Good morning from Weymouth!
If you’ve been reading this nonsense for a long time, you may be familiar with my yearly pilgrimage to the jewel of the Jurassic coast. My daughters take part in a dance festival while I work in a caravan. It’s all very glamorous and exciting.
This time things have been a little different. Alright, not that different. Basically, the wifi in the caravan isn’t working, so I’ve spent the week going from one café to another, ordering a small diet coke and then sponging their internet connection for four hours at a time. Yes, I’m that guy. Sorry.
My favourite base for the week has been a table by a window in the caravan park bar which, when I position myself carefully, has palm trees in the background of my zoom calls. For thirty seconds, colleagues and clients have thought I’m in the Caribbean, until they’ve spotted the colour of the sky.
Anyway, I hope you had a lovely Halloween. It’s time for some podcast-related news and insights.
Colourful Graphs from Acast
There’s nothing we like more than a colourful graph. That and Cheese on Toast.
Acast have come up with the equivalent of Cheese on Toast with added cheese and toast in their Podcast Pulse report. The main focus here is on how podcast listeners use both mainstream and niche shows to build their own personalised portfolio. Yes, you might be into Diary of a CEO, but if you’ve got a passion for a particular piece of geekery, or a special type of presenter – there’s always a podcast for that.
64% of people say that podcasts cover topics that aren’t typically covered in traditional media. There’s more diversity and more depth in audio shows than they’ll find elsewhere, and this narrow focus for certain shows means they’re highly trusted by a very loyal audience. 40% of a podcast’s audience will participate in its online community or forum and the medium is better at creating presenters who feel like friends to the audience.
And, marketing people brace yourselves … there’s even a funnel in there. Podcasts pull people into the top, with 62% of people having been introduced to a new brand on a podcast. Then in the consideration funnel section, 57% have visited a brand’s website as a result, and finally in the ‘business time’ bit 41% have purchased from a podcast advertiser.
What I’m trying to say is that this is probably both the prettiest and most useful study into podcasts we’ve seen in ages.
Beckie’s Classy OOO
Beckie – Fresh Air’s Head of Organising Everything Everywhere All at Once – has headed off on her honeymoon after getting married at the start of the summer. She and Adam are now in sunny Mexico, which is lovely for them both. She had a great dress and we loved her wedding, but if we’re honest the thing we were all looking forward to was her pun-heavy out of office message. Admittedly, this is a niche pursuit, but when it comes to puns and OOOs. She’s the absolute queen. Here it is in all its glory:
‘Hola! I’m currently not at my desk right now as I’ve left taco on my honeymoon. I will be back on Thursday 21st November. I know, Oaxa-can’t believe it either! But don’t be corn-cerned as I’ll be guac before you know it!
Just in queso you huevos any issues while I’m away, you can contact the people below.’
Those are not listeners
Continuing a (kind of) Spanish theme, El Pais have given us all a reminder to take other people’s podcast numbers with a big pinch of salt. ‘Hoy en EL PAÍS’ has just launched its third season, and claims to have had 20 million listeners in the last season. Some podcast experts started to smell a rat, and spotted that a piece of software was set to automatically download the podcast whenever anyone visited the newspaper’s website.
So let’s be clear, downloads are not listeners. We spend a huge amount of time working with our clients to understand the difference between the two, and your downloads are entirely pointless unless someone has listened to the show. El Pais are very naughty, and they’ve now been roundly told off by the whole podcast industry, which is the audio equivalent of a very stern Paddington stare.
That is not the real Michael Parkinson.
Everyone’s got a podcast these days haven’t they? Well, not quite true because dead people don’t have podcasts, obviously.
What?
Yes they do.
Michael Parkinson, who passed away last year at the age of 88 is to release a brand new celebrity interview podcast. Michael’s son, Mike, has worked with an AI tech called Squark to create a fully unscripted podcast enabling Parky to resurrect his chat show career in the audio world. The guests haven’t been confirmed yet, but I’m assuming they’ll be alive, and there will be eight episodes.
It’s at this point of the newsletter that I start to wonder whether it’s all a dream. But, with talent costs for podcasts escalating all the time, and celebrities dying at pretty much the same rate as everyone else I guess there’s a market there. Coming soon – Shagged Married Beheaded, with celebrity couple Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, The Rest is 80s Politics, with former political rivals but now friends Margaret Thatcher and Denis Healy, and Diary of a CEO hosted by feisty young entrepreneur and ‘Seed Investor’ Jethro Tull.
Julie-Anna Needham examines the opioid crisis…
How did so many Americans became addicted to opioids? This show answers the question telling the – somewhat remarkable – story of one man. Tony Hathaway was a successful engineer at Boeing, a job he loved.
But a back injury meant he was prescribed OxyContin which he quickly became addicted to. Heroin addiction soon followed. As his life spun out of control, Tony came up with a plan to feed his habit; robbing banks. He became one of the US’s most prolific bank robbers ever.
The interviews with Tony and his family help you understand how easily addiction can take hold and the devastation it causes, all starting with a seemingly innocuous painkiller for a bad back.
Martin Poyntz-Roberts goes deep into the net…
Don’t believe the hype. It’s a mantra I live by. But the problem is that sometimes the hype is justified. And if you don’t believe the hype you can end up missing out on something kind of special, so I’m going to say, scratch that, believe the hype. So, when Rich asked if anyone had been listening to Kill List and would they recommend it for the weekly email, my initial response was no way! I like to choose what I listen to, and not another ‘true crime by numbers’. I wasn’t looking forward to it. But as it turned out I was completely wrong.
Is it fair to suggest that Carl is an unlikely name for an investigative journalist? And no offence to Carls. I’m a Martin. Dreadful name. But he’s great. And he likes a good swear too. Genuine ‘F*ck me!’ moments pepper the series.
The synopsis? Carl is a tech journalist who comes to possess the Kill List. But what should he do with it? Is it real? It looks real, but…And then what should he do once the police have told him they’re not going to act immediately on his information?
I’m on episode 5 and it’s full of more twists and turns than a Northern Soul all-nighter. So, believe the hype. True Crime, done well, is still the BEST format for podcasts.
What we’ve been listening to this week
The question isn’t so much what we’ve been listening to, but what have fungus been listening to? Scientists have discovered that fungi are happier and grow more quickly when listening to certain sounds. Have scientists got too much time on their hands? Probably.
Want to keep your fungal soil microbes happy? Don’t play them ‘Let it Be’ or David Bowie. They just want white noise, thanks. They can’t hear it but they love the vibrations. A mould called Botrytis cinerea loves the sound of a fridge, whereas Trichoderma harzianum gets down to the groove with a frequency of 800 hertz.
Expect to find a mushroom at your next karaoke night or just a fun-guy on the microphone. Here’s a list of songs inspired by mushrooms and fungi. I mean, why not?
What we’ve been doing this week
Halloween. When did it go from ‘dress up spooky’ to ‘just dress up as anything’? My daughter went to a Halloween party yesterday dressed as Tigger. Absolute nonsense.
