Thoughts On Owning Your Own Network

I still remember the conversation. I remember what I was wearing when we had the conversation. I remember we're at table in the hotel I was sitting at when we had the conversation. And this was the conversation. He looks at me and he tells me about his channel at YouTube and the revenue and the opportunities and the sponsorships and the checks and the building out of his crew and the buying of the equipment and everything that he needed, everything that he wanted, everything that he dreamed for was going great until one day he gets email from YouTube that it's over. He's been demonetized, and he can contest it, but that whole contesting process could be days, could be weeks, could be months, could be years. He had to let everyone go, people he loved, people he really enjoyed having around. But he couldn't afford to pay them anymore because his channel on YouTube was over. See, he didn't own the network. Now, the week I record this, Facebook had a embarrassingly long downtime. And depending on who you read, it was different levels. But it was not. It was not minutes, it was not hours. It was a decent chunk of the day. And what's interesting is anybody who led their lives, anybody who did their business inside of Facebook was, couldn't do it that day because they didn't somebody else's network, their business. Now, I have spoken many times to my absolute adoration of Anne Lamott and what she's doing on Facebook, and hopefully this didn't interact with any of her problems. But while Facebook was down and couldn't be Ann, and While my friend's YouTube channel was down, he couldn't be what he wanted to be. And what struck me when Facebook was down this week, oh, one more story. Got a client who's looking at moving, looking at joining a network. And in this looking at joining of the network, there are a lot of questions. What happens, good and bad, when you hand these things over? It's just interesting stuff. It's a big theme that I'm dealing with right now. So what do we do with this? Where do we think about this? What do we learn from what's going on? The fact of the matter is we learn one simple thing. You need to own the network, plain and simple. If you've been with me for years, you know, my whole big thing was, who's the media? You the media, know you the media, clap hands kind of thing. Now it's changing. It's no longer owning the media, it's actually owning the network now. Well, wait a minute, Paul, you can't own Facebook. You can't own YouTube. You can't own. No, of course you can't. But you can, as your network, put things on Facebook. You can, as your network put things on YouTube, you could, obviously, this being the podcast report, you could put your things on a podcast. But if you own the network, then the channels don't necessarily bring you down. If your entire life is plugged into Facebook, could potentially have problems. If your entire life is plugged into YouTube, you could potentially have problems. But here's the interesting thing. If you are plugged into actually with podcasting, if you go one place into podcasting, if you're only on Spotify and something goes wrong, it could go bad. If you're only on anchor and something goes wrong, it could only be bad. If you're one of these specialty programs for one of the networks, that could go bad. But when you are everywhere and Spotify runs out of favor or somewhere, actually YouTube Live, which is a fascinating cable TV alternative, they had a situation where it looked like you might not get NBC on YouTube Live or YouTube channels, whatever, YouTube TV. And there's a big stuff. There's a lot of good shows on NBC. And when you buy YouTube TV and you don't get one of the big channels, you leave. But you know what? NBC was fine. So when you think about your content, you want to think about your content in a way. Not just you own the intellectual media, not just in the way that you own the. The platform or the domain name or that kind of thing, but own the network. Put that network on YouTube for goodness sakes. But be smart. Realize that YouTube. And we've chatted about this before, realize that YouTube, three out of every four views are YouTube. That if you like this content, you'll like this content. Meaning that YouTube makes their money by selling your audience to your competition. Definitely get your stuff on Facebook. Realize Facebook makes their money by selling your audience to your competition. Definitely get your stuff on Instagram. But make sure that you realize that Instagram makes their money by selling your audience to your competition. But be everywhere, own the network. I want you to think, not in terms of just the show, because the show is one thing in one place. The network is all over the place. And the example I'm going to give is Game of Thrones for hbo. Not a big fan of Game of Thrones. I know that's hard to believe as a hardcore nerd, like I am with the nerd streak credentials that I'd like to think I have. But hbo, the network, owns Game of Thrones now, one of the reasons they got Game of Thrones is because their past history of other big massive shows and they can take Game of Thrones and they can put Game of Thrones on a DVD and put it somewhere. They can put Game of Thrones, they can take a premiere episode and put on YouTube if they want to, or they can put it on Facebook if they want to. They can put whatever, but they own it all now. The prime win for HBO. Right now, as of 2021 into 2021, the prime goal for HBO is to get you to sign up for HBO Max. But really, if they make it HBO Super Max or HBO Platinum or they call it a different name or that kind of thing, once home box office stops to make sense and they give it some creative name, I don't know, effervescence, that really made no sense. But if they're giving HBO a new name, if they own the network and they own the content, does it matter where they put this stuff? If you're a podcaster and you're thinking to yourself, my future is in getting picked up by Spotify, one network, their network, and if it goes away, not good. My idea is to get this show picked up by a television station or a, a content creator picked up by them. No good. Maybe it gets made into a book, maybe it gets made into a series of DVDs, all this stuff, you don't own it. You've heard me chat in the past about Star Trek and how I'm a big Star Trek fan, but the fact of the matter is, because it's now over it, I think Paramount plus is what it's called today, even though past episodes it was called C. It's too much work. But because your show is every time, every place, everywhere, anytime, any place, anywhere, you're at a good place. So what's fun here is I'm actually recording this live at my Facebook PaulColligan.com Facebook and David Henning here jumped and said, thanks, Paul. We met at Mike Koenigs. You're everywhere now. Book writing weekend 2015 training was awesome. Thank you, David. And for those of you who are on want to say something great, it's at Facebook and I'm on Facebook and I'll get a lot of views from Facebook. But Facebook's not my network. I am my network. So when this is done, I'm going to save this file and I'm going to run it through some optimization stuff and we're going to get an audio file and then we're going to put it, actually lips. And I'm a big fan of Libsyn. I've been with Libsyn. Feels like forever. But Libsyn's not my network. I have the domain name. I have the show. I have the audience. I have the capacity. And if Libson were to go south or someone were to give me a better offer than what Libson offers, I can go because it's mine. Don't think about being the show. Don't think about being the talent. Don't think about being even necessarily the destination. You want to think about being the network. So this episode is going to be at the podcastreport.com forward slash, be the network. And we'll put some links here and we'll put some thoughts here. And I'd love your comments. This is the podcast report. I'd love to subscribe any place that you might find podcasts, any network, because I'm on all of them, because I really own mine. Anyway, hope this makes sense. I want you to think bigger because your show deserves it. Have a great one. Bye.