Remembering Todd Cochrane by Tom Webster
Earlier this week RawVoice and Blubrry founder Todd Cochrane passed away suddenly while travelling back from visiting his family. A full obituary co-written by James Cridland and Cochrane’s long-time cohost Rob Greenlee can be found here. Tom Webster shares his own experiences as the podcast industry remembers Cochrane. The very first podcast Webster ever listened to was Todd Cochrane’s Geek News Central, nearly 20 years ago. Since then, Cochrane became a friend and confidant, sharing a deep passion for podcasting in general and creators specifically. “Todd worked tirelessly to keep podcasters going not because it was good for business, or so that he could “monetize.” Todd worked to keep podcasters podcasting because he understood the central truth of podcasting: it can change your life. It changed the life of a Senior Chief coming out of the Navy in the mid-2000s. It changed my life, too.”
Nuzum discusses a disconnect between the mentality of creators and the mentality of the executives they’re pitching to, and how both sides could benefit from understanding that disconnect. In a conversation with a creator expressing frustration with making no progress on pitches, there was a common thread: the ideas were being pitched on their artistic merit as good ideas, not their viability. Meanwhile, on the executive side of the industry, a podcast pitch is largely evaluated on its potential for recouping costs (a mindset that makes celebrity-hosted podcasts such an enticing investment: a known quantity with an established fanbase). Risk trumps merit in the business world. Creatives could stand to incorporate profitability into their pitches, while executives would benefit from processing phrases like “bring your best ideas” reads as “explain your idea’s editorial merit” to creators.
In court filing, Google concedes the open web is in “rapid decline” by Ryan Whitwam
In a bit of a paradox, Google has pushed back against negative coverage of AI search summaries with claims users love it and Overview isn’t decreasing clicks through to actual websites. Now, in court, they say the open web’s advertising spend is in rapid decline, with closed web infrastructure (e.g. connected TV, retail media) coming at the expense of open web display advertising. Google has pushed back against interpretations of the “rapid decline” comment, stressing they mean open web advertising and not the web in general. Though Whitwam fails to find how that specification makes much difference, especially when the only other big claim of the internet’s health (a 45% increase in indexable content picked up by Google crawlers since 2023) does not specify whether that 45% includes the flood of AI-generated sites churned out automatically to farm SEO.
What Amazon’s Exit Means for Creative Value
A new issue of The Sound Insights Report spends a section looking at Amazon’s retooling of Wondery, resulting in layoffs and shunting narrative-driven podcasts over to Audible. While the Wondery brand still exists, there’s potentially a power vacuum for companies that value the unique offerings narrative podcasting delivers (when monetized appropriately). If one attempts to monetize narrative content (be it investigative journalism or outright audio fiction) similarly to a simple celeb-hosted chat show, the concern becomes audiences being unwilling to pay for unknown content. Infinitely-renewable chat shows with built-in audiences are much safer plays for standard advertising arrangements than limited-series with defined seasons and planned eventual end-points. Conversely, subscription and patron-supported funding models specifically reward high-quality, immersive content that relies on niche, engaged audiences over broad reach. Narrative thrives in boutique dollars-per-audience member instead of pennies-per-thousand.
Locked On grows advertiser partnerships through competitive insights
Magellan AI has a new case study out, this one focusing on the results of Locked On Podcast Network using Magellan’s intelligence. At the beginning of the study, challenges included Locked On’s original strategy of manual prospecting, which gave limited visibility into other networks’ advertising strategies and manual research acted as a bottleneck to both prospecting and strategic insights. Since adopting Magellan AI, data-driven prospecting reportedly cut Locked On’s advertiser identification and outreach time, win rates went up as spend pattern data helped time and tailor pitches, and competitive insights gave a leg up in winning advertiser attention.
As for the rest of the news…
- The final deadline to enter into AudioUK’s Audio Production Awards is next Wednesday, September 17th (and the Pay What You Want scheme is still in effect for creators who might need help with entry fees).
- Podscribe has a couple new updates, including now displaying a country breakdown of YouTube simulcast podcasts, as well as the ability to tweak YouTube modeling (such as tweaking how much a YouTube view counts relative to podcast downloads).
- Speaking of YouTube, their much-teased multi-language dubbing tool has launched to everyone on the platform after several demonstration videos by top creators (e.g. Mr. Beast, Mark Rober, and The Grumps have all uploaded dubbed content via the pilot program).
- Lemonada Media has renewed Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Wiser Than Me, as well as announced the upcoming series Don’t Listen to Us, in which married couple Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody dole out advice to their audience similar to to their viral TikTok account (for my money, one of the more heartwarming things online).
- New Hampshire Public Radio has dropped a new episode of the true crime podcast Bear Brook, detailing how investigators solved a final mystery in the case.
- Variety has a feature piece digging into ABC News’ recent upping of their investment in true crime podcasting.
