I love you.
I’ve never found the right time or way to say it before, but a podcast-related newsletter on Valentine’s Day feels perfect.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to say it back straight away. I understand it might have come as a bit of a shock and you’ll need time to process things. Please just know deep in your heart that just by being an avid reader / subscriber / colleague / client / LinkedIn contact / someone who once went to a conference and unwittingly signed up to be on a mailing list*, you are the most precious thing in my working life and always will be. From now on, please consider this to be a weekly love letter that I have personally sealed with an electronic kiss at 9am every Friday.
Mwwwwaaah.
Sorry, I forgot to get you a card.
*Delete as appropriate
New Year (sort of) New Presenters (definitely).
We’ve launched two new seasons of two of our longest running shows this week, and welcomed two new presenters to the Fresh Air family.
In 2025, Legal and General’s ‘A Little Bit Richer’ is being hosted by Iona Bain – financial journalist and BBC Morning Live’s resident money expert. It’s not often that a podcast presenter comes to Fresh Air Towers and ends up using the white board to tell the production team how the world works and what the podcast should be about, but she did and we loved it. Helping millennials through their financial lives with brilliant insight and warmth, here’s a little preview of the upcoming season and Iona’s philosophy on money. How many other podcast promo videos quote 18th century satirist Jonathan Swift, eh? None, that’s how many.
Also this week, our brilliant clients at Allianz revealed the new presenter for ‘Insurance Tomorrow’ – Sky News and LBC presenter Vanessa Baffoe. It’s one of our longest running shows, and a brilliant example of a B2B podcast that addresses a valuable niche audience for a major brand. Experienced professional presenters bring a polish to any show, and particularly if they have a genuine passion for the topic, and Vanessa brings that in spades. I know what you’re wondering though – ‘Can Vanessa walk and talk at the same time?’ Darn tooting right she can, as she proves here.
Acast hits profitability
I know everyone at acast reads this newsletter, which just proves that they are a classy bunch with great taste, intelligence and a gap in their diaries at 9:05 on a Friday morning. Well, they’re all celebrating this week as they hit the target of profitability in 2024 after ten years of trading.
I first met CEO Ross Adams in 2015 when acast was a small and ambitious Swedish start-up and, despite spending an indecent proportion of his salary on hats, he’s guided acast to being the dominant platform in UK podcasting. They host 140,000 podcasts, saw 17% sales growth last year, and, more than anything, are a great bunch of lovely people with a brilliant work culture. Profitable and nice? I know, right. You can watch Ross talking about it here.
Audio versus social? No contest
Have you ever wondered why are brands getting into audio and shifting budget away from social? Me too.
Well actually, I know why. It’s because audio is powerful and intimate and engaging and warm and rewarding while most social is a stinking swamp of weird men shouting at each other to make up for their low self-worth and tiny appendages, on platforms owned by other weird men who want to take over humanity in a power-grab because having all the money in the world hasn’t brought them true happiness.
If you still have questions on this matter and want to understand the relative value of audio and social, you might want to sign up for this Linkedin event, hosted by Sounds Profitable and Sirius XM who really know their stuff and might be more insightful than what I just wrote.
Spotify Gold Awards
Spotify have invented a new awards for podcasts – the Creator Milestone Awards – recognising the shows that reach significant milestones in their streaming levels on Spotify. There’s Bronze for shows that pass 100 million streams, Silver when you get past 250 million and Gold when you hit 500 million. The inaugural golds have been awarded to shows including Crime Junkie and The J** R**** E*********, and you can now see all Spotify’s most streamed podcasts in one place.
Nik Gandhi learns from Louis Theroux…
I have to confess that I didn’t know much about the allegations against Armie Hammer other than the odd comment about him being a cannibal. This seemed to be quite heavily meme-ified culturally, which in itself tells a story about how such allegations are treated by the public (see also the comments under the social clips of this episode). Going into this episode I did consider that by engaging with an interview where the guest is so clearly using the coverage to rehabilitate his image, am I complicit in sensationalising a dark and sensitive topic? Fortunately that is a concern that Louis himself raises and reassuringly, he clearly trusts his audience enough to not get sucked into Armie’s therapy speak. With every monologue Armie goes into about how ‘grateful for the experience’ he is concerning the allegations of predatory behaviour, Louis allows space for the stench of the PR machine to linger, before correcting course with laser focused questions around the allegations.
Neil Cowling mixes with mid-life…
I don’t know exactly what it’s like to be a mid-life woman. This won’t be a shock to you. But I do surround myself with a number of really brilliant ones and I know that they make my own life ten times better. I have come to appreciate that being a mid-life woman comes with its challenges. I also know that Eleanor Mills is an absolute powerhouse – the former Editorial Director of the Sunday Times and Editor of the Sunday Times Magazine. She was unceremoniously ‘let go’ in 2020 and has gone on to found ‘Noon’ – a group for ‘Queenagers’ who are only at the lunchtime of their lives and who want to become even better in the afternoon. We’re big fans of Eleanor at Fresh Air Towers having been in her captivating company a number of times, and listening to this episode of Davina’s show is time very well spent. It includes stories of magic mushrooms and many powerful tales of how society treats our best women, as well as what they can do about it. I listened in the car with Nicola – Head of Being Married to Me – in the passenger seat and there was an enthusiastic level of nodding going on.
What we’ve been listening to this week
Sonic Identities
What would you do if you were launching a brand new thing and wanted to make it stand out? Create a superb sonic identity of course. This week has given us a glimpse behind the scenes of two expert teams creating high-pressure sonic identities.
With Scott Mills taking over the Radio 2 breakfast show, it’s good to know that some radio jingle packages are still created with real instruments and choirs. Wise Buddah – long time experts in the art, released this short TikTok video of how it all came together. And if you’re a proper radio nerd, you can hear the full finished sonic package here. On a totally different budget level, Saudi Arabia’s new airline Riyadh Air proudly unveiled their new sonic identity this week, recorded at Abbey Road. It’s a thing of beauty, made by the appropriately named Sonicbrand combining traditional sounds and full orchestra, and of course there’s a shot of their cabin crew walking across the zebra crossing. Seeing a brand care so much about, and be so proud of, their sound right from the start warms my little cockles.
What we’ve been doing this week
On Tuesday, we had a full day in our lovely Tileyard office, but the heating broke down. It started off as a mild inconvenience and turned into a full arctic experience by lunchtime. Beckie – Head of Organising Everything Everywhere All At Once – was sat at her desk wearing her coat and Fresh Air branded Oodie. She understandably went home at lunchtime. We conducted our meetings in the small meeting room, powered by one electric heater before we all then followed Beckie’s example.
I couldn’t use my off-peak train ticket until 7pm so I left the office and sat in the pub at Paddington station for two hours just to keep warm.
The heating in Fresh Air Towers is being mended.
