How Influencers Stole Broadcasters' Ad Money

0:01Hello, welcome to the Media Club. I'm your host, Matt Deegan. On the club today, the influencers are coming. How social media stars have overtaken traditional media in ad revenue. Michael Savage, media editor at The Guardian, shepherds us into this new era. Also on the show, as The Standard announces a new partnership with Message Heard, we chat to the podcast outfit's Jake Warren about the magic ingredients that turn print into podcasts. All that plus Warner Brothers Discovery gives more details about their split. plus in the audio network quiz i become professor brian cox that's all happening in this edition of the media club come on in uh gents uh welcome to the club nice to see you here michael uh first time recently installed uh as the guardians uh media editor membership obviously of the media club is just a final rite of passage but who would you like as your plus one i think i'd like to bring in uh someone i've heard a bit about already in the short time i've done this job which is Olly Madden who's heading from Film 4 to go do Netflix.

1:04I was told, as I say, I haven't been doing this job long, but I'd already been told that he was sort of rated as a commissioner and very plugged into the UK production scene. So that's interesting. It's also another person leaving Channel 4, of course, after their chief executive is gone looking for a new chairman. So it's all changed there. So it's interesting times at Channel 4. It is, and he was going to be sort of a great white hope for drama. and I remember sitting down with some of the Channel 4 team and they were excited about what he had planned. And I guess it's hard to turn down a big shiny Netflix job.

1:36Yeah, well, this is the world we're in now, isn't it? And I suppose a big question for the UK, given the difficulties the UK production scene has had at times, will this be a good thing for them or not really? Will his appointment at Netflix help Netflix lean into the UK scene, make more sort of UK-focused things? So we'll have to see. and Jake welcome back to the club who can we give an award to for their valiant work this week by getting a club membership yeah I'd like to nominate I want to keep it in my lane of podcasting I'm going to nominate Davey Gardner who is I believe his title might be the head of podcast or head of audio at the Tribeca Film Festival and I believe they are the first sort of you know premiere really credible film festival to actually have dedicated podcasting selections now I think there's 16 and two of them have already going through their ip adaptation phase and i think with as we know podcasting more and more becoming that ab development testing ground for the streamers the netflixers of this world for someone like tribeca to go actually it deserves its own space is great i mean you probably would have experienced the same as me as like the arias in 2021 when i think they had their first you know best podcast category which we were nominated for for a show about, you know, someone that used to be an Al-Qaeda.

2:52And I noticed that we were up against, you know, my dad wrote a porno. And, you know, someone else that was just completely different genre format. I thought, you know, they've clearly done that holding their nose. And for Tribeca to be making that front and centre, I think is great for our industry. Because they've had it a couple of years now, but it's really starting to become a big part of that festival. Yeah. And it shows me that it's an art form as well. and to be fair I don't know Davey well I think I've spoken to him once or twice if he is an avid watcher and listener of the show I will take any and all favouritism but I know he's made a big part of it in a few years he's been there to say actually audio is you know it's a craft in its own right it deserves to have the same space attention and limelight and the way that films do and I think that's fantastic to have the credibility of Tribeca propping up our industry Should we get the BFI to jump into UK podcasts?

3:45America sneezes, we catch a cold. They'll be next. Just give them 24 mics. It does feel like the media world's changing so fast. We're sort of catching up, aren't we? Chasing our tails slightly. And some of these, you know, we're going to realise how important some of these forms are if we haven't already. Yeah, and it's important to not always just think about the money. I think a lot of traditional awards about audience and scale and kind of cash that follows it, it's important to look at the art too. And it's recognition for those audiences which are hard-earned. OK, another major milestone has been achieved in social media this year.

4:17More ad revenue will be generated by influencers than traditional media companies. Now, Michael, you've been writing about this, and I've sort of stretched the meaning of the word influencer. Tell us more about what you've uncovered. Yeah, so as I say, I started covering the media in just at the start of March. And since then, I spent most of my time just thinking about the massive change that's going on, the fragmentation of audiences that we all know about, the repercussions of that. And then along comes one sort of nugget in a report that tells the whole story, really. And it really jumped out to me.

4:51It's from a WPP media report on the ad industry. and what it said was user-generated content platforms, well, they're going to attract more content-driven ad revenue than it called it professionally produced material. Obviously, that is quite a gray area. It's not quite binary, is it? Exactly. And of course, if you're Mr. Beast, you're hard-pushed to say it's not professionally produced. A lot of money goes into it. But you can see the point it's making and the sort of tipping point that's coming, really, that shouldn't surprise anyone, that places like YouTube, TikTok, this is where a lot of content is being generated.

5:27And when you follow the money, people are seeing that. And that's why we're seeing this. I think it really tells the story of the modern media at the moment. And also, I guess it's sort of following attention. Where is consumers' attention? Is it on not just small screens? YouTube does well on big screens too. Yeah, absolutely. Is this problematic for the old media or for traditional media? I think it's just the story of this time, which is adaptation, trying different things, experimenting and changing. And you can just see it. Everyone's trying different things. And I think there's a lot of experimentation, a lot of branching out into different areas.

6:04Suddenly written form is doing visual, visual is doing audio. And, you know, there's a lot of competition, but you can see people adapting all over the place. Some of it will work, some of it won't. We see sort of Channel 4 and Channel 4.0. They've got a sort of YouTube channel for that. They're putting a lot of that content also now into Spotify. Spotify's video push you've got ITV are putting a lot of full shows on YouTube as well do you think some of those big broadcasters are just jumping to it when suddenly the money's there or have they missed the boat a bit, have they let Mr Beast and his ilk grab all the attention and add dollars?

6:39I think it would be defeatist to sort of give up on it but I think if you look at Channel 4 they're a good example aren't they because they've really run at it, a lot of their content on YouTube and things like that, clearly they skew younger as an audience So it's important that they've got to be in these places. The question in my mind is, you know, do you cannibalize your audience? In other words, obviously YouTube is a huge platform that squats right across media and they take a chunk. Right. So this is not just free for Channel 4. It comes at a cost. Yeah. What they say when I've asked them about it is actually this is a new audience.

7:10There aren't people who would have been watching on Channel 4 otherwise. You're not replacing a linear consumer. people yeah and obviously there's a challenge there for something like the bbc and senior people there have talked about doing more on youtube and it's about what you do how much you do how you get people back to the original broadcaster and that's the challenge there i think uh jake i was at a conference the itv were there and they were sort of whoever like the super youtube channel manager person was who was very happy to to welcome itv on onto their platform and you know whatever they want to do hey we're we're all for it i mean in some ways youtube are the are the big winners in this battle for content providers, aren't they?

7:49Absolutely. I think the world has moved from commissioning to acquisition. And so if you can prove that you've got that audience on YouTube, actually, guess what? The networks need you a lot more now than you needed them in order to sort of gain and accrete an audience. And, you know, one very, very silly, small example that I think was really interesting. And again, this is kind of stretching the barrier, the boundaries of maybe what you would call the sort of influencers but in rugby the pro d2 rights of the second division which is you know no caps you've got all this sort of you know people being paid squillions and squillions to go and play their you know superstars the rights were bought by a youtuber i think they call themselves you know the egg chasing show yes there's a chases podcast podcast exactly and i thought that is brilliant because you've got their influencers who, okay, the content they're not creating is their own.

8:44They're licensing and then creating content that's ancillary and around that. And I imagine the advertising's not huge for that, but you are taking a hyper-focused, dedicated audience that you imagine if you're smart enough, you should be able to find those brands and sponsors and advertising money that wants to reach that dedicated audience. And I just thought that could be the future. It's really interesting. Yeah, I don't know if you saw this, Michael. So this is the Tim Cocker, Egg Chaser podcast. Has a radio background actually, and has done some commentary in the past for BT Sport, has built a YouTube channel around rugby and acquired the rights, I imagine, for not much money because no one else seemingly was after it.

9:20And they've sort of built shows off the back of it. I'm rugby. I'm not a huge rugby fan, but I had a look at what the play counts were. Like, not bad. It's like not bad to start up a thing. And also we see this week that Gary Lidek has probably done a deal with DAZN for access to footage for the FIFA's club championship as well. Yeah, and I was going to mention that's another example, isn't it, where you've suddenly got a podcast company signing a deal with a broadcaster to clips and, you know, is it a mini match of the day? I don't know. Let's see how it goes. But I have to say already I've become totally fascinated by YouTube and the size of it because it's not just in this space or podcasting.

10:03It's right across the piece. You know, it takes a bit of everything. it's incredibly powerful there's not really a competitor it feels like it's got the world at its feet really so it's going to be really interesting to see how how it evolves i think podcasting youtube is sort of looms and we've talked about on the show quite a bit some shows are sort of youtube native and they've kind of come from that direction others have sort of trying to back organize themselves into into being into being video shows but for creators it's quite difficult like the the old world of podcasting was pretty easy like you signed up with an a cast or a dax or an audio boom you're an ad network and they never really had to worry about the money but now you have to think about your youtube money and your spotify money and your rss money to make it much more difficult for creators another barrier for for new entrants into the podcast space yeah because it makes it more complex because there's different rules of engagement with different platform and also even just going down to you know the format of of how a show you know it works on different platforms in different ways right you know there's different demographics in those different platforms and even to you know is it a video native show or is it an audio native show right you know i i sort of remember in the first dalliances of people putting podcasts on youtube i think it was sky sports cricket they uploaded one i don't know if you saw this quite a few years ago and they literally just ripped the audio and it opened with one of the presenters going now if you look at the screen and it was an audio only thing and i was just thinking okay we've moved on a little bit since then so yes it's more complex it's more complicated but the truth is it's worth it because those audiences don't cannibalize each other you're fishing in different pools uh well speaking of the advertising the ad revenues from the article uh five companies account for 54 percent of all ad revenue can you remember all five let's see how we get on google meta amazon alibaba and bike dance yeah i mean some of those are quite interesting people obviously familiar with google and meta tiktok as well um i mean amazon are a huge media company it's not on a this isn't all prime tv is it this is this is something else no absolutely Absolutely, on the site, on Amazon.

12:16I mean, it's incredible the amount of advertising you get on these big outlet sites now. I think Walmart's the same. It's right up there, isn't it, in terms of ad revenue. So, you know, it's sponsored listings when you search Amazon.com. It's a fascinating phenomenon, actually. And I guess Alibaba being similar, but in other markets doing the same, doing the same trick. Yeah, some of these Chinese companies are just absolutely colossal in a similar way to the ones we know probably better, the US companies that we know more here. But the same is true in China as well. They have these huge behemoth companies.

12:48I'm looking forward to our version of the TikTok shop. I can just sell great media items whilst doing the show. Okay, some more news from Warner Brothers Discovery have announced some details about the split. You might remember that they announced that they had kind of internally split the company in two. One half sort of networks, the other half the sort of shiny new things like max now hbo max again i mean michael this is three years after more of other discovery sort of appeared and on the scene are they splitting sort of in the same way that they started or have they got a different view on what they should be going into the i mean it does seem and some of the noise from the company seems to have been that they are ending up pretty near to where they started i think probably if you know the business very well.

13:38You could be critical about some of the decisions made there. I think if you're taking a step back, you could also say, well, look, we're in a hugely changing industry. People are trying different things and some things aren't going to work. And for whatever reason, they're trying to unroll this thing. What's interesting is they seem to be separating off the sort of, as you say, the flashy news stuff from the sort of legacy broadcast stuff. So that's an interesting phenomenon. And if you look at some of these companies on the sort of legacy side, if I use that word, CNN for example, they're all looking for similar things and that is sort of subscription models making premium content that people want to buy.

14:16They see this and it's not just them as the way to make these things sustainable in the long term. And we saw Comcast do a similar job. It's sort of like the networks, things that you remember from the Sky EPG in one business and then the IP stuff in the other and often content in the other as well. People have perhaps unkindly referred to the original networks businesses as the shitcos. Do you think that's a lot of the cash still comes in to the shitcos? And this will probably be the bigger part of WBD's split. Are they shitcos? Or do they just need to be looked after in a different way? I think some of them are still making a lot of money actually so I think it's a complete misnomer really and you know it's just another way of saying we're in a period where consumption is changing very fast if you look at something like CNN there's a lot of brilliant work done and a lot of brilliant people people would be willing to tune in and probably pay to tune in for I'm not saying that is the model but this is good content they're producing good stuff so there's got to be a future for stuff like that I think I mean Jake if you are CNN and you're Mark Thompson would you be a bit annoyed that you've sort of been shoved in with um discovery channel um and you know some old movie channels and some other bits yeah if it's all together in one big jumble it diminishes some of the wins that you might be having individually for your patch in the same way it more might also hide some of the stuff which is not doing so well and if you kind of unravel it as you said a sort of reverse roll up and sort of so actually everyone needs to stand on their own two feet it also perhaps gives you a bit more clarity to go well this is what we need to shut down and this is what we need to focus in on because if it is all jumbled up together you know it becomes i suppose you become liable for all of the bad news and some of the good news perhaps gets hidden so yeah i think it does make sense i i i think you if you were in a bit that was performing well you'd probably welcome it michael i mean one thing that wbd have done actually quite a good job in is cutting their debts um they sort of launched with like billions and billions of pounds of debt from at &t um the david zaslav the the ceo's done a pretty good job of of reducing um the networks business is probably going to get the majority of that debt and the shiny business will be allowed to um go off in a slightly better better financial situation i was looking at it and i was thinking does this mean that like the discovery channel end because they're keeping discovery plus in the networks business that it's all going to be split from from max their big streaming service and are we adding another streaming service potentially to the mix oh my goodness not another one um and you know if you if you like me and you like cycling you need discovery you know it's got all of it so this is the problem yeah another subscription so you know apologies to my uh direct debit advisor at my bank i'm afraid yeah it's probably going to be doubled up um also i think the the networks business gets like a 20 share in the streaming business so there's like a nice little bonus.

17:19One of the questions though is whether this really is actually just being set up to be sold. All these networks and Comcast have launched their own version of this with Vasant. And the CFO of Warner Brothers Discovery I think is going to be the chief executive of the New Channels business. If you put a money man in charge of it will it live as its own thing just for a very short amount of time before they bundle it with something else? They do have plans don't they have pretty clear plans you talked about Mark Thompson earlier I mean he is clearly a man with a plan to try and change things at CNN make things more sustainable and when you hear him talk you know he thinks very big and differently he wants to try things so and I think that's the right approach clearly in this climate but as I say that the backbone of it is going to be high quality stuff ultimately and I do think on the other side of the business you know they've got a lot of good ip haven't they uh i think they've got dc comics things like this and new harry potter series of course and they've tried a long time to pay down the debt they've been concentrating on that the share price hasn't really recovered in any way although it has slightly after this environment so i suspect it's all related to that if they are starting new streaming you'd be happy if you're an illegal fire stick seller yes there's some there's some more uh more content to add on the ultimate bundling of course uh right finally just before the break and netflix have announced an investment of a billion dollars in spanish language originals jake this is a diff it's different from a commitment to mexican content they made four years ago that i'm sure you remember um but has spanish content been overlooked by big media in an anglo-centric world i think so i mean i i i did some googling for this one because i wanted to actually at least have one fact for you which was and it shocked me actually which was that netflix you know and i know that's just one of the big platforms but 40 of people globally actually watch consume all of their content with the subtitles on which i think maybe that it perhaps skews generation a bit of a younger thing you hear a lot about people do want to consume it with subtitles and that just naturally means it almost doesn't matter so much about the native language that you're listening if you're consuming it through the subtitles that you're reading so i think it's a smart play right i mean how many spanish speakers are there in the world loads and also if you look at the quality of the content which is coming out the spanish-speaking world right you think of the money heist of this world you know netflix you've got the platform you know there's all of these great great shows which i think the sort of sneering we only make top tier stuff in the you know in the sort of english-speaking world and everything else is sort of b b tier and blow i think that that misconception is changing and so i think it's a smart play yeah also we obviously saw the success of squid game if you're not in spanish but in Korean, which is obviously a super global hit for them.

20:10Yeah, absolutely. Parasite. I mean, you know, there's all of these. I think it's more of an equal opportunity world now, regardless of the language it's created in. Yeah, and Michael, I mean, Netflix in particular has been pretty bullish about native content, really, in lots of markets, perhaps because of those global hits. Do you think that's a bit of an advantage for them over some of their streaming competitors? I think so. And I think the other part of this is they're so sort of big now, Netflix and powerful, that comes with sort of political questions as well. And, you know, it's no coincidence, obviously, that this announcement came, you know, arm and arm with the Spanish prime minister.

20:49You know, these companies now, Netflix in particular, where it makes production, where it produces the things it chooses to make, these are political questions now, almost, have we seen in this country complaints about its influence here, Should there be a levy on streamers? And so I think maybe there's one eye on that as well, producing stuff locally in different areas. It can't harm them in terms of the sort of political pressures they face. Should we be legally mandated to watch adolescence? It's no different. Jake, do you think about languages for some of your shows and whether you'd like them to live in different versions?

21:26Yes, we do. but it's difficult because you don't want to do it in a way of which it's just ai right because the it's the nuances what we actually had this thing a couple of years ago i had two examples that spring to mind one we we did a sort of investigative show where we kind of smuggled microphones into prisons in syria and it was all about disappeared peoples you lose a lot of the authenticity of listening to the actual person if you're just dubbing over their voice then you have to deal with i suppose syntax and the way people speak and then even with things like the arabic world you've got to deal with dialect as well and so it becomes a really difficult thing to do similarly we did a show i remember we had virat kohli come on one of our shows you know cricketing god and it was the first ever time that he revealed that he'd been suffering with mental health and so that went hugely bar and we had that kind of moment we're like my god do we need to dub this into sort of you know 19 different native indian speaking languages and actually we kind of realized no you probably don't need to do that that's a bit overkill so i think someone else will probably do it yeah they will do it for you but it has to be done with intentionality so that it isn't ai slop and and i don't quite know what the answer to that is other than you know you do the classic thing where you hear the trail of someone speaking and then it's dubbed over that that to me is is the best solution at the moment in order to protect the authenticity not just the accuracy because the accuracy is probably there now but it is about that authenticity i think OK, when we return a bit more on podcasts in the changing world and also about whether a show can still be audio only.

23:01We'll see you in a sec.

23:23cut the greenwashing from so-called compostable dog poo bags. It's not social strategy or new artwork, though we have been on that too, but it's an innovative way to get new eyes on a show. To find out about what we can do for you or for anything else to do with podcast marketing, head to podcastdiscovery.com. That's podcastdiscovery.com. As we've just been hearing, if you have a domestic hit, you might be on your way to global success too, which is why it matters where you choose to film. That's why here at the Media Club, we use Podshop Studios to bring you our show every week with state-of-the-art commercial-grade recording equipment for both audio and video.

24:03Podshop's got everything you need to make your podcast stand out. So if you're just starting out or a podcast pro, like ourselves, Podshop guarantees professional recordings every time. You'll even benefit from a dedicated engineer on hand, ready to help with any technical details so you can focus on the talking whilst they handle the rest. And right now you can get 25 % off your first booking by using the code MEDIACLUB at podshoponline.co.uk. That's the code MEDIACLUB at podshoponline.co.uk. Welcome back. Before we return to our guests, here's what we've been talking about in the media club this week.

24:40After an eight month search, Disney has found their European chief and its ITV's unscripted boss Angela Jane, who's been running the teams behind Love Island and I'm a Celebrity. Spin back a little further in her CV, however, she commissioned a lot to E4, including Inbetweeners and Dead Set, which was sort of one of the four runners to Black Mirror. Let's see what she gets up to with Mickey Mouse's money. Meanwhile, Kamal Ahmed has left his role as head of audio at The Telegraph after just over a year at the title. Ahmed also co-hosted The Daily Tea, which has made his exit perhaps a little more public than most media roles.

25:16Will he follow his friend and colleague Will Lewis over to the Washington Post? I guess we will find out. And The Guardian this week has announced a new encrypted messenger service that operates from within its existing app, developed in partnership with Cambridge University. The tech is open source, allowing any news outlet to adopt this technology. Links to those stories and all of the things we talk about on the show you can get on our sub stack. Just head to themediaclub.com. That's themediaclub.com. It's free to sign up. Michael and Jake are still with me. Michael, has the newsroom had their induction yet on the new encrypted app?

25:52We're across the app, yeah. It's an exciting development for us because obviously, you know, in the job we do and the sort of traditions of the Guardian, we're quite frequently dealing with these stories that involve, you know, very confidential sources, vulnerable sources at times. So it's really great to have this new piece of kit. And it's also, I think, just reaffirming to see technology being used sort of in a positive way in journalism. It can be very disruptive. We know all about that, the challenges that come with AI and all the rest of it. But actually, this is some smart people working with The Guardian to do something really positive that's going to help our reporting.

26:26Because normally a lot of that sort of send me an encrypted message. You know, I'm quite media savvy by looking and go, God, that looks complicated. if I wanted to tell you something, like do I just create a dodgy Yahoo email account and send it that way? Are contacts concerned about this stuff? Do they want to send it to you this way? Well, it's important for us as a newsroom to get it right and to protect people. So it's really on us to have a system that's going to help people do that. And this is done through the app and it's done in a way that someone sort of monitoring activity couldn't tell it from just normal activity on the app.

26:59So it's a really important bit of kit. I mean, and I remember that the Guardian has done big stories over the years involving very confidential sources. But, you know, I remember in particular things like Ian Tomlinson's death those years ago at the G20 riots. We had sort of people contacting us. We had footage in the end. It was pushed rather than, you know, this idea that it just sort of happened. So these stories are really important and it does rely on people coming forward and know they'll be protected by us. uh jake do you uh ever have any anonymous tip-offs for any of your your stories that message heard we do you know signal and uh telegram you know these are the the sort of channels which i guess we typically use for more sensitive i mean even whatsapp to a certain degree is encrypted right and thank goodness because i'm still getting whatsapp messages from angie m chowdhury every now again and i'm thinking thank goodness this is encrypted or i'm sure i'm where every watch list going but no i think it sounds it sounds great i mean the only thing i suppose is the discoverability and awareness for other people to be for them to feel that confidence that actually this is something that i can really trust because i always think that the best publicity for anyone in that sort of world was telegram when wasn't the french were saying to the the russian founder you know we want to put you in jail but it all that proof is they couldn't crack it and get in And I just thought that was great publicity for the security and use of Telegram.

28:22Well, if we combine newspapers and audio, it comes to one of your projects at the moment. So you recently announced a partnership with The Standard, Knee, The Evening Standard, where you're sort of taking on all their podcasts. What's the deal? Yeah, I mean, I think to try and sound smart, we'd probably call it a strategic partnership. I think what that really means is that we've sort of taken over the podcasting output and operations. them really um and it's one of those sort of cases i think where it's can we be slightly cleverer and sharing the risk and sharing the reward by bringing together our core competencies of you know they are one of the fastest growing if not the fastest growing digital newspaper in this country huge amount of credibility great newsroom great access to story and journalists and can it it bring in with us right the ability to be able to do podcasting end-to-end on you know both a high quality editorial level, but also on a commercial level and exploit those opportunities out there.

29:21And so it's early days. We're trying not to break anything in the beginning, but we've already had some real successes. Our first show with Wondery, we did as a licensing deal, Killer Privilege, which really did utilize their newsroom and our narrative storytelling chops. And we just found out, I think they told us it was their third best performing license deal globally, right? Which shows you a London-based newspaper and a UK-based podcasting company. We can mix it with the big boys in North America if you create something compelling. So why does someone like the standard want to work, like sort of outsource it versus do it themselves?

29:55Obviously, they're moving more to a digital thing. Why not make that a central part of the newsroom? I think it probably comes down to mitigation of risk. You know, how do you skip a few rungs of the ladder? Well, bring some people in that actually hopefully know what they're doing. We've been going, you know, seven and a half years now. So we'd like to think we know what we're doing. And also cost, right? You know, you talk about the telegraph, right? People leaving. Well, I don't know about the performance of it, but I know that a hell of a lot of money was spent. So how do you dip your toe in that water first that we might do such a good job that we do ourselves out of a job?

30:27And that would make sense, right? With the way that podcasting is growing. So it feels like a sensible melding together of core competencies where ultimately, if you're willing to share in the risk, let's share in the reward. Podcasting's been around quite a long time. a lot of newspapers have have done a variety of different things in it i think often it's sat in the bucket of oh we need to get into the space and kind of the business model doesn't really matter it's just we've got to we've got to be out there with it is it partly that everyone's having a bit of a think now about what has worked what hasn't worked maybe not launching 20 shows a year to to no listeners and they've got to make these things more successful i think so i think it you know podcasting for however long you know the audio team was a subset of the video team and sat in the corner of the newsroom, right?

31:12It wasn't treated necessarily as a craft in its own right. And I think you could be the best journalist in the world. It doesn't make you the best podcast producer in the world or create the most compelling podcasting content. I mean, one example I always think of is, I can't remember his name now, but a guy who I know who was a producer at WNYC, where they have the New Yorker Radio Hour. And he would come with these Pulitzer award-winning journalists turning up, you know, with their laminated bits of paper, just thinking, I'm just going to read out my story. Actually, no, it needs to be reinterpreted, reimagined in a different way that lives natively in audio.

31:45It's going to sound rubbish if you just read it out. And I think there is now perhaps more of a sophisticated understanding that podcasting needs to be treated as its own distinct thing. It is a craft and needs to be treated as such. Are there too many newspaper journalists as podcast presenters? Yes. Don't even have to think about that. Michael why is it why is it that I mean there's a lot of there's a lot of podcasts and newspapers across the board um journalists love being on them they love presenting them is it ego is it getting to new audiences why has it been such a big thing do you think well I think at the base of it if you're a journalist you want people to read your stuff hear your stuff and the format becomes less important and I think what we've discovered is when you have a great story you can then think about well what's the best way to tell this story and that's been the great thing about the innovation that's happened around here is that you know you now have different avenues to go down and I look at the stuff we do at the Guardian with today in focus for example you know you can really see having seen the work they do their expertise in doing it and putting it together and thinking even on my own story thinking about different ways to present it it's really fascinating you can see the amount of expertise that goes into that do people do does that team sort of come to you and go oh we saw you've been doing this or we'd like to get involved or tell us about it what's the what's that yeah a lot of our guardian journalists have um have appeared and you know increasingly it's it's it's more interwoven and just part of what we do i mean at the guardian we've done podcasts for a long long time now but um even since starting this job for example i've been on our today and focus podcast sorry to mention it again and to talk about the media industry so it's just it's more and more just part of part of what we do i think i've been working with another media company as well on podcast projects al jazeera obviously a tv uh outfit predominantly um how do you decide what's a video podcast what's an audio podcast uh is it a tv show what what did you do with them and how do you decide what it would be well this is where i think it becomes more open to debate and you guys you have to sort of ask that existential question you know what is a podcast right and it is a video podcast i would define it as that but also in reality it's a low-grade tv show and i don't mean low-grade in quality but i do mean low-grade in if you were to compare the budget sadly one of the things that we've learned from that actually which i think is an interesting stat is how much of that audience is actually people watching youtube on their televisions yes and so treating it as a tv show but watching it through the youtube so you know the youtube search function and i think that's really interesting i mean with that show true crime reports and it's been amazing to make because it's sort of had i think about almost 10 million views on youtube in the six months it's been going we've won multiple awards we won the gold for best true crime at the new york radio festival the other week beating hbo's the jinx which i think is the most watched or most consumed true crime show i'd love to know what our budget is compared to theirs how how would you do something as a narrative podcast that works in video that was the question that we were trying to answer and through us thinking about it the answer we've come up with and i'm glad to say audiences are sort of taking to it is by using generative AI within a distinct visual language of the show, where you've got a host who is, you know, looking down the barrel of a camera, telling you a story, you know, it's got the same amount of...

35:23Who is real. Who is real. The amount of times people ask me, is she AI? She's a real journalist. Halima Houdin, she's a fantastic journalist. But then it's exemplifying what is being said with visual aids so that you can consume it that way if you want. But in the audio version, that is not just ripped. It is, you know, sound design, it is created as if it was a native audio listening experience and those two things live happily side by side because they don't cannibalize each other because some people want to listen to it and some people want to watch it i mean the ai side is is fascinating um i think people aren't entirely sure what they should do with ai obviously people can in the creative interviews come to see the benefit of it yeah i think some people are going down a route of almost like stamped ai has not touched this it's purely human others at the far end are like hey it's an entirely generated piece um i mean basically even more complex when you add a news organization uh into that how did they feel about um adding in that sort of material i think you know we were very open and honest and transparent from the beginning because one of the sort of misconceptions i think is that we're doing people out of work by utilizing ai actually it all it i think it democratizes the process by being which able to create video content and it's created more jobs than what would be for a traditional video podcast because it takes a hell of a lot of wrangling it requires animation it requires editing and actually the new language which you're going to have to learn in the same way that people have been learning to code is how do you train and prompt the ai you know generative platforms that you're using in order to create something that's compelling and let me tell you that is something which is difficult it is hard to wrangle it is it is a skill and it is a new language which needs to be learned also there's about 20 different platforms to test out to try and work out which is the the best well we we've invested in creating our sort of own proprietary platform to try and knit it all together so that we can stay on top of it i would be lying if i told you that i understood how that worked but luckily i've got some very clever colleagues and look you know you can stamp your feet it's not going anywhere yeah it's about how do we utilize it in a way which is as ethical as possible.

37:34And if you just outsource it to AI, it's going to be slop and it's going to be rubbish. But there is a way to use it in a curated and refined way, which is creating new jobs, I think. When you saw some of the demos from Google's kind of VO3 product. That's scary. Did you think, great, this will help me do more of that or do that better? It will be able to help that. But what the problem is with that is we're relying on people to be honest about, hey, AI has been used as the bedrock of the creation for this. And when it gets to that level of humanistic realism, it becomes difficult because people can, you know, create stuff and pass it off as being real human beings when it's not.

38:18And to me, that's where my brain starts to break a little bit and it does get a little bit scary. And so how do you self-report? How do you self-govern the use of this thing where it is honest and open and transparent? That's a different question, perhaps. Well, we'll look to see what you'll add into Hopeful for Series 2. Yeah. OK, just enough time for the Audio Network Media Quiz. Let's see how much attention our guests have been paying into the media world this week. What's the quiz called this week? It's going to be The Wonders of Media. So in memory of the producer of those wonderful Professor Brian Cox Wonders Of series, Michael Lockman, who's recently died, this week we're playing the Wonders of Media.

38:58I'll marvel at the wonders of three media stories of the week in a knowledgeable way. You just tell me what the heck I'm talking about. and this week to celebrate Audio Network's new orchestral collection Alex has selected three suitable works to score the quiz recorded at the world famous Abbey Road Studios okay it's a best of three so buzz in with your name if you know the answer so Jake you will say Jake Michael you will say Michael let's play The Wonders of Media This phenomena was last seen 16 years ago the graceful ark across the sky a liquid seemingly suspended in mid-air it's hard to believe that just a thin membrane that protects us all and that it's provided by radio waves what's the story jake yes something do with the rolling stones uh no good good guess this is radiox okay they've created beer proof parkers ahead of the oasis reunion tour um i mean it's not the beer that i'd be worried about uh and i am standing for the oasis gigs uh so yes they've come up with some uh some basically like kugels uh that you can wear so a classic bit of of radio pr do you think we're going to see quite a lot of brands jumping on the oasis bandwagon i think we might do um every you sort of periodically get sort of waves of tick tock trends hailing back and actually i did a piece quite recently about it's awful but nostalgia for the noughties i mean was the noughties that long ago apparently it was but um that's a big trend so you could easily see oasis hooking into that couldn't you uh yes will any of them turn up at downing street this time though uh yeah probably not probably not uh okay uh time for our second wonder now it might look like a 1960s version of star wars but just this 40 second video took the power of 130 000 stars isn't that just mad

41:12really struggling come on gents you haven't been paying that much attention so we mentioned the bfi earlier oh jake yes it's um it's the imagery that's been training ais have been trained by over 130 hours of tv and film scripts um do we want the world's ai to be trained in our content maybe that's a good thing it's a good and a bad thing right you know if you you don't want to outsource the creativity to it but in the same way you know if you look at the bfi in particular the archives they've got there right if we can synthesize that in a way so that it isn't lost the history or that you have to physically sit in the bfi and manually scroll through it then that's an amazing thing for us to be able to utilize so like anything is there's good and bad depending on its usage hey michael and this week disney and universal started legal proceedings against mid-journey uh one of those ai uh creators so that they're the the big one for images uh originally but the old media going to be able to bring the new boys to heel well it's interesting as a very live political question and still in this country obviously we've got our own regulations on i mean the government's quite pro using this material yeah well certainly that the idea was we have this sort of opt-out system you've got to opt out if you don't want your stuff to be trained there's obviously been quite a big backlash against that and obviously the consultation's ongoing so it's quite a live battle and you can see you know within the government uh over here there's a certain allure to the the money of big tech you would think you know we're desperate for growth the government's desperate for growth as well for the public finances so you can see those pressures but you know clearly there's a huge argument yet to be had and we we still don't know what the outcome of that's going to be it's a crucial moment for regulation okay one to number three uh imagine i'm walking through a barren desert or something whilst saving these lines okay here we go you might think that two stars colliding would be an event in itself but you'd be wrong because slowly over hundreds of millions of milliseconds a new star is born.

43:17So this is a podcast that has been rebranded this week. Oh, Jake. Yes. It's Jamie Lang and Sophie Haboo's re-re-rebranded show I think it is now. Is it Nearly Parents? Yes, it's now called Nearly Parents. It was called Nearly Weds. yeah and newlyweds i think afterwards yeah yes um so yeah so it's been around it's been around quite a bit yeah it's quite obviously their lives are changing uh baby on the way um are they is this quite a clever kenny move of jampot who make that to kind of keep the show evolving i think it's smart because influencers who are increasingly supposed to document every facet and aspect of their life you know they think about i think probably you know in eras right and it captures and encompasses the era of what they're discussing right they're about to get married they've just got married and now they're about to have a kid i mean i'm gonna hazard a guess that maybe the next rebrand might be newly parents you know or something like that but it's i think it's smart because it it allows your audience to understand the the parameters probably of the kind of things that they're going to be talking about.

44:29So it makes sense because it's an evolution of their lives and their show is fitting in with that. I think it is smart. I mean, because normally you'd say with brands, you know, don't mess with the brand, kind of consistency, keep it all the same. But the brand is them rather than the format of the show, right? And the show is just the conduit by which their fans can access information about their lives. Do you think, Michael, we need another parenting podcast? is there a is there a gap for another one well you know if you can make it work why not but you know i can't wait for you know nearly career switch and nearly retired which i'm sure is coming down the line nearly retired would show that they really have had some success probably probably holographic by that point um okay that makes jake just about uh our winner there of the quiz i'm buzzing beat the media guardian media editor I'm sort of disappointed that my amazing Brian Cox impression didn't really.

45:26It was very good. Yeah. Okay. Didn't really carry over the line. It's on us, Matt. Don't worry. So my thanks to Jake Warren and Michael Savage. And of course, to Alex Audio Network for this week's suite of music inspired by their new orchestral collection. You can browse tracks by celebrated composers such as Lorne Balfe at audionetwork.com. That's audionetwork.com. So gents, where can people keep up with you and your work? Michael well of course at The Guardian so please anyone out there with media related stories get in touch michael.savage at theguardian.com or encrypted through the app absolutely they're ready to go and Jake how can people see what you've been up to and what's next well for all things message heard obviously the website which is www.messageheard.com you know across all the typical socials or if people want to send me abuse I think I'm on exit at the Jake Warren so there will be some professional boasting and letting you know what's coming soon as well.

46:21Excellent. Thank you both. And thank you for joining us. Remember, you can sign up to our sub stack. It's free and it's at themediaclub.com. My name's Matt Deegan. I'm your host. The producer was Matt Hill. It was a Rethink Audio production with video support from Podcast Discovery. We'll see you next week.

46:48So, retrospectors, what historical events are we ticking off on this week's run of Today in History. On Monday, when the world met Monty Python. On Tuesday, Yes We Can Can, opening night at the Moulin Rouge. On Wednesday, the politician who escaped the Prussian war in a hot air balloon. On Thursday, bang to rights, the tiny nation with the world's oldest constitution. And on Friday, we discover the first political assassination caught on camera. That's Today in History with the Retrospectors. 10 minutes each weekday. Replicate your podcasts.