Fireside Chat

You know you've been doing something way too long when someone is declared an "industry veteran" after five years in the business and you've been in it for a lot longer than that. I get that feeling every year at Podcast Movement (and, come to think of it, at every radio convention as well), and I've come to terms with it, because it's no different from every other business in which everyone's an expert. Credentials are beside the point. Just walk in and behave as if you're the fount of all wisdom and you'll find a certain percentage of the audience will buy in. (Works for me.)

That came to mind again when Mark Cuban used his keynote to promote his social audio app Fireside, which he decided to push with the interesting and possibly effective method of thoroughly trashing what everyone in the room does now, declaring podcasting as it is today "Podcasting 1.0" and clearly inferior to his "Podcasting 2.0" app, which, as much as I understand it, is basically Clubhouse plus Anchor, live chats you can publish as podcasts after the fact. Here, I'm not going to go into any more detail or criticism; my thoughts on social audio are here and Edison Research's Tom Webster did a brief Twitter thread here that's worth reading about Cuban's presentation. (Also, James Cridland actually read the terms of service for Fireside and found that Cuban and his partner's claims that you own what you create on Fireside might not be quite accurate, so be careful there.)

No, what I'm thinking is how the focus should be less on the specific platforms and more on the content and how people want to receive it. The latter is a given: People want convenience, which used to be "turn it on and it's there" or "if you don't like what you're hearing, hit the scan button." We're beyond that now, which might not be good news for traditional broadcast radio, whether it's on an actual radio or a phone or smart speaker. The younger you go, the more of an on-demand world it is. Convenience is "what I want, when and where I want it." But we knew that. And that means any platform ubiquitously available through an internet connection will do, if...

If, that is, it has the content people want. Yes, we're back to it being all about the content, and that's why, as skeptical as I am about Fireside and a lot of other things in the audio space, you can't dismiss any platform... including, incidentally, radio. (Okay, maybe AM, but other than that.)

Take Joe Rogan. (Please. Thank you, I'll be here all week.) As Libsyn's Rob Walch emphasized in his annual dive into the real download numbers of podcasting, "The Joe Rogan Experience" is by a wide margin the biggest thing in podcasting, one of only four shows that's done over a billion downloads, and itself several times the size of entire podcast networks. Before you can interrupt, yes, Joe was famous before he started the podcast, and had a large following from comedy, UFC, and "Fear Factor" built in and ready to go when he started the podcast. But I'll also remind you that when the show started (2009), podcasting was not what it is now, In 2009, podcasting was largely a) tech shows and b) comedians talking to other comedians about comedy. It was not a platform with a mass audience at the time. Yet, Rogan, working independently, got his audience to find him there. So did Adam Carolla, who started his podcast about the same time. You want an example of someone who DIDN'T have a following at that time and succeeded? How about another billion-download show, "Stuff You Should Know"? Started in 2008, and attracted so much audience attention and loyalty that it ultimately spawned what is now iHeartMedia's podcast division.

It wasn't the platform. It was the show.

You don't go to an Apple store because of the architecture, as nice as those stores can be. You go because of what it sells. You don't pay for Netflix or HBO Max because of the app design (definitely not HBO Max's design, which is Early Crash), you pay because you want the movies and shows ("I Think You Should Leave," most definitely). You listen to radio for the personality, the music, the entertainment, and if you can find better versions of any of that on podcasts or through streaming platforms, you go there. If everything on those social audio platforms sucks now, but someone comes up with a really good show people want to hear, you won't call them failures anymore. It's not exactly "if you build it, they will come," because it's possible for the platform to be too obscure or gets in the way of people finding the content (Quibi!), but, generally, the focus some people have on the platform tends to downplay the essential element of content. You do something people want, you let them know about it, they'll look for you. Radio, podcast, Clubhouse, TikTok, YouTube, Fireside, whatever. Make it easy for them to find it and you have something.

Hey, MySpace still exists. You never know....

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Other things to talk about, you say? Why, yes, and the place to find them is All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics show prep section, which you'll find by clicking here, and you can also follow the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics and find every story individually linked to the appropriate item.

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Okay, so, a note of explanation. After promoting my appearance at Podcast Movement 2021 for what seemed like eons, I was a no-show. Panel cancelled, and I did not make it to Nashville at all. I apologize, because I had a last-minute emergency that prevented me from traveling (and, as it turned out, it was a good thing that I was here at home rather than thousands of miles away. Also, I discovered that the cafeteria at the local hospital is actually pretty good), and, honestly, the Delta variant made the idea of travel rather unappealing to begin with. But the convention had plenty of good content to make up for my panel's cancellation, and, barring another emergency or pandemic flare-up, I'm eager to get back to Podcast Movement next year. I think it's in Dallas. Maybe I can debate Mark Cuban.

Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
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