The Potpourri Dispatch: My TED Talk, NYT’s Paywall, and Public Radio “News”
A collection of smaller items circulating in my summer brain.
Welcome to Dispatch #66 of The Audio Insurgent.
Today a number of smaller items that don’t really have any connecting theme at all, except they’ve been lingering around my notebooks looking for a home.
First up…
[TODAY’S FIRST THING: NY TIMES PAYWALL] Two weeks ago a Wall Street Journal article shared that the New York Times was planning to paywall its audio content…kinda. New episodes of The Daily would be available in the wide, free RSS podcast ecosystem, but older episodes would be moved behind the paywall for Times subscribers. There were also some ambiguous plans to window first-access to new Serial Productions series exclusively to subscribers for a week before sharing with the wider podcast universe.
The podcast industry then started to collectively clutch their pearls over this, wondering if this was a harbinger for awful things to come.
Now, let’s be fair, after the last 18 months in podcasting–there is often an immediate “sky is falling” reaction to almost any news in podcasting. Instead of seeing any upside, any major news is greeted with fear and concern, at least at first. I get it, but while interesting, this is a bit of a nothing burger for most listeners and the industry as a whole.
I am an adamant believer in free, open podcasting. I think it is a key factor in podcastings development and it will continue to be an important component of the industry’s future growth, too.
I won’t go as far as to declare that audio content that isn’t in the wide, open, free RSS podcasting ecosystem isn’t a “podcast”--that’s silly. (And there are many who would declare that saying “RSS podcasting” is redundant because if it isn’t using RSS…IT ISN’T A PODCAST–I find that puritanistic view tiresome). Podcasting isn’t a technical definition, it is an experience–an experience defined by its audience, not by gatekeepers.
That said, I do not think that all podcasts need to be widely available for free all the time. In fact, I think it is borderline foolish to rely solely on the free open podcast system to make podcasts successful.
While at Audible, I was one of the first (but not the first) to use windowing in our business model when we created Audible Originals–it was so early that “windowing” didn’t even have a name yet. It was just a crazy idea to give premium access to some listeners before making it widely available to everyone. Everyone thought we were nuts and it wouldn’t work, yet within two years, most major podcast companies were trying some version of it themselves.
More after this jump…
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The reason I think some version of paid access or preference is important is it opens up so many other revenue possibilities to fund work. If you only rely on the open podcasting ecosystem, you will be dependent on two primary sources of revenue: advertising (slow to gain traction and the most unreliable source of revenue) and subscription/membership/listener contributions (also slow to gain traction, but is the most reliable source of revenue once you are up and running). While these schemes do work for some podcasts, the more revenue options you activate, the more experimenting that you and your network can do to figure out what works best for you.
Though it would be great if this wasn’t true–and it would certainly be easier–one thing I’m learning about today’s podcast industry is that one economic shoe does not fit all. While we have so much we can learn from each other about revenue generation, especially in the emerging and highly potentially lucrative field of subscription/membership/listener contributions, the mix of revenue and audience drivers that works for one show won’t necessarily work when duplicated by others.
And even though the New York Times and The Daily are huge by anyone’s standards, they also deserve to experiment and figure out what works for them. The Daily is a massive podcast and ridiculously expensive to produce, with probably the largest staff of any podcast in the industry. The New York Times took a huge gamble in starting it and growing it over time.
And for those worried that this may destroy podcasting or destroy our industry, I would remind them that this practice is not new. Even the big granddaddy of podcasting, This American Life, has used this same approach for almost all of its history as a podcast, with a few episodes available in its wide, free feed (ranging from one free episode at a time up to the current ten episodes), with the remainder available on their site, their app, or a third-party space. And I think This American Life is doing just fine.
So will The Daily and so will podcasting. Just take a breath.
[TODAY’S NEXT THING: MY TED TALK] This is a bit off topic, but worth sharing. I recently participated in a TEDx event at Bell Works near Asbury Park, NJ (you know this building as the company HQ in Severance). It was an amazing event and you should take time to look through all the talks from that day.
As the day was getting started, a woman came up to me in the lobby with a copy of Make Noise, saying she had read the book and was looking forward to hearing my talk.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” I told her. “But I won’t be talking about podcasting today.”
“Oh,” she said, with a bit of polite surprise. “Then what are you talking about?”
“Vampires.”
She nodded and walked away looking a bit confused.
You can’t blame her, everyone who knew I was doing this expected me to talk about podcasts or at least audio–and I didn’t.
For those of you who don’t know, I have had a slow-boil career as a writer, resulting in a pile of magazine articles and four published books. My second book is still very close to my heart, probably my favorite to write. It is called The Dead Travel Fast and is a cultural history of vampires–a subject I confessed to know nothing about when I started work on the book. It was so fun. That book is a wild ride. And the subject is still a lot of fun to me on occasion.
When I was asked to do a talk at this event–I asked if I could explore a kinda ridiculous topic: “Why don’t vampires cast reflections in mirrors?” It is a goofball question, but also a surprisingly deep topic too (as most things involving vampires tend to be).
Have a watch, it is a quick 13 minutes.
[TODAY’S NEXT THING: PUBLIC RADIO “NEWS”] Here is the thing about being in the news business–you don’t get to pick when news happens. I could share a long list of major news events that have happened on weekends: most of them are exceptional deaths (Osama Bin Laden, Nelson Mandela, and Princess Diana all died on weekends), and major weather events (hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis), but these just reinforce the idea that news is a 24/7 business. If you want to be taken seriously as a news service, you need to be prepared to be the same.
I learned of the assassination attempt on former president Trump via a news alert…from the BBC, minutes before anyone else. It contained very little information, but it impressively held up–everything they said ended up proving accurate as more information came forward.
Saturday’s events also proved, yet again, a major stumbling block for public radio stations in the United States when news breaks on the weekend. I was sitting in a theater when it unfolded, but a number of people I know and follow did quick tallies of what public radio stations were offering and found that most got caught with their pants down: very slow to respond and get breaking news coverage on the air. Lucky for NPR, they were in the middle of the Saturday All Things Considered feed, and were able to pivot into coverage within an acceptable amount of time. However, the problem wasn’t with NPR’s coverage, but with the responsiveness of stations. Once again, public radio couldn’t seem to respond quickly.
James Cridland covered this in his always excellent international radio newsletter on Sunday, noting that the only U.S. public radio station that he found airing coverage was WBEZ in Chicago…because they happened to be airing the BBC at the time. I spoke with others who observed a number of stations, including major market stations, who were late.
First off, I have a massive cringe that the public service broadcaster who was first to share the news (and did so accurately) from an event in the U.S. and was prepared to switch into live coverage…was the BBC. Good for them, bad for the U.S. system. If I ran a U.S. public radio station, I’d be having a long conversation with my programming staff about how information is monitored and acted on throughout the weekend and what procedures are in place to make quick action happen.
Public radio gets blue in the face talking about the public service of its news, yet it struggles to make a pretty easy call to pivot when it happens outside of 9 to 5. Stations don’t get to pick when news happens and if you want to declare yourself a news service–especially a public service news service–you have to be prepared to respond when it happens. When a potential listener receives a breaking news alert–where do you want them to go? It only takes one or two tries to listen to what you offer–and find nothing–before they stop considering you an option.
The problem wasn’t programming offerings–both the BBC and NPR had content offerings within minutes–this is a last mile problem–how quickly stations can respond, any time, under any situation. That is what drives the perception of your radio “news” brand–not what you put in a grant proposal.
[TODAY’S LAST THING: JE M'APPELLE ERIC] I was asked to contribute ideas about the changing face of journalism–and the role of journalists for a publication put out by Méta-Media, part of France Télévision. They had some surprising questions that were fun to puzzle through. You can get a free copy here.
Okay, that’s it for today.
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Make great things. I’ll be listening.
--Eric