Tuesdays with Tom: There's a Podcast for That
At my office, there is a radio in the men’s restroom. I think there are two people privately feuding over which station is on, but most of the time it’s on either a Chicago hip hop station or top 40 radio. Occasionally I will go in there and there is a talk radio segment or an interview on the airwaves. It’s a bit of a jarring experience for me. Talk radio used to be a format I consumed with great attention. You’re in the car or at your house, you flip on the radio and tune into your local talking heads to listen to a lively discussion. Maybe you wait around for an interview or a round of obnoxious fan callers. In between you hear advertising jingles you wish you could forget (“1-877-CARS-4-KIDS” and “O, O, O O’Reillyyyyyyy!” come to mind). I think about this and I say to myself, this seems like it happened in my distant past. Then I realize I’m in a public bathroom and I should get out immediately. But after I do THAT, I think about how the days of talk radio are a thing of my past and given way to the emergence of a newer audio platform. Welcome to the era of the podcast.
The history of the podcast isn’t even old enough to drive a car and yet it’s already driving a near billion dollar industry. The term itself doesn’t even hold up upon further scrutiny. Is an audio file really casted? What is poddy about it? Even the man who coined the term, Ben Hammersley, wasn’t sure what to call this strange format. In 2004, he wrote a piece for The Guardian with a hilariously dated subline “Online radio is booming thanks to iPods, cheap audio software and weblogs.” A few sentences into the piece he offered three possible terms, “Audioblogging? Podcasting? GuerillaMedia?”. The people went with Option B. Hammersley doesn’t even remember doing this and admitted to a Vulture reporter that he made up the word. It’s a shame he didn’t trademark the term.
The early days of podcasting were scarce and unformed. It was mostly bloggers looking for a way to expand their foothold online. There were no established rules. The amount of smartphones in the market was nearly nonexistent. The only universal place you could find them was on Apple and plenty of people didn’t even know what a podcast was. Apple wasn’t even sure what to do with them and they let almost anyone use their platform to house the podcasts. In short, there weren’t many shows, they were hard to find and there wasn’t any way to make money doing them. Podcasters in this era were like Lewis and Clark adventuring west of the Mississippi River. Little did they know that they were charting their own audio manifest destiny.
All mediums evolve over the course of history. But it’s fair to wonder if the podcasting realm has evolved faster than almost any media type. Ten years after Hammersley coined the term, podcasting had reached a watershed moment that changed the industry forever. By 2014, almost 39 million Americans had listened to at least one podcast. Pioneers like Marc Maron (WTF with Marc Maron), Joe Rogan (The Joe Rogan Experience) and Bill Simmons (The B.S. Report) enjoyed large followings after putting in almost a decade of work into building them. But the major shift from podcasting as a niche hobby into an exploding business took place with the launch of Serial. The series was an investigate journalism endeavor about a 1999 murder case. The host, Sarah Koenig, is a reporter and the co-host who outlined the case for convicted killer Adnan Syed's innocence over 12 podcast episodes. It was a compelling series and a phenomenon for podcasting. As of today, it holds the world record for most downloaded episodes with over 340 million downloads worldwide. Serial has produced two more seasons, but the industry at large owes them a great debt as they transformed the medium and gave many consumers a taste of the wide potential of podcasts. Serial propelled the medium to massive growth.
Other podcast facts of today? There are plenty. Studies estimate that 51% of the U.S. population has listened to a podcast. They’re listening at home (49%), in their car (22%), at work (11%), on public transit, working out, walking around (everything else). There are an unfathomable amount of podcasts available to consume and roughly 30 million podcast episodes in the ecosystem. For some context, Hulu currently has the largest library of TV episodes in the world. They “only” have 75,000 episodes. Imagine if you had 400 times the amount of episodes to watch on Hulu. We’re nowhere close to the final tally count for podcasts either. We’ll get to the money part of this later, but it’s also worth considering how the genres and topics have evolved within podcasting. There are music, TV, film, sports, tech, science, culture, news, politics, business and countless other genres of podcasts. There are podcasts that serve as weekly or daily insights and entertainment. There are podcasts, like Serial, that are immersive deep dives into a storyline or finite subject matter. The phrase used to be “there’s an app for that” and now you could very confidently say “there’s a podcast for that.” One time a guy told me his favorite podcast was a two-minute show that he plays for his kids to brush their teeth. He wasn’t kidding. It’s called “Chompers”. It’s released twice a day. You’re going to laugh when you see how many people subscribe.
I should point out that I’m squarely in the prime demographic for the podcasting sweet spot. I’m a male in my 20s, college-educated, living in an urban setting with multiple work commutes a day. I’m biased. There are podcasts for anyone, but I am the poster child for someone most likely to subscribe. In other words, I’m juicy prey for advertising (and also a good guy but hey who’s counting!). With the massive growth of podcast listeners, the ad dollars are beginning to follow. Last year, over $480 million was spent on podcast advertising. This year, it’s going to be around $680 million. You don’t need to be a salesperson to see where that’s going. One of the intriguing things about the structure of podcast ads is that people like the hosts of these shows and trust their opinion. Unlike say, a random TV commercial, you might actually believe the endorsement of a host over a brand spokesman (in theory). There are limitations to the effectiveness of the medium such as lack of tracking beyond the download, users pressing the skip ahead button and the nebulous measurement. But there’s a reason why Spotify spent $500 million acquiring podcast giant Gimlet Media. It’s the same reason why SiriusXM acquired Pandora. This is an exploding, profitable marketplace. People are only listening more and more.
I’m not doing this to plug podcasts as a hobby. It’s obvious that I enjoy them and consume them frequently. I’m currently subscribed to 17 shows on my Spotify account. Hell, I even have one! Anyone can make one. What I’m curious about is what happens next. We’re vastly approaching the point of no return into an endlessly cluttered space. Unlike say the TV world, podcasts never really get cancelled. There is almost no risk involved to beginning a podcast. Every celebrity has one, every comedian needs one and every reporter wants to be the next Serial. But while the risk is low, the reward is increasingly hard to attain. Building an audience takes incredible commitment and output. The owners of podcast inventory want to monetize them in more unique ways, which means more paywalls and restrictions in the future. But that in turn limits your potential growth. If your audience expects three episodes a week, you’re expected to deliver on that without fail. When does it stop? No one will admit it, but we’re all clueless.
What’s undeniable for now is we’re becoming an increasingly audio driven society. Look around on your average commuter train. How many people have headphones in? 7 out of 10? More? The numbers say at least half of them are listening to a podcast. If you have an hour to kill, a podcast can be an informative way to kill that time. It has transformed the one-on-one interview into a truly illuminating experience. Instead of getting a pre-planned six-minute radio segment, you can get an hour of mostly unfiltered thoughts from someone, guided by a thoughtful interviewer, and it all goes into your ears on your schedule. Perhaps we will reach out limits and saturation point for podcast content. But it’s an extremely convenient tool with seemingly unlimited scale. Talk radio isn’t dead, but make no mistake. They know they can’t rely on quirky callers for much longer. And once I start taking my AirPods with me into the restroom, they’re really in trouble. It’s so easy, an O'Reilly Auto Parts caveman could do it.
Tom’s Thoughts of the Week
It’s pretty much become impossible to evaluate Kanye West on objective terms. Diehard supporters will overlook any transgressions and geek out at the faintest glimpse of his talent. Ardent critics will refuse to acknowledge any trace of decency or quality in the work because they disagree with his politics and beliefs. I’ll try to do the impossible and be in the middle. Kanye’s work from 2004 to 2010 is unassailable, awesome and revolutionary for rap. Since then, the best I can say for him is he’s streaky. His arrogance and ego has consumed his soul. I’m not qualified to say how deep his mental health issues are, but let’s just be neutral and say he’s got unresolved issues. He’s arguably the biggest celebrity of his generation and he’s the master of creating hype beasts out of thin air. He walks a perilously thin line between misunderstood, musical genius and offensive, irrevocably arrogant megalomaniac. The same guy who begs for people to believe he’s now a devout reformed Christian also sells plain white t-shirts for $170 a pop. He’s a contradiction at best and a hypocrite at worst. Enter his latest work, Jesus is King. If you’re in one of the first camps I listed, you already decided how you feel about this 27-minute EP before it got released. I think there’s a few decent songs, but it’s mostly forgettable to me. There’s not a single track here that would make a Kanye top-10 or even top-20 list. But we just went through this last year with his ye EP. Expecting him to crank out an all-time classic is like expecting Joe Montana to light up an NFL defense right now. His best days are probably behind him and expecting a likely insane, troubled mega-millionaire to maintain the creative vigor of his less famous youth is a fool’s errand. And that’s fine with me! I don’t hate this EP, but I don’t love it either. You’re not a loser for thinking differently.
Last week, you probably saw the trailer release for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. I didn’t need to be convinced. I’m seeing this movie no matter what. But the trailer only reaffirmed the rumors that this will be conclusive end to this version of Star Wars. I will have a lot more to say about this at a later date (teaser!), but don’t try to make plans with me on December 20th.
When my school Mizzou left the Big 12 for the SEC beginning in 2012, there was a great deal of animosity shown from our traditional rival, The Kansas Jayhawks. Kansas, who boasts a football record of 75-132 since the turn of the century, showed open disdain for Missouri leaving the conference and decided not to schedule future out of conference games with them in either basketball or football. The Jayhawks, who last won a football conference title when Lyndon B. Johnson was president, believed that Mizzou had tainted the integrity over their 100+ year old rivalry in both sports and life. It was a very immature stance for a program that has almost as many Final Four appearances (15) as they do outstanding NCAA violations for bribery and funneling money from Adidas to players. Well, thankfully Kansas came to their senses and they’ve agreed to reignite the historic Mizzou-KU rivalry in basketball for the next six years starting next season. I was there for the “last” Mizzou home basketball game against Kansas, which we won 74-71. Will Bill Self be around for the new series? We’ll see! I know I’m looking forward to it. M-I-Z!
I was both elated and sad to hear that BoJack Horseman’s newest season would be it’s last one. They are splitting it up in two eight-episode chunks. The first batch premiered last Friday and the final eight will come next January. There’s some speculation that the creators were forced to end it earlier than they wished. Whatever the reason is, I’ve been a fan of this show since it premiered in 2014 and I love it more every year. It’s a tough show to explain to newcomers. The logline of “depressed talking horse” doesn’t really begin to scratch the surface of why it’s so good. Sure, it’s a dark comedy. It’s also an incredible satire of the entertainment industry, a masterclass in puns and animal-human jokes and very broadly a hilarious absurdist comedy. The voice acting is top notch and it’s a very engaging story. I selfishly hope that the characters get a happy ending, but I’m not sure it’s heading that direction. BoJack’s never-ending quest to change has been muddied with some truly despicable behavior. What’s great about the series is that it can offer up amazing jokes while acknowledging that we all have to face the consequences of our actions. What a fantastic show.
Dennis Quaid is no Larry King when it comes to failed marriages, but he’s about halfway there after proposing to a 26-year-old woman last week. His first wife was three years older than him. His second wife, actress Meg Ryan, was 10 years younger. His third wife was twenty years younger. Quaid, 65, is almost 40 years older than his current fiancé. This would be funny enough on its own, but I realized after doing some light research that Quaid has a history of age inappropriateness throughout his career and life. For example, in his 2002 movie The Rookie, Quaid plays a man who gets an improbable shot pitching for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (their name at the time) after a lifetime of unfulfilled baseball potential. He was 48 when he filmed this movie, which would make him almost as old as Julio Franco was when he retired from the MLB. A few years before that, he acted in Any Given Sunday as the aging quarterback for the Miami Sharks. He was 45, older than all current NFL players except for Indianapolis Colts kicker Adam Vinatieri. In 2000, he starred in an underrated movie called Frequency opposite Jim Caviezel. Quaid played a past version of Caviezel’s father, even though he is only a mere 14 years old than Caviezel in real life. And of course, the most damning comparison that many made is Quaid’s fiancé is a full seven years younger than Lindsay Lohan, who notably played Quaid’s twin daughters in the 1998 nostalgic classic Parent Trap. One more ageism joke. Quaid’s son, Jack Quaid, is now starring on Amazon’s superhero satire show The Boys. He’s 27 and therefore older than his father’s future wife and his future stepmother. Dennis Quaid, congrats on refusing to acknowledge your own age at almost every turn of your life!
Almost a full year ago at this time, Netflix announced there would be a Breaking Bad movie released this fall. I wrote about it and said to consider me “very nervous for this idea.” Enter El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, which was released a few weeks ago on Netflix. (Minor spoiler alert) I gave it a try with neutral eyes and I have to say, it doesn’t totally justify its existence. Plain and simple, this is a dedicated attempt at Breaking Bad fan service. I’m a massive fan of the series, but I personally didn’t need an epilogue about what happened to Jesse Pinkman. It’s obvious that Vince Gilligan and the cast of the show love working together, hence why Better Call Saul is on its fifth season and they reunited to make this movie. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it doesn’t mean I have to care about it. It’s a decent, somewhat pointless movie in my opinion. Only the most ardent supporter of Breaking Bad would say that it’s better than that.