I think they know the effect, long-term, that you have when you stop marketing. His last remarks drew laughter and claps from co-workers. I only say this to you because thats how we do that sale. Because you have this new platform thats incredibly cool, and lots of great creators using it, and its 80 million Americans a week. Movies. Our business affairs team is busy and accounts for a lot of our growth. We have a few minutes left. Conal oversees podcasting at a giant radio company, and his group accounts for a quarter of iHearts revenue, which was $1 billion last quarter alone. Burgundy, who has a fountain of knowledge that spans literally every topic imaginable, has signed on for two 12-episode seasons, with the first episode of "The Ron Burgundy Podcast" making its . Hot Pod Summit is where we bring that community of creators, trendsetters, and decision-makers together to explore the latest developments in podcasting, audiobooks, and more. Its why those guys initially were the first people to jump into podcasting, because the only kind of marketer that doesnt need your data is a direct response marketer. One of the themes we come back to on Decoder over and over again, especially when I talk to creatives or creative executives, is that your distribution fundamentally shapes what you make. Ive listened to you in the past. Ron and his co-host, Carolina Barlow, interview various exciting guests from all walks of life, including celebrities, politicians, and everyday people. The core fundamental, pretty consistent business model of podcasting is a rev share model. Weve arrived. Is there any tension there at all? Launching in early 2019, the podcast will be co . / Sign up for Verge Deals to get deals on products we've tested sent to your inbox daily. When you say direct response in the context of performance marketing, these are the words the ad agency invented to describe very simple concepts. Youre still getting the full ad load. If youre a creator on YouTube, its a terrific platform and incredibly creative, but you dont own your fan base. Youre the CEO of iHeart Digital, which is a big company with a long history. These are objective truths. Theyll overcomplicate in order to camouflage something they probably shouldnt have done. Everybody in this room has worked damn hard for the last 20 years to get to this point. Show Monocle 24: The Foreign Desk, Ep Explainer 355: Ron DeSantis vs Disney World - 1 Mar 2023 Will Ferrell reprises his role as Ron Burgundy in the world-famous Ron Burgundy Podcast! There has never been a moment in the company that we were sidelined or deprioritized. The second reason is parallel pathing. Again, streaming was a really obvious example of this for TV streaming companies. Ill end on this. 246 episodes totalling 170 hours, 51 minutes. There have been moments in the last five to ten years where Facebook has shown real interest in audio, and then theyve backed off the two or three times that has happened, so Im not sure. We have a whole newsletter for podcasters. You have an ad load that is light. A little bit. Sometimes they just shuffle it to create change. It made perfect sense to me as a consumer 10 years ago or so when I subscribed to Netflix. Ive never seen a medium move from widely distributed, free, high quality, and low to no ad load, move into a paid medium with exactly the same assets. We ran a third-party research study two years ago with WARC. It kind of never went away, but now were back to this again. We havent even discussed the trust issues that are very real on social media. i believe, an audio podcast mixed with a live audience, is a not a good mix. Producers: Whitney Hodack, Jack OBrien, Miles Gray, and Nick Stumpf. Yeah. Are you doing that math? You are going to describe them to us, we are going to put an ad in front of them, and its going to convert, and then maybe Apple will ruin everybodys business with ad tracking. In my opinion, I dont think we would be where we are as an industry otherwise. So far, that is all we know, which is a shame. The day before, I was with Publicis. In this podcast, Ferrell discusses his opinions on various topics and shares his thoughts from Ron's point of view. Are you on the side of having a wide distribution and using that to convert against whatever your other business is? I think if you were to sit down with any of these creators who are on broadcast radio, they would openly say it to you. The money you might get from overserving the Spotify audience or doing marketing on Spotify to get downloads does not necessarily result in the same return. Podcast star Joe Rogan mocked Donald for attempting to brand Florida Gov. You dont? Theyre not in charge, right? In particular, attaching a 1,000-plus-person sales team to a startup usually goes sideways. Its a massive amount of the stuff we take in and that we call the media. We tried it. Youre saying, Oh, theres a seamless back and forth, but surely you must see, Oh, okay. One of America's most famous fictional news anchors, Ron Burgundy, is back with his own podcast. How do you do it? Each episode has a different theme in which Ron engages in conversation with another notable person on the topic at hand. One of these cards literally says, What is your org chart? That is my whole brand. "The Ron Burgundy Podcast" has officially arrived, kicking off with its inaugural episode and it's everything you've ever wanted from San Diego's top-rated newsman. Jun Group is a vendor that drives marketing for podcast companies that is targeting mostly gamers, whether those are gamers playing Subway Surfer or people who overindex for the metaverse. Im building up to it. Yeah. Podcasting not to your question, but as a side answer has bucked that a lot to date. I mean, aside from the iHeartPodcasts app, obviously. Be wide open to new industries and new things inside that industry. When I told him this, I was like, You know, like the blockchain!. Exorcising some demons in Rons man cave. He was like, I believe in this medium. Each episode has a different theme in which Ron engages in conversation with another notable person on the topic at hand. Ill give you an example of a show. In each episode, Georg.Show More Introducing: Season 3 of StraightioLab 02:55 | Sep 2nd More RECOMMEND 8) Peter McIndoe and Tim Heidecker You brought up SEO. You get to market all these shows with your massive terrestrial network and your now massive podcast network. I know that sounds like, eh, its kind of boring. Its not for them, its a multi-billion-dollar business, so I want to be more a part of that. Have you had conversations with Spotify about making stuff exclusive? I have to say people are very excited to hear from you today. Eighty million Americans a week listen to podcasts. Up or down on NFTs? Hes going to start this journey now of trying to get into college. Was there ever the thought, Hey, as long as were getting listeners in the door and making these numbers go up, some of them will convert and stay? Those companies are also struggling. This may be cheesy, but they seem to be genuinely in love with the medium, like we all are. We all know what a YouTube video is, because YouTube has designed the constraints of the platform to produce that thing. I know. We will avoid, at almost every turn, simplicity. To many in the industry, that seemed pretty disingenuous. There was this new-ish thing called podcasting, so we soundproofed some rooms and threw some people in those people being Josh and Chuck, who co-host Stuff You Should Know and several other shows. The other day, we were talking with Angela Yee, who was a former co-host of The Breakfast Club and has started a new radio show on iHeart called Way Up. Its not that being inside Discovery was bad, it was just different. Do you offer rev shares to your creators? Or this will be a business in and of itself, and thats fine too. There were lots of things that moved what were initially experimental marketing dollars from those big brands and holdcos into permanent marketing dollars. Were going to buy ads somewhere where someone will push the button and download the episode, the number will go up, and hopefully some of them will stay. Ron sits down with Boris Johnson and gets into the restaurant business with Guy Fieri. Theres no ulterior motive or different goal. The last thing Id say is more of a human thing. Are they yours if theyre subscribed in Spotify? Reviews. Once we were inside Discovery, we suddenly had the air cover of this huge, already global media company, and we could start to experiment a lot with other content types, other stuff. The tales he unfolds and his interview with a criminal psychologist are positively bone chilling.Credits:Ron Burgundy: Host, Writer, Executive ProducerCarolina Barlow: Co-Host, Writer, and Producer.Producers: Whitney Hodack, Jack O'Brien, Miles Gray, and Nick StumpfExecutive Producer: Mike . The Ron Burgundy Podcast From iHeartRadio Returns For Season 2 With An Interview With Kamala Harris Joshua Dudley Contributor I write about podcasts Aug 8, 2019,02:16pm EDT This article. I look at the companies that have the targeting capabilities. You mentioned that you had experimented with subscriptions. Oddly, no. Ron takes a stab at the most popular genre of his new chosen mediumthe True Crime podcast. You walk into a holdco in New York and youll say, I know were going to talk about podcasting today. Well, Conal, thank you so much for being on stage, and thank you for answering questions about your org chart. This is what the audience wants. Terrestrial radio distribution is a thing that were all very familiar with. Sure we are. I ask it of everybody. No Longer So. Ron Burgundy! Youre saying we have to innovate and push back in it, but its still just promo codes. Thats actually a podcast we make together thats actually awesome. Theyre all looking for internships. Its back to the org chart a little bit with this. Yes. via Podcasts. Thats what were trying to true up. 1 commercial podcast publisher globally with over 20,000 podcasts available on its iHeartRadio platformboth of whom are kind of a big dealannounced today "The Ron Burgundy Podcast." With podcasts, youre talking about promo codes at the ends of the ads, right? The Ron Burgundy Podcast. For sure, we deserve and need it. Im very interested in the derivative work potential of podcasts. The first episode of the show launched on February 7, 2019, on iHeart Radio [1]. Even if ultimately it was frustrating to the creator network, usually when there was a huge shift in a business model, the newer platforms were fixing a problem. Each episode has a different theme in which Ron engages in conversation with another notable person on the topic at hand. Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. That is some real Silicon Valley stuff. Then if they want to, we launch their podcast with iHeart Podcast Network. Its not that theyre bad people. Its finally arrived. On the other side of the business, you own the distribution. The Ron Burgundy Podcast. Weve won in that sense in podcasting. Is radio the upsell on podcasting for you? In true Ron Burgundy fashion, these conversations have a tendency to go off the rails, and we find out things about people we never knew we wanted to know. When we launched The Ron Burgundy Podcast with Will Ferrell four years ago, we gave him a really big gross radio point push across broadcast radio. We also have an original content series we make with IBM called Smart Talks with IBM. I fell in love with this medium 10 years ago. This is the only room where you can say that and people perk up. No. This is very unique. So we launched a company together. There is no moment where theyre surprised a month or two later that such-and-such advertiser has been underwriting their entire slate and they hate that brand, or something like that. You would have a platform tax that has not yet been introduced into podcasting, and may never be introduced. When you pay for a subscription on most platforms, and you receive a podcast that somebody else is piping into that platform through an RSS feed, nothing has changed about it. What worries me a little bit is that we have this tendency on the internet, and since Ive been working in digital media overall, to have this belief sometimes that I think is false that everything really needs to be a video when it grows up. All of the distribution points that we distribute to today through RSS feeds are equal to us in terms of the money we make, because thats just how RSS feeds work. I think more importantly, he saw the potential of the podcast medium to be a way for him to find, develop, and break new comedic talent in America. He only came on here to pitch the app. I can talk about the things I cant talk about on the radio. We predicted it to some extent, we felt that it was coming in 2018 or 2019, but that certainly helped. Into the whole thing? I really just keep going back to this notion that its perfect the way it is. Big Money Players and iHeartPodcasts. Ill go from the more obvious down to the less obvious. Hes fantastic. A million monthly downloads or more is a ton. The Ron Burgundy Podcast Will Ferrell reprises his role as Ron Burgundy in the world-famous Ron Burgundy Podcast! Its happening. We have talked about a lot of your shows, and we have talked about all of the new things youre doing. There was a moment on YouTube, around 2010 or something, where we all realized the same thing. It makes sense to me why a platform like YouTube, which is a wonderful platform in many ways, would smartly say, This is some of the best content in the world, wed like to distribute that. But its a different business model, and you just have to be aware of it. We were especially interested in, If we got gamers into our podcast network, could we then bring them into these live shows in iHeartLand? We dont use it anymore. Don't act like you're not impressed. Will Ferrell reprises his role as Ron Burgundy in the world-famous Ron Burgundy Podcast! Why did you want to sell to iHeart? Thanks to Ariel who did an amazing job. Weve actually noticed in the last two or three months that its a very timely question for us at our businesses, because I feel like weve moved off the direct response business too fast. Google wont give us the time of day. It sounds like you think you have some leverage over the platforms. iHeartRadio, through its broadcast radio stations, reaches nine out of 10 Americans a month. Who wants to be able to try stuff a lot, make a few mistakes, get it righter and righter, and then hit something big or two or three things. What is your framework for making decisions? You own the radio stations and you program them. In true Ron Burgundy fashion, these conversations have a tendency to go off the rails, and we find out things about people we never knew we wanted to know. I think our stats were something like never more than 1 percent, 2 percent, 2.5 percent of our downloads in any given month. I do. We spend $120 million a year it was something specific like $113 million a year the last time we said this out loud of our own on broadcast radio valued impressions or commercials to promote our podcasts. Each episode has a diff Will Ferrell reprises his role as Ron Burgundy in the world-famous Ron Burgundy Podcast! Next week, Im with Universal McCann. I talk to a lot of startup CEOs, and a lot of them who get acquired by big companies. The Ron Burgundy Podcast podcast - Listen online for free The Ron Burgundy Podcast Will Ferrell reprises his role as Ron Burgundy in the world-famous Ron Burgundy Podcast! We run billions of podcast impressions in a month to promote our own shows and our partners shows. Youd be surprised actually, as much as it may sound nuts, the extent to which youre innovating by iterating many different reads, at many different lengths, and many different placements across a show. Its crazy to see your podcast expressed as a series of note cards by the way its very humbling. It often is. This may be debatable, and may feel like an affront to a lot of folks in the room who live and breathe podcasting as an original medium. But I have learned firsthand and talked a lot about the extent to which broadcast radio talent has honed this craft of conversation over the last hundred years and certainly the last few decades, and the extent to which that has driven our medium, just sheer talent hitting the medium, but also with an awareness of the medium. This changed everything for podcasting. Thats our conference for the podcast industry. Will Ferrell reprises his role as Ron Burgundy in the world-famous Ron Burgundy Podcast! We had three or four people who were our formal official sales team at Stuff Media. Radio is a more ruthless industry than podcasts. The only reason we have that number is because of broadcast radio marketing. The Ron Burgundy Podcast is a hilarious and entertaining show hosted by the iconic Ron Burgundy, star of Anchorman and Anchorman 2. To some extent, you kill creativity and true innovation when you start to reverse-engineer what an asset should be for the content platform its going to be distributed on. Its called Hot Pod, written by our very own Ariel Shapiro. If there are principles that I try to remember once a week or so, its probably those three. I havent found a business model that proves it differently, so I think it behooves all of us to plug that pipe into as many distribution points as possible. One way to do that is to create different operating segments in your company so you can talk more about how well youre doing inside certain divisions and businesses as opposed to it all getting lumped together into one big overall set of numbers. Were like, Hey, you should buy podcasting. We all are. People trust podcast content more than they trust what they see on social media by like 60 percent more. Will Ferrell reprises his role as Ron Burgundy in the world-famous Ron Burgundy Podcast! If I want to hear a perpetually adolescent man scream PEE PEE through my speakers there's a ton of YouTube channels I can subscribe to. Yes. The longer answer is, were in an odd economy. Cut to 10 years later, and that has become almost as and in some ways more successful than the source of it, the website. Film series [ edit] Weve all seen this, so Im not saying anything privileged. Last year when we were all in this room, we could not stop talking about Spotify. Were going to build the podcast business by running Will Ferrell at you until youre sick of it, because we control that inventory and we control that distribution.. But hey, these reviews and opinions, I love your show but the live shows just arent as good as the old shows. It thrives when it is a widely distributed medium. We spun it out as its own company, Stuff Media, and very shortly thereafter we realized we needed two or three things to grow a lot faster and get a lot bigger. Ron DeSantis with the nickname "DeSanctimonious" ahead of a likely battle for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. The Ron Burgundy Podcast was distributed as a show on late Sunday night on broadcast radio too. Whats the structure below you to make all this work? I want to come to exclusives and to consolidation. I dont depend on it. I can go on as long as I want.. Nothings perfect, but its pretty close to perfect. I talk to a lot of digital media CEOs and digital media types. I want to start at the beginning. Okay, I guess we have some calls to make at the end of the day to the long tail. It is usually one continuum or even the same slate. One is called the multi-platform group. He founded MTV way back in the day, and hes had a long career of being the CEO of several companies.