Are Seasons Becoming Reruns? Podcasting Via Mobile? | New Media Show Live 3/6/23

Okay. Welcome to the New Media Show, where each Wednesday at 3 PM Eastern UTC+4, Todd Cochran and Rob Greenlee take their over 30 combined years of leadership in the podcasting space to discuss, dissect, and deconstruct the current podcasting news, forecasts, trends, and predictions. Now here are your hosts, Academy of Podcasting Hall of Famers, Todd Cochran and Rob Greenlee.

Well, a little different intro today, Rob, but the copyright hounds have caught up with us and they did not like Afternoon Delight, I guess. That got us a copyright hit, or at least got you one, didn't get me one.

Interesting.

But it, but it did get blocked on Facebook. My last show got blocked on Facebook.

Oh, you know what? I think it was on Facebook actually. But I think I did see something in my studio about— so they're starting to match up the databases, Todd, more and more. So I think we had talked about this a couple of years ago that this was coming.

Yeah. It says your video is blocked and can't be viewed in two locations, wherever that is.

I think mine came back saying it can't be viewed in like 200 locations or something like that. So some incredible numbers. So I wasn't quite sure what that all meant. So hey, hey, Afternoon Delight is no longer, no longer good, but off the table now.

Yeah, here, here we are.

So if anyone helped us out with that, uh, well, that's the problem, Todd, is that if someone helps us out with it, it's usually under their rights or they took it some from somewhere not legally.

Well then, Rob, if you want to get on that, uh, I'll see what I can do. Maybe, maybe we have some AI-generated music.

I don't know, is that possible now?

It's a great—

some AI-generated music, that'd be awesome if it was.

You know, you know what's funny is, um, this afternoon I was listening to the marketing AI group's writers conference. They got a writers conference going on from 12 to 5 today. And the, during the, during the interludes, I'm writing documentation for our AI system. And it's amazing what I, so I would do is I took a screen capture of a menu, put it up in ChatGPT, and then wrote, this is Blueberries Podcast AI, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, wrote about a paragraph and say, write me a documentation page. Wow. Wow. And I took each of those segments and I probably edited on each segment. I probably edited 3, 4 minutes at the most. And guess what I've got? I've got my documentation three-quarters written already.. And, you know, that would have been normally like 3 days worth of work and me henpecking away. Right. So just gives you another— and it's better than anything I'd have ever wrote, you know, because I got lazy and started taking shortcuts. And so, yeah, yes, yes, founders of companies even write doc, user documentation, jack of all trades. Yeah.

So it's always been kind of core, uh, helping users understand how to use things. Well, yeah. Let's also to have a documentation for the developers because there can be a changeover in developers to understand how it all works.

Yeah. Well, you know, the developers, uh, you know, they help us beta test it. So I think they're pretty good on it, but, and I'm knock on wood, I haven't had any rollover.

But do you think that, uh, AI is gonna replace the need for, um, programmers and coders?

No, no, no, I don't think so. Not in the near future, because you still have to be creative. You still have to have— you have to have logic skills. You have to— you have to be a math expert. You have to be a database expert. You have to be— you have to be all these things. A programmer is not just a programmer anymore. Programmer has to know how to run EC2 instances, how to do database integrations, You know, they, they, they, you know, they earn their keep.

But Todd, is their, their role in the process going to change because maybe they're not spending as much time actually coding? Good. But, but the overall process of getting that code published and integrating it and those kind of things is still a long way off?

I think it's just going to make, you know, what, what I've seen how coders work. They get stuck on something. What do they do? They go to Google or they go to, you know, some, and they go looking for code. So it's just going to help them, you know, and I'm—

are increasingly becoming more and more important.

Yeah. So, you know, I think developers, you know, the question is, will we still be able to have— okay, for an example, We started the— and even my graphics guy, he knocked it out of the ballpark in about 36 hours, come up with our next segment of our AI design. We reviewed it during a review meeting today on, uh, clip creation, and we had looked at a lot of different platforms garnering ideas, and we thought they all sucked, and He came back with his own design. No AI could have done that. It took someone doing, you know, analyzing all the discussions we had. And, you know, my words saying, this sucks, let's not do this. And I think this would be better. And that's cool, but that isn't. And taking that input and be able to come up with something that I mean, man, it's like basically almost said holy shit, you know? And it's just like, so a good designer, a good marketeer, a good programmer, they all are going to have to— the creative process doesn't stop. We just get help. We just get help now in some of these mundane thunking task. And I call it thunking. It's a thunking stuff that we all hate to— who writes— who likes to write documentation? Raise your hand. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody likes to write documentation.

Good reason for that too, right? It's boring and tedious type work. It's not a creative—

Yeah. So now I can upload an image of the UI. I can describe what it does and what its function is in a paragraph and say, write me a documentation page, and it blurps it out. And then I take 5 minutes to edit, delete, revise, because some of it is like, I don't need that in there, you know? And it gets smarter as I was walking, because I was using one thread as I was walking through the process. I didn't even have to hardly prompt. It just got smarter knowing what I wanted for that particular thread. And so I was like, okay, you know, let's— so really in between sessions of about 20 minutes, literally in about 20 minutes, maybe 30, I got half, about half of my AI documentation written in amongst listening to this writers conference. So it's, you know, it's, it's a thing. And there's, there's use cases for it, and podcasters are going to find use cases for it. And my bigger brain now is, what can I do? Not necessarily to help. What else? What else can I use this technology to help my business? No. And as a podcaster, I think you need to start thinking about how, again, original voices are not— are, you know, it was reiterated during— it almost take— maybe I have jumped— maybe I heard this guy talk about it in this podcast and I've just picked up on his words, and or vice versa. But original voices are going to be critical going forward. In this landscape of mass-generated content that is just, you know, a paragraph of words comes up with 300 or 500 words blog post, lightly edited and punch go. And it's not original. It's just the conglomeration of what a machine thinks is right, even though it's pretty good. You know, how do we, how do we make sure that what we're listening, what we're watching, what we're reading is original content. I think at Geekness Central, I had contemplated going to some AI writing in Geekness Central to cut costs, but I figured in the long run it would probably hurt me. Maybe it'll kill me in the long run. But what do we do? Do we start writing on our articles that this was originally written content, no AI was involved?

Well, that's the big question is if original voices are going to stand out, there needs to be some way for the audience to know which is original and which isn't, right? You know, as far as human, human created versus machine created content, whether it's video, audio, text, and whatever else creative expression that's, that's happened out there. I don't know if the government is going to step in and like the FTC did in the early days of saying, well, if you're going to run an ad in your podcast, you have to identify it as being an ad, right? Or what they did with, with Google in the early days with search results. Um, you know, what's, what's paid placement and what's organic kind of search.

Content.

I think it's the same question to some degree, Todd. It's, it's organic versus artificially created or paid for content, right? Sponsored content. And I know that this has been an issue as of late in the podcasting space, as there are some proponents out there talking about, um, and actually Dave Jackson posted on this just this past week. About guests paying to be on your podcast, right?

Yeah.

So if you're doing an interview show and you're starting to charge your guests, you know, $1,000 to appear on your podcast, you know, I think that there's some ethical issues that come up in that process that maybe some people aren't being upfront about that. You know, are those paid placements really kind of really quasi-commercials that are being camouflaged in content? I don't, you know, these are the questions going forward. I'm not sure how it's gonna, how it's gonna sort out.

Rob, you sound good to me, but I'm worried about your audio levels going out. You may be down a channel on my side. I just noticed it. So go ahead and keep talking. I'm going to go check the the pots. I'm gonna go sweep the pots to make sure, uh, it's— you're good on your side. It's definitely me. We've been out of the studio for a month, so let me, let me go check the first time. Yeah, yeah, let me, let me go check it.

We've been on StreamYard most of the time.

Yeah, let me go check it real quick, and, uh, maybe you can start to introduce the next topic while I'm gone, or a topic that you've got in mind.

Hang on. Yeah, so what I wanted to cover in the show today, kind of big, big topic areas. I know we kind of get kind of buried in these more organic topics that come up at the top of the show sometimes too, like we just did. But our, our seasons, you know, I know the concept of seasons have been around podcasting for a long time now. And I saw in the news, in PodNews, that, and this is kind of bringing up this concept again of seasons. And whether or not it's a good thing. And also, you know, what's this concept? You know, Serial has chosen to come out with their fourth season of Serial, right? Which was a very famous kind of season podcast that came out 10— you know, the last time they did this was 10 years ago. But now they've chosen to come out with a new series about the history of Guantanamo, uh, out on March 28th. And I posed the question, is this going to signal the start of maybe reruns coming to podcasts? I know the concept of reruns and kind of new, new editions of, uh, like Star Wars or, or Star Trek. So there's like remakes I don't know if it's a remake, but you know, sometimes it's a sign from the content sphere that we've kind of run out of new ideas, right? So when something comes out, that's kind of like a fourth season, 10 years later, is that because the creators wanted to continue banking off of that brand cereal? And to come out with another one. But 10 years seems like a massive amount of time to take between series like this. And just posing the question is, would it have been better for them to have come out with an entirely new series? I think what they're trying to tap into is existing audience and existing brand familiarity with the the brand Serial. But my question is, is there really that much of an audience that's still following Serial? Um, so anyway, Todd, did you hear what I was talking about? I was talking about this whole thing with Serial coming out with season 4, 10 years later.

I did. I didn't fix the pot issue. You're down a channel. You're going out still stereo. But, um, yeah, I got to get underneath the hood a little bit deeper. I thought I checked everything and everything was working, but I guess I didn't check close enough, but if you guys are having a hard time hearing Rob, I apologize, but I turned you way up.

So, so is it, uh, mono or something like that?

So when you say single channel, well, what happens is, is on the mixer you're coming in on the left channel but not the right channel. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But when it joins, it basically goes out mono on the stream. So, but Anyway, you're— we're okay. I just— yeah, I'll get it fixed. All these old wires. But anyway, yeah, I don't know. Serial— I saw that and I was like, oh, okay. Um, I mean, people have changed.

People have changed phones, and I can't imagine that they're capturing much, uh, prior.

Is this— is this a sign of desperation?

Well, like I pose as a teaser in this, is this a sign of kind of lack of new ideas? Kind of like what happened in the movie industry, right? Where they kept coming out with how many different versions of the same story of Spider-Man have been out, right? Yeah. It was like 10 different renditions with different actors and actresses that play the same story that come out every couple of years. And is this just a sign that we've kind of run out of new ideas here?

Well, if it's a different topic, you know, if they've got a new person to save.

No, it's what it's still going to be hosted by Sarah Koenig.

Okay.

Who hosted it a long time ago. So, I mean, I guess they can, they can draft off an existing franchise, I guess, just like Star Wars and Star Trek did for many, many years. I guess it's kind of similar in that light, right?

Well, I'm not one to guess someone's motivations. Obviously, they think there's enough people that are still subscribed that makes sense to do it this way. What am I to judge?

We've always had this contention that if you're going to do seasons to make your prior season end on Friday and your next season start on Monday, right? Or some concept like that.

Well, you, you know, you don't hear the blowback I get when I say that, you know.

So, but from one perspective, it actually makes some sense. I think from a, you know, in this particular case with Serial, it's, it's a little more complicated than that. I know that they, they invest a lot in the investigation and the production and all that kind of stuff, and it can take, you know, upwards of a couple months to produce one episode. So it, it just takes time for them to get this stuff.

It's just like that report where someone was saying they're spending $5,000 an episode for, you know, come on.

Yeah, I'd be curious to see if this series is, is embracing the kind of modern, more modern kind of approach here is to keep your costs down, or are they going all in on the costs on this? Which is contrary to, to what's happening out there right now and, and putting a lot of pressure on themselves to get sponsor revenue coming in the door. If they keyed the launch of this on— did it take them 10 years to come up with a new idea, or did it take them 10 years to come up with another sponsor?

Yeah, that's the question. Hey, by the way, I had a support ticket come in today and I have not had time to go look. So Ted, if you're listening, there's some people out there, and this is the second time I've heard this, is that in order to choose your own transcript, you have to pay $19.95 a year to be able to do that and choose your own. So basically, in, in Apple Podcast Connect, there's a place, and I got to find the email and go in and do it myself. I haven't had time today to do it, or I'd already done it. Or where you load your own? Well, no, you— it's basically where you allow— I think there's a switch, there's a setting, and again, I'm going to have to go and look. I haven't paid attention. I should have, but I didn't. Or you can choose that your transcript is used versus the one that they create. So I hope that doesn't mean uploading. I hope it means just picking it out of the feed. But, um, I need to get into Apple Podcasts and look. And see what the actual— because we've had two customers say that they were to use their own transcript, they've been asked to pay. So yeah, and I— and that set them a little bit wrong. And I— my understanding was it was just a switch that you made in Apple Podcasts to force it to use your own transcripts versus theirs. So James or someone else is listening, maybe you can go investigate that as well. I Again, this is what we got in a support ticket today. I haven't had a chance to go look. Anybody else had any luck? I should look at the email because there's instructions there on how to switch it. I just haven't had time to do it.

I haven't actually gone in. I'm looking right, right now in the interface to find where, where a transcript—

no, you have to actually be in Apple Podcast Connect to make the change. But have you updated iOS 17.4? If you haven't, then maybe I can find— maybe I can find email from Apple while we're messing around here. Yeah, see here, Apple transcripts. Let's see if I can find it. Now there's the There's the—

you're thinking that you have to go in and activate that feature?

Well, you have to turn it off. You have to turn Apple's transcripts off. That's my understanding.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm talking about being able to actually see a transcript that—

oh no, no, no, this is, this is not the function. It's because a podcaster was trying to turn off Apple transcripts and couldn't find out how to do it.

Yeah, so I'm just trying to find in their, their, their app where you actually can get access to the transcript.

Well, you have to update to 17.4. Have you updated to 17.4? Yeah, if you haven't, then you won't see it yet. I think that's kind of— I think it just came out today. I think there was something in Pod News about it. Again, I've been, I've been pretty— yeah, Apple iOS 17.4 launched today.

So see if it gives me the opportunity to do some sort of update.

Yeah, I'm just looking here. Creators who prefer to provide their own transit can do through the RSS tag or an Apple Podcasts net for subscriber episodes. Learn more here. Let me go there and let me look.

And so it, it's asking me to update to the 17.4.

Yeah, so transcript settings in Apple Podcast Connect, I'm looking at it right now. You go to the show setting, uh, and then you go— yeah, so this should not be— let's see if I can get into— okay, clear this up right now.

It says if you upgrade this to 17.4, right?

Yeah.

Um, It gives you that transcript access right away.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's being generated already. So let's see.

It says highlights in sync with audio in English, Spanish, French, and German. You can adjust the text size, contrast, and voiceover. What?

Voiceover. I'm trying to unlock my password thingy here. No. And then go through 5, 5 verifications that I am who I am. I got my phone ready here. Come on. I've already hit enter. I haven't forgot my password. Oh, come on. Apple requires a device with iOS 17. Okay, I am on a Mac. What the hell? Authentication failed. Why did my authentication fail? Requires a device with iOS 17 to get into Apple Podcasts Connect. I can't get into it with my Chrome browser. Oh, this is— let me go load Safari.

Are you trying to—

I'm trying to— I'm trying to log in on a Mac. On a Mac. And it's saying iOS 17 is required. Well, I do not understand. Why it's forcing that. I'm—

well, that's only, um, on iOS, not macOS.

Yeah, I'm on my desktop. Yeah.

Okay, so you're not trying to access through an iPad or anything like that?

So requires macOS Sonoma or iOS 17. Oh, I— about this Mac, I am on More info. What am I on?

Yeah, are you on Sonoma?

I am on macOS Sonoma.

Okay, then it should work.

What the— oh, they— there is this— this is ridiculous. Doesn't think I'm— okay, now it's taking it. Oh my goodness, it's like it lost its mind there for a second. Okay, I got in through Safari. Go into Geek News Central and let me find— okay, let me go back to the email that they sent so I can review this, or the instructions. I gotta go to availability setting. All right, so let's go back to Safari. Sorry everybody here. Availability, transcripts, display transcripts I provide. Save. I didn't have to pay $19.95. It's right there. So someone is is confused. I'm going to take a screenshot of this.

What do you mean Apple is confused?

No, one of our customers is confused. Two of our customers are confused. So I don't know why they are getting the— huh. All right, I'm just gonna— so I wonder how they're ending up on— of course I do pay for premium, so okay, I'm going to ask one of the other team members to check this out, but I just switched mine to mine. So we'll see what happens when I update my, my iPhone, because I surely didn't have to pay to select my own. Anyway, um, yeah, we just wasted 10 minutes of time getting everyone confused. But, you know, that's what we kind of— it's just, you know, these weird things that, these weird things that come up. Yeah. Okay. All right. So what else you got on your list, Rob?

Yeah, Todd, did you see this announcement that Shure put out about a new lavalier mic? That they're putting out. It's called the Z7. It's called Move Mic.

No, I haven't heard about that.

It's a clip-on mic that's kind of like what was put out by DJI and—

Oh, it looks like— I see here what it is. It looks like $499. They're smoking crack.

No, it's actually $249.

Oh, okay. I'm just looking at the two microphone and the—

oh yeah, if you get, get the full kit, it's probably that expensive.

Yeah, $249 for one mic, full kit is $499. That's still expensive. Yeah, that's very expensive. Yeah, compared to just other products that are out there.

Yeah, I just wonder, Todd, if, if we're seeing kind of like, uh like a growing trend around being able to increasingly use your, your mobile device to, to produce podcasts. And we're going to see that happen more. This is to the future.

This is not for podcasting. This is designed for people that are doing YouTube, TikTok.

No, but it could be.

It could be.

But, you know, if you combine some of the latest AI-based generative AI audio enhancement platforms. If you used a device like this in combination with those platforms, you can basically do your podcast anywhere.

Yeah, but this is not AI. This is just a recording tool.

I'm not saying this is AI, but what Shure is claiming here, that the audio quality is, is top-notch. On this. So if you can capture top-notch audio quality and then process it through, you know, one of these enhancements platforms, you can produce content that sounds like you're doing in a professional studio. Enhance kind of changes the whole dynamic.

But no one's advertising enhancement platforms. What enhancement platforms are out there?

Well, Oh, like Auphonic or—

Oh, that's— but they're not using AI.

InSounds platform. Yeah. Numano is another one that's kind of, kind of going into this territory.

But aren't you having to use most of their hardware though?

No, not necessarily. So, I mean, with Numano you can, but you can record in any device and upload it to—

Oh, okay.

The Numano Cloud, and they'll use the same generative AI technology.

Same with InSound's folks. Anything that gets the job done to improve audio quality, I'm all for it.

I think that's the direction the industry is going. So if we can get people away from always thinking about getting some SM7B and soundproofing a room and doing all this stuff and maybe get into regular conversations with their— I mean, that's the big thing I've seen with this and a Numano device too, is that you just clip on these lapel mics and you can have conversations anywhere. Yeah, it doesn't have to be in some studio somewhere in front of, you know, a, you know, a big microphone like this, right?

Well, you know, again, I, I'm all for it. I'm, you know, sign me up. Uh, because, you know, we do stuff like going to CES and those types of events. Anytime I can do an interview and not have to lug a bunch of gear, you know, last time I went, all I had was those— I've got a DJI mic, uh, you know.

Yeah, I have one too.

I have, you know, two. And actually have got one from somebody else too. I've got two of those in the— I like the DJI version better.

Um, yeah, and we use the, the Nemato platform to, to record our last session at, um, at Podfest.

You know, be honest with you, I just took that audio and uploaded it. It— how good of a good job did it do?

It did good. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, well, I mean, if you consider the environment that we were in—

yeah, it was horrible.

I think, I think it turned out quite well, actually.

Yeah, it was, it was pretty bad.

Yeah. So, and I got rid of most of it, you know, uh, you could clearly hear our guests and us talk. So yeah, I sent you a completely cleaned up copy of that.

Okay.

So I don't know, I thought you published it, Todd.

I did, I published it.

Yeah. Okay. I thought you said that you didn't publish it.

No, I did. I did. I did. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yes, I just wonder if there's increasing opportunity on— which I think is good for the industry— that we can start doing things more freely and openly at events and coffee shops.

And— but, but Rob, I've been doing that forever without AI technology. You know, I've been— I've done interviews for years Yeah, but the audio quality isn't always very good. Yeah, you know, when you're— you know, I'm using a decent mic, you know, decent, uh, and with a windscreen, and I wasn't using lavs. But, but then again, I did spend money to get a better quality. But you know, if you want something like this, still $349, you know, that's, that's, uh, for two. That's, that's not inexpensive. You can get two hand mics cheaper than that with the windscreens on them, but I think there's lots of opportunities here.

But as you kind of see the industry gravitate towards video again, you can kind of see where people are going to use these things to create, you know, YouTube videos with their mobile devices, and there's certainly nothing wrong with doing that.

Right.

I mean, those cameras on the back of these smartphones are as good as these SLRs that people are spending thousands of dollars on.

Oh, well, be careful. You're going to get beat up by the camera enthusiasts.

We're not that worried about it, Todd. I mean, I think if you look at the latest iPhone, the video quality out of that's pretty darn good.

Oh, it's definitely good. And, you know, it takes great pictures too, but I guess it all depends on your application, right?

Well, if you're only streaming it 1080p, I mean, I mean, I mean, some of these phones are capable of what, creating 8K videos now, but there's no way of publishing that anywhere, right?

Right.

So it's kind of a waste. So yeah, so that's, that's what's going on with that. Um, and it's just, you know, it's how technology has always kind of evolved and improved and given podcasters more, uh, ways of doing things. Uh, I just see it as an extension of what we already have.

Yep.

I know I've, I've used it quite a bit and it's worked worked really well for me. So it's just— and just, I have a hard time thinking that it wouldn't work well for others.

So my trip back was pretty uneventful, and, uh, that's, that's always good. Yeah, you know, and, uh, made all my connections, and, you know, 30 hours or so, uh, and then overnight in Chicago and train ride. I tell you, I post about on Facebook, uh, I, I could get used to this Amtrak thing. Uh, it's, it's pretty easy.

Amtrak.

You took Amtrak from Chicago to Battle Creek?

Oh, okay, okay. So you flew into Chicago?

Yeah, and I got in so late there was no way, and I didn't park my car there because I didn't want to pay $20 or $20, $25 a night for 30 days, and, uh So it's a $24 train ticket from Chicago to Battle Creek, and then I had somebody pick me up. Much cheaper than parking in a parking garage. So pretty spoiled, you know, and Amtrak, I just got a coach ticket and you know, you got good internet and you can, you know, you can sleep, the chairs are big and comfortable and So it's, um, um, it's, you know, for those of you, of those who live on the East Coast, you're like, oh, this is just normal stuff. This is what we do. I live in rural America and, you know, something we don't normally do. Yeah, but definitely, uh, save miles on a vehicle and wear and tear on my body trying to drive when I'm jet lagged and So yeah, I tell you what though, the working from like 6 in the evening till 1 o'clock in the morning was— that was a bit of a challenge because it was basically offset hours. And I feel like my productivity is about 80% when I do that. Yeah, because you got to try to sleep, you know, late into the day. And no matter what you do, a touch of sunlight hits your face and 7:30 you're awake. So, uh, yeah, that, that remote working on the other side of the world is, uh, is a bit of a, a bit of a hack.

Mm-hmm. Todd, have you ever gone to the Apple, um, kind of like, uh, content area, the podcasters.apple.com support area, and, and looked up their promotional and artwork.

Yeah, all that with requests before. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

You ever do that on, uh, with your own show?

I have not done that with my show.

I guess it was that area was, was down yesterday or something like that.

Well, Facebook was down too.

Oh, oh, a lot of— yeah, I think there were other things that were down too, but yeah, I had a hard time getting into Facebook.

Yeah. All my Facebook stuff got logged out and it wanted to authenticate everything that I was trying to log back into. Authentication messages weren't coming in.

And so I would imagine that Facebook probably lost some users. It was like, do we take advantage of this opportunity to, to take a break?

My mobile phone never logged out. It was all of my web browser stuff. Which is curious.

Interesting.

Yeah, it is curious.

So yeah, so I was just going through and looking at this. Yeah, I do, do remember the days when I used to send an email with all this information directly to the Apple team, not have to go through this massive form.

1,700 sats from Mike Dell. Welcome back to the Eastern time zone. Thanks for the boost, Mike. 1,000 sats from Andrew Grummett. Thanks. Enjoyed the show. We've had streaming sats too for the podcast. Let's see who's been streaming the show. I know Adam has. Who else? Yeah, Darren Schwartz has been doing 50 sats. Adam Curry was streaming sats. And I guess, you know, based upon listening to, you know, basically I did catch up listening to the Podcasting 2.0 show and Rob Greenlee. I guess they're glad I'm back. And not having a one-sided view on everything. So, kind of curious. You should listen. Your ears might have burned just a little bit. Or rung.

All right. It's always good to have a— sometimes of a different perspective sometimes.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's what we all are advocating for now, right? Have fair and thoughtful debate on issues.

Have you heard about this, uh, company called— and it's kind of funny because there's a new feature in Podcasting 2.0 called Podroll, but I guess there's some company now called Podroll. New dynamic— new dynamic feed drop technology has been launched by Podroll. It adds promotional episodes directly into podcasts as the second most recent episode, works on more than 30 different podcast networks. I, I hate the speed drop stuff. I really do. I, I'm so much against it. It's like, okay, so I guess it's a viable marketing opportunity, but how would you guys like me to just drop an episode of Geek News Central into the New Media Show feed? You know that, Todd?

I think you have to think about it from an audience perspective, is that you might want to set it up a little bit with your audience before you do it.

Well, Regardless, I'm not going to betray the trust and time of my audience to drop in.

You're not really forcing it on anything.

Yes, you are. You're forcing it onto them. Okay, they're gonna hit play. What's this? WTF over? And they're gonna waste time looking at their phone, looking at the show they're in, trying to figure out why this episode of Geek News Central is in the New Media Show feed, and then they're going to send an email and say, Todd, what is going on? Why is this episode in your New Media Show feed? Why did you do that?

I think it's all about being clear with your audience about what your intentions are. And, and Todd, this isn't like the old days of podcasts.

Oh, guess what? Guess what? I'm an old-timer. I'm not going to do it.

Well, okay. It's not even that. It's more to do with that in the early days of podcasting, all these episodes were pushed to people's mobile devices automatically.

Right.

Right now it's, it's like each time you have a new episode, that listener, that subscriber, that follower, whatever, has to choose whether or not they want to click the button.

Right. It's not being— it's never been the same. It's the same situation. No one was ever forced. Right.

So if you're clear with your audience on what you're doing, I think as the host of this show that you would get value out of listening to this other show because there's a companion topic.

Then I'm going to put that as a suggestion in the show notes and a link to that show so that you can go listen to it. Or I will play a promo of that show, a 30-second promo. But I am not going to assault— and I'm going to use that word liberally— assault my audience by dropping someone's episode into the feed. I think it's rude. I think it's rude. I think it's inconsiderate of audiences. Maybe just call me old school, but some people say, oh, this has gained me so many new listeners. Well, again, you new listeners during that episode, did they convert to be subscribers of that episode? Because you got extra listens because of that audience. You didn't grow really an audience. You may have grown some stats for that episode because of course you were put into someone else's feed and they automatically got that episode. I, I'm very much against this, but I think he—

yeah, I think you have to give, um, the audience some credit for being able to decipher what they want to do and what's what. What their choice is, right? If you're, if you're doing a good job of a host and communicating with your audience that this is a piece of content that I think has value to you as a companion to my content, um, to check out, um, I don't think there's anything really wrong with it. I, I, you know, if the audience wants to skip that episode, they skip that episode. They just don't listen to it if it's so, so offensive.

Well, how do I know It's, it's not going to be evident to me. I look, what's the next episode, click, you know. And, uh, okay, we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to agree to disagree.

It's really no different than doing a host read for a sponsor.

Well, that's fine. That's a, you know, that's completely different. It's, it's momentary.

Similar, Todd, because you're taking a product or a service and you're kind of pushing it.

Okay, that's, that's a 30-second, 60-second ad spot. For me to put a whole episode of someone else's podcast in my feed? No, I'm not doing that. I'm not.

Nobody's forcing you.

I understand that, but I just, I just wonder, you know, what, what the rest of this audience thinks of this type of practice. I— if you, if you've had great success with it, great. And if you've actually shown audience growth, great. But there has to be a serious level of trust for me to be able— and a serious level of acceptance besides go listen to this show. What if I put the Podcasting 2.0 episode in this feed? What— first of all, do I have permission to do that?

Well, sure. I mean, Todd, these things don't happen without cooperation.

Oh, okay. We'll see.

What do you mean we'll see?

That's, well, that's there. There has to, I, yeah, I don't know. I'm just not, don't just don't call me a fan and it's not a pod role. That's a, that's a pod hijack.

Well, it doesn't have to be portrayed in the, in a negative light, Todd. It can be portrayed as what it is.

So hijack.

No, it's not a hijack. Both parties are cooperating with each other. It doesn't have to be a negative thing.

Well, yeah, I just don't agree with it. And again, and different strokes for different folks, but I just really wonder what most, what most listeners think when that happens.

I think it depends on the expectations that you've set with your audience, just like anything else with this.

If I did that, if I did that in Geek News Central, people would revolt. They would unsubscribe. They would unfollow. Even if I told them.

Maybe if you told them and then gave them time to give you feedback before you did it.

Oh, I know what the feedback would be.

You might be able to get a better—

I know what the feedback would be. Why?

You don't know until you ask. Really?

I don't think so.

Plus, it also is very, very contextual to what the content is too. You can't just make a blanket statement. And say, this is something that, that I'm going to do, but I'm not going to give you any context about what that content is. Is it of value? Well, you—

I don't know if it's being implemented that way. You would, you would, you would think it— there would be all kinds of precautions.

I mean, if I were to do it, that's exactly how I would do it. I would portray it in a light that this is a way for me to grow my show and for that show to grow their show, and there's a there's a— it's almost like the same thing that we went through in the early days with the cross-promotions, right? Um, when two, two shows cooperated with each other, and, and increasingly what we saw over time was, is that shows became very territorial to their audiences. But what I want to share their audience—

but what we did that was very effective was I would run a promo in my show for that show, right? And it was me doing an endorsement, but yet not subjecting them to dropping an episode in my feed and, and essentially forcing upon them the episode and driving confusion about what is this. Now, if I tell them, hey, I'm going to put an episode in here that's another show, I know what the reaction is going to be. Of course, I've been doing this a while, so I know my audience. Yeah, I don't think this audience would appreciate us dropping in someone else's episode. I don't know. Yeah, tell us what you think.

Let's say we dropped in an episode of, of, of, um, Pod News Weekly in here.

Yeah, tell us what you think. How would your reaction be?

And if the Pod News Weekly folks dropped an episode of this into their show? Feed.

Uh, first of all, James is not going to do that.

Well, I wouldn't immediately say that.

I highly, highly doubt.

This, this is, this is the bigger point here, Todd, is that we're, we're, we're falling into this trap of viewing things from a competitor.

No, no, I, I— to— no, it's not. It's, it's not even competitive. It's about audience respect. For me, it's about respecting my audience and giving them what they have— giving them what— and giving them what they have come for.

Yeah, I mean, I'll ask James what he thinks about the idea and see what he says.

Well, he's probably going to listen. How about you, Adam and Dave? Would you want us to drop an episode of, uh, Podcasting 2.0 into this show feed?

I, I'd be okay with it, and I think this audience would probably be okay with it too.

I don't know about that.

Why don't they want to hear, hear from Adam?

I can tell. Okay, everyone go listen to the Podcasting 2.0 show. It's high on my recommendation list. Right. That's all I need to say. Right. If they, if they—

That's a clue that there might be some cross-promotional opportunities.

If this audience respects us as hosts, and they respect our recommendations as podcasters, they will go listen to that show. If they don't give a shit and don't think our reputation or our recommendations are good, they will not go listen to that show. And I guess that's so— that's the choice. It is a choice, but I am not going to drop someone's episode into this feed willy-nilly Even tell— okay everyone, we're going to drop an episode of Podcasting 2.0 into, into the feed. It'll show up.

Drop it on like a Monday or something.

No, no, no, no, no. Over my dead body. If I die, Rob, you, you can do this. I veto this one. Wow. I have acquiesced to some other things recently, which is going to come to surprise some people. I will not say what yet.

You're not going to say what yet?

No, I won't.

Okay. Acquiesced. Wow.

Acquiesced.

That's quite a term to describe yourself, Todd, with.

And if I think the acquiesce means I have given in, Or allowed, or I'm going to do something against—

Tolerated might be the better way.

Yeah. Tolerated. Yeah, exactly. And so not saying too much because it's coming.

Oh, is it part of, part of Blueberry by chance?

It's part of Podcasting 2.0. So I just gave it away. Dave and Adam already know what I'm talking about. Because I said the word acquiesced. Wow.

Okay.

And just—

and supported—

and James— no, I've acquiesced.

It's a, it's a less than full-throated endorsement.

That's exactly right. I'm sorry. I'm going to hide it to the best of my ability to Yep.

All right.

Hey, did you, did you hear about, uh, Rumble having RSS feeds?

No, I hadn't heard.

Well, we've been investigating, and the only thing we've been able to figure out is if you do a live on Rumble, only a live, you'll get an RSS feed for those live events. We can't find And if someone can point us at this direction, we cannot find the RSS feed for a normal video post. So when you do live on Rumble, there is an RSS feed with an enclosure for video.

Hmm. It says— I just did a search, um, in, in Google. With the topic, and it says create Rumble RSS feeds.

Yeah, the only thing we've been able to figure out is how to do it with— from live events, not from a playlist. I don't even know if Rumble has playlists, but, um, this— and if this is the case, this is actually pretty big. This is a swipe at, uh, at YouTube. Yeah.

Oh, well, they're all about swiping at YouTube.

Well, my, my understanding is currently the RSS is only for anything that's been done live. So if someone can find out different, uh, todd@blueberry.com, because I haven't figured the secret decoder ring. I've had Mike working on it. I haven't went into Rumble and looked. I know you have a Rumble account, Rob, so you look around and find an RSS feed in your account, then show me the path.

And plus, it's also possible to synchronize your Rumble account with your YouTube account, and it will automatically migrate videos over to your Rumble account from YouTube. I don't know if you knew about that, Todd.

No, I did not.

So it, it does it a little bit at a time. It doesn't do it all at once, but over time it'll migrate all your videos over to Rumble from YouTube. It's an API integration between the two platforms, which was surprising.

Yeah. Yeah. We, we, we're, we're working on a lot of stuff right now at Blueberry.

Rumble unfortunately has a reputation that follows it though.

That's the, well, you know, there's people, it's the challenge with it. Well, Rumble's the place for the people that have gotten kicked off YouTube or are afraid of getting kicked off YouTube. So to me, they're, you know, they're purveyors of freedom of speech.

And yeah, and I've mentioned Rumble in meetings and things that I've done just as a, you know, as a marker point in the media landscape today. And I sometimes feel like I'm looked down upon because I even know about it.

Well, you know, and what that is, that That tells me one thing, Rob. Yeah, that— okay, let's just have a frank conversation here. Do we care where people listen to our content as long as they can get our content?

No, I don't.

Do we?

And so, so why open to any platform that, that'll—

so why would any— why would anyone in the in a media creation space be down on a platform that promotes free speech?

But it's all about politics.

Yeah, well, I don't care about politics. Let's, let's leave politics.

I mean, that's, that's, that's the divide. I see people that are— I'll be frank about people that generally follow liberal politics and believe in a lot of that process, you know, a lot of that thought process, don't even know Rumble exists.

Well, that I'm maybe not so surprised about.

Even when I raise the fact that Rumble even exists, it's— and explain it to them, right, it's a free speech platform— I get this weird, weird reaction from people. It's like When did all of a sudden in this country we were opposed to free speech?

Since Trump.

That really start since Trump. Well, it's this whole campaign around misinformation and disinformation, or maybe COVID or whatever, just causing people to lose their minds. You know, I think that people have to be suppressed in their ability to to have free speech.

You know, I, I don't care what your politics are. I'll be frank, I don't. I don't care what you have to say. You have your own— you know, here's the thing, I can go on a limb and say some stuff that will just get me crucified, but I'm not stupid enough to say it. And I'm not necessarily— do I believe in it either? But you know, you have to, you have to be able to respect and understand the value of being able to say what you want to say. And a lot of other countries also—

I mean, part of this truth is also true too, Todd, is that, um, oftentimes the truth can get lost in this debate.

Well, look at, look at, look at what's in some Arab states. Yeah, you know, you can go to a certain line They— and the people in the country know what the line is, but you can't go over the line. You go over the line, you're going to get rolled up. They don't do that here in America. We don't get rolled up for going over the line. Well, we might get canceled and people might get upset, but I don't know, Todd, as long as you're not in doing hate speech As long as you're not invoking violence, you know, in my opinion, it's, you know, and again, there is, you know, most people don't understand that hate speech is actually protected speech, which is, you know, you think about it, it's kind of wild.

Well, Todd, I always like to talk about this hate speech thing from the perspective of, you know, we've been involved in running content platforms for a while. For many, many, many, many years, and we've always had what we call in the industry terms of service.

Yep. Right?

And those hate speech clauses are usually in terms of service.

Yep.

But one of the things that we always had to do was be very specific about what that was.

Exactly.

Because if you didn't, right, you could be called out for it, for not being specific about it. It's like, well, what's hate speech? What's not hate speech? Problem that we're seeing now is that that definition of what hate speech is is gradually getting wider and wider and wider and wider and including more and more topics and more and more types of speech.

Yeah.

And it's an easy weapon to throw against somebody to say, well, that's hate speech, right? Because oftentimes it's someone that's saying something that someone doesn't agree with.

Right.

Is it all of a sudden hate speech now?

Yeah.

That's not what the intent of the term hate speech was. Hate speech was around violence and really embracing really anti kind of harmful.

Being racist, being racist at home.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's part of it, right? But it also is very much linked up with violence and it's also linked up with things in our society that are clearly illegal right now, right? But as we get into opinions on all sorts of topics, that's not really hate speech, right? Just because someone's feelings might get hurt—

we can't hurt— no, we can't hurt nobody's feelings anymore, right?

That's not hate speech though. That's not the definition that we've spent our whole lives under with that term.

You know, you still have the right to go out there and call somebody out or something they've said. You have the right to— you have the right to do that. And that's the beauty of this whole system we have, at least in this country.

And I guess you've never been really immune to the consequences of free speech.

Um, oh, you can say what you want, but stand by, it might get you fired. Right. You know, it might get you—

always the check and balance.

You know, it might make you unemployable, right? It may make you liable to pay someone lots of money, you know. So, you know, it has its consequences.

But to be looked down upon because— as a content kind of person in, in the internet ecosystem, to be looked down upon because you're in favor of distributing your content to a very large content consumption platform just based on political orientation is a big red flag that we've kind of crossed over the line. I mean, if we're using Rumble, right, as a consumption platform, then I think we've gone too far.

I'm sure as soon as someone hears Rumble and they automatically think it's conservative far-right content, and I don't think that's the case. I'm sure there's that over there, True, but I'm sure there's a whole bunch of other stuff over there too, uh, Second Amendment stuff. I'm sure there's just a whole litany of content that YouTube loves to cancel.

So, you know, um, yeah, there's been shows over there that are live, kind of like what we do here. I mean, the analogy would be that we would start this show and go live. Oh, then switch on YouTube, and then halfway through the show we say goodbye YouTube because we're going to start talking about topics that we're going to get blocked. Yeah, we're going to get canceled on, and, and go over and watch the rest of the show over on Rumble, right?

Right. Yeah, I hear that tells you that, that we have a broken system. Yeah. And you know, I'm starting to hear podcasters talk about being on YouTube and saying, oh, my show was removed, my channel was removed. And, you know, we have at least one of those that come in a week now. There are people are like, what's going on? And I'm like, well, what's your show about and what are you saying? And, and I'd hate to say it, it's not— it's both sides of the spectrum and down the middle depending on the topic, you know. And I'm still getting, you know, on a weekly basis information from Spotify in a certain episode or certain show that's being removed because of X, Y, and Z. So, you know, it's— there's no guarantee anymore that you're going to remain on any of these platforms. And thank God for OpenRSS.

Yeah, you know, so oftentimes the, the platforms that use that OpenRSS are closed. So that's the—

well, that's why you need yourself a new podcast app from podcastapps.com. One of those modern podcast apps.

Yeah, because we've always been at the whim of proprietary platforms, you know. I think that the— this concept that just because it's open RSS makes the whole medium open is really kind of a little bit of a—

well, you know, don't get me wrong, you know, I can count on probably no more than two hands the number of shows I've had to cancel at Blueberry because of Oh yeah, as far as that goes, you know. So, you know, and we, we, you know, we, we had a white supremacist group that was on right around the time of the situation happened down in South Carolina where somebody drove through a crowd or something. There was that event that happened, and we had, we had a show that was like, uh, you know, praising that activity. And, you know, they were, they were very shortly off the platform as soon as we knew about it.

Yeah, I You know, so I classify that as hate speech.

So, you know, we've had some of that that's come across. I've never killed a show because they're a conspiracy theory show. Never done that.

It's oftentimes speculation and conjecture.

Well, it's usually when someone says, I am going to you, you know, and, you know, you know, or invoking, you know, trying to rabble-rouse and invoking violence.

Or literally threaten someone, right?

Or threaten—

yeah, in their podcast.

Yeah, yeah, we've had— and those are sort of harm. That's where probably the 90% of the cancellations have occurred, you know, when someone has said something like that.

And but now it's, it's just, you know, opinion-based topics now can get you blocked.

Knock on wood, I have not had anybody come to us in recent times and complain about a specific show because of an opinion they did not like.

That's interesting, isn't it? It is. The whole crackdown on shows and podcasting is kind of around the concept of hate speech has gone away. Well, through those terms of service.

Oh yeah, at least to us. But again, I, you know, this is what I'm talking about. I'm talking since 2006. The number of times I've had to kill a show, which is like, you know, under 10 probably.

Yeah, but when, when was the last time, Todd, that you felt compelled to go in and remove it?

The last one was— the last one was the white supremacist group here in the last couple years. It was— no, it would have been while it was during that thing in South Carolina or wherever that— oh, wherever it happened where there was, um Georgia, or wherever that car incident—

Charleston, was it Charleston?

Yeah, that was— so that was the last time I've killed a show, I think, that time frame.

Yeah.

And actually, I killed two in one. I had one that was a white supremacist show and one that was using our stats. They weren't even hosting with us, and I canceled their stats service.

But that was a long time ago.

That was a long time ago, more than or 5 years ago, whatever that time frame is. So that's interesting, but I haven't had another one come since. Now we've had shows that have been removed from some of the— well, on a weekly basis we have shows that are removed from other platforms. COVID discussions, health product discussions. Okay, music, obviously, you know, 3, 4, 5 things.

Spotify?

Yeah, those type of platforms. Yeah.

Okay.

You know, and, uh, that seems to be the 3 categories that are getting whacked the most. Is someone that's talking about a health product, maybe not with the right disclaimer or something, and then COVID. And, and they're still killing shows because of COVID discussions. They're killing shows that have been out for a couple of years, but then once they find them or someone complains about them, I guess episodes were largely— not necessarily the whole show.

And there's some very large podcasts that are doing, doing video, um, that are only doing their video stuff and their live stuff on Rumble, but yet they're still creating content for their RSS feeds.

Um, well, if they're doing a lot, doing anything with YouTube, well, if they're doing live on Rumble, uh, their video can now have— there's a, there's an RSS feed and you can submit that to, uh the platforms so that you can have a video podcast. But again, it's relatively new. This kind of popped on my radar last week.

So I'm not surprised. I mean, there's always been these third-party tools that will take some sort of an address to like a YouTube video and be able to somehow create it.

There was an interesting article. Where is it? About— oh, it's in today's pod news. After flurry of announcements last year, YouTube has gone quite quiet about podcasting. However, Steve Goldstein spotted Kai Chuck, who is the head of YouTube Podcasting, in the audience at the Hot Pod Summit last week. He writes about the session that Kai attended, which contained frustration about how slow YouTube is to see audience growth. So is that podcasters complaining about audience growth on YouTube, which we said is not going to happen? Or is that— I want a little more context on that, James.

It's a mixed bag, right? I mean, growth of what part of what YouTube is doing.

So let's see if I can find Stephen Goldstein's article.

Was it?

Oh, it's basically an article on Amplify saying podcasters are grappling with how to make YouTube work.

Um, on the RSS feed side, the session revealed a video side.

I'll read what it says. The session revealed a palpable frustration over the slow pace of audience growth, which often seems insufficient to offset the considerable cost and efforts involved. Uh, duh. Um, it took a— I took great interest, this says, like a live focus group follow-up to our podcast movement keynote, uh, in collaboration with Coleman Insights. Love, by the way, I love Coleman Insights, where we jointly invite The New Rules of Podcasting, a study highlighting YouTube's approach to podcasters. We see a diverse response since last summer, with some podcasters diving headfirst, others tentatively testing waters. However, a common thread among creators is the daunting challenge of balancing the need for visual content with investment time and resources it demands and skepticism over the role video can or should play. One podcaster told the group about her frustration sinking a lot of her own money on equipment and editing with no momentum. The session also highlighted confusion about what video needs to look like, ranging from highly produced and informal TikTok style and the big enchilada of whether every podcast needs video. I love this. What? Because guess what? Told you so, right? It was mentioned in discussion early on, several organizations, NPR and some advocacy group, tried to abandon— tried an abandoned video when the matter didn't meet or didn't move. Oh, despite YouTube, despite huge hurdles, there was hopeful dialogue about YouTube evolving policies.

But it might be worth to pull up on the screen what, uh, Rumble looks like. All right, let me see here, because there's probably a lot of people that are listening to this or watching this that have never even gone to the Rumble.

Oh, looks like, looks like YouTube. Uh, let's see here.

It does. I mean, it looks, it's kind of Identical.

Barstool Sports, the Yak Yak with Big Cat. Let's see what else we have here. We've got Redacted News, Kim Iverson, Dark Horse Podcasts, 2024 SLS Paris practice recap, gaming. Uh, what else? Stuff I'm not familiar with here. A bunch of live stuff. Um, it does look like a fair number of conservative shows, gamers, sports.

They've gotten a lot of content from content creators that are trying to still work with, uh, a YouTube but oftentimes get blocked from YouTube, so they're oftentimes splitting their content between the two platforms.

A lot, a lot, a lot of podcasts are definitely, um, well, yeah, there's a lot of political podcasts.

Redacted News is a good example. I know Clayton has been a, a long— you know, Clayton is the host of Redacted News. He's been doing a podcast version version of his show here for, for a couple years now.

Bitcoin, vlogs, more news, science. Yeah, music, entertainment. Yeah, I've got an account over there. I haven't been on there in months and months and months and months, so I guess it's worth a look.

Um, I think the big takeaway from this is We're seeing shows grow very large audiences on this platform. And if you're a content creator, you might be missing out if you're not on it.

Easier to break out because there's not as many people on there. Let's click on it. Let's click on the podcast link. Podcast link has Do Dissidents, LFA TV, Dr. Drew. The Michelle Moore Show, Revenge of the— oh, I'm not going to say that. That's a, that's a word that would potentially get me blocked. The Seth Williams Show, or Telestreams, Trump Train, London Real, Revolutionary Blackout. So you have a few very, uh, how should we say, let's view all. Let's look.

Are they all Ramsey Show, which is Dave Ramsey?

Let's see here. J6 Truth, True Talks America, Bill Cooper.

Our News Now here too, right?

A lot of religious shows.

Dan Bongino.

There's only 2 pages of podcasts.

Yeah, so there's, there's opportunity over here.

Recorded streams, videos. Oh, that's interesting, huh? Well, maybe that's where you're— everyone, maybe that's where you need to be next. Woohoo! But you know, it— on this, on this Steve Goldstein article, going back to it, which you conveniently made me move off of, Rob.

Um, no, it's just related.

But what it, what it really is, is expectations are not being met. Surprise, surprise, surprise.

On, on what side of the issue are expectations not being met? It's the question.

The podcaster side. YouTube doesn't care because it's just another channel of content that they can monetize against with podcasters not earning enough hours to earn any revenue and be monetized.

So yet the data continues to show that there's large numbers of users that are looking for content, um, podcasts on YouTube. Yeah, Spotify.

You know, just like I said to a favorite YouTuber of mine the other day, I said, I tried to find your podcast on Apple Podcasts, and I don't want to— I don't— and I basically purposely said I don't want to listen to your show on YouTube because I like to watch instead of listen. And, uh, they said we'll investigate that. So again, it looks like a duck, smells like a duck, you audiences call it a podcast. But you know, we don't need to get into that topic again.

Yeah, I think a lot of folks are This number 1 off of Stephen's article, uh, what should podcasters do? It says number 1, YouTube is eating the podcasting space.

Yeah, whatever. Eating what? Eating their money.

It's a top source for podcast search in our study, and is what it says here.

It says, but the average podcaster is not getting any bump. Here in the top part of the article, the session revealed a palpable frustration over the slow pace of audience growth. Okay, let's, let's, let's look.

Yeah, but that's, that's happening via RSS distribution.

But, but we're seeing great growth in RSS right now. I, I, let me, let me share with you something that's going to come out next week. Okay, uh, see if I can find it here. I probably shouldn't do this, but you're gonna do it anyway, Todd. Yeah, absolutely, I'm gonna do it. Let's see here, uh, let's see here. February. I gotta find February stats. Stats report for February 2024. This is gonna be something new we're gonna put in the report. Um, what do you think outside of the outside of United— let's, let's take the top 7 or top 5. Let's take United States, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany— Nigeria is not live for us— France, Czech Republic, Brazil, and Sweden. That's all these top 10. They exclude those, okay? And again, Sweden's at 1.39% with us in global market share. Let's exclude those 10 countries. What do you think the growth rate for countries that had, um, am I in the right report? Hold on here. Uh, no, I'm not. I loaded the long, the long wrong one because I already have the calculations done. All right, let's load this one. Let's throw out those top 10. And let me get down here because I got the math. All right, there we go. Countries with more than 50,000 plays monthly on average saw a growth rate of 6.83% from last month, from January to February. So we're throwing out the top 10, and any country that had more than 50,000 plays, again, of our global reach— and when you get into some of these countries, the numbers are very small, had 6.83% growth rate. But listen to this statistic: countries with 10,000 to 49,999 monthly downloads. Again, that's gross. So you think, well, that's not very many. But if you get into a country like Rwanda— Rwanda does not have more than 100,000 plays being played on our— in our stats on a monthly basis. Rwanda had 22,129 plays in, in February. So if we look at all those countries, and there's about 30, about 30 countries that had between 50,000 and 10,000 and 50,000 downloads. They are showing a growth rate of 23.05%. I've been watching this data for a few months now and scratching my head and trying to figure out what I originally wanted to do was see when there was a 3% jump by a country. You know, I thought if you look at the United States and you see more than 3% growth over a month to month, that's a significant number. I thought it'd be worth reporting on. Well, it's not. That's not where the meat— that's not where the juice of this is. Now, you— the Vatican. We break the Vatican out. Now, the Vatican doesn't have a lot of people. You know, this shows up as an IP from the Vatican, but in the month of February, the Vatican had 524% growth rate. South Korea, 700% growth rate from one month to the next. Greenland, 110%. Equatorial Guinea, 412%. Angola, not a country you would think would be a big podcast consumption, 100% increase month over month. And I've been watching these numbers and South Korea, Vatican, Greenland, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, and these countries that are 10,000 to 50,000 downloads per month globally are seeing massive, in their own scale, growth rates. So now the lowest country, which we didn't put in this list, was Norfolk Island. They had 100% growth rate, but guess what? They only went from 2 listeners to 4.

That's a country.

Uh, well, it's Norfolk Island is a, you know, we can detect them by IP. And again, you know, 4 IPs download, 4 plays from Norfolk Island. So we, you know, we didn't include them in the, and you know, because that, that's just You know, that's stupid. So that's why we set the base at a minimum of 10,000. Um, Bolivia, Bahrain, Cyprus, Seychelles, Afghanistan, Jordan, Costa Rica, Guatemala— these are some of the countries that are in that 10,000 to 50,000 plays per month. That are seeing some of these, uh, incredible growth rates. So, and again, it was an average. Um, I don't know if it means anything, but when we started building this chart, I was having a hard time trying to make a realization what is important here. It wasn't the U.S. growth, the 2.3%, you know, that, that number, okay, you know, that's, that's outside of the U.S. Well, in U.S., if I'm saying you know, outside of you, US growth 2.3%. I think we all can be happy with that. But when I see, you know, a, a country like Morocco who is in the 150, well, actually 50,000 plus, which Morocco is, 14% growth rate and I seen the previous couple months, 6%. What was the other one? Let me look at the other 8%. So, you know, something is happening in Morocco. Um, and again, it's small numbers, but when you have that type of growth, you see something happening in this country. So the need— and, and I don't know how I got on this tangent, but the podcasting is growing. A little bit fast in some small countries and slow and steady in the top 10.

Yeah, I think it's safe to say that we're kind of flatlined here in the United States when it comes to growth in a lot of areas.

Uh, not broadcasting. Okay, it's from growth in listeners. I think it's still growing.

Yeah, it's still growing. It's just, you know, it's— if you look back over the span of the history of this medium, it's, it's only grown anywhere from, what, 2 to 4% a year?

This This is also a little subjective because what could happen here is the numbers could be skewed a little bit because there could have been a, you know, when we're looking at the total number of episodes that we're measuring, you know, that number can change a little bit. So those— this is not a perfect science. And a matter of fact, uh, uh, proportional. Yeah. So don't eat me, Tom Webster. So this is, you know, this is just pure data and there's lots of factors. You know, if I was saying, okay, every month we're going to take 82,000 episodes and use a sample of 82,000 episodes, that would be the number. But at one month, it could be 108,000, and it could, you know, it all— again, I don't actually— what was right, what was the number? Uh, 548,000. Was that— that's the measurements are based on 548,000 episodes. So for the month of February.

So did you see the Edison Research study that came out with the share of time spent listening, you know, from audio sources, that it basically broke down the distribution of people listening to AM/FM radio versus people listening to podcasts by broad locational-based orientation to urban, suburban, and rural.

And rural America is not listening.

Uh, rural America is, uh, 6%. Um, suburban is 11%, and urban is 13%.

I totally attribute that to the lack of good connectivity in rural America.

And the difficulty to mobile, mobile devices as well.

Uh, when I'm sitting in my house, it sucks. Thank God I got Starlink, or thank goodness I, you know.

Yeah, but do you get adequate coverage on your mobile phone versus your data connection?

Well, when I'm at home, I have to connect via Wi-Fi.

Okay, so can you not connect to data?

I can, I can. I have data, but it's 1 bar and, you know, and it sucks. Maybe 2 bars if I stand by the window and hold the phone up. So everything is via Wi-Fi. Get home, first thing you do is make sure I'm connected to the Starlink. So, but then if I'm out roaming around, if I'm sitting out in the woods or I'm on my tractor, which I don't have a tractor, but you know, that's what happens in rural America. You know, the poor guy out there is on a one— or woman's out there in a one bar or two bar.

So it's just that there aren't as many cellular hotspots out there.

No, and I'm 13 miles from a, well, small town. 30,000 people.

So, and that probably has decent mobile.

Well, I'm looking right here. Let me look. I've got 5 bars, LTE, 5G. So I got great connectivity here, the office, and I'm again in that little small 30,000 people town and I've got great connectivity. So again, is this, is this, but Is this still rural? Well, I don't know. I don't know. We're not near a big city, 30 minutes to Battle Creek, which isn't that big.

I guess that's a big bucket to put people in. It depends on where they constitute rural versus suburban.

But I think also in suburbia, let's just be frank, I'm sure the penetration of podcast listening is is much higher just because you have a— it's a different— okay, it's a different vibe here. I go into a bar and people say, what do you do? I work in podcasting. And like, oh, what podcast do you like? And, you know, and it's not like they don't know podcasting, but they don't listen to too many podcasts.

Yeah. And there it looks like 43% are still listening to AM/FM radio.

I have no doubt, especially if you're on a one-bar near a farmer. What are you listening to? You listen to the farm report, or you listen to talk radio, or you're probably on a music station, or a music station. And again, the music stations are limited to— there's a country, there's a rock, right? You know, so, you know, you go across the FM spectrum. I think I can get 4 or 5 stations here. So, you know, so again, it's— and also, let's be frank, the young people have left. They've went to suburbia. So, or the cities in there, yeah, where the jobs are at. There's an aging population here. We have back— we have some factory workers and a lot of, uh, you know, a lot of, uh, jobs that are, you know, in the farm industry, slaughtering hogs, that kind of stuff. So, you know, they're standing on the line butchering pigs. They're not, they're not listening to podcasts.

So you're thinking it's not necessarily the low consumption isn't necessarily around the types of content I don't know, Rob.

I can't answer that. We'll have to leave that up to Addison to figure that out. Yeah, but I'm not surprised that there's— you know, my mom's an avid podcast listener. It's all she listens to is podcasts. I can't walk in the house and bam, there's a podcast playing in the background over her computer. And, uh, you know, but why is that? Because, you know, she knows You know, she's been enthralled in this since I got started 19 years ago. You know, big fan of a number of shows. She's always sending me episodes to listen to on other podcasts that I've never heard of.

So what's your opinion on this whole thing? I saw a post that's coming out of Pod News again. Thanks, James. Pushkin's Malcolm Gladwell, I guess, who recently fired about a third of his employees. I guess he's going to be given a Governor Award at the Ambies coming up.

And Rob, you're asking me a very loaded question.

Well, I just, I think it's interesting, you know, actually Sky Pillsbury asks, Um, has accountability slipped through the cracks? So I'm not giving an opinion one way or the other here.

I don't think they think about accountability. It's all politics.

Yeah, I guess we've digressed to that, haven't we?

I, I, again, does he have a podcast?

Malcolm Gladwell.

Yeah, he's joking.

He's got a huge podcast.

I know, I'm joking.

Yeah, um, but, but I, I think I, I get where you're going. He's not a podcaster that you're listening to.

Well, it's true, you know, he's not somebody I'm listening to. Again, I don't— be honest with you, I don't listen to any political kind, uh, podcast. I don't know if he is— does he have a political podcast? I would assume so.

I, I think it's more culture.

Oh, okay.

I think is what he's always— an author and that kind of stuff.

But I've heard him speak, I've heard him speak on YouTube before, and yeah, he's got a strong opinion on a lot of stuff. Yeah. Doesn't he work with New York Times or somebody like that, or one of those big newspapers?

Uh, I believe he's linked up with— I mean, Pushkin, I think, is distributed as far as— well, I think he got something at On Air Fest too. I think he—

yeah, I'm not going to try to second-guess another award system, but anytime you have a body of people that vote that are not listeners, there's going to be a huge amount of bias put in. And it's all, you know, I can guarantee you that a lot of the people that probably voted for— I don't know, maybe he wasn't— maybe that was done by the Podcast Academy. I'm sure a lot of those shows, a lot of those folks in the Podcast Academy do not listen to just like me, maybe not listen to certain types of content. So I think we're, you know, in society right now, we're pretty bucketized right and left. And so if you have a lot of left-leaning people on the Podcast Academy, they will not be aware of shows that are on the right, and vice versa. And it's to be expected. It's just kind of the way it is now.

Yes, it is. It's probably hard to eliminate bias anymore, isn't it?

That's why—

all sides.

That's why I think what— I just think the way I'm running my awards has got the best, because there's— it's the listener's pick. I don't pick.

So it's not the organizers or the, or the board or any kind of entity that's influencing these choices. No, it's actually just the general population. If that bias exists in the general population, it'll show up.

Yeah, right. And if you look, if you look at last year's list, I, I don't even know the politics of 99% of the shows that were nominated because we look at content type, not what their content leaning is, right? You know, so I think majority of podcasts probably lean more left than right, though. If I was to guess.

Well, if you think about it just purely from the consumption patterns, um, it— that tends to follow the urban orientation, right? Which is a much stronger area of consumption for podcasts. So I guess it would make sense that the kind of left side of the political spectrum would be represented stronger in podcasting.

I would, I would think so. Again, I, I don't know. It'd be a good study to find out what the breakdown is. I kind of used to laugh because it used to be broke down when I went to a conference of who had a Mac and who had a PC.

There's always been some sort of a dividing line, hasn't there?

For nerds, that's the way it was. I go to a tech conference, see who has them, but that's not the way it was anymore.

But, you know, 10 years ago, but it's a good observation because I don't really hear that.

No, no, you don't. But 10 years ago, you'd go into a conference and who has a Mac and who has a PC, and we'd all kind of snarl at each other.

And I think to some degree we went through that a little bit with between, um, iPhone or iOS and Android too.

No, I see it when I go to our team meetings. All my devs are on PCs and all my All my production team are on Macs.

Interesting. So your devs are on—

all except for one is on PCs. Everyone else is not. I have one dev on a Mac. Everyone else is on PC.

Oh, interesting.

I don't know. I don't know why, you know. And I'm like, you would rather have a Mac? No, no, no, I would never.

That's kind of how I feel about it. I tried for for a few months. So I'm with a MacBook Air.

You were just— you're just too indoctrinated. Your old dog can't teach new tricks.

I don't know that I need to learn new tricks on that side though. That's the thing.

Well, the thing is, I— do you—

you know, where do I invest my time? Do I invest my time trying to learn something that really doesn't drive?

The majority of us don't use apps. Majority of us are in the cloud using Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, Sheets, right? We're not using— you're not using applications anymore, so it doesn't matter. It does— you could have a Chromebook.

Yeah, I, I totally agree with you, Todd. It's just, it just doesn't seem like there's— it's worth the investment of time to learn another operating system.

It's— and it's fine, you know. Yeah, yeah, I was hardcore PC guy for many, many years, you know.

I know you were, right? But now you're ambidextrous of sorts. You can—

well, I have, I have, I have 2 remaining PCs and everything else is Mac. So I think I'm pretty much converted here. You know, I really, really am. Because be honest with you, I haven't used a PC in many, many years. So now when I get to use a PC, I'm annoyed. Where's my— where's this application? Because it's— I used— I'm used to be clicking the Start button like Windows 98, going over, grabbing my program, launching. Right now it's like, where is this program hid? Where's File Explorer? You know, all these stupid little things that, you know, when we were—

you just put shortcuts on your screen just like—

yeah, I know, but you know, I'm a, I'm a, you know, Windows 3.1 baby. Take us back there.

That was horrible. Let's just call it what it was.

Oh, but boy, I had control over my PC. It did what I wanted to do.

Yeah, yeah, which wasn't, wasn't exactly a whole lot back then.

No, it wasn't. But you know, yeah, it was my glory days of, uh, you know, trying to squeak up 300 more bytes of memory using QEMM.

Well, Todd, I think we—

yeah, we're over—

went long, didn't we?

We did. Todd@blueberry.com, @geeknews on X, @geeknews at geeknews.chat on Mastodon.

Wow. And I'm on X as well, @RobGreenlee, like I've been since 2007. And I'm on, I'm on YouTube. Just search, search my name and you can find all the stuff I'm doing over there. And if you want to send me an email, you certainly do that. Rob.Greenlee@gmail.com is a great way to get a hold of me if you would like to. And, and I'm on all the other social platforms. Platforms too, LinkedIn. So trying to keep up with everything.

So Rob, I was scolded by Mike. When you go to PowerPress and you go to the place where you enter the URL for your media file on the player, there is a little settings selector over on the right. Click that and there's an option in there to turn in— turn on cover art for So you can put cover art for your videos. There's a little list to turn that function on, so that's where that's hid that I was so confused about.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Anyway, well, I've been uploading my audio and video to the Blueberry platform for my new show, Podcast Tips with Rob Greenlee, and working great.

Got something coming for you that you're going to really be interested in. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

That's all. Tease me all over the place, Todd. There you go.

Oh, anyway, everyone, thanks for being here. Uh, we'll be back next Wednesday, I believe. I guess so. Yeah, that's not podcast movement yet, but it's fast approaching. Um, so we'll be here next week, and thanks everyone for being here. And Rob, thanks for, uh, hosting while I was, uh, on the other side of the planet.

So since I'm not going to Podcast Movement, um, in LA this year, it's the first time I'm missing. Maybe I can do a, do a live, uh, New Media Show and then I can bring you in somehow.

Oh well, potential. There's only gonna be two of us there, so I guess it all depends on booth traffic.

StreamYard has a guest app that you can get on your iPhone. Oh, you could call in.

I'll probably have my laptop, so laptop screen and a headphone or something. Okay. All right. Yeah, we'll figure it out. All right, everybody, thank you, thank you, thank you for being here. We'll see you next week. Everyone take care.

Okay, bye. Good night.

Good night.