Rob Greenlee and Dave Jackson discuss 2026 media shifts: video-first platforms like Flightcast replacing audio-only, AI voice cloning tools like ElevenLabs raising ethical questions, and new analytics dashboards consolidating podcast stats across Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. They predict AI agents will reshape how people discover content and which platforms survive.
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Well, back in 2024 or 2026. My God, what was I talking about? 2024. It just slipped out. But Thanks for being here on the first episode of the New Media Show in the new year. And the topic tonight I want to cover is the shocking change that we're seeing in the podcast industry and even the new media industry around video, AI, and the future of RSS podcasting. And this change really, really feels like an earthquake in podcasting right now. And what's funny is the YouTube creator world, it's just another day. So We are the ones that are feeling this earthquake and what's gonna happen to audio via RSS and the culture around that and then versus platform native platforms for video and this drive towards algorithmic first creation and we're gonna talk about that and then also Podfest Expo is coming up January 14th through the 18th down in Orlando and it's exciting and then the Podcast Hall of Fame is, is coming up too. But I have a terrific guest with me, and his name is Dave Jackson, and I'm sure many of you are, are familiar with Dave. So Dave, thanks for jumping on the show, Mr. School of Podcasting.
Rob, great to be here. Always fun to hang out with, uh, you know, podcasting's Jolly Green Giant, Rob Greenlee. Good guy and, uh, ready to have some fun conversations.
All right, well, awesome, awesome, Dave. But this topic, like I, I teased a little bit at the beginning, uh, I think, you know, and we just went through this, so in some ways this isn't a new thing, um, but this whole shift that we've been seeing in the podcasting space really started in full swing in, well, probably 2024 through 2025. And it just feels— I don't know if you're feeling it too, Dave, but, uh, it just feels like things are just so dramatically different now. Um, and I just wonder if you're getting that same feeling too.
Yeah, it just seems, you know, the fact that, uh, you know, TikTok is now a podcast and you, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, kudos to Todd Cochran, I'm, I'm in that no RSS, no podcast kind of thing, but it is shifting and everybody's talking about video. And it's, it's just kind of tough then, when we name everything a podcast to get the proper reports to find out, well, what really is growing and what's not working and things like that. So it's going to be fun as this shakes out in 2026 to see what lands and what doesn't. And, you know, I know everybody's excited about what's the number we're trying to get to, $2 point something billion in, in revenue.
And I think we're trying to actually get over that $2 billion mark. So, and I think we probably have by now. But really, I think that this past year, 2025, has really been a time when the industry has really debated the definitions of what a podcast is and trying to really fully embrace the audience aspect of this and how that's impacting the perceptions of being a creator and a podcaster, and is there a difference anymore? Creators are being forced now to play kind of two different games now, and it's the RSS side and then playing to algorithms. And I think that's one of the things that the YouTube creator community is constantly grappling with. I know I follow that very closely, and I see that they're shifting content creation over to creating content that plays to what the algorithm wants. But the question I keep coming back to is, is the algorithm may or may not be, and I want to get your thoughts on this, maybe a reflection of what the audience wants. So I don't know if, you know, is, is YouTube and Google playing a game with the algorithm to, to play up certain channels certain content, are they putting a thumb on the scale? Dave, what do you think might be going on here?
Yeah, the thing I see a lot, especially on the YouTube side, is the different people that, that live and breathe YouTube, they often advise people, go and find your competition on YouTube and then go in and find out what worked for them and then do your version of that. And I was like, well, okay, so Let's say there's a, you know, a group of 6 or 7 really popular YouTubers and they all talk about coffee. Okay, great. So they're all pouring coffee and grinding beans and all that stuff. Okay, so, you know, show number 1 does that and then show number 2 does it. I'm like, okay, number 1, every audience is different. Even though we're all talking coffee, there's always different variations. And to me, that just sounds like, uh, You know, if we all just end up imitating each other, it reminds me of my back— one of my backgrounds is music. In the '80s, there are a lot of bands that really, really— like, there was one band called Kingdom Come, and they sounded like a lot like Led Zeppelin. Like, it wasn't kind of a, hey, we are influenced by them. It's like, no, no, we're just going to blatantly rip them off. And what was interesting is when that band kind of almost had a little bit of success Well, then somebody ripped them off. And so eventually it's like a— for those of us that remember cassette decks, right, you'd make a mixtape and then somebody would make a copy of your mixtape and then somebody would make a copy of the copy. And every time you do that, you lose something every generation. So I get the idea. I mean, it makes sense. Hey, find out what works for them. You share an audience, do something similar, obviously with your own spin to it. But I also go, yeah, but if we all end up talking about the same thing, you know, there just comes a time when you're like, oh, another episode about this. I mean, here's where we record this, it's January, so there's a lot of like how to have your best year ever kind of episodes going out. And after a while, you're, you're going through your player on whatever you're using. I use Pocket Cast, and you're like, oh, here's a best year ever, here's another one maximizing 2026, here's and you're like, well, okay, I've kind of got my fill of that topic. Let's move on, shall we? So that's, that's one thing that I kind of go, hmm, I get the strategy. I'm not sure how well that's going to work.
And I do kind of wonder, you know, as we kind of move into 2026, that, you know, especially on the podcasting side, that we kind of feel like we're losing sight of what the, what the foundation of this medium and why we're doing podcasts and why podcasting became so popular during, you know, the last 4 or 5 years, especially. And then if we push towards this algorithmic, just like what you're talking about, Dave, of almost like a copycat type of a strategy. And I hear a lot of YouTube strategists talking about this is go into the algorithm, do a search in the area that you that you may have a little bit of knowledge about and try and find topics in there that have sparked a lot of views, right? And like you said, copy that and replicate it, but obviously you need to make it better somehow, or you need to do something slightly different so it's not a complete ripoff. But that, I fear that is gonna spill over into podcasting. Where if you look at the top of the funnel, if more and more creators are coming into this medium as video creators primarily, they're gonna get sucked into that approach, right? Where they're not creating content based on a passion, they're creating content based on trying to make money and try and get as many views. And that's gonna take people down a very different path in what they're doing with creating any content. And that's gonna impact podcasting. I don't know, what's your thoughts on that?
Well, we've seen it. Uh, you know, it's one of those things, uh, I don't remember when John Lee Dumas started, but John Lee Dumas came out.
He, he wasn't the first, like 2010 or something like that.
Yeah, he wasn't the first show to have a daily show, but he was one of the first for kind of entrepreneurs, and it was Entrepreneur on Fire, and he had tremendous success, and he, he really thought out his show, and it was kind of different at the time, and everybody was talking about it, and it just— he just blew up. And so everybody thought, all I got to do, I'm going to do a show called, you know, Ice Hockey on Fire, and I'm going to ask the same questions and I'm going to get people. And I mean, I, I had people that literally stole his show. If we go back again, it wasn't being influenced. No, no, they stole his show. The same questions, they just called it Librarians on Fire or whatever it was, right?
Right.
And we ended up having John on a show. I used to do a show with Ray Ortega and Daniel J. Lewis called The John Lee Dumas effect, because people were like, podcasting doesn't work. This, you know, these people are making money, these people, but we're doing exactly what he's doing and we're getting nothing. And I'm like, yeah, because you're a copy of a copy of a copy. And also, you know, John is a very— like, nobody else is John Lee Dumas. And if you meet John, that's not a persona. He is stoked to meet you, man. And that's, you know He's kind of a high-energy guy. And so that was part of it too. And, you know, there were a lot of people, I'm sure, if we go back to the '60s and '70s that grew their hair long and put on some boots and like, we're going to be just like the Beatles. And I'm like, no, you're not. So, um, we have seen that before where people have like, oh, we're just going to do what everybody else is doing and expect it to work. And I'm like, well, it might. But, you know, there's a little magic in that bottle that maybe you don't have, and you got to find your own magic.
And I think it is also true that, um, podcasting— for putting this spectrum on the podcasting space, um, copycat typically hasn't worked that well. Um, but I, I keep hearing about, you know, that it works sometimes on the, on the YouTube world, and, and it's like There is fundamentally something different here, and I think there's going to be people that are going to do this because their primary motivation is views and making money, right? Those are the two things that are driving this, and the algorithm is being put out there as the way to get there, right? So we can blow up your— you know, it doesn't matter anymore how many subscribers you have to your channel. It doesn't matter anything. Everything is judged on each individual episode, and, and the algorithm either likes it or it doesn't. You know, if the algorithm sees that it has good engagement with the, with the artwork and they're clicking in to watch the show, and how long are they actually watching the show is the metric that YouTube cares about, because then they're gonna, gonna be able to deliver as many ads as they can in each of those content. But if If your show is enticing with thumbnails and enticing even with the titles, but yet when they start playing the show, they drop out after 10 seconds. Guess what? They're not going to get a financial benefit out of featuring your show.
Yeah, it's, it's tricky. And any time in any medium where somebody goes, hey, how can I do the least amount of work to make the most amount of money? Now, it makes sense. Who doesn't want to do that? But yet when you hear people that have made it in any kind of entertainment, they always have that story about, you know, just the grit to push through. Um, today I was watching an interview with Adam Sandler, and you just hear how he just bombed for a very long time before his audience found him. And I think if he was in the, like, I'm doing this for money, after about the, you know, 7th time, he just you know, stood up and told jokes to silence, he just would have said, okay, I'm done with this, I'm out of here. And so that— I've never been a fan of that. And in fact, if somebody ever came up to me and said that, I'd be like, please don't start a podcast because it's just not— it's just not going to work. I also wonder sometimes when you do have those people that are like, you can make money from day one, because those people then attract those people that like, oh good, because I want to do the least amount of work and make the most amount of money. And then they spend their hard-earned money, 3 easy payments, you know, etc. And then they find out, oh, well, you're going to make, you know, $0.005 per download. And so let's see, you got, you know, 500 downloads, so you made $2.50. See, you're making money from day one. Well, that's, that's the tricky part.
Well, that's the experience of most people that are taking advantage, especially at the beginning of their shows. Yeah. The programmatic platforms, the ones that are automatic sales and injection type of technology platforms that are very popular now. And increasingly I'm hearing that creators are making significant money off of programmatic advertising now. It depends on the size of the audience, right? So if you're a brand new podcaster and have no audience, it's great to have programmatic ads, but I'm increasingly feeling, and I felt this way actually for many years, that you should never run a pre-roll ad.
I'm with you on that. Amen, brother. The first thing you should hear is you.
Yeah.
And I listen to it.
Early mid-roll is my— yeah, that's—
I mean, if you have to do it, the phone's in the pocket, it's in the car holder. There we go. But yeah, I was auditing a show this week and I heard the pre-roll and I was like, okay, well, it's a pre-roll. And then a second one came on and I was like, oh, that's not my best first impression. And so I told the person, I said, if I was not listening to this because I had to, I go, I would have stopped right there. I would have just said, you're not in any kind of hurry to talk to me, and so you're wasting my time. And none of the ads were really, you know, they weren't bad. It's the typical stuff, you know. And I just went, you know, I'm 2 minutes in here, I haven't heard your voice yet. So that's— I just worry that we're, we're going down the road of banner ads. For those of us that remember banner ads on website, used to be you can make decent amounts of money because you were— it was almost like a billboard. You were renting time on a space. And then by '95, that switched to CPM. And then what also happened is back in the, you know, late '90s, not everybody had a website until everybody did. And then kind of like now where there's so many, which is great that we have the technology that people can do dynamic content. But, you know, when you have the— what's the company that's doing the 3,000 episodes a week? Something. Oh, I always forget them. I should know them. But it's— they're doing 3,000 AI.
It's Inception AI or something.
Yes, there we go. Inception Point, maybe.
Yeah, something like that.
Something like that. And it sounds to me like they'll take $2 CPM all day long.
And so, you know, they've got 3,000 podcasts, right, that are delivering 10 episodes versus 2 podcasts delivering hundreds of episodes. Yes.
So that makes me worried just for my friends that are feeding their kids. With CPM-based ad. Like you said, if you've got the audience, there are some people that are making some bank. But now they're— and I listen to a few, and they're— they used to be short shows, and now they're a little longer.
Why?
Because now I can have 2 ad breaks. And those ad breaks used to have 1 ad, and now they have 2, and in some cases 3. And I was like, oh, this is not, you know, as a signal, that's not a good one in my book. And I'm like, I was watching the Hallmark Channel, uh, over Christmas. It's a love-hate relationship with me because what I love is it's always the same movie, and now it's even with the same actors. They just really just changed the title of it. But I was watching it, I'm like, this is a horrible experience. So I busted out my phone and started the stopwatch, and at one point we watched 7 minutes of movie and then 4 minutes of ads, and I was like, that's almost 50%. And I watched 30 minutes of it and it was 32% ads. And so one of those ads was for Hallmark Plus. And so I called them up because I'm a curious guy about this stuff. I go, hey, just for the record, I can see I can pay my $7 a month. I go, but does that have ads in it? I go, I realize I can get access to the whole back catalog, but do I get rid of the ads? And they said, yes, you do, except for the occasional cross-promotion. And I was like, well, that's the YouTube strategy. That's not new. Uh, YouTube has the annoy you until they pay me, uh, strategy. And I am a paid YouTube subscriber because I couldn't handle the ads anymore. And if I really liked Hallmark movies, I would probably be dishing out the money. And I was just— it's just on me, like halfway through the movie, like they go to ads and just never come back. And I was like, okay. And then you're— I was watching it live, which was another thing I was kicking myself for, but 32% is too many ads. 30% is roughly radio.
Well, it is, isn't it? I was going to make the comment, we are becoming radio. And it's interesting, Harold Gilchrist writes here, if I hear a pre-roll in 2026, I'm done. So maybe we've reached a threshold, Dave. I think the research has been coming back for many years saying that audiences are becoming a little less tolerant of over-insertion of advertising in podcasting and people are gonna drop out.
Yeah, that's where like Dan Granger over at Oxford Road was kind of putting out, hey, let's cap that at like 10%.
Kinda slow down on the, you know.
What drives me nuts is, you know, Sounds Profitable and Oxford Road, they have reports after report of like, hey, we have more engagement, we have more trust, We have like all, all things point to podcasting is great. And I'm like, then why is the price going down? That, that drives me bonkers. Like we should be having less and charging more and we save the experience and you can still feed your kids. And I—
it is interesting, isn't it, Dave, that, that as we've moved down this path, I also think that as we have more ads in each of the shows, the value of them goes down. So yeah, so I think that Dan Grainger from Oxford Road talks about this as well, is that, is that he only values a certain couple of insertion points in a, in a show, right? And, and, you know, once you get past— I think he said at one point, I think it was like 6 ads, um, per hour of content— the, the returns fall off like a rock. You know, off of a cliff. I mean, they, they just drop, drop dramatically. So if you're in the second, um, mid-roll ad insertion break and you're the, the second ad in or the third ad in, or puts you in the, the range of the post-roll, which is not much is going on, uh, with that, that endorsement. So it's not going to bring in, you know, I think the, the ROI really happens out of I think early mid-roll breaks, whether it's host reads or programmatic.
Well, I know if I'm listening to a show that consistently has post-roll, I listen in Pocket Casts partly for this feature. I can tell it to start at a certain point so I can adjust the start time to, you know, a minute and a half or whatever. And likewise, I can say skip the last 3 minutes because I know what's coming, you know, and I'm just— so we do have some tools to do that. Yeah, Renee says 6 ads. No. Yeah, I agree, absolutely. So we'll see what happens there. Um, do you think— my, my thought is I think we're going to see more people do kind of a premium show, either if it's ad-free or just— and maybe, you know, $3, $5, whatever, something that's— because when you start charging $20, unless you're really, really niche, there is that voice that's going to go in your head and go, yeah, but isn't Netflix $16 a month? You know, charging more than Netflix. So that's going to be the thing. But I just wonder if, as we were talking about, as people just get tired of like, oh, another ad that they'll just, you know, Like me with YouTube, I was like, okay, enough is enough. Take my money. Just get these ads out of here. I just don't want to put my audience through that first experience of like, oh, this is horrible to have to sit through this. So I guess—
and advertising has always been based on this concept of annoyance, right? That's the whole point of it, right, is to annoy people. But the problem, you know, what we're seeing happen now is that we're annoying audiences so much that they're going to value their time and they're Maybe what the real goal is to get them to be subscribers, Dave, because that's the path that we're pushing people. Yeah, increasingly in the ad market, I've felt this way for many years, Dave, that I just— the whole advertising market just doesn't feel right, if you know what I mean. I mean, it doesn't feel aligned with what people want, and it does make me wonder what the fallback from that. But we're also seeing pushback on paying premium subscriptions too, because people are saturated with subscriptions now.
Yeah, I, uh, I'm a cheapskate, so I have, uh, right now I think I have Netscape— Netscape? Wow, how old am I?
Wait, wait a minute.
Netflix. Netflix. But I canceled my Hulu. Like, I will have one at a time because I kept finding myself where I was watching one show on a platform. So like on Hulu, I just, I just binge the whole Big Bang Theory and I'm done with that there. And I, and when I start going, maybe I could, and you spend like 5 minutes and you can't find something to watch, that's when I'm like, hey, it's time to go to HBO, it's time to go to Apple. So I just have one, and when I run out of stuff to watch, because I just looked at my bill like, okay, here's 15, here's 18, here's 20 do. And after a while, you're like, what am I paying $22 for? Oh, so I can watch, you know, whatever, this one show. I'm like, well, it'll still be there. And it's the one thing that kind of helped inform that was we don't have the water cooler talk that we used to do. I remember, you know, again, in the '90s, getting to work and everybody would come in and everybody's getting their coffee and they're all talking about Howard Stern and what he said this morning. And aside from the Super Bowl and maybe a couple other things, maybe the Olympics as they come up here, there aren't too many things that everybody watches at the same time.
Yeah.
And so I was like, well, you know, I don't have— and if somebody starts talking about Stranger Things, I'm just gonna go, no, no, I haven't, haven't finished it yet. Don't— no spoilers, please. You know, so I think you're right. It's as much as we want to kind of go Hey, you know, just give me $3, $5 a month, whatever. But, you know, $5 for this podcast, $3 for that, $2 for that. After a while, you're like, wow, I'm spending $32 on podcasts. They might start thinning the herd.
So, you know, you know, we have a problem when there's paid apps out there that help you keep track of all of your subscriptions and give you the option with one little tap of the screen to unsubscribe. Yeah, but I think you have to log into all of them inside of that app though. That's the thing, you know.
Yeah, I just heard about it. I heard James talk about it. I have yet to go over and kick the tires and see because I'm just— it just— everything about it just goes, that's a— that smells illegal, you know what I mean? Like, to cut the ads out of somebody else's material and then resell it.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. As far as the, the The ad blocker thing. Yeah, the ad blocker thing where they're actually taking the content, stripping out the ads, and then selling access to them to the ad-free version. Right, right. And, and, uh, I think we were both talking before we did the show how, um, it seems how illegal that is. Those folks are going to get sued into oblivion if they keep doing this.
Yeah, one would think so. I, I saw— I went to their site and I saw where they're like we've given back X amount of money to podcasters. And I'm like, through what, the United Podcast Fund that I'm not aware of or what? It's just like, I never heard of that. So yeah, that's going to be one. And I heard in James today over at podnews.net, he said he had reached out for comment and shockingly their email bounced.
And he's like, yeah, yeah.
We shall see.
I can't imagine that they want any community feedback with a platform like that. Yeah. So we shall see. But it does feel like we're moving into an era where video is seen as the default place to start now. And I think that that's somewhat of a threat for podcasting. Um, to, to kind of really kind of summarize it, um, because it changes the perception, because the industry of podcasting really has not over the last 10 years really embraced this concept of an RSS-based video podcast, right? Since the early days of podcasting, I mean, they tried, it's just too expensive. Yeah. And well, There's been a lot of talk about trying to use streaming technology, HLS, trying to deliver the content to maybe cut that cost down a little bit. Yeah. Throttle that content based on the device's speed of its internet connection. But I think that's gonna be slow sledding. And we haven't seen Apple step up to the plate and say, you know, we're going to make it easy to find video podcasts in the catalog. And yeah, and Apple has the keys to this. So if we want to hold on to video podcasting by its strict definition and not give it completely over to YouTube to change the definition of what a video podcast is, then there's got to be some moves in the industry to shift it back. Um, I don't know, Dave, do you think it's too late to shift it back?
Maybe because it's just— I mean, Spotify, as much as they love to say, oh, look at the billions of people that are watching video on Spotify, I don't know who these people are because there's none of my friends. And I uploaded about 3 months worth of content as a video podcast on Spotify. I have probably 12 episodes, and total I have maybe 15, of which 13 are probably me. So now that's a podcast about podcasting, so it's kind of niche, but I would think I would get, you know, maybe more. Or maybe they just know that I'm not a fan of Spotify, so they, they squelched all my content. I don't know. But it's, um, for me, if somebody says, hey, have you seen that gorilla on a, you know, bike? I'm going right to YouTube. I mean, that's when somebody says watch something, that's where I go. And The whole, you know, different streaming, whatever it is— HL—
what is it?
HLS? Is that—
yeah, HLS. Yeah.
The only reason I kind of go— I kind of like— my hair starts to stand up. That's really a feature for the audience? No, not really. For the podcaster? No, not really. It'd probably be more for the advertiser because we could—
well, and that's what a lot of this stuff is really fundamentally what it's all about. I mean, yeah, the companies, the bigger companies are in this medium know that these advertisers would love to run video ads, but the infrastructure in this industry really isn't there yet to support it. Now, the, the dynamic ad insertion of video ads into cable television has been there for many years, Yeah, um, and, and if we shift to HLS or we shift to a streaming delivery of video, it's going to be a lot easier to integrate in with the existing infrastructure that has already been created for cable television streaming of ads. So, you know, I think that's really where we're pushing towards. But, but you see this weird stuff going on with Netflix, and I think I have to really back up and I think about what happened with, um, Joe Rogan, right, where he decided to, to do this deal with Spotify, right, and take all of his content over there and make it exclusive. Because that's exactly what's happening with Netflix, right? The only deals that they're doing are exclusive deals, and the content creator has to take his content out of YouTube, right, or not publish anything new in there. And I think that's going to blow back on them, um, You know, and they're gonna wind up saying, oh, I'm not gonna renew that deal. I had to give up too much revenue.
Yeah, and I know James had mentioned that he had used some tool using the backend of Netflix, their API, and he could see how many views, you know, people were getting on Netflix. And he said his show, the weekly one, Pod News Weekly Review, was bigger like 20% of the time, 20% of that audience, his show is bigger. And I think he gets, I think he said 26,000 downloads a month. And so we think if you're on Netflix, there's, you know, 8 billion people using it. And I'm like, well, there's also a lot of content on Netflix. Now, if there were only 6 shows to watch, sure. But, uh, you know, it's, it's one of those things where I just think exclusive contracts and it— look, I'm sure these people are getting paid well, As did Joe Rogan. So yeah, but I just think it's short-sighted because, okay, let's say you get a 3-year deal. At the end of 3 years, your audience has dwindled and you still have, you know, that diehard people that are watching you on Netflix. But now you're not starting from scratch. But I mean, if you look at, um, Ask a Ninja was a show that was really popular in the very early days of podcasting, and they came back in 2025 Yeah, and I expected it to just— everybody— and it was like a lot of people like, ask a who? Ask a what? I'm like, no, it's Ask a Ninja. You gotta— and so you, you've kind of lost some of your momentum, you know. It's— it drives me nuts with the NFL. Even this weekend, it's, you know, when do you play football? Sunday. Oh, except during the playoffs when it's on Saturday. And then some of it's on Amazon now, some of it's on— it's— they're making it very hard to consume their content.
Yeah.
And I think in the long run, that's going to hurt them because it just used to be, oh, I watch football on Sunday, it's on Fox, it's on CBS. And now it's like you go and you're like, wait, where's, where's, where's the stuff? And then you got to, you know, pull up your, your, you know, some sort of thing to figure out. You ask the woman at the tube or your phone, like, where can I watch the NFL?
Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to know sometimes where to get the content that you want to get, you know, and there's markets that get blacked out. I mean, I know that happens a lot with the NFL and stuff like that, but You know, at the end of the day, um, what's going on with Netflix is just an experiment. Um, yeah, and I'm not sure, you know, I know James Cridland keeps saying that it's, it's the play towards cheap TV. It's a way to cut down on your, your, your production costs to create content that maybe they're hoping will gravitate towards a subscription platform.
I did I did see where some of those shows, when I was in Netflix, it was like coming soon. So they were getting some promotion. But, and I was like, well, that's an inter— you know, at least they're getting some promotion. I know some people have joined different platforms expecting the platform to help promote you, and then they don't. So I was like, well, at least Netflix is holding up their end of the bargain here. We'll see how I'm with you. I think it's an experiment, um, because they're, they're busy battling YouTube right now, you know. I'm not sure how much they're gonna like, oh, let's, let's make sure all these podcasters are happy. They're trying to get the latest movies and the, you know, the big comedians and everybody else to, uh, pay attention.
Yeah. Are any of these folks going to really try and compete against YouTube is my question, because right, right now they're They're playing at the edges. Uh, I think Spotify is doing the same thing as well as Netflix, and they're not going all in on it. If they were going all in on it, they would try and become more like YouTube. But the question is, can anybody at this point compete with YouTube directly? Yeah, do they all have to be a little bit different and play it safe?
Well, and I, I just can't imagine what the infrastructure is behind YouTube because for every video you see, you know, there's however many that have to get deleted and removed because somebody's uploading the wrong stuff or whatever. And so that makes it hard. You can't just go, hey everybody, upload it to Netflix. Now they're like, whoa, wait, you know, I think there's always these insane stats. You know, there, there are 500,000 YouTube videos uploaded every 10 seconds or something ridiculous like that.
Yeah.
And, but it's a lot, and, you know, you've got to have the team to be able to handle that. So, but YouTube is something that's— I thought it was interesting. I was listening to a show called, uh, The No Agenda Show with Adam Curry and John Stavorek, and they, you know, the story has come out now about the fraud in— where is it— with all the, the child daycare centers that are, um Is that Minneapolis?
No. Yeah, the Twin Cities in Minneapolis.
And there was all this fraud going on, and they pointed out, they're like, this hit the news like 10 years ago. This is not a new thing. And they were playing all these clips. But what broke the story? A YouTuber. Why? Because you can share that.
Nick Shirley, he's the one that, uh, yeah, yeah, he's been bouncing around the, the country and even down in South America doing content for a few years now.
Well, and that's the difference. 10 years ago, if CNN or anybody else said that, there really wasn't that way for people— like, if you didn't see that, you know, obviously you could record it on your VCR or whatever. But the fact now that people can see it and share it, you can kind of start to get that, that viral thing going on. So that's the one thing I think that YouTube definitely has to a certain extent over audio podcast is that it's easy to share. You, you know, most of the time, especially if it's a short or a reel, you get right to the point. You don't have to fast forward and things like that.
So, um, and I think this whole thing with, uh, Nick Shirley and this whole thing is it really speaks to the, the influence and the impact that YouTube has in our culture and our society, because all these big major media outlets, they all knew what was going on to some degree., but they didn't report on it, right? Um, that's starting to come out too. And now we're starting to see unrest start to break out in, in the, in the Twin Cities over this whole thing with ICE and things like that. Not to take this show into politics, but right, it's just an example of what I'm talking about, is that the influence of new media, which is— I, I include— I mean, I don't know how new YouTube is. YouTube has been around as long as podcasting. You know, this concept of new media is That's an interesting question too. Well, I, I posed it with Todd on this show in the early years. It's like, well, when do we drop the name, the new part?
Well, did you see the clip from— see, there's a new host to the CBS Evening News, and he came on and basically said, hey, like, we know you don't trust us and you don't believe that. And, and, and then he's like, this is what we're gonna do. And it was funny because it reminded me, I always love when you see an athlete go, I would love to stay here, it's not about the money, it's not about the money, but I just, we're gonna go over here. And then you find out later, oh, it was just about the money. And so when they're like, we're gonna do this and this and that, I'm like, these are all the things we are not doing that you should be, that YouTubers are. So yeah, it's, again, it's, uh, yes, it's new media, but We go back to trust and, uh, you know, what's 2026 gonna bring?
Because there's a new, new trusted media now. Yeah, right. Versus what we had before. My initial reaction when I saw that, that video clip that you're talking about, about the mainstream media host coming out and saying you don't trust us— yeah, I thought for sure it was an AI video.
So, well, that's it.
There's—
how do you know, right? I see in a way AI has broken my habit of looking at Facebook Shorts because I go over, I have a group on Facebook, and so while I'm there I'm like, oh look, it's, it's a killer shark doing something, and I'll click on it. I've just quit clicking on those because somewhere I clicked on an AI video that had a gorilla in a zoo, in quotation marks here, so it keeps feeding me these gorilla AI movies, and I'm just like, yeah, that's— I don't think there's a baby sitting next to a silverback, you know, gorilla playing with cups. I'm like, I'm pretty sure that one's fake, and they're all fake. And I'm just like, well, okay, I used to waste a lot of time looking at those. I've just given up. So that is something that, that has me worried with, um, you know, with the, the invention, I guess, of these the technology of people just making, you know, an AI show without listening to it and not really caring and just putting it out there. So that's going to be another fun trend to see because the other thing I didn't think about was, you know, if you think you're Apple or any, you know, directory, that's more storage. And when you're making 3,000 episodes a week, that could add up, even though an MP3 file in the in the actual big picture isn't that big, but you know, you get a couple million of those, that's going to start making a dent. And if other people go, oh well, they're doing it— that's why I'm going to be really interested to see if this kind of AI-generated thousands of episodes a week actually turns out to be profitable. That's going to be the worst news we've ever heard, because people like, wait, what, it worked? And off they go to, you know, fire up their servers. So we shall see.
Yeah, I did a call with Janine Wright, who's the CEO of that company, and, and asked her a lot of these questions because she came out with some, some, you know, some press relations that was kind of the dumbest thing I've ever seen a CEO do.
It's always great to insult your potential customers.
Exactly. And frankly, I told her that. I said, you know, the way you came out with the announcement of this probably wasn't the way I would have done it. So, you know, right, saying that you're— but she was under pressure by investors to make a big splash, right, into— well, she did rattle the cages, and, uh, she was successful at that. But she also said that, um, she can turn around a, a podcast in about 5 minutes, you know, a whole new podcast, and get it out Now, I think there's maybe a little lag time in getting it listed in like Apple and some of these platforms. But, but I think being able to turn around an episode around a breaking news story and, and it's— I also got a sense from her is that it's content that humans probably would not create in most cases because it's very single, like, like she has podcasts that are like the title of the podcast is like one word, like like basket weaving or something like that. It's all keyword-focused, right?
It's not—
it's a different kind of content. And that's the way I started to think about it as I thought about it more, was it's not like they're creating shows like this where it's a conversation show, though they could do that, right, with AI cloning and capabilities of that. But that's generally not what they're doing. So maybe it's It's still, you know, this term AI slop, it's, it's still relevant to some degree that it's kind of cluttering the pathways here and filling up these catalogs. And there's pushback on this. Some of the catalogs are saying, oh, I'm going to delete all this stuff that I can't verify is human. So we're creating this tension between human content and AI content while at the same time so much of the content now that's being published and even consumed out there is now AI, and a lot of people don't even know it.
Yeah. Or it's like, for me, AI, I'm not a big fan of having AI create the content. I like having AI polish the content, right? Where I can go in and say, hey, I do this for a newsletter I write. I'm like, hey, I'm writing a newsletter for podcasters. I wrote a blurb about this. Here it is. And I'll just go make it better. And it does, and it keeps my voice. And I was like, that to me, it's an assistant. I don't want to— I like that version better than, hey, AI, write me something and I'll go through and fix it to make sure you didn't say something stupid. I'd rather have it polish mine. I like the one comment, since we were talking about video, from LinkedIn. They said, it's interesting that MTV closes and Spotify adds full-length music videos. Um, that's somebody, uh, Adam Curry once said, he goes, you know, video's so great, why did MTV go off the air? I was like, because that was the epitome of, uh, it was, yeah, and it's also a great example of copying, of they went to cheap video, right? All those reality shows took nothing to create, and then at the end of it, all they did— I don't know if you ever saw the show Ridiculousness. It's, uh, some guy uh, showing really crazy YouTube clips. So they basically just took YouTube and put it on MTV and ran it almost non-stop. Every time I turned on MTV, it's like, oh look, it's Ridiculousness. And it was like, okay. And it was, you know, people, you know, falling off their bike or whatever, you know, was nothing. It's basically America's Funniest Home Videos where, hey, let's watch dad get, you know, hitting the jewels with a, you know, wiffle ball bat or whatever. And it's like, okay, really? This is, this is what we're doing now on MTV?
So Oh yeah, back in that era, that was the thing, right? It was the prank, prank video shows, or the, or the— oh, Jackass was, you know, funny home video, um, series and stuff like that, which really was kind of a precursor for what we're seeing oftentimes on TikTok and some of these platforms now. Yeah, that's where it started.
What do you think the, the risk of AI is? You know, when you think about all this AI coming in?
Yeah, I think that the risk of AI is where people are too dependent on it to create the content and to really manage it and do everything for it. I mean, I think a couple of years ago I was like thinking, well, that's what the future looks like. And but I'm increasingly starting to understand the AI stuff and maybe it's just not good enough yet, but it's, it's rot— it's fraught with problems. It's just not— it— I spend more time correcting what it does than I do using it to make something more compelling. And so that's, that's the, that's the rub of it right now, is that it's just not as good as everybody thinks it is in creating content. Now granted, I'm talking about, you know, scripts and outlines and stuff like that. I'm not necessarily talking about what's going on with video. I think what's going on with video is gonna, you know, break us all of sorts, because it is becoming very compelling video, and it's only going to get better from here. So where it's at right now is pretty darn good, um, at some of the leading platforms.
Yeah, well, yeah, every time I see something, I now have to kind of go, oh wait, is this— is that real? Yeah, because you'll see things in the— the best ones aren't the gorilla and the baby, because that's like, well, duh. It's the ones that you're like— like, I just saw, again, without turning this into a political show, but there was, uh, some— a shooting in Minneapolis today. And, uh, I was like, wait a minute, I go, is this AI? And then I went and I saw 3 different cameras, right? Yeah, 3 different camera angles. And I was like, oh, that's real. I'm like, that really happened. But I had to— my first reaction was, I was like, well, that's horrible. And I was like, oh wait, hold on, Is it real? And then I was like, oh, I think it is. So that's going to be the tricky part, and I'll be really interested to see when, you know, voting and stuff like that and just, just shaping public opinion, you know, because there are going to be a lot of people that are going to get fooled and they won't know that it's fake.
So I think that's, that's probably one of the biggest threats that I see in the world today is this whole concept of trust, right? It's the— what can we trust? I mean, we just saw what, what potentially happened in Minnesota with the daycares and all the stuff like that that really makes the government look really, really bad, um, and its ability to control its spending and, you know, keeping out fraud and all this kind of stuff. And that's just another brick out of the wall, right, of of all of our trust of the institutions and the society that we have in general. And then you throw into the mix AI, and we just get into this, you know, the spiral. I hope it doesn't get worse than this, where people just don't trust anything anymore. And I think that's a very— that's a threat to our very— the fabric of our society.
Yeah, I'm with you on that. When, uh, and that's why I always try if I state an opinion, I'm like, based on what I read or based on who I saw or what, like, like, here, here's where I'm coming from. And so that they can see why I base my opinion on this. Yeah, just so— and I'm also always wide open to go, oh, I missed this piece of the puzzle and I've now changed my mind to something else or something, because people need to know I think I'll be interested to see if the media changes at all, because right now the media tells us what to think. And what I get from podcasts, although the one I used to listen to is kind of doing what mainstream media is— tell me the facts and let me figure out if it's good or bad— instead of like, these guys are idiots, these guys are great. Like, no, no, no, tell me what happened— the who, what, when, where, and why.
What's the facts? What's the truth about what— I mean, I think at the end of the day, that's what we're all looking for. We're looking for it from our leaders, our government, our media, and more oftentimes than not, we're not finding it. And, and we're constantly being shown that they're hypocrites or they're lying or whatever, and eventually nobody's going to trust anything that anybody says, right? Because we all have an agenda, you know. I know That's good.
Todd Cochran's— everybody has an agenda, Rob.
Everybody has an idea. So even I do, Rob. Yeah, right. And, and that was always kind of a, a subtext to all this. But having agenda is something quite different than just lying to people, right? Telling false things. I mean, agenda is like self-interest, or it's, it's trying to drive your point, or those kind of things, which isn't necessarily fundamentally bad, but It's, um, but it still erodes at the same wall of stability.
Yeah, but I, I think at least right now that's where podcasters are to a certain extent outshining the mainstream media, right? We've got the trust. And, um, I've seen some guys on YouTube that actually do this thing that we used to call journalism.
Yeah, well, you know, Shirley is an example of it, right? Yeah. And, you know, Ralph has a good point here in this comment. He says AI will never be able to share the real human journey, the pain, the stories, the challenges, and the struggles. That is what people really are seeking, and content creators need to keep that in mind. And I agree 100% with that, Ralph. I mean, I think that AI is really poor at doing all those things. So It's good at regurgitating stuff, but it's not really good at, uh, really good compelling stories that are built on human experience. Yeah, yeah.
So as we said at the beginning of the show, 2026 is going to be fun to watch. Yeah.
And then see what's left for 2027. Yeah. And it— and really, in a lot of ways, what's interesting about this, Dave, too, is that a lot of what we're seeing with video and podcasts and all this stuff is we're increasingly learning what the audience expectation is to some degree, right? And what they're watching and what they're not watching. Now, this conversation about AI content kind of confuses that because I don't know that we know for definite what type of AI content audiences want and what kind of content human content that the audiences want and what that actually looks like. I think 2026 may give us a better glimpse into what that looks like.
Yeah, I always— to me, I think the current audience, if they know it's AI, obviously depending on the topic, but I can see where a lot of people are like, I don't want it. I'm used to hearing stuff from a human. What I worry about is their children's children, you know what I mean? Like, when, when people have grown up where the only thing they saw was AI, they're not gonna know, well, that guy's not a real human. They're just gonna be like, oh, that's, that's the thing that gives me the news. So I always, I always kind of back off a bit. I'm like, you know what, it may not be a big deal here, but if this continues and the next, you know, generation grows up with that, and then their kids grow up with what they grew up with, I'm like Hmm, but I mean, I agree with Ralph. I like— I want the humans to win. I don't want the robots to win. Yeah, it just makes me wonder what's going to happen.
So I guess we'll see. Yeah, I do wonder what's next here. What's the blowback from all this? What are we going to push towards as we look to the future? You know, this whole thing that happened with Nick Shirley is an example of maybe where things are, are going with the next generation. That the next generation, um, I mean, he's like 23 years old or something like that, and he blew up like this. Um, it's remarkable. And I, I guess it is a little bit of a sign of what the next generation may be starting to do, which is kind of, kind of rebel against the establishment. And we're seeing, you know, My worry is that it gets out of hand. Yeah. So, and where does it go from there? And Ralph has another comment in here. Um, Ralph, uh, Estef, uh, in the end, it's all about building relationships with your audience. AI can't do that. Only you can do that. That is the secret sauce to success. Though, Ralph, I would say that some of the things that I've seen with the AI capabilities, um, that may or may not, uh, play out that way.
Well, yeah, there, there are people marrying their AI, so yeah, right. It's, it's, uh, but I, um, Joe Pulizzi, uh, used to run Content Marketing World, something, some big content marketing thing. He's, uh, Content Inc. is his book. And he kind of came out and said, we got about 3, 3 years to just build as many human connections as you can before, uh, and this kind of already exists where I think it's the Washington Post or the Washington, um, what's the other one, um, anyway, the New York Times or the Washington Post or yeah, maybe it's the Washington Post, maybe the Washington Post where you can go in and say give me a 10-minute podcast about the pork industry, and let's let Julie read it this time. And it will give you Julie reading an 8-minute podcast about, you know, the pork industry. The, the, the article I read was like, the problem is it's hallucinating. And so they went to the Washington Post and said, hey, you're, you're kind of putting out fake news And their answer was, yeah, well, we're working on it.
It's a parody, Dave. I mean, it's like, you know, you know, it's hopefully it's humorous. Yeah.
So I was like, I thought that was going to be coming in 3 years. And I'm like, oh, it's here. It's bad, but it's here. And I went, well, that makes me nervous.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's no end to the, the ridiculousness of content that's out there. You know, I know that You keep talking about keeping content entertaining. Can an AI be entertaining?
There was the one— remember that they got sued? There was somebody that took all of George Carlin's monologues and then had an AI version. And George Carlin's account came out and said, you guys can't do that because— and it was— it wasn't like laugh out loud funny, but it was kind of like, I could see George saying that. It was kind of in the vibe of George. And I was like, but, you know, that's going to be— when an AI tool makes me laugh, that's what's going to be interesting, because usually part of comedy is going past a line that makes people comfortable. Like, like Dave Chappelle is a master. Uncomfortable, you mean? Uncomfortable.
Yes.
Thank you. But Dave Chappelle is the master of this. He will drag you across the line Yeah, and then get you to agree with it, and then he'll— there'll be a gotcha where you're like, you know what, that's not a bad point, and then he'll go, and that's why— and you're like, oh wait a minute, I'm on the other side of the line, you know. So I, I don't know that AI is that clever at this point to do it, but I guess we'll find out.
Well, I know that Grok has a, a, uh, a ridiculous mode or something like that, or yeah. Where it'll totally play with you, or evil mode. I think it has an evil mode too, right? Where it will, you know, or I one time played with their conspiracy mode. Oh nice. They have a conspiracy mode too. So you ask it, you know, something about the flat earth or something like that, and it'll go into this whole diatribe of, you know, all of the evidence that exists for the flat earth believers out there, you know, and— or aliens or that kind of— I mean, you can totally go down the rabbit hole on this stuff. And, and I think it's— and it is a little entertaining, though it does get a little old after, after a couple minutes, right? Because it gets into their, their ridiculous region of content.
Yeah, after a while you're like, okay, that was cute for the first 10 minutes.
Yeah, right.
Let's go back to reality now.
Yeah, can't take it anymore, right? Yeah, totally, totally. So yeah, um, yeah, I just, you know, it's going to be entertaining at the very least here. Um, it looks like, uh, Harold Gilchrist writes another comment in here, and he writes, it's still very early. Many podcasters and creators will use AI at this point to enhance their content, which I know that's what you said, Dave, too. The same for podcasts to decide what they want to listen to, or podcast listeners, I guess, to decide what they want to listen to. And at the end of the day, that's what will drive all this. And, you know, I think as we've seen with the Inception AI platform, whatever, is that it doesn't take much listeners to give them their rate of return because they're flooding the zone with content, right? So it's not a matter of trying to build a lot of audience to one show or two shows. It's about building a small amount of audience to thousands of shows, right?
Well, and I know a lot of people talk about YouTube and the algorithm, and that's definitely part of it. You have to know— I always say, when you say, I want to be a YouTuber, okay, what you're really saying is, I need to go learn how to, you know, get my stuff in the algorithm. And they always say, yeah, but audio doesn't have that. And I always push back on that and say, my family and friends recommend things all the time. My brother's great at picking movies for me. He's like, oh, I saw this thing, it's dark humor, you're gonna love it. And I will instantly go watch it. I'm like, man, that was amazing, thanks so much. So I think we have algorithms in audio, they're just not digital. But a lot of times that seems to be the thing that like, oh, well, YouTube's got the algorithm. And I'm like, well, don't say that audio doesn't have one. It's just old school word of mouth, you know.
But yeah, I think that there is a certain amount of, I think, YouTube envy that exists, and it's been growing for the last year. Specifically around that algorithm and then also around the metrics that we get out of YouTube is at a whole other level compared to the metrics that we get out of podcasting. I mean, it's even, you know, it takes AI to analyze it. It's so complex and so depth. It gives you a lot of signals that supposedly will help you make better content, but At the end of the day, making better content to play to the algorithm is almost like becoming non-human. If you think about it, playing to the algorithm is almost like you're following the direction of an AI to create content versus being a human to create the content. And the humans have flaws. Humans have— they make mistakes with lead-ins and hooks and all these concepts that are so big in the YouTube space right now. Is it— you got to teach, you know, I even did it with this show, you know, the, the whole YouTube stuff is influencing how I'm producing content too, uh, around creating hooks. And yeah, and but, but a lot of ways, a lot of the concepts even with that are old school because I did the same thing with my nationally syndicated radio show I did back in the, the early 2000s where I would the first like 2 minutes of the show, I would tease what's coming up, right? I would play like a clip of the interview, or I would do something, especially if it's pre-recorded. Now granted, what I'm doing with you tonight is quite different than what I did with my radio show, um, because I had all that stuff pre-recorded and edited and all that stuff. So I could take out a snippet from that interview and put it at the front of the show. But you can do that if you're recording, but you can't do it if you're live. And So what do you think, Dave, is going to happen to live? I know you've been doing your live show for a long time. Do you see live becoming more popular as almost like a— what I like to call proof of life?
I was going to say that might be part of it, is, uh, it's just the fact that, you know, at least at this point, I'm not AI. And so, you know, it is proof that you're talking to a live person. One of the reasons I love it is because just like you're doing, you get to interact with your audience and you get instant feedback on whether this is, you know, working or not and things like that. So I could see live doing that. I also wonder, I, um, was on a show, I want to say it was PewDie in the News, it was something like a PewDie, that was it, PewDie in the News. And this is a guy in Pennsylvania that has a small theater, and you can go and do a live podcast there. And he's starting to— almost like a comedy club where he's starting to get a community of people that like to listen to podcasts. And I was like, well, that's different. I mean, it's not, it's not new. There have been big podcasts that have been doing this. But he said like he had one night where, you know, 20 people showed up. And I'm like, hey, 20 people, if they're paying, you know, 20 bucks a pop, you know, that's a lot more than your $5 CPM. You know, you could have one person show up and make more than an ad. And I was like, well, that's a different advert, you know, maybe that's a thing. I would hate to see it. But you know, you could have a thing if you want to come watch me live on, you know, whatever, buy a ticket so you don't have to do a theater. But it's a great medium. It's a whole different skill set than recording, you know, locally to your computer where you can fix things and You know, when it's live, you got to have a little more preparedness so you're not just winging it off the top of your head. But I agree with you, it might be something that's, hey, it's proof I'm human. Watch, I'll, you know, punch myself in the face.
I'll make mistakes. I'll say ums and ahs, right? Which AI typically doesn't say ums and ahs. So it's a perfection layer filter. That's it. Or imperfection layer is what it is. Um, yeah, and I think that, that will always be, uh, I think part of this conversation. Um, I have played around with cloned versions of myself, and I'm trying to make it, make it as good as possible. Um, I'm just, I'm just not sure how I would implement it, uh, at this point to even even do anything with it. So it's, it's like, do I put this out and try and fool people?
Well, like right now, Paul Culligan's in the chat room. Yeah. And, and he has Virtual Paul. Uh, yeah, he does pretty good, you know, but he's, he's very obvious about it, you know. It's Virtual Paul. He, he lets you know. He's not trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes.
So, um, so Paul, Paul has an interesting quote here. He says, when Paul Colligan is what I'm talking about. When, when we work for the computers, we lose. So, um, is— I'm not 100% sure that that's going to be that way forever, given what's happening with AI. What's your thought, Dave?
If we work for the computers, we lose. It's, it's one of those things where it's hard to get my brain wrapped around that, you know. But I just— today on the, uh, the local morning zoo was talking about robots, and they were showing that, you know, you have the little vacuum robots now. Well, they— the newer models now have legs and they can go upstairs. And they were just saying, you know, then they had a robot that was actually really flexible, and it was AI, and it would rave and all sorts of stuff. And I was like, well, that's where we're going. I don't know what that means exactly, but that's it. And another old schooler in the chat room, the one and only Tim Street.
Yeah.
Someone told me Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck aren't human. Crazy thing is, I still enjoyed watching them.
Yeah. Tim's got a great point. It's where that line that we're talking about here is between AI content and human content. There's going to be aspects of AI content. And obviously Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are not AI content, but they certainly could represent what AI content could look like.
That would be because what if they actually had a like— because obviously Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny are a cartoon. And so even as a child, I could go, well, that's not real. That's a cartoon. Like we didn't have to teach us that back then. Children had this thing called common sense and we could figure things out on our own. But what if you made a video that was so lifelike and there was a duck and an actual rabbit that turned around and talked to each other? And like, you know, people like that can happen right now.
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. I mean, even the whole Bugs Bunny cartoon series could be, I'm sure, recreated very easily in AI. Um, you know, and would it look exactly the same? Maybe. Maybe it would look better.
I don't know. I, I saw a clip today, and that was the whole clip. They're like, this is what used to be on TV. And I'll just say it was a bunch of stuff you can't say on TV anymore.
There's a lot of stuff that was on TV that's not politically correct.
Like, we used to say this, one little, two little, three little. It's like, wait, what?
Like, so yeah, like All in the Family is a good example of that.
Yeah, well, All in the Family, they used to get away with because it was like We're holding up a mirror to how ugly Archie is.
And yeah, right.
I don't know today's society could go, oh yeah, that's a good point. They'd just be like, get him off the air.
Yeah, that's right. Yes.
Paul says, get off my lawn. Back in the day. Yes, exactly. So future Hall of Famer next week.
Paul Poligan. Yeah. Paul is getting inducted in the Hall of Fame. I know we haven't gotten to that topic yet here. We've been off on all sorts of topics that are fun to talk about too. You know, I do want to talk a little bit about, um, the platforms out there too. Apple Podcasts, um, what you think we're going to see from them this year, because we saw in the past year where they, um, they've added some capabilities like chapters and, and timed links and things like that. Um, but are they gonna re-prioritize video podcasts again and make it discoverable. What, what do you think? Um, I say Todd.
Hey, Rob.
I wish.
Um, yeah, I'll be interested to see because to me that seems like— because they used— most people don't know this— it used to be you go into Apple Podcasts and when you went to search, it was like audio or audio video. It's like there was a tab, like a switch, right? So we know they've done it in the past, and maybe it's just a case that maybe they're Aren't that many true video podcasts. Yeah. RSS video podcasts, which would be great because whoever was in there would get a huge audience.
Like, well, that's what this show is. This show is a video podcast. It's in our— it's been in Apple for 13 years. So it's, it's, it's still in there. And obviously, if you're watching this tonight, you're seeing there's new content.
Yeah. I'm excited. The fact that they have embraced some stuff, I thought it was a huge thing. That on the PodNewsWeek review, an actual Apple representative said an opinion, like, in terms of what was going to be happening in the future. It was like a prediction thing. And it was— and I'm sorry, I forget the person's name, but it was a guy from Apple. And I was like, I've never heard ever an Apple person say something on the record. Now, I can talk to the, the guys at Podcast Movement when they show up and things like that, and they'll they'll talk very openly, but it's off the record, you know what I mean? It's like, well, we can't really record that. Uh, so I'm somewhat encouraged, I guess would be the word, to see them doing things and, and moving. So I like that. And I think they know that, you know, YouTube is, is, is— as we keep, you know, things get a little blurry on what is a podcast. They're like, well, let's show them what a podcast is And that's where I'm with you. It'd be great if, you know, they had a video option, but that's where, you know, I don't know if James could look up, you know, come with some sort of algorithm to check how many of these RSS feeds have an MP4 as the file and see how many video podcasts there are. So get on that, James.
So what are your— Ted needs to get on that from Apple.
So yeah, what are your thoughts on that? What do you think they're going to do?
I think it's, it's low-hanging fruit for Apple. The question gets back to is it's going to take a change of strategy on their part. It's going to have to be a corporate thing that happens where they're going to say, well, this is— we're going to consider this to be a new initiative, even though the capability is already there. It's going to have to be, you know, put out in a press release. It's going to have to be announced to say, if you're a content creator, you're putting your stuff up on YouTube, guess what? You can put it up on Apple Podcasts, and we would love to have your content. So because it's not costing Apple anymore to do it because they're not hosting the media file, well, that's so right, you know, it's, it's not a cost center for them. It's, it's more of the risk of them pointing to something capability that's in their catalog that there's just not a lot of content currently to. If I think back to my years working at Microsoft running the Zoom platform, you know, video was huge with what I was doing with Microsoft in the early years. And that video podcast capability was, you know, just a given. You know, all the major media companies were embracing it at the time. You know, all the same companies that you see today that are big audio podcasters or putting their stuff up on YouTube, they all embrace RSS-based video files. And so I don't see it as a stretch for them to get into it. I just think it's got to be a will inside of the company to say, you know, this is the direction we want to go and this is how we're going to hold on to the dominance or the importance of RSS because in a lot of ways this shift to YouTube is a threat to the very platform that we know is RSS.
Yeah, yeah, that's where— and then we'd have to go back and teach everybody again that a podcast needs an RSS feed because now it's either Libsyn, Blueberry, I think, or Podbean are the only three that I know that you can upload.
There's others out there that are playing around at the edges right now. Okay. And, and some of them are starting to embrace HLS too with the alternative enclosure tag. Or the Lit is the other one. So there is some initiatives inside of the Podcasting 2.0 project to push towards video. And it's funny, I mean, you'll hear Sam Sethi on the, the Pod News Weekly talk about HLS, and he's supporting it in his TrueFans platform. And, and then there's other platforms too, like Fountain, and, and Pocket Cast supports on video podcasts. One of the other things that Apple has to change is the— even you go to a video podcast in Apple Podcasts, you click play, and there's this little tiny icon at the bottom left of the screen that has the video playing, but it's not obvious. It's not like when you click play the video podcast in Apple Podcasts, it pops up full screen and plays you the video. You have to click a second time So really it's designed to play as though it's audio. And this was an issue that even Spotify had. And I've noticed they— Pocket Cast actually improved this here like about 4 or 5 months ago, where you hit play and it will pop up and play the video and not display it in this little tiny thumbnail at the bottom, right, that you have to click on to actually Expand it, because that's what Apple's doing. So that would be another UI change that Apple would have to make. Yeah.
And then I got the email today that Libsyn has been selected as a launch partner for Spotify's newly announced Distribution API. And basically they say it unlocks new video distribution and monetization opportunities for creators in 2026, which it sounds like you can upload a video. Yeah.
Via Libsyn to Spotify. To Spotify.
And I was like, well, this is just another kind of another example because that takes Libsyn out of the hosting for that. But I'm sure the monetization part of that is ads, and that probably has something to do with AdvertiseCast.
Maybe it's just trying to create a publishing and integrated publishing experience, right? It's really— and there's other platforms actually that same API has been available for a while now. Uh, it's just, uh, I think the first one to embrace it was Flightcast. Yeah, flightcast.com. And, and they, they went at it from the perspective of a video-first publishing platform, right? And they also support audio, but, but they started— they're really trying to optimize the video publishing experience and then having the audio be also part of what they're doing versus how Many of the platforms are built for audio, and now video is an additional part, right? It's so where you start in the industry right now is moving increasingly, whether we like it or not, towards being a video-first medium, even though we're not really technologically, we're really not video-first if you're talking about podcasting. So yeah, it's a little bit of a mismatch of what's really going on.
Yeah, that's, uh, Stephen Bartlett's, uh, company, the guy from Diary of a CEO. So that'll be fun to watch. There's, there's a guy that likes to cross his T's and dot his I's a couple times.
So, well, Rox Codes, he's the founder and builder of Flightcast, is going to be on, on the New Media Show panel at Podcast Fest here later in the month. So So we can get it from the horse's mouth on the show. So nice. So I tried to get Stephen Bartlett onto that panel, but it didn't work out.
So yeah, that's, that's got to be a— I'm sure nobody's trying to get a hold of him, right?
No, I can't imagine. Tons of free time. Second largest podcaster in the world now. So yeah, yeah.
So anyway, you took a swing, you know.
Kudos. Yeah, I did. I mean, what the heck, right?
Right.
All you can say is no. So Daphne Shepherd posted something in here. Apple's Personal Voice is an iOS— I know it's an accessibility feature that lets users create a synthesized voice matching their own by recording 15 minutes of audio. So I thought that was interesting. It says that the feature was really kind of deployed primarily for individuals at risk of losing their voice. Like those with ALS. So in a lot of ways, I guess this feature was built as a disability support feature, I suppose. But you start thinking about, you know, how that could be used in other ways. And it raised, you know, like the ElevenLabs folks is another example of it. You can create, you know, you and I both, or whoever's watching this, could just go to ElevenLabs and clone themselves and then take that clone and put it into a video creation platform, and voilà, we've got a— got our synthesized audio podcast in video too, right? So it's interesting times.
It is. I, I cloned my grandpa. I had an old cassette of him. Oh, you did? Wow, that's reading a story, and I put it in, and boy, with the tools now, you can clean up bad audio. And I got done and I was like, man, that sounds really— like, I'm really surprised how well that's cleaned up. And then a little light bulb went, wait a minute, can I clone Grandpa? So I did. And then I went to my brother and I go, what do you want Grandpa to say to you? And he's like, what voodoo are you playing with now? So I typed in, you know, my brother's name is Doug. He's like, hey Doug, love everything you're doing with you and your girls, keep up the great work, I'm so proud of you, Popo. And he, you know, got the audio, sent it to me. He's like, I am crying like a baby. So, wow, maybe some things you shouldn't do. That was one that I was like, okay, we're gonna put that to rest.
That's a little creepy. So what's a way to make your, your passed away relatives immortal, right? Yeah, that's it.
Yeah.
So it's interesting, you know, there is talk about being able to upload your, your brain to the, to the cloud at some point, so So we'll see how that plays out and maybe it can be installed into a robot at some point.
Have you seen that show on Amazon? There's a show on Amazon called Upload and I don't think I've seen it.
That's the whole premise of it. Yeah. Oh, well, of course. Of course. Yeah. Some author is going to come up with that, you know, science fiction story. Scott Sigler's next book, probably. Yeah, probably. Yeah. So it looks like Paul Colligan posted, uh, posted something else in here. For me, the biggest part of the Lipson announcement is getting all my stats in one place.
Oh, have you seen Podcast— it's either Pod Analyst or Podcast Analyst.
I can't remember. Yeah, I think it's Podcast Analyst. Yeah.
And, uh, what you do is you go in and you take their email and you add them to your Apple Podcasts Connect and your Spotify for Creators as a viewer of stats only. They can't do anything. They can just view it and all your stats. And I think he's working on YouTube. I don't know if he's launched that yet, but it was— it's a great tool to like pop some popcorn and just geek out over your stats like you never have. But it was— I love the fact that it's color-coded because I had like 3 episodes in a row that apparently were just stinkers in terms of keeping people's attention. And that's the stuff you want to learn. I was like, well, wait a minute, what was I talking about on this? So, and I believe right now it's free up to— because it'll show you how many individual people are listening to your show. And I think when you go over 1,000, you have to start paying. But, but it's still It was interesting insight. So in terms of getting all your stats in one place, I was like, well, that exists, which I was very happy because, uh, the guys over at Bumper have it, but they're an agency and I'm assuming it's not cheap to use their system. So somebody came up with one for, for all the little people that want to see that kind of stuff, right?
And looks like Harold Gilchrist wrote another comment here. I wouldn't be surprised to see OpenAI ChatGPT support video podcasts before Apple. So yeah, that's, that's an interesting point. And I've been kind of following, and I'm sure you have too, Dave, about what's, what could potentially happen with content discovery with AI too, and how ChatGPT may play a bigger role than all of us can practically see right now around finding content and consuming content. They may just suck up everything, right? So all the apps that we have on our phones become part of some integrated AI platform. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple's not working on this, right? I'm trying to build a new OS that integrates all of the apps of sorts as agents, and you have one interface to your phone that allows you to get full access to everything. And they've got to figure out the way to monetize that, else it's not going to work. But, but that's the new model, right? So do you have to subscribe to every single one of them, or do you have to subscribe once to Apple and Apple gives you access to all these apps, right? And are there going to be different tiers of that? So I think that that may be where we're going here. And then actually getting access to content that may be something that they gatekeep at some point too. So, so, um, it's like Harold asks, uh, is there really going to— are they really going to compete with Google? Uh, it seems to not want to display fully here for me. Okay, compete with Google, they need to mainly compete with access to YouTube content. So, so I think that that is, I think YouTube is going to be integrated into a Google AI experience. I think what's going to happen increasingly, YouTube is going to be integrating more AI technology into it, and eventually we will probably see this shift happen. You know, I know YouTube announced that they were going to filter out AI-created content in there that they they consider to be slop. But my pushback on that is that I think that there's a good chance that Google and YouTube want to be the source of creating that content.
Yeah, yeah. I got fooled today because I was watching a video about the band Evanescence, and halfway through, the really realistic-sounding announcer said, you know, and that's when they formed Evanescence. And they told— I'm like, wait, the video is about this band called Evanescence and you just butchered the name. And that's when I went, all right, you're not real, next, you know.
So yeah, right, yeah, it's still not, not perfect yet, right?
Maybe that's good that it's not perfect, but it fooled me for like the first 2 minutes.
I was like, okay, yeah, exactly. And oh, and Paul Colligan writes here, uh, Virtual Paul is shocked, shocked, I tell you, all this conversation about him. So yeah, Paul, it's your doppelganger, I guess, is the right way to call it.
I guess Virtual Paul is busy right now counting all that sweet, sweet podcast money. It's a phrase Paul pawned many moons ago. Sweet, sweet podcast money.
And we're like, where? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, Sue Ann, I think you're right in your observation that YouTube will follow suit. I mean, Google is probably one of the, I would say, one of the two leading AI platforms that we're gonna see really dominate as we look to the future, that and Groq, I believe, are the two that are gonna really dominate. And then there's going to be, And you'll probably notice I left out OpenAI on that one, but there's a lot of talk about China right now actually taking over the lead with AI because they're starting to fabricate their own AI chips now. Oh, are they? Our little cutoff on them getting access to, yeah, you know, AI chips and and compute power is, is, uh, has been cut off, but China's going to make their own, right?
Exactly. Like, well, I guess we can't do it now. No, like, we'll make our own. Yeah.
Who does the—
and I don't know the official name, but something banana, um, for images. Banana Nana, I think. Yeah, Fofana Sana, B5 Fofana Sana. Yeah, whatever it is, it's really good. It's really good. I was using a couple different AI tools trying to do an image, and I finally went over and just said, this is what I want, yada yada yada, Nano Banana. Thank you, Nano Banana, right? And, um, I told it what I wanted and it was like, boom, here it is. And I was like, oh, that's why people are talking about this. So it was not only accurate, nobody had like 7 fingers or things like that. So, uh, and, uh, Daphne says that's Google. Is behind Nano Banana.
So yeah, there you go. Yeah, it's, it's, uh, Google's all in on this stuff. I mean, I mean, I'm starting to see on, on YouTube some very photorealistic, uh, videos that are being put up there that are, um, pretty impressive, I would say. Yeah, very lifelike but very fantasy-oriented, right? Very much outside of the realm of what the capability of any human with normal resources would have the ability to create. And I think that's where the line's gonna get drawn, is that it's gonna be a lot of fantasy stuff. It's gonna be a lot of weird content that, you know, who would ever have thought to make some of this stuff, right? I wouldn't have. I don't know about you, Dave. Maybe you have that kind of a warped mind, but I don't know that, that most people are gonna be able to create content like that. Yeah.
So AI's gonna do it.
Yeah. Fun to watch. Okay, so Paul had one last comment here, and I think we're gonna call it a night, 'cause I think we, you know, between the both of us, Dave, I think we could go easily 3 hours with this show. Yes, we could. So Paul writes, can you make good nachos with AI chips? Yes. Oh, there you go. There you go. Thank you, Dave, for—
yeah, pressing your, uh—
he's here all night.
Yeah, was that true?
Yeah, my RODECaster Duo. I'm ready. Duo. Okay, there you go. So that's awesome. All right, well, I think we're gonna call it a night. Thank you so much, everybody, for, for watching the, the New Media Show. As I'm in my, my fourth relaunch episode, Dave. So how are you feeling? It feels weird to be doing this without Todd.
Yeah, I don't know about you. I know you're trying to wrap up the show. That's okay. I'm, I, I'm really looking forward to podcast or podcast, uh, Podfest, but there's a part of me that's like, this is gonna kick me in the pants, um, because there's no Todd, there's no Neil. There's no Lee. And I'm like, so when I see an— when I, in my head, I just think when I see an empty Blueberry Booth with just a Mike Dell, that's going to be weird. And both you and I were at his funeral, so I've seen, you know, Todd in a casket. I'm well aware. But it's just the fact that this is one of those situations where I'm used to seeing this, this, and this, and then you go, hey, that's, that's different, and that's the way it's going to be from this point forwards. And I'm just like, All right, so that's going to be a little, uh, I'm, I'm happy that it's Podfest because at least for, for, you know, we've gone every year pretty much that it's been there. So it is like, you know, summer camp in the middle of winter that all my friends are there. So that will be fine. But there is a part of me that's like, that's gonna be weird. I'm not sure how hard that's gonna hit me.
So we shall see. But I'm just hoping that I can actually make it there. Uh, we've been hit with a cascade of snowstorms lately. Oh, well, there you go. So I'm sure that— I'm sure you've had a few too where you're at.
But yeah, I'm, uh, that's why I was— I was gonna— I, I'm flying in the day before, and I got in the habit of not doing that, but that's why, because it gives me an extra day to like— even if it, if it works, I'm there the day before, and I'm like, well, okay, I guess this was a a waste of money. But on the other hand, I'm like, yeah, but I don't have to because I've had thunderstorms and stuff like that where you can't fly.
So yeah, excellent. So yeah, go to podfestexpo.com if you are not familiar with the, the event and check it out. And if you wanted to check out more and see who all the inductees— because we didn't get a chance to talk about all the inductees on the show, uh, we got distracted in a lot of other topics, but go to podcasthall.com, and you can see the, the plan for that. And I'm feverishly working on making sure that all the, the, the i's are, are dotted and all the t's are crossed to make sure that this thing goes off without a hitch. So that's my goal. So, so anyway, well, thank you, Dave, for coming back on the show again. It's great to have you on, and it was great to be on your show. A week ago or so.
So yeah, Rob, thanks so much. Yeah, always, like I said, always fun to hang out with you and talk podcasting.
So thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, and good night, uh, everyone out there. And I appreciate all the comments and the, the thoughts that you shared with us tonight. It really helps make a, make a more interactive experience on this show, and it's, uh, it's always fun to do. So I'll be back. I don't know that I'll be back next week because I, I got to get ready for Podfest. So yeah, maybe the week after. And I've got some terrific guests lined up coming up. Um, so, so it'll be the ongoing great conversations on the New Media Show will continue. So good night, everybody. Thank you.
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