to hear episodes early, come to our place–or you can wait and hear it everywhere later.

Many readers may not know that I was an early, vocal, and large scale advocate for windowing–before it even really had a name. Our original content strategy at Audible was based around windowing: our series were initially available in Audible for a few weeks or months, then as an open RSS feed everywhere.

It “worked” in the sense that people listened in Audible, and then a larger number of people listened in the open ecosystem. But I rarely saw much evidence of conversion, meaning that people would become fans, then go to the exclusive place to listen sooner. Those who listened during the initial windowing period tended to be those who were already listening on that platform, not new incoming listeners.

Many who have utilized windowing have claimed it was working, but rarely did they offer any evidence. The biggest piece of evidence that it never worked is the fact that most places don’t do it anymore.

And regarding if windowing undermines the open RSS ecosystem. If it worked well, it might have. But it didn’t. The worst impact on the open RSS feed is that it just makes things confusing for listeners. They just want to find the shows they want where they expect to find them–and get lost (and then disinterested) when we start putting obstacles in their way.

And is it a threat to Apple/Spotify? No. I’ve seen some anecdotal reports on the results of the BBC Sounds app’s exclusivity and windowing, claiming it is a big success. But, nothing against the BBC, I don’t trust it. It doesn’t pass the smell test for me. And even if it is “working” by their standard, it isn’t a threat to Apple or Spotify.

Also no podcast or even podcasting company is big enough on their own to undermine Apple and Spotify’s positions in podcasting. Individual companies and networks don’t have the leverage they wish they did. When they try to throw some weight around, at best nothing happens, and at worst they only harm themselves.

More after this jump…

Be like this reader who became a paid subscriber because they value what they read in The Audio Insurgent. It seems that everywhere you turn, someone is asking you to set-up a subscription. When that thing has value to you and you’d miss it if it went away, you gladly pay up. When I’ve asked subscribers why they decided to contribute to something they can get for free, the most common response is, “Because you asked.”

So here I am–asking YOU this time.

There are many very good places to hear today’s news about the podcasting and spoken-word industry. Here, I’m trying to do something different–create a space to understand several layers deeper, why things happen, and what the implications will be. This is a place for thought and analysis…plus my take on what it means.

If this is valuable to you, you can make sure it comes to you at least twice a month–and be among the first to read it–for as little as $5.

This reader did it. And so can you.

Subscribe now

“What would you say to yourself from 5 years ago?” –Gregory

What an interesting question, Gregory. While this feels like a standard job interview question, I have to admit I was a bit stumped by this at first when applying this to my own life. Five years ago, November of 2019, was a very exciting time for me. Jesse and I were about a year into Magnificent Noise and things were really picking up steam. That month I spent some time in Bangkok reporting and gathering tape for what would eventually become the pilot episode of TED’s Far Flung with Saleem Reshamwala. We had just started working on a new show for the New York Times with Priya Parker and a 30 for 30 series with ESPN. And, of course, Make Noise was finished and just about to be published.

It was also just a few months before the pandemic, which we all have a sizable amount of PTSD about–so I look at the months before as the calm before the storm.

I’d say that if I could reach back and talk to myself, I would just say, “Stick to what feels right.”

The pandemic, the economic fallout from that, and the podcasting recession of 2023 were all scary times, but Jesse and I stuck together and stuck to our vision, yet we pivoted here and there and just made sure our decisions were made on principle, not fear. And we came through a stronger company.

2019 was also the “stupid money” time in podcasting, with a tsunami of cash flooding in, big acquisitions happening, and vultures everywhere. When Jesse and I started Magnificent Noise, we made a few decisions that others found confusing: we did not seek out or accept investment (despite several offers), we didn’t distribute our content (instead working with others), and we only worked on projects (and with talent) that we believed in. Part of this was a business strategy, and part of it was spending time talking about what we wanted the professional side of our lives to be like. And we never changed that.

A number of those politely-critical others said we were missing out. But today, we are still here, and a very healthy company, and almost all those other companies are gone.

Stick with what feels right. That is what I’d tell myself.

“Which difficulties does the demise of Chartable entail and how do podcasters best solve them?” –Laura

My friend and colleague Dan Misener wrote a great post on this for the Bumper blog. Rather than share what I’ve learned on this, I’d suggest you read what Dan says. My only other piece of advice is that if you have a show with a Chartable prefix attached to it, you need to get rid of it before December 12th, or your podcast won’t work anymore.

“Why is public radio so hellbent on restricting itself to essentially three formats: news, AAA and classical?  All of which have tepid support amongst audiences younger than age 50.  Why haven't pubradio stations taken advantage of commercial radio's general total meltdown to move into other, perhaps more lucrative, formats that listeners who aren't traditional pubradio listeners?” –Aaron

Why stop at formats, Aaron? You could make the same case about literally any component of public radio.

I am a huge believer in the mission of public radio, but I’m not very enthused about its leadership. Public radio has been on cruise control for the past 25 years, lacking any meaningful innovation in its service to audiences (those they currently serve or new audiences). Besides a few occasional (and very successful) pockets of innovation, you can even say the same thing about NPR, too. And you see evidence of this every day: lower ratings, reduced revenue, less impact. The spirit just isn’t there to innovate and make change. Leaders in the industry are quick to blame changing media habits, listener taste–anything but their profound lack of vision.

I really wish this wasn’t the case and it is literally painful for me to come to those conclusions. I would LOVE to be proven wrong.

And chasing lost formats in commercial radio isn’t a strategy likely to do better. The questions to make public radio more relevant to more people are actually very simple and clear–the leadership of the industry just doesn’t have the stomach to make it happen.

“I'm concerned about whose responsibility it is to clear out old, dated podcasts from the Internet. Does each platform delete things after a specified period? I produce podcasts focused on health issues. Some have an indefinite shelf life. Others will not hold up forever. I like to think that I am creating a library or treasure trove of health topics, but I'm unaware of an efficient way to tend this library so its content remains useful into the future.” –Amber

Amber, it is your responsibility. No platform is going to do this for you.

As producers, it is so tempting to think that once we publish something, or responsibility is over. We’ve done our part–now it is out in the world.

While it is true that once you publish something, you can never fully “unpublish” it. Even if you delete or update an episode, the older version will still live on in pockets of the Internet or on user devices.

There is no problem leaving dated material online and assuming the user can figure out that something that’s a few years old would note reflect the most current thinking (in fact, you should speak to this in your show notes). However, even for old episodes, new listeners find their way to it every week. The numbers may not be huge by comparison to new episodes, but new people come in all the time. If you don’t think your older episodes reflect your brand, commitment to robust thinking or best practices, or are out of date in ways that make you feel uncomfortable, YOU should go into your hosting platform and delete them.

Okay, last question…

“Can you please caulk behind the kitchen sink where the backsplash meets the counter?” –Katherine (your wife)

This is a real question that was submitted through the form by…my better half. She saw the call-outs in previous dispatches to “ask Eric anything” and took this opportunity to remind me, again, of my promise to take care of this. So I guess you all know what I’m doing this weekend.

[LAST THING: WE ARE HIRING, AGAIN] You may have noticed a few mentions above that we are hiring another Magnificent Noise position: Senior Producer for Where Should We Begin to work with our team to make this singular podcast. It is probably the largest open hire we’ve ever done on a very high profile project. If you are interested, please consider applying.

Okay, that’s it for today. 

Thousands of people read this newsletter without even a free subscription. If this was forwarded to you or you read this online, would you mind subscribing?

Subscribe now

If you are a regular reader of The Audio Insurgent, I hope you’ll consider doing your part by supporting this work with a small donation. And if that’s too much, you are also always welcome to buy my book or (even better) buy me a beer.

Make great things. I’ll be listening.

--Eric