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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Fear and Greed summer series. I'm Michael

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Speaker 1: Thompson today a subject very close to my own heart. Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: the booming industry that has done a lot more, you

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Speaker 1: would say, than just carve out a niche in Australia's

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Speaker 1: media landscape. Tim Burrows is the founder and publisher of

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Speaker 1: media and marketing website Umbrella and the newsletter Unmade. Tim.

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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fear and Great.

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Speaker 2: Thank you very much for having me back, Michael.

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Speaker 1: Why has podcasting succeeded at such a large scale where other,

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Speaker 1: I supposed to say kind of new media formats have

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Speaker 1: perhaps remained more niche. Podcasting feels like it has burst

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Speaker 1: well beyond that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I suppose we look back on a probably

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Speaker 2: ten to fifteen year journey really where it's just kept

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Speaker 2: on keeping on, you know. So each year podcasting has

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Speaker 2: just attracted a little bit more attention, a little bit

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Speaker 2: more of the audio that the time audience is than

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Speaker 2: the year before. So you know, we're getting to that

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Speaker 2: point where and there are so many different surveys and

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Speaker 2: so many different methodologies, but most of them seem to

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Speaker 2: indicate that more than half of the population now listen

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Speaker 2: to a podcast at least once a month, you know,

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Speaker 2: so that's sort of you can probably start to count

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Speaker 2: it as a mass medium.

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Speaker 1: Finally, Yeah, and what about on the advertisers side, because

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Speaker 1: you cannot have an industry like this without the support

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Speaker 1: of advertisers, and that kind of then fuels growth. Clearly,

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Speaker 1: there is something about podcasting that appeals.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's probably a couple of ways of answering that,

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Speaker 2: because it's still definitely something where there are some there's

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Speaker 2: a handful of really big winners who get those really

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Speaker 2: big audiences and they get the sponsorships and all of

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Speaker 2: those things. So you know, it's definitely a medium that

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Speaker 2: skews towards the big But you then get this sort

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Speaker 2: of long, tight tale where a fair bit of the

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Speaker 2: advertising is effectively is networked advertising, you know, so it's

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Speaker 2: you know, you may get a network the targets by

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Speaker 2: maybe an age demographic or an interest demographic, but you

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Speaker 2: also get that beauty of life reads, you know, the

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Speaker 2: persuasiveness of heiring in your ear, the oracle of Orange

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Speaker 2: Sean Almer talking about the supplement he happens to be

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Speaker 2: currently taking, that can be very persuasive.

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Speaker 1: Indeed, it certainly can, and it does allow for a

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Speaker 1: very direct relationship with an audience and a very interested

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Speaker 1: and engaged audience. In that advertisers, if they know that

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Speaker 1: they want to reach people interested in, say business, then

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Speaker 1: they can speak to a podcast hey like Fear and

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Speaker 1: Greens just piking one out at random. A lot of

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Speaker 1: change happening, though still at the moment, it is an

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Speaker 1: industry that's still evolving. There is a shift towards video,

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Speaker 1: and there's been a tie up, for instance, between iHeartMedia

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Speaker 1: in Netflix to feature video podcast on the platform. How

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Speaker 1: do you see that playing out? And is there this

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Speaker 1: chance that we will end up almost with two podcast industries,

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Speaker 1: one audio first and one that is video first, or

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Speaker 1: does everything to stand up with video?

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Speaker 2: Do you know what? I do buy the argument that

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Speaker 2: an awful lot is going towards video, whether it's everything

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Speaker 2: we'll have to see, and there's probably a sort of

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Speaker 2: a pull and a push of it. The I think

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Speaker 2: the attraction for podcasters, particularly those who are funding the

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Speaker 2: sales going onto YouTube is YouTube feels like one of

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Speaker 2: the last algorithms that's actually quite generous in helping kind

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Speaker 2: of creators get themselves discovered. So that's that's one attraction

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Speaker 2: why people are running towards it. But then I think

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Speaker 2: the other thing is if you look at the you know,

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Speaker 2: the deals that the likes of Netflix has done, I

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Speaker 2: do think they see an emerging challenge for from a

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Speaker 2: for people's attention, you know. So if you think that,

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Speaker 2: you know, people are probably not that far away from

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Speaker 2: it being relatively routine to spend an hour in conversation

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Speaker 2: with your AI. Now that's time you're not doing something else.

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Speaker 2: So it feels like a lot of what Netflix has

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Speaker 2: been doing with with with with offering up gaming, with

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Speaker 2: doing these podcasting deals is just to try and increase

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Speaker 2: the number of minutes that people stay with that platform

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Speaker 2: on any given day.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. We talked on a previous episode about the challenges

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Speaker 1: for legacy media and the much for a told death

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Speaker 1: of newspapers and TV and radio as well. One of

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Speaker 1: the things that cited when we're talking about radio is

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Speaker 1: podcasts and the rise of podcasts. Do you see podcasting

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Speaker 1: as a threat to radio, to radio stations, to radio

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Speaker 1: audiences and to radio advertisers or are they now at

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Speaker 1: this point where they just quite happily coexist, you.

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Speaker 2: Know, in Australia, there's a lot of coexistence, possibly more

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Speaker 2: so than some other markets, And in part that's just

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Speaker 2: because so many of the popular podcasts are coming from

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Speaker 2: the same stables that are also in radio as well.

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Speaker 2: I you know, I was talking to a kind of

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Speaker 2: somebody who who looks at this stuff that has come

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Speaker 2: up through the radio industry. He was using an example

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Speaker 2: of driving along for an hour in conversation with his AI,

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Speaker 2: and for that hour he was not listening to the

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Speaker 2: radio and was not listening to a podcast. So it

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Speaker 2: feels like it the real question may not be radio

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Speaker 2: versus podcasts. It may be AI versus both of those things.

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Speaker 1: Okay, that is actually something very very new to think

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Speaker 1: about and may kind of change what I was going

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Speaker 1: to ask you then, was about kind of in a

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Speaker 1: year's time, in five years time, is podcasting still going

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Speaker 1: to feel like the challenger or is it just part

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Speaker 1: of the media establishment. But maybe if the bigger threat,

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Speaker 1: the greater, the existential threat, is actually coming from AI.

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Speaker 1: It is about we need to accept the podcasting radio.

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Speaker 1: We are all in this together against this digital behemoth.

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Speaker 2: And let's remember that the other threat, which we're already

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Speaker 2: beginning to see, is some really crappy AI generated podcast

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Speaker 2: just being churned out as well. So we're seeing a

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Speaker 2: lot of kind of AI slot which I'm sure will

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Speaker 2: end up in podcast form. So I think there is

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Speaker 2: there is a real fight to kind of hold that

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Speaker 2: premium end and you know, create stuff which is still

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Speaker 2: obviously from humans and all of those sort of human insights.

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Speaker 2: So that feels like the benefit. You know, it feels

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Speaker 2: like the advertising part will become commoditized, but you know

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Speaker 2: it's gonna be that where we'll find the value is

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Speaker 2: in that long tail of podcasts.

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Speaker 1: Okay, and the one last question without notice, do you

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Speaker 1: have a favorite business podcast?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? Do you know the one I deeply miss? I

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Speaker 2: was looking in my feed back from twenty twenty two.

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Speaker 2: There used to be really good one called safe Word,

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Speaker 2: but I noticed that the people from Fear and Greed

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Speaker 2: haven't updated it for many years.

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Speaker 1: That one has been rested. We experimented with it for

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Speaker 1: a while and we have rested it. Now we have

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Speaker 1: got plenty of other options within Fear and Greed. I'm

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Speaker 1: glad you nominated something from the Fear and Greed stable.

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Speaker 1: It was a bit of a gambler, could have been

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Speaker 1: very awkward if you'd said something else all together, Tim,

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Speaker 1: thank you for talking to Fear and Greed summer series.

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Speaker 2: Always a pleasure, never mature.

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Speaker 1: That was Tim Burrow's founder and publisher of Umbrella and

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Speaker 1: newsletter Unmade. Don't forget to hit follow on the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Michael Thompson and this is Fear and Greed