Podcast Movement 22: Thoughts, Feelings Impressions and Take Aways

Voiceover 00:00:01
Welcome to the podcast Super Friends. Five podcast producers from across North America get together to discuss podcasting.

Matt Cundill  00:00:13
Another addition to the Podcast Super Friends, I'm Matt Cundill from the the the the soundoff media company have a lighter crew today saying hello to Johnny podcast in Dallas in Fort Worth, howdy. And in Detroit. Jon Gay.

Jon Gay  00:00:32
Johnny would say, howdy. I would say, what upto?

Johnny Podcasts  00:00:37
I would use your Eminem Beanie.

Jon Gay  00:00:41
Does my shore microphone recording in session T shirt that I bought a podcast.

Johnny Podcasts  00:00:46
That is a sweet shirt. I actually meant to go get one. Were they over at the shore table where they just giving them away to you have to buy it.

Jon Gay  00:00:53
I bought it. It was like $20 or something.

Johnny Podcasts  00:00:56
Honestly, I'd say it's worth it. Yeah, I don't have any company shirts, so that might be the best way to kind of differentiate yourself. Because I always get a lot of weird looks when I go into offices with a big roller bag of equipment. And they're like, can I help you? But if you have the shirt, it's pretty obvious why you're there.

Jon Gay  00:01:13
I think so, yeah.

Matt Cundill  00:01:14
We're going to talk about the shades, Johnny.

Johnny Podcasts  00:01:17
You know, I found these as I was cleaning out some stuff over the weekend after post podcast Movement found them. I think they're from college. I must have gotten them at a TCU football game because our colors were purple. And I've decided that this is me just testing out a new look while we're live streaming. I'm going to be the guy that wears shades. Maybe it'll drive some more viewers.

Matt Cundill  00:01:38
Shout out to our Canadian audience and Bob McCowan, who was just signed recently to Advertise Cast, who wore shades on his show on Rogers for many years.

Johnny Podcasts  00:01:47
There you go. So there's proof right in the pudding.

Matt Cundill  00:01:50
So we're back from podcast moving. So, just to explain, catherine O'Brien and David did not attend podcast movement. We were still hoping to have them on today. Both had other things going on because they were actually at work last week, working and doing projects and still have things to continue. That leaves us here to dig out and talk a little bit about.

Jon Gay  00:02:10
Take a break from all of us catching up on the work we missed while we were Podcast Movement.

Johnny Podcasts  00:02:17
All right.

Matt Cundill  00:02:17
Well, this is designed, of course, to have a show on the heels of Podcast Movement, which is the big podcast event in the podcast industry. I think if you go to one, you go to this one. There are other podcast events out there, but this is the one that's been going since about 2014. And it started in Dallas. Went back to Dallas this year. And we'll start with Jag. Do you want to start with a takeaway from Podcast Movement 22?

Jon Gay  00:02:42
Yeah, my big takeaway. And this went to a couple of the sessions I went to, and that was short form video.

Matt Cundill  00:02:50
I pressed the wrong button.

Johnny Podcasts  00:02:52
Sorry.

Jon Gay  00:02:52
Wow.

Johnny Podcasts  00:02:54
Talk about short form video. That was 5 seconds in. Message received.

Jon Gay  00:02:58
That was an Instagram real right there. Short form video, boom. Done.

Matt Cundill  00:03:03
It's a great takeaway. Johnny, over to you.

Johnny Podcasts  00:03:06
Also, short term video gone.

Jon Gay  00:03:10
All right, so short term video is something that I've been interested in. I've been dabbling a little bit with it, and I think I was making a real mistake with my podcast in that it was kind of I apologize. This is a dirty phrase, I don't think it is, but the spray and pray mode, because that is the idea that, you know what? I've got my podcast. I'm going to take the best 32nd promo clip and dump it out on Instagram Reels and on TikTok. Sometimes I would do a micro podcast less than three minutes and put the whole thing on TikTok. What I came to realize is the bar for short term video, for promoting a podcast is insanely high because when you think about all these social media companies, be it TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, their goal is to keep you on the platform, not to leave and go listen to a podcast. So with that in mind, you've got to have a really compelling reason to go to a podcast. If you've got a piece of your podcast that's just 30 seconds of absolute gold, Jerry, then that's fine. But otherwise you want to think about different ways to promote your podcast aside from just here's a clip. So one of the things that I mentioned, I did go to one session on Instagram Reels, and the idea is it doesn't have to look like your podcast. You can do something in the Instagram Tik tok world of just holding up your phone and doing a quick 32nd. Hey, guys, had a great podcast talk with Matt and Johnny about podcast movement. We covered X, Y and Z. It was really good stuff. I hope you'll go check it out, think about different ways to really sell it and promote that content. Because otherwise just click and send. Or Matt and I from our radio background, take that best 30 seconds of the morning, show that episode and run it in a promo all the next day. Tune in tomorrow morning. In that situation, you're somebody's already listening to the radio. So getting somebody to cross over from video to listening to a podcast is a really big jump to get someone to make and a better way to promote the podcast video has you certainly is promo swaps guesting on other podcasts advertising on other podcasts. It's cliche, but you want to fish where the fish are. That was really my big takeaway from the convention.

Johnny Podcasts  00:05:20
Can we play on this topic for a second, Matt?

Matt Cundill  00:05:22
Absolutely. I was going to continue, but go ahead.

Johnny Podcasts  00:05:25
So Jacket, there's really insightful what you said that I don't think a lot of people think about, which is the goal of TikTok and the goal of Instagram Reels and the goal of YouTube Shorts is to keep people there scrolling, not to get me to look at one video of your podcast, Jack, and go, wow, Jack is really insightfully, knows a lot about podcasting. I'm going to leave and go look up his podcast and listen to that. What if we just kind of take the our goal ultimately is to drive those people to the podcast. It doesn't matter what TikTok's goal is. We can still use the platform to try and drive people to our podcast, but what if we chop it into sort of microsteps? Having one video of your podcast up on your page is great, but having 500 videos of all of the podcasts that you've ever done is even better. Okay, the microstep from getting we start at they find your video and we end up they're now a recurring listener to your podcast. The steps in between that are I now follow him on TikTok, I'm now binging all of Jack's content, I'm now watching him on other platforms, and now I get to his podcast. So maybe it's not so much about getting people to get to the podcast right away, but it's to become a fan of Jag on TikTok first brand all of your content, brand awareness and then ultimately get to I listen to Jack's podcast every single week.

Matt Cundill  00:06:42
So I totally agree that some sort of presence on video is a good idea, especially on Instagram Stories and Reels where I'm very reluctant. I didn't even turn my camera on once. The podcast movement, big mistake. I probably should have every single day just talk to the audience and say, what's going on? That way.

Jon Gay  00:06:59
I had that same thought and you're kicking myself for not doing it as well.

Matt Cundill  00:07:02
So why didn't we do it? What's wrong with us?

Johnny Podcasts  00:07:05
We're too busy all hanging out. We were tired and seriously taking notes and trying to learn something. I guess you kind of have to have your content creator hat on at all times when you're not away from even when you're away from the microphone. But then you cross the line of, am I a podcast or am I trying to become an influencer online?

Jon Gay  00:07:23
Why not both?

Matt Cundill  00:07:24
Every time I read this episode, I always will pop on the camera and just say, hey, I've got a brand new episode. This is what it's about and this is why you should check it out. And when other people say, well, how should I market my show? I'm like, we should turn your camera on and engage with people. And I think I know, johnny, you've said this before, not necessarily in this podcast, but in some of our group meetings about the people who want to hire somebody to do their social media or hire somebody to do all our marketing. Well, you can't outsource your personality, right?

Johnny Podcasts  00:07:57
Especially when you're putting your face on the camera. You can't hire somebody else to go on your Instagram page or on your TikTok and promote your podcast because you ultimately are driving people to you. You're the one making the content.

Jon Gay  00:08:08
I don't want to monopolize this, but if I could make a second point and we can come back to this if need be, but I do want to give Travis Brown a shout out for the Instagram Real session that I went to. The other shot I want to give related to this tangentially is Jay Claus, who did a session on building your podcast by Twitter and specifically email. It is a lot easier to get an audience from email and social media. Email, of course, doesn't have that same algorithm where they're trying to keep you on the platform, on the platform, on the platform. You can build an email database and thus get your content out to your audience all the time. It's going directly to your inbox. And yet, even if your open rate is 25%, which is the industry average, that might be better than the chance that Facebook is going to show your video to somebody or Instagram or TikTok or whoever the platform might be. Email is really a central thing and you can set it up. You can set up email automations that relate to your RSS feed. I just set one up with AWeber at their booth when I was a podcast movement where you hit publish on that podcast and an email goes out to all of your subscribers about the podcast.

Johnny Podcasts  00:09:14
Do they talk about how to get the email? Like, how would I have a podcast? I'm someone in the audience watching and I hear you and I said, that sounds like a great idea, Jack, but how do I go about actually securing a listener's email?

Jon Gay  00:09:28
Ask for it. A lot of that. And this goes into another topic, but I'm glad you asked. If you're familiar with the phrase lead magnet, you want to have some reason on your website to subscribe to that email. You want some sort of white paper, some sort of maybe top five mistakes that people make when starting a podcast. Top five ways to improve your podcast or best microphones for podcasts in our cases, whatever that might be. Have a reason to get on the email list and don't just stay on them with your podcast every week. You want to occasionally send an email with just some insight, some information as well. Once you have somebody's email address, then you can put the link to the podcast in the email every week and have a lot better chance. And it might take weeks, months, longer for someone to actually subscribe to your podcast. But to your point, a moment ago, Johnny, you got that brand repetition of that brand awareness. Like you said about Tik, Tok and Instagram, you're constantly in their email box. Obviously, don't spam them, but get in their email box off and stay top of mind for them and at some point they're going to say, oh yeah, so maybe I'll listen to it and then they click Play. Hopefully you can get them to subscribe to your podcast.

Johnny Podcasts  00:10:31
Would you agree that that's somewhat similar to sort of the decentralization of podcasting? It's like you said, it's so hard to get your message out on these massive platforms on social media that we're taking our message away from that and saying, I'm just going to give it directly to my listeners so they don't have to sift through all the crap to try and find me. I'm trying to find a better way of phrasing this. Again, I go back to this thought of microsteps, but it's just a different avenue and I think that's so valuable and I think a lot more focus should be on that, of how do I cater directly to my listeners. And the easiest way to get them is, like you said, is their email.

Jon Gay  00:11:07
Johnny, I'll ask you, as the youngest person of the Super Friends, is there any concern about Gen Z and younger millennials not reading email? Not using email?

Johnny Podcasts  00:11:21
No, because we all use it for work.

Jon Gay  00:11:24
Got it.

Johnny Podcasts  00:11:24
Slack hasn't taken over email completely because it's so internally company focused. I know, Matt, you can give us the white paper on how you use Slack, but I still think email is the dominant way that people get. Like, I get email for the brands that I like, and I think that it's just such a different medium than social media that it can't really be taken over unless there was some kind of crazy web three version of email.

Jon Gay  00:11:54
Three?

Johnny Podcasts  00:11:54
Web three. It's back, baby.

Matt Cundill  00:11:57
I mean, the email part is just really putting into words and sending somebody a message. The same way we would turn on the camera to do an instagram reels. It's one on one. It's personal. There's a piece of value in there. Hopefully coming from radio. We built our email list by putting coupon codes for concerts, be the first to buy tickets by using the code that we're putting into this email. And so there are things that you can put, like a little exclusive things that make it worthwhile for people to register for your email every week that might be in your podcast or not necessarily related to your podcast. But one of the things that I think is quite apparent is the worst way you could use the email is to say, hey, I just put out a new podcast episode. Check it out over here. That's not going to work.

Jon Gay  00:12:47
Related to that, in the instagram reels session I went into, they said the absolute worst thing to do on Real's is new episode out. Now here's my new episode. Check out my new episode. There has to be a hook.

Johnny Podcasts  00:12:58
Yeah. Even if it's just to entertain them for that 60 seconds. So you stay in their mind when you're real inevitably shows up in their feet again, like, oh, I know this guy, or I know this girl, and they follow you or they don't. I really think the approach to social media has to be to get them to follow you there and then hopefully at some point, I'm literally changing my mind as this conversation goes on. I'm not sure that the goal is ultimately to get them to your podcast, but it's just to create the brand awareness and that might be the best use for it.

Jon Gay  00:13:28
And you mentioned 60 seconds, johnny, according to this panelist that I was on or that I witnessed, you have 3 seconds to get them in that feed. The real might be 60 seconds. You have 3 seconds to get somebody's attention and a social feed like that, if you don't get them in 3 seconds, they keep scrolling on to the next video.

Johnny Podcasts  00:13:47
And that goes to the benefit of learning video production. If anyone listening out there is editing their own podcast, there's so many tools out there that allow you it can't just be the straight on camera of you talking into the microphone. Those 3 seconds, like you said, Jagger, is so critical. It's got to be image meme, something, text, something that gets their eyes to move around a little bit, to forget for that 10th of a second not to scroll immediately to the next thing and keep them for even 1 second long.

Jon Gay  00:14:12
Another thing was you're changing the camera angles. Maybe the first sentence is over here. In the second sentence, you're holding the camera over here. Just that constant. Because we are goldfish and we need to be constantly entertained visually.

Johnny Podcasts  00:14:22
Yeah.

Matt Cundill  00:14:23
It's very possible that somebody will engage with you on video, never listen to your podcast, but know exactly what your podcast is about because they're engaging with you on video. And I think that's the goal I use. By the way, my hook is resting. Bitch face.

Jon Gay  00:14:36
You are so good at it.

Matt Cundill  00:14:37
I know. It's just exactly like I put the camera up close and I just seem displeased with whatever's happened. This podcast is exhausting.

Johnny Podcasts  00:14:51
The last thing, the worst is when you see those real, they come up with say, don't scroll.

Jon Gay  00:14:55
Don't scroll.

Johnny Podcasts  00:14:55
You have to hear me out for give me 10 seconds. That's an immediate scroll. Or even the triple dot on the right hand side. It says, don't recommend this channel ever or block this user.

Jon Gay  00:15:07
Instant fail.

Johnny Podcasts  00:15:08
Yeah.

Matt Cundill  00:15:10
All right. Well, this is the thing. Whenever video comes up in podcasting, I always get overwhelmed because I feel like I now have about 1000 new things to learn and 1000 new things to do. But I think, like you guys said, it doesn't need to be complicated.

Johnny Podcasts  00:15:22
No, it's so easy. Jack, you had a great point. The multi camera angle is great, but as a hobbyist podcaster, like the the Sound Off podcast, you're great. You're fine. With one camera, even recording on the riverside with your guests. But it's about those extra things that you're adding on graphs, photos, and things like that to keep the person's eyes engaged. Those are so much easier to add on in the post than learning how to do multicamera angle setups in Final Cut Pro or Premiere or whatever video production suite you're using.

Jon Gay  00:15:53
Fair enough.

Matt Cundill  00:15:54
All right, so we'll move on from this and just ask Johnny, what was your big takeaway from Podcast Movement?

Johnny Podcasts  00:15:59
I had two big takeaways. So one of the things that I was really looking to do, I think David set this up. David said it privately and one of our we kind of had a Podcast Producers Superfriends meeting prepodcast movement, and we're all talking about what our biggest takeaways were. And unfortunately, David wasn't able to go to Podcast Movement, but in the meeting where he was considering going, he said that my goal is to just come away with a handful of things. I think a lot of people go into Podcast Moving thinking they're going to learn the entire industry in a week and meet all these people and get a bunch of new clients and just basically convert your entire ideology of podcasting in the span of a week. It's just not possible. Every one of us is doing a very specific thing within this industry. And his goal was really smart. It was, I'm going to come away with a handful of takeaways and if that hopefully three takeaways. And I only really came away with two big takeaways from podcast moving. One was that Co Host is going to be my new favorite hosting platform. I'm like 90% sure on that. I'm actually hoping that we can get the creator of this product on Podcast Super Friends. She was great to meet at Podcast Movement, but they are just taking such a better approach to analytics and I would be butchering it because I didn't take any notes. I was just so flabbergasted as she was showing it to me. But essentially the analytics are next level and that's really what a lot of us work with corporate clients. That's really our bread and butter is the people that we're producing for, they really care about analytics. They don't care so much about the social media likes, those are nice to have. They really want to know how well is our audience doing now, the audience that we do have, how much of the podcast are they consuming, where are they? What age, demographic are they, gender, things like that. This platform is showing you these analytics. Co Host is showing them a lot better in a lot more detail than the platforms that I've used. And I'm talking about the three or four major ones that we all use. That was my biggest takeaway. I was blown away. You can read more about it in my newsletter that I put out this morning.

Jon Gay  00:17:56
How do you subscribe to your email.

Johnny Podcasts  00:17:58
Johnny, you can go to my Twitter at johnnypodcast. It should be in the first couple of tweets. I guess I should have a better direct link to that. The second one is Podcasting 20 the Adam Curry Panel. And my biggest hope and take away from that is that we can decentralize podcasting away from the big Apple and Big Spotify, that people will use more podcasting platforms. And the reason that people should migrate away from Spotify and Apple podcasts, I know it's really easy for them to use, I use Spotify for all my podcasting needs. But the stuff that I learned in this panel was just incredible. On YouTube, one of the biggest things when we live stream or when you see the really big live streamers are the super chats. People can donate money directly to you versus if you have a patreon or something like that or on Apple podcast you can subscribe. Apple takes a cut of that. What Adam and his team have built, or helped people build onto these sort of lesser known podcasting players is tipping live in real time via cryptocurrency. I think they're working on trying to get US dollars. Obviously that would be ideal, but you're listening live on the app and you can just tip them one 110th of a bitcoin or however much $3 worth of bitcoin is. You can do that in real time. A transcript read along that's playing like sort of how when you saw in the old Disney movies the ball bouncing along the lyrics as Mickey Mouse was singing and dancing on the boat. A live transcript along companion with your listening experience, you can embed your own clips. So these highlight clips that we talk about putting on social media, you can list those in the actual episode. And so if someone sees your full episode and they go I don't have 2 hours to listen to this. What are the highlights? Here are all four of them. I can play them one right after the other without having to leave the app to go somewhere else to find your highlights. The fourth one commenting and chatting live within the podcast player. And as the host, I can go back and see all these comments around 48 40 mark, the 48 minutes 42nd mark, love this. Great comment, great comment, great comment. Creating that engagement within the podcast creating community. People can talk to each other as you're listening to the podcast streaming video and audio within the same app. I know Apple has video, Spotify has video for some, but you have to have anchor allowing video for everybody regardless of what platform you're on. And then there's a ton more. But again in the newsletter there's a link to the podcasting index that we're kind of that base of everything that they're talking about. I know I just went on a huge rant but podcasting two point the decentralization of podcasting that was my biggest takeaway from the entire week. Outside of having brisket with you guys, that was probably the most fun part.

Jon Gay  00:20:41
What was the name of the place you went, Johnny? It was a good recommendation.

Johnny Podcasts  00:20:44
Terry Blacks. If you were in Dallas, Texas, go to Terry Blacks. But buffer yourself some time because the line was literally around the entire restaurant.

Matt Cundill  00:20:53
So we had a pretty good crew. So shout out to my wife Avery, who says, this is a good looking crew here.

Jon Gay  00:21:00
Wonderful to meet Avery.

Johnny Podcasts  00:21:01
Yeah, Avery is great.

Matt Cundill  00:21:02
And by the way, podcasting is so infectious. She spent some time there. I think she's looking to start a podcast of her own. I mean, how could you not go to Podcast movement and then just not look around and go, I think I can do a podcast.

Johnny Podcasts  00:21:15
Absolutely.

Matt Cundill  00:21:16
Yeah. So some thought will be put into something that will happen in the next few months, and it will likely include some video as well. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Johnny Podcasts  00:21:25
The Matt Navy Show.

Matt Cundill  00:21:27
It will not. In fact, she's really keen to work with one of the two of you and probably not me. She doesn't need that much resting bitch face in her life.

Johnny Podcasts  00:21:35
We could literally just do this and just replace you with Avery and have her give her thoughts on just kind of anything, and we'll just bounce ideas off each other.

Matt Cundill  00:21:44
I think we sort of talked about it. Before we go to Dallas or any new any new city, we look up where to go to eat, and I think it was an Uber driver that gave us a recommendation for the Terry Blacks barbecue, and it was delicious. My shirt still smells of the smoke.

Jon Gay  00:21:59
You say that like it's a bad thing.

Matt Cundill  00:22:00
No, it's good. And thank you, by the way, Johnny, for going to the podcasting two point oh. I had a power lunch at that time, so I'm glad you went to go and do that. And thanks for the notes. I know you'll share them with me any month now.

Johnny Podcasts  00:22:15
Yes, any month. I'll send them to you.

Matt Cundill  00:22:17
All right. By the way, for those who are interested in Podcast 20, did they mention anything about using the Fountain app to get started?

Johnny Podcasts  00:22:28
They may have. I was so furiously taking notes that I may have missed it. But essentially there's a link that we can put in the comment. Once this goes, it gets published out as a podcast. I'll send you a link to put in the description that people can go look at. And essentially, it's called the Podcast Index, and it lists all of the players that are currently have all of these sort of what they call value for value add ons to their podcast and what they work on. Some work for iOS. Some are web only. Some are for Android. Some are all three. Some of them have all of these features some only have a couple, but I think Fountain was one of them. Is Fountain sort of like the base layer that they're building it on?

Matt Cundill  00:23:06
Yeah, it's one thing that can be used to just sort of actually as you use the app, you start to gain some cryptocurrencies, some satoshis and whatnot which can be used to send to could be us if we were set up for it. We're not just yet, but we will be. I know the new media show is set up for it and Pod Land is set up for it.

Johnny Podcasts  00:23:28
Yeah. A lot of the podcast, like news shows and like big like podcast media shows, they're all on this. They're all using riddled on it.

Jon Gay  00:23:35
I think it's nice.

Matt Cundill  00:23:37
Definitely. Right now I look at it as, okay, so I get $100, turn it into some satoshi or whatnot, and pass it around. It's great social value just to say, hey, we want to thank the podcast Super Friends for making this donation and thanking us. And these are micro payments. Nobody's going to be sending somebody a dollar via PayPal.

Johnny Podcasts  00:24:00
Not yet. That was one of the questions that kept asking, what about dollar? Because that's the difference is like podcasting I can be frank. The demographic of podcast movement seems to be older, at least from my experience. And what comes with age tends to correlate with they don't necessarily understand cryptocurrency. So having to explain that, that's what makes part of this so difficult for mass adoption is you have to explain cryptocurrency first to people. How do I set up a wallet? What the hell is a satoshi? I only learned like two days ago that a satoshi is like a micro bitcoin. It's like a micro fragment of a bitcoin. And having to teach people of that and then get them out of the third party app, it's going to take some time for this sort of mass adoption to happen. Yeah.

Matt Cundill  00:24:50
And of course, I think one of the problems is it has to go across many apps. So you mentioned about commenting. We get this all the time. Where can I see my reviews? When can I respond to my reviews? Well, not every app offers reviews. Castbox does and Apple does. And I don't think Google does. And Pod Chaser does. But that's a website. It can be very confusing. So a lot of this, I mean, you talk about sort of decentralizing the whole thing, but at the same time it's sort of bringing a number of things together as well in the podcast space.

Jon Gay  00:25:21
Do you want to ask Matt your big takeaways from the week?

Matt Cundill  00:25:25
I'll ask myself, Matt, what were your.

Jon Gay  00:25:28
Big takeaways from the week?

Matt Cundill  00:25:30
So I'm glad that we kept it to later in the show for this because this is very boring. So on Tuesday? Sounds profitable. Had a day long session for their sponsors. I did not attend, but at 03:00, they made it available. To everybody to come and see some research from Tom Webster. Formerly of Edison Research. Who's now working it Sounds Profitable. Along with Brian Barletta and a number of other people in the space. Their study that they released and I will put in the show notes where you can have a look at that really talks about the host Red ad versus the announcer ad versus the ad libbed host Red ad and where it really lands. So they basically use the Jordan Harbinger Show, a very popular podcast with a lot of loyal listeners. And from that they put three different ads in the show and then ask the people afterwards their recall based on the ads that were read. So remember, this is a Host Red ad, which is sort of a straight announcer read, but by the host an ad libbed one which will go a little bit longer but feel a little bit more cozy. And then the straight announcer read, which is a voiceover person which they use a female for to sort of really differentiate. And they talked about a very common product, something greens. I just can't remember the spell.

Johnny Podcasts  00:26:47
Athletic greens.

Matt Cundill  00:26:48
Thank you. See, there's my recall. It ain't that great. But anyhow, I think the big takeaway was that both the host reds did very well with the recall, but the announcer Red ad was not that far behind. And it's almost like not that far behind to the point where it really doesn't matter if you do have an announcer Red ad. And this is the argument for programmatic, can we take this one ad with one announcer voice and roll it out across thousands of podcasts with a recall, be like and essentially there was a bit of a green light for advertisers to do that. So this is really what Sounds Profitable is about and that's really connecting podcasters to where the money is inevitably. And there are some ad agencies that they're working with and encouraging really to fill the space with the ability to have programmatic ads. Sorry for talking over everybody's heads, but programmatic ads are those ads that are injected into your podcast hopefully seamlessly and not out of nowhere and hopefully it's not too jarring and hopefully the sound levels are all the same. But these are some of the problems that you got to work through if you want to have a really good sounding podcast and if you want to have it sort of a nice sound where there's an attitude and the podcaster can make a few bucks.

Johnny Podcasts  00:27:58
Yeah, Matt, I was sitting next to you for that panel and my thinking and my bias going into it was the host Red ad is going to beat out the announcer Red ad every single time and twice on Sunday. And you're right, it was essentially the same across the board, which is huge for programmatic advertising and it's going to allow a lot more podcasters to potentially advertise if companies want to just drop their ads all over the place and it's not going to kill your show. I think the biggest differentiator that still made a big splash in my mind was that the ad itself mattered more than who said the ad, it has to fit with your show. And that was one of the questions that they asked in this sort of research study that they did, was how well did the advertisement fit with the vibe of your show? And with athletic greens. Jordan Harbinger they were like, It fits great. It doesn't take me out of the podcast. So if you are someone that is considering advertising, matt can go into a lot more detail about the programmatic side in terms of you can actually select which types of advertisers you want to allow to inject ads onto your show. You have to be really conscious about the types of advertisers. Does this fit with your audience? Is this something that's going to take people out of the conversation and potentially make them bounce or leave your podcast? Because it was just so jarring and so not on theme with your episode. So I think that is what really matters more than necessarily who's actually speaking the ad.

Sarah Burke (Voice Over) 00:29:30
The podcast Super Friends.

Matt Cundill  00:29:33
Thinking back to later, I did get a chance to speak to Brian Barletta and we were talking about CPMs, which is really the cost of the ad. It's cost per meal, the cost per thousand listeners for this stuff. I think if you go out and obviously cut your own deal, you'll do very well. You'll always make the most money in podcasting by cutting your own deal with your own clients. Not a problem. But what is really the value of a five or $10 programmatic ad? Is it that bad? Well, let's think of it this way. If I got to produce a commercial, I got to write the copy, I got to go back and forth with the client to find out if they like it, then I have to do the production on it, then I have to insert it, then I have to it's taken me now so much work. The programmatic ad is probably more valuable. I know that sounds crazy, but it makes sense, right? Who's with me?

Johnny Podcasts  00:30:27
I'm with you.

Matt Cundill  00:30:28
No one's with me.

Jon Gay  00:30:30
I'm just thinking of the production side of it, where if you are doing everything on your own and working directly with the client, you're cutting out the middle man and then, yeah, it just becomes that time value of money thing. Matt, where you're talking about, is it worth it? Is it worth the time for the pay off? And that's really the tricky question.

Matt Cundill  00:30:48
I mean, it's kind of rewarding when you're sitting there doing nothing and an ad shows up and you got paid for it. I think that's a good thing. I'll give the example again about being on the train in Spain. It was my podcast. I listened to a 32nd Spanish ad, and then my podcast started. I said, I don't know what that was, but I got paid. That's okay.

Johnny Podcasts  00:31:08
Matt, do you know anything about because the biggest problem that I've had with programmatic advertising and the reason that some of my clients have said I don't want dynamic ad searching for programmatic ads because of the inconsistency and sound quality and levels. I'm wondering if there is like, is there something on the horizon of some kind of I keep talking about the decentralization of podcasting, but is there some kind of centralized way that we can make sure that everything is like your ad is not going to be accepted unless it's of a certain quality level.

Matt Cundill  00:31:40
So I'm working right now in the Spotify Ad Network, which is on Megaphone, and actually you can actually disqualify a number of categories from appearing on your show.

Johnny Podcasts  00:31:49
Which categories being what? Like in terms of production value? Because that's kind of where I'm coming from.

Matt Cundill  00:31:53
Well, I think the production values on you, johnny the producer, not if it's.

Johnny Podcasts  00:31:57
A programmatic ad that's dropping you.

Matt Cundill  00:32:00
Yeah, right. Podcast ads, I think we know where the levels are supposed to be. I think it's sometimes the podcast that's not at the right level. However, with that said, that doesn't exclude companies. I'll just use a random company, I Heart, that will just inject one of their radio ads into a podcast, and they did that about a year ago. There were some jarring experiences, but I think the industry is beginning to figure out what the levels should really be at and what the loudness and the Lufts are.

Johnny Podcasts  00:32:30
Yeah, because as a host, you would say, I had an Iheart ad play on my podcast and it sucked and people got mad and were telling me about it. I don't want I Heart promoting on my podcast anymore. So the market may balance itself out to force these companies to go, all right, look, we can't just record this into our AirPods with the windows down on the freeway. We have to put at least $30 behind this to actually make it quality.

Jon Gay  00:32:54
Yeah, you mentioned Iheart. I want a point that I found really interesting about Iheart, and not just the fact that they tried to voice track their coffee stand and it was never open. What I did find interesting about Iheart and one of their I don't remember his name, so forgive me, but one of the panelists I saw on the branded podcast panel was talking about I Hearts model for selling podcast. Branded podcast, two big companies, they're not selling it off of downloads, they're not selling it off of streams. They're selling media impressions. So essentially what they're doing is they're saying, hey Procter and Gamble, hey, Clorox, whoever the company is receiving those as examples. If you do an ad buy, we're going to guarantee you so many impressions for your ads, for the podcast, whether that's across their 1000 radio stations, billboards, their outdoor in app ads, whatever that is, we're going to guarantee you x number of impressions and then any listens and streams you get to the podcast is a bonus and we're going to cover the production costs. So I hearts model and actually I shared a lift back to the airport with Seth Wrestler of Jacobs Media and Seth had a really good point when he said this iheart is the only company that's big enough in podcasting to do this where they can sell their radio ads, they can sell all these things across different verticals and that's their business model. They are selling an ad buy based on impressions and covering all the production costs. And I thought that was really interesting that it's unique to Iheart that they can do it that way. Curious for your reactions to that.

Matt Cundill  00:34:29
I'm curious to know what session that was.

Jon Gay  00:34:32
I'll pull it up in my notes which I have up on my laptop here.

Matt Cundill  00:34:35
Okay, excellent. Let me know who that was because I think that there's a little bit of a race going on with a lot of these companies whether it's Lipson and Advertised, Cast and Iheartbreaker Omni that have actually been in the game now for quite a while and they're really looking for inventory. So I noticed that being the head of a network with reach up to 70 podcasts I'm kind of popular in a sense for a few minutes.

Johnny Podcasts  00:35:02
Everyone knows Matt Cundill if you go to podcast movement you can't throw a stick without someone going matt the Canadian. Yeah.

Jon Gay  00:35:09
I've heard your podcast, Matt.

Johnny Podcasts  00:35:10
I love it.

Matt Cundill  00:35:11
They just want the inventory. This is why everybody got bought up and it's really been about acquiring the podcast to buy the inventory and to get access to it and now there's more access than ever before. And to your point Johnny, about the quality of the ads, I think you're right. I think there's still an issue and we're not there. But it's also there's also responsibility on the podcaster to make it so you can't have this jarring abrupt, you just can't put the marker in and all of a sudden there's an ad you actually should probably segue into a podcast that in some manner that it's going to be nice for your listener to listen to and accept. We don't have as much programmatic in Canada scale wise, we just don't have enough yet. I still get a couple of ads for Scotiabank and a few others but it was kind of like Mardi Gras on the day we were leaving Dallas and I went to go download a bunch of my podcasts from the network and some of the ads that went in were really really good.

Jon Gay  00:36:11
Really? Yeah.

Matt Cundill  00:36:12
So your tech report which is I think it's partially made in Montreal, which is obviously about computers and geeks, there was an ad for Nerds nerds candy. Hey, I know we're all nerds shake the box. And I thought they matched that up and paired it so well and it was very seamless. And they were talking straight to the audience about this. There was also another ad for podcast out of Toronto, but because I was in Texas, I was invited to a Texas barbecue at a car dealership and I thought that's exactly what this is supposed to do.

Johnny Podcasts  00:36:48
That's awesome.

Matt Cundill  00:36:49
This is all working and it's working very well in parts of America where it's working well. And Canada is not there. We are not there. We've got Canada post and Scotia Bank and maybe a bank of Montreal.

Johnny Podcasts  00:37:03
It's like you said, isn't it a population issue more so than a desire issue?

Matt Cundill  00:37:07
Yeah, I think there's also Canadians are a little bit conservative, they're a little tight about trying new things and they go with what's easy, and what's easy is doing streaming. And again, we go back to that attribution which I'm going to be very interested in hearing about Cohost because it sounds like Co Host has some numbers that were to give to podcasters.

Johnny Podcasts  00:37:28
Yeah, a couple of additional specific points about Co Host was they will automatically transcribe your podcast for you. And with what she said is a 95% accuracy, which everyone pitches 95%. That's kind of the industry standard for AI speech to text code. And the other one was a website. If you don't have a website for your podcast, they'll make a very basic one page website for you as well. And then they also embedded in what's the one platform is it podcaster or that gives you the link where you tap it and it automatically opens a podcast app that's connected to your phone chargeable, I believe. Charitable. Yeah, they've combined with chartable and linktree, like a sort of link like that. So instead of posting. Here's the Spotify link. Here's the Apple podcast link. Or here's the Chartable link. Here's a link from Co Host that will open it up. And it will open up a link tree that says. You can list me on Apple. Google. Spotify. Whichever is your preference. And you can track the analytics of who's opened that link. Which link that they tapped. And where all those people were and what device they were on when they opened that link. And where they eventually consumed the podcast. So a lot of those little stuff that the normal hosting platforms just don't have yet.

Jon Gay  00:38:49
Just to come back to math question, if you want to include anything about this in the show notes, the session with Iheart was how to sell branded podcasts like a pro. It was moderated from Dave Bezing from Sound, that brands that's the company that did the very famous inside Trader Joe's podcast, tom Webster was on it as well. Andy Kelly was the SVP of custom podcast for Iheart. He was on the panel as well.

Matt Cundill  00:39:10
Andy Kelly okay, well, dave Beasing escaped from my eyesight, which is too bad because I was looking for him. So I'm sorry I didn't go to that one. I know. I was in another session at that time.

Johnny Podcasts  00:39:21
Another power launch, maybe.

Jon Gay  00:39:22
Yeah.

Matt Cundill  00:39:23
This was not a power lunch, I can guarantee you this time. I was in a session.

Johnny Podcasts  00:39:27
When Matt says power lunch, he means power stuffing brisket, not a power hour.

Jon Gay  00:39:33
Of, like, a shot of beer every hour.

Johnny Podcasts  00:39:35
Oh, yeah, that, too.

Matt Cundill  00:39:37
There was beer involved at that power lunch. It was with Seth Wrestler.

Jon Gay  00:39:41
Oh, there you go. Yeah.

Matt Cundill  00:39:43
That's power lunch.

Jon Gay  00:39:44
I'd say.

Matt Cundill  00:39:44
So did you guys see the podcast makeover?

Jon Gay  00:39:49
I'd look forward to that every year, but I was actually in a different session at that time, so I did miss that one this year.

Johnny Podcasts  00:39:53
I missed it as well.

Matt Cundill  00:39:54
I thought we did a great job not going to the same sessions.

Jon Gay  00:39:57
Yeah. So the podcast Makeover is sort of a quick air check version at the beginning of a podcast, right? Seth is usually does that every year.

Johnny Podcasts  00:40:05
Yeah.

Matt Cundill  00:40:05
And I can tell you it was really well done. They're down to 30 seconds. There have been massive cutbacks in the industry. They used to give you, like, 60 seconds to make an impression, but they're giving you 30. But I really like that. Here's the artwork. So the artwork will go up on the screen, and then they'll do 32nd audiogram, and that's all you get. And if anything, it feels like an education piece about how important the 30 seconds of your show has to be.

Jon Gay  00:40:33
Is it always the first 30 seconds of the show, Matt?

Matt Cundill  00:40:35
Yes.

Jon Gay  00:40:36
Okay.

Matt Cundill  00:40:37
And so there's voiceover, there's an intro, there's the music. All that is taken into consideration because I really do think that's all you get when people are making the decision about whether or not to listen to a new podcast off the top.

Jon Gay  00:40:53
Yeah. I did see Matt shared internally in our group here, Rob Walters slides from Lips. And your marketing advice for your podcast is BS that he does every year, which usually a lot of great insights in there. And then the fact that the first 30 seconds of your most recent episode is the most important thing you'll ever do, because if somebody finds your show, that's what they're going to hear. And the whole you only get one chance at a first impression thing. If that 1st 30 seconds of your latest episode is meh, forget it.

Matt Cundill  00:41:21
So were you in that session?

Jon Gay  00:41:23
No, I wasn't. I was just reading the slides that you sent me earlier this afternoon.

Matt Cundill  00:41:28
Again, who can really remember who was assigned to be doing what at what time, right?

Jon Gay  00:41:33
No, we did Divide and Conquer pretty well. You're right.

Matt Cundill  00:41:35
Yeah. Listen, Rob does a great job with that session every year and trying to come up with really what I mean, listen, I know some of the things he says will make people not such as you don't really have a podcast. You're not really podcasting unless you're an Apple. But it's kind of like saying I'm a baseball player and then just playing whistleball in your backyard. If you're not on Apple, you do need to have your podcast on Apple in order to be playing the game. So I know technically we can say he's wrong, but he's right in that sense. The number, by the way, the magic number to beat half the podcast out there was 161.

Jon Gay  00:42:16
It was downloads per episode.

Matt Cundill  00:42:18
If your podcast episode gets 161 downloads after 30 days, you have beaten half the podcast out there.

Jon Gay  00:42:27
I think the other big number from that is the percentage of podcasts that are still active. And I think last year was around 15%. This year it seemed like a dropped closer to ten if my math is right. Matt, does that sound right?

Johnny Podcasts  00:42:37
Yeah, it's been on the warp path of now is the best time. There's never been less competition in podcasting right now.

Matt Cundill  00:42:44
There are so many quitters out there. It is excellent. You want to get yourself into podcasting. So many people are quitting right now. It's like a wide open space, but it speaks to consistency and just releasing your episodes on a consistent basis where people can grab onto them, you will be able to build up to I think 161 is a great number to start at. It's like when you go play golf, you're having a terrible day. Well, if you get below 100, you've beaten most of the golfers out there.

Johnny Podcasts  00:43:14
Today. I'm going to raise up my war flag that I always do. When people talk about download numbers, it's not always about the quantity of your audience. It's about the quality of your audience and the goal and the goal of your podcast. If your goal is to have more than 161 downloads, then great. Keep your eye on the analytics, keep pumping out content to try and drive listeners. But if your goal is to sell your product, your business, yourself, get the guests that you have on to become a client, the audience number can kind of be set to the side for now. But again, we're all vain. We all have gigantic egos, we all want tons of people listening to our podcast. It's interesting that that number seems continues to grow up because I think from last year was 120. Like Jack said, now it's 160. Does that correlate to or does that point to just the consistent growing of the medium? The amount of people that are consuming podcasts?

Matt Cundill  00:44:04
It talks to a number of podcasts that have dropped off.

Johnny Podcasts  00:44:07
Okay.

Jon Gay  00:44:08
The ones that stay drive that number up. That makes sense.

Johnny Podcasts  00:44:12
I don't have this podcast to listen to. I want to go listen to this podcast that's actually putting out content.

Matt Cundill  00:44:17
Just to dovetail a little bit from the programmatic. If there's anybody left listening after I talked about programmatic advertising, just the number of ways to monetize your podcast. There's not one way. There are so many ways, and whether it's the programmatic ads I went to see Jesse Brown from Canada Land and how he built a podcast network, basically asking people to crowd fund the company. We need to get $10,000 this month in order to do this next step. I remember at one point on his show, he was saying, we need to get this amount of money so I can give my employees benefits, creating these goals for people in order to move up. And so in 2016, when he broke the story of Gian gamesHi and some awful allegations at the CDC and the story went out, people began to see a real value for his podcast. And then, as years have gone by, it went from 10,000. He's now getting over $50,000 every year. And I think as companies in Canada like Bell and Chorus cut back or change the way they do the news, there's a lot less trust. And there's more trust going into something like Canada Land and the journalism that they're doing, especially now with the last few weeks and what's gone on with the departure of Lisa La Flam from CTV News. And I know this is a Canadian story again, but I was like, what?

Jon Gay  00:45:36
It translates here too, to the states where you talk about less and less media personalities and less and less people that exist, whether you're on the MSNBC side, the Fox side, the CNN side, whatever that is. Podcasters tend to be very well trusted with information, and there's a lack of Walter Cronkites out there at this point.

Johnny Podcasts  00:45:57
Back to the crowdfunding thing they use. Would you say crowdfunding or crowd sourcing?

Matt Cundill  00:46:03
You tell me the difference.

Johnny Podcasts  00:46:04
I feel like they're the same. I've heard both. And if there was two different words, they have to mean two different things. But that's besides the point. There's also the aspect of community building, too. Not just the trust part of it too. It's the feeling of being a part of something. And people, unfortunately, in the world today, people are lacking community. People are lacking something that they feel really a part of. We're also living these individual, solitary lives online that, wow. I listen to Matt every single week. I feel like I know him just as well as my neighbor down the street that I talk to all the time. I feel like I know him because he's in my ears all the time. He's asking for my help to be a part of this. And there's thousands of other people that want to help him, too, to help keep this thing going, this show, this company, whatever you're building. And that's a great selling point too, as you're building a community. And as much as the bullshit around sorry, as much as the BS around is built around, quote unquote, communities, like with NFPs and all that crap. That's a legitimate thing. You can build a legitimate community around your podcast because it's like you said, Jack, there's that source of trust and that people latch on to you for whatever reason it is they're latching onto you.

Jon Gay  00:47:17
Mark the episode explicit, matt oh, yeah, totally.

Johnny Podcasts  00:47:20
I think they all have to be explicit. I always dropped the ball and cursed on his episodes.

Matt Cundill  00:47:26
Sorry. Jesse Brown did mention that he didn't think that his podcast was a community, but it was more sort of a source of journalism.

Johnny Podcasts  00:47:34
Yes, in that particular instance, yes.

Matt Cundill  00:47:37
But yes to everything else that you said.

Johnny Podcasts  00:47:39
Yes.

Matt Cundill  00:47:40
With that said, there was a session at the very end, and this was done by Anna Deshawn, who was part of the podcast makeover session as well. Crowdfunding, let's get that money. I did not attend this, but.

Jon Gay  00:47:54
She.

Matt Cundill  00:47:54
Did do a session on this, so crowdfunding is definitely a thing. But with this said, I want to talk a little bit about the schedule of podcast movement. I feel that after looking at the whole thing that they put everything on the first day to make me buy the Pro Pass, so I have to go and watch everything on video now. I just feel the schedule is built so that I have to go get the Pro Pass to watch all the.

Johnny Podcasts  00:48:17
Stuff that I missed because I didn't even go Friday.

Jon Gay  00:48:21
Yeah, you dipped out, Johnny. I always say that this is a very mentally exhausting week as a business owner and as a podcaster because on one hand, you are trying to be a sponge. And soak in as much information as you can, I filled half the little notebook they gave us with notes like you said, Johnny furiously scribbling down stuff. But the other piece of it is you're trying to network in the community. I got to see Matt and see Matt in person for the first time ever and see Johnny in person for the second time ever. So if you're not soaking in information, you're networking. You've got to be, quote unquote on for the networking. And I think by Friday I was pretty spent and I went to a few sessions on Friday morning before I ended up heading over to the airport. But my notes were definitely more copious Wednesday and Thursday. But I think some of that is just fatigue by the end of the week as there's so much substance there.

Matt Cundill  00:49:13
I know a lot of people are kind of shocked and horrified when I mentioned this. I think I mentioned it to Michelle, Michelle O'Dell, by the way, shout out, who was running with us for a good chunk of the week. That it was the first time that we'd all met face to face, the.

Jon Gay  00:49:27
First time we'd open in the same room. Johnny and I met for ten minutes at a fire drill during the Orlando podcast movement. But aside from that, that's it.

Matt Cundill  00:49:33
Yeah, that's it. And we've been working together now for a few years, but that was podcast movement was the first time we've all been together.

Johnny Podcasts  00:49:41
Well, it wasn't weird. Like, we all met up, and there was no awkward like, oh, hey, we've been chatting online for two years, and now we're meeting up for the first time. It's like, no. We've spent so much significant FaceTime together that it was just like it was the same as we are now.

Jon Gay  00:49:58
It was odd for me because last year in Nashville, I was there with Catherine and David, and this year in Texas, I was there with the two of you. So hopefully get the five of us together at some point.

Matt Cundill  00:50:08
All right, let's talk about the tweet, shall we?

Johnny Podcasts  00:50:13
The tweet heard around the world. Can I say something really quick? It blew up on Twitter. We're talking about the podcast movement tweet that reference Ben Shapiro, which, if you're watching this, you probably heard it through the grapevine. What was so odd is that Jack showed me the tweet while we were sitting in a session. He goes, this tweet is blowing up. Have you seen this? And nothing had changed. On the conference room floor, the world on social media, everyone's running around with their head cut off, and the world is on fire, and you're losing everything around you. The conference went on as if the tweet had never gone out. There was no, like, confrontations or yelling outside. There's nothing. It was so bizarre how different the world is online versus actually, I had.

Jon Gay  00:50:57
A friend who works in a newsroom text me and say, hey, are you a podcast? Yeah. Why? What's going on? Are there protests? Are people picketing? No, not at all. I think there were some folks who were very upset just to catch anybody up who doesn't know. What is the company that Ben Shapiro associated with?

Johnny Podcasts  00:51:17
Daily Wire.

Jon Gay  00:51:18
Daily Wire. Daily Wire was purchased a booth. They were there. They were giving out free popcorn, which I guess is ironic when you think about it. And as a result, then Shapiro shut up. At one point, he was not a paid attendee, but his company was sponsoring a booth. So take that for what it's worth, but he was there. There were a number of folks on the left who are very upset with Ben Shapiro being there. And then that caused some noise, and that eventually caused the podcast movement folks to tweet an apology, which, according to some PR folks I talked to, may not have been the best way to handle it. And I'm just hoping it doesn't overshadow what was a really good conference, because on one hand, you're calling yourself inclusive. So folks on the left are saying, how can you be inclusive and have someone like Ben Shapiro there? And folks in the right are saying, how can you be inclusive and exclude one of the biggest podcasters in the world? So. It seemed like. Unfortunately, they managed to piss off both sides. And that's got the tweet pulled up here.

Matt Cundill  00:52:14
Yeah. So, I mean, you can have a look at it here. It looks like one of the tweets was deleted. I don't know when that had taken place, but this was the apology that was put out by Podcast Movement.

Jon Gay  00:52:25
Do you want to read it for the folks listening to the podcast?

Matt Cundill  00:52:28
I should. You're right. Hi, folks. We owe you an apology. Before sessions kick off for the day yesterday afternoon, Ben Shapiro briefly visited the PM 22 Expo area near the Daily Wire booth, though he was not registered or expected. We take full responsibility for the harm done by his presence and then it goes on. There's no way around it. We agreed to sell The Daily Wire a first time booth based on the company's large presence in podcasting. The weight of that decision is now painfully clear. Shapiro is a co founder and drop in is a co founder. A drop in, however unlikely, should have been considered a possibility.

Johnny Podcasts  00:53:07
Hold on, you missed a critical line right below that. Those of you who called this unacceptable are right. This goes back to what I just said at the beginning. Everything was blowing up online. The apology was referenced, I think came from a tweet. So this all happened online. Someone said they felt unsafe on Twitter. However, nothing happened on the floor of podcast Movement. So I'm just curious how what harm was done. We all lean differently politically, which is great that we all have such a great relationship. We can all set our politics to the side. I think that you can't have a podcasting conference without acknowledging that what the Daily Wire has built has increased the industry, it's grown the industry. It has brought more people into podcasting that likely wouldn't have before. Same with podcasts that are on the left, like Pod, Save America. It really bugs me that Podcast Movement thinks that they could play both sides of the coins by saying, sure, Daily Wire will take your money, have a booth, great. But then also say, this is completely unacceptable, but we're going to keep the money that we took from the Daily Wire for this. That really bugged me.

Matt Cundill  00:54:28
So my strategy is, if you don't really want somebody there and they came to you with money, you're sold out. If you just don't want them there, you're sold out. It's just management. It's your business. You manage it the way you want. I could sell advertising to some of the most awful people in the world. The rate might just be a little bit different than it might be someone else. You have to manage these things as you go. I'm not sure that they thought this far ahead.

Johnny Podcasts  00:54:55
I don't think they did. Sorry, go ahead.

Matt Cundill  00:54:56
I don't even think they thought about the tweet. I think the tweet is really bizarre. More than anything.

Johnny Podcasts  00:55:01
I don't think that they thought through having Daily Wire there because from my perspective, the podcasting industry leans to the left. I would say that a majority leans to the left. And if you looked at the people on the floor of the conference based on stereotypes, you could say that the majority of the people attending probably lean to the left.

Matt Cundill  00:55:21
We already have that information. The podcast creators was something I think that was done by sounds profitable. And it already shows that it's higher on the left side than it is. But most people will identify as being independent.

Johnny Podcasts  00:55:35
Exactly. So by accepting a Daily Wire booth, it's interesting that I wonder if there was any consideration taken into that of hey, everything blows up on Twitter. Everything is always a controversy all the time. There's going to be a massive people here and people that are politically active tend to whine on Twitter. They had to have known that this was potentially a possibility, not that Ben was going to show, but that there's going to be some significant reaction to the fact that Daily Wire was there.

Jon Gay  00:56:03
You're on a first name basis.

Johnny Podcasts  00:56:06
I think Ben is great. I'll come out. I'm a fan of Ben Shapiro. I think what he's done for podcasting is absolutely incredible. Politics aside, which one of the industry is incredible?

Jon Gay  00:56:16
There are folks on the left and I have not listened to his show, nor would I based on my political leanings. But there are folks who feel that his show traffic and conspiracy theories and racism and misogyny and that was where the controversy came from. There are folks who truly believe that off not just on Twitter. But you're right, a lot of the outrage came online. I'm going to get a text from somebody in a newsroom in Washington, DC. Saying, hey, what's going on there? Well, I don't know. I guess he came and shook hands and took pictures of some of his fans.

Johnny Podcasts  00:56:43
I didn't even know he was there. I didn't see him.

Matt Cundill  00:56:45
Yeah, I wouldn't have known if there wasn't a tweet. And that tweet has I wouldn't have done a tweet like that.

Johnny Podcasts  00:56:52
No.

Jon Gay  00:56:53
Some folks I asked in the PR industry would agree that if that was a poor way to handle it, which is a shame because it's a great conference and the guys behind the conference do a great job.

Johnny Podcasts  00:57:01
Yeah. What do you think? Because it is a tweet and because the news cycle goes every 24 hours, by now everyone's forgotten about it. It's not even a thing anymore. It's like it never happened. Does this have long term impact for podcast Movement? I can see two potential possibilities. One, I could see what they said they said in the tweet. They said, we're going to be much more careful about vetting the people that we have at podcast Movement. What I take away from that is potentially that they are going to completely axe anything right of center from being a podcast movement going forward to avoid this happening in the future. I could see that as one distinct possibility. I could also see the right boycotting just purely out of spite boycotting podcast movement going forward.

Matt Cundill  00:57:45
Or they go get their own conference.

Johnny Podcasts  00:57:47
Or they go get their own conference. Do you guys see the tweet or the controversy at all having any lasting impact on podcast movement going forward?

Matt Cundill  00:57:54
Yes, I think that scenario is possible whereby they just start refusing money from the people that might make other people uncomfortable. Listen, everything is going to be I mean, if Ben Shapiro had twelve downloads, nobody would care. He's got 12 million downloads and a fairly successful network that is, by the way, still exists on Apple, still exists on Spotify, and all those other podcasters that are complaining about it also have their podcasts sitting beside Ben Shapiro on Apple and Spotify. So I'm not sure who's supposed to be the judge and the gatekeeper here along the way. I will tell you that one thing that did happen, which I don't mind sharing here, is that Lauren.

Johnny Podcasts  00:58:36
I was shocked when I saw it tweet. When I saw this tweet from her, I was like, oh, this is not getting contained.

Matt Cundill  00:58:47
So you refined taking money from the Daily Wire as long as it stayed hush. Interesting. Also, if the mere presence of Ben Shapiro somehow harms you, you need more help than you can find on any self help podcast. And then I just had to respond. I said, this is it. It finally happened. I finally found something on Twitter. I kind of agreed with her.

Johnny Podcasts  00:59:06
With the tear in the spacetime continuum that finally brings the left and the.

Matt Cundill  00:59:11
Right together, there was going to be no other way.

Johnny Podcasts  00:59:14
Screwed up podcast movement. You cured the political divide in America.

Jon Gay  00:59:19
Yeah, I did see a couple of tweets from people in the podcasting industry that I respect that said, I'm so glad I didn't give any money to the podcast movement. But again, that's on to Johnny's point on social, I don't see in terms of the actual conference or the experience, I don't see it affecting podcast movement in years to come. I think the gentleman behind podcast movement would be wise to maybe have a PR team to employ in case something of this invariably comes up again. Because again, I don't want to crap on them because they do a great convention every year and it's really grown in the last nine years. But the situation could have been handled better, I think.

Johnny Podcasts  00:59:55
Luckily for PM, it's a full calendar year. Between that so much is going to happen in the news between then and now that this will be completely forgotten going into podcast moving next year, except for the people who took it personally and are like, I'm not going to podcast moving after this because of this. And I think this is probably a good lesson learned from them, too. They can go, hey, like I said, they're going to take the route of we're just going to act the right completely or conservative podcasting completely, or they're just going to say, we're just going to have podcasting be inclusive. And we are not going to comment because there was no actual physical violence or anything that happened that caused any legal issues with podcast movement. So if anything, we're just going to not tweet about this stuff going forward.

Jon Gay  01:00:41
Tell me. I'd like to over correct. And have the Pod Save America guys on next year.

Johnny Podcasts  01:00:45
Yeah, just put the Pod Save America booth right next to Daily Wire and have them battle it out.

Jon Gay  01:00:51
That would be worth getting some popcorn for.

Matt Cundill  01:00:53
Well, I think that's what the popcorn was there for. And by the way, I made numerous stops to take some of their popcorn, and I just thought it was tasty. I didn't even really know what Daily Wire was until I got there. This is what happens when you're in Canada, right? It was the first time I got to meet Terry Gross a number of years ago from NPR Philadelphia.

Jon Gay  01:01:10
Yeah.

Matt Cundill  01:01:10
And I became a fan. Right. I'm not exposed to all the same stuff as you might be. I don't get the same news. And we have our own problems up here, as it were. But if somebody has a secret to doing really well in podcasting, I want to hear it. Even if you're a complete wackadoo and there's a lot of wackadoos, maybe that's the secret. Well, I don't think Ben Shapiro was the worst podcaster in that building, so I think that there's way worse that.

Jon Gay  01:01:38
We just you mean in terms of irresponsible content or quality irresponsible content.

Matt Cundill  01:01:43
I'm sure there's way worse. Way worse. And I don't know what you do when you find it. I mean, we're going to start escorting people from the building if that's the case. See how that tweet has made everything very problematic? Listen, I think it's well intentioned. Somebody is very welcome to feel uncomfortable. I totally get that they're uncomfortable. I totally understand that. However, now we've gone and done it.

Johnny Podcasts  01:02:10
Yeah. Regardless of how you feel about it, I agree it was well intentioned. I think we've gotten to a place culturally where playing the card of this person's present is harmful to me. When no physical harm was actually done to you. I don't think you can really play that card anymore. And I think the reactions on Twitter from both the left and the right show that we've moved beyond that era where you can play that and get.

Matt Cundill  01:02:37
Your way and everything can be politicized. We even found a way to do it now.

Jon Gay  01:02:43
Yeah.

Johnny Podcasts  01:02:45
Now, are the political super, the podcast politics super friends?

Jon Gay  01:02:49
Hopefully.

Matt Cundill  01:02:51
Johnny, thank you for being such a great host down in Texas.

Johnny Podcasts  01:02:54
Yeah, absolutely. It's an absolute blast seeing you guys, and fingers crossed, Denver next year.

Jon Gay  01:03:00
I've never been to Denver. I'm really looking forward to that.

Matt Cundill  01:03:02
I have not been to Denver other than an eight hour stay in the airport.

Jon Gay  01:03:07
Actually, yes, I did have a layover there once where I did sample the Rocky Mountain oysters at the airport. Kind of like a cross bean chicken and calamari. If you don't know, well, if you know, you know.

Johnny Podcasts  01:03:17
Yeah. If you know, you know.

Matt Cundill  01:03:19
All right. My name is Matt Cundill. I am the owner of the Sound Off Media Company and the Sound Off Podcast Network and I host the Sound Off podcast. Thank you very much for listening.

Jon Gay  01:03:29
I am Jon Gay from Jag In Detroit Podcast, where I can co host, produce, edit your podcast, and help you in any other way. You can find me online@jagindetroyt.com.

Johnny Podcasts  01:03:40
I'm Johnny Podcasts. I'm an audio and video engineer for podcasters across the nation, and you can follow me on Twitter at johnny podcasts.

Sarah Burke (Voice Over) 01:03:50
Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening to the podcast Super Friends. For a transcript of the show or to connect with the super Friends, go to the show notes of this episode or go to Soundoff Network, 

Tara Sands (Voice Over) 01:03:50
produced and distributed by the sound of a media company.