The Shift to Spoken Word

Support for the show comes from Faragamo. This Father'say, Faragama presents there the thingsings I have learned from your collection becausecause a father's influence is reflected in the details, in the way they dress, in the appreciation of materials, and in making considered choices These elements build over time and become part of a shared identity. And Faragama wants to highlight the style, assertiveness, and poise that are naturally showcased with the everyday moments between a father and the ones they love Discover Farraagamo's Father's Day gifting selection at farargamo. com or in store Support for the show comes from Faragamo. This Father's Day Farraagamo presents there the thingsings I have learned from you collection Because a father's influence is reflected in the details, in the way they dress, in the appreciation of materials, and in making considered choices These elements build over time and become part of a shared identity. And Faragama wants to highlight the style, assertiveness, and poise that are naturally showcased with the everyday moments between a father and the ones they love Discover Farraagamo's Father's Day gifting selection at fararragamo. com or in store upport for the show comes from Fetch Pet Insurance Do you have a pet Every six seconds, a pet owner in the US gets hit with a vet bill of over a thousand dollars, and it's almost always an unwelcome surprise That's where fetch pet insurance comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance get paid back up to ninety percent of vet bills. You can use any vet in the US and Canada. All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet dot com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet dot com slash save In today's offffice hours, we discuss who will replace sixty minutes or we will replace sixty minutes, why billionaires keep mying media companies and whether podcasting is already past its peak. We're joined today by Sarah Fisher, media correspondent at Axus. Sarah, welcome to Propies Office Hours. Hi, thanks for having me We're excited about this. Our producers, when we tried to find a talented, insightful first on media, two separate people on the team came back and suggested and your name was floated. so we're happy you're. A You you ready to go I'm ready There we go. Our first question comes from John McCauy on Instagram who says As the old sixty mininutes crashes and burns, what in new media will carry on the mission? The first thing I would ask as a prelude to that question Sarah. It's bit of a loaded question that assumes sixty is going away. What are your thoughts on What happens to sixty? and if in fact it if it is in fact, does decline, does that create an opening for something else? What do you think happens here Well, I think that three major correspondents signaling that they're going to stay on, including Leslie Stall and Bill Whitaker means that this show won't ultimately die. If they had chosen not to renew contracts, Scott, I think that sixty mininutes would have been done as we knew it and would have been replaced by a far different product. becausecause they're staying, I think you you can and should expect the mission of sixty minutes to carry on. But with a caveat, which is that one, I do think there's some audience trust that has been lost Given Scott Pelley coming forward and saying he felt pressure to change his journalism in response to management and then T I think there have been some chaotic and confusing moments for consumers that They're going to have to reckon with when they decide whether or not they want to continue watching in particular pulling that episode of Cacot down and only to air it a few weeks later unchanged. So sixty minutes won't go away But I think that the trust has been burned a little bit in terms of what could replace it moving forward, you know on the broadcast side They're facing such heavy cost pressures in traditional television that I'm hard pressed to believe that anything from traditional television placed it. On the new media side, there are some Bright spots where I'm very optimistic Right now we're seeing a lot of nice momentum at the local level, Scott. You'd be surprised about that We are seeing philanthropists shift a lot of their effort and energy and money into starting new startups that are commercially nonprofit, meaning They're going to get continued backing to break news and do investigations without the pressure of necessarily minting money And then The other area where I feel increasingly optimistic is deffinitely recognizes the need for investigative journalism, we're seeing more reader donations go into outlets that do good investigative reporting. One area where I've found that's expanding and I've been happily surprised by it It' been proro publica a lot of newations coming in. We're seeing record reader revenue at places like the Guardian that are committed to you know investigative journalism. The efforts of regular everyday people and philanthropists right now seem to be filling the void that traditional commercial models are not There is some truth to checked journalism that tries to hit it straight down the middle is important to a democracy and people realize that The with respect to sixty And I'm curious to get your thoughts here their approach of trying to disrupt it from a position of strength doesn't make any sense. They're basically trying to perform open heart surgery on the healthiest person you know, in the franchise, For fifty consecutive seasons, sixty has been the number one rated news program. and garnering about nine million viewers, that's up nine percent year over year in an industry that's in structural decline And it grew five percent in the key demo of twenty five to fifty four So it's growing and it's doing well. It did about eighty million in revenue ad revenue. That's ten million more than the Late showow that same year So this isn't this isn't an entity that needs to be disrupted. This has become very politicize because I think an obvious The way to connect the dots here is quite frankly that a group of billionaires who feel there's probably more profit incurring in favor of the current administration want CBS and specifically sixty to I'm trying to say this as generously and as politely as possible to be less anti Trump. I can't figure out any strategy other than The elephants are either themselves very politically motivated to change the tone and tenor of CBS and sixty, or they see more money incurring favor of the Trump administration, who seems to be, I've heard was incandescently enraged by the tay by the interview with Marjorie Taylor Green and then Barry Weiss was similarly raraged with Anderson Cooper sign off. I think what will be interesting. if you look at the actual data Youve had a bunch people call me from sixty I think three or four of the seven correspondents have resigned Six of the eight senior managers have left. But none of the corpus, the six or seventy editors, producers, analysts have left so far So I think it all comes down to you know, these layoffs or firings were timed not accidentally around the end of the season. They're going on a three month hiatus It'll kind of be up to the product. while we all pick our corners based on politically what makes us feel good in big grandiose notions about journalism and Trump At the end of the day, if the product is really good in the fall with new correspondence and some old ones, I think it'll be fine. If it doesn't, it'll die a quick death and everyone will say I told you so. So I don't, you know, it all comes down to this. first five or six episodes in the fall. Any thoughts on that? Well, one thing that new management would tell you is that a lot of the success of sixty Mutes does ride on the NFL because it airs right after. And the reason that they claim that they needed to come in and modernize it even though that they were ahead, as you mentioned, ratings were up nine percent under executive producer Tigan Simon is because they say, you're not taking into consideration how much this show relies on the NFL. What's now happened is that evenven if things were to go back to status quo There's still a trust that has been broken between CBS sixty and the audience and CBS sixty and the management and the day to day staff there. And that trust means that being broken means that anytime somebody does encounter and ethically challenging situation, or situation where there's ambiguity in terms of what's the best path forward The trust is would allow you to have a constructive conversation to figure out the best path forward for the audience in journalism And with that being broken, nobody believes that any decision you make was done in good faith. That is the big challenge that they're going to face moving forward. Make no mistake. There will be a time when an episode is questioned. Does it need to be pulled from air? Do we need to make changes? And I think that's where the rubber will hit the road. And if people feel as though they can't trust the products changes or decisions being made, I think it's going to be very hard to get back to some of those, you know, the traditional ratings that they've seen for a long time Also I'm curious to get your thoughts on this. I find the media is just self obsessed. This is the number one story in the nation and this is an eighty million dollars business. Y know Nike's Fuel band was a much bigger This is just a small business. Now granted, I get that it does play an important role in America's dialogue And the notion that a sixty is a diminished sixty or even goes away is a threat to our democracy I get the notion that there's an overall chill that's suppressing free speech. I think that's a big threat and this is another indication of that. However, having said that I see so many small aggressive you know, truth to power startups, including Axos, including seemaphore, including PC, I don't see journalism or truth to power in any way being quashed. I would argue that every time they try and do this, it's a game of whackam all and it just inspires a series of new startups backed by people You know, the bulw, my God, are they giving Trump a hard time and they're making money doing it. I don't see the threat to journalism and I find that I would say There are a few people, few groups and this will piss off everyone's favorite intellectual support animal journalists But there are a few groups that more so than journalists, or I would say writers who see themselves as more precious than they actually are. I could not agree with that more. I did this analysis once on the show succession how It is consumed by so few people relative to the amount of coverage that it got by journalists because journalists are obsessed with covering their own industry and obsessed with themselves. The reason that this story is important, from my point is broadcast as an asset public good as defined by our laws And that such it needs to be regulated as a public good When there's political pressure, on somebody on their journalism asset to get a deal close, the broader implications of that O are we regulating a public utility based off of political preference, that God is a pretty serious problem because you always want public utilities to be governed by independent agencies who can do its best for the public To me, that's the broader existential crisis, and it's bigger than just what's happening in media and the FCC. I cover the FTC. The Supreme Court will determine and is likely to side with Trump in Trump's firing of Democratic commissioners under that agency. I cover the copyright office, which the music sector that I cover, you know broadly relies heavily on Trump his administration tried to oust the head of the copyright office. So what are the political implications of agencies governing uh, public goods No longer being independent. That is a massive, massive story Scot The problem is we're often neglecting to link some of these small incremental happenings like eighty million dollars show sixty minutes broader narrative, and that's where I think the discussion has gone awry Now it was great. Let's move on. Question number two is from JC Bral Can our media ecosystem not be controlled by billionaires? It seems impossible to opt out. So just some Data here. In nineteen eighty three, fifty companies own ninety percent of American media. Today that share is controlled by just six corporations, Comcast, Walt Disney Warner Brothers, Discovery, Paramount Skotdance Son in Amazon And when Paramount's pending acquisition of Warner Brothers closes, it'll be just five. More than half of all US online news sites visits. go to new sites controlled by just seven families or corporate entities. in twenty twenty one. twenty three of the world's largest corporations were in the media sector with a combined turnover of two point eight trillion USD, nearly double the combined GDP of the world's forty poorest countries at that at that same year. And media ownership, let's be honest, it does have a big impact on society, politics and culture, not necessarily reflected in the revenues or the market cab Nine of America's ten richest men are media executives or owners of those nine, five sit on Trump's Council of Avisors of Science and Technology. According to the Free Press's media capitulation indndex, out of the thirty five largest media companies, only two, Bloomberg and Netflix operate independent from political pressure So what do you think? Could that first of all Bloomberg refused to be covered by his own media outlet when he was running for president. So no, Bloomberg is not amused from political pressure Um, Netflix has in many do you let me just p pause there. Do you think that was an attempt to to show independence and not and not use his own media asset to speak favorably to his presidential run or you think it was a defensive protective move? Itesn't matter either way. Any news organization that's truly independent should never be told whether they can or cannot cover a person Um, and Netwlix has, in many cases removed episodes from its platform based on political pressure from other governments. So neither of them are immune. In terms of the billionaire impacts, what we're finding is that you cannot stop the momentum of regular everyday people putting their dollar behind the news, the information that they think is not biased and best. Take a look at what's happening in Hollywood. Sure, there's going to be a ton of studio consolidation, but the best performing box office hits these past few weekends have been from YouTubers and they've been supported by A twenty four, a smaller independent studio. One thing I want to just make a note of We in the U S We used to be when we were majority in newspaper country. We were mostly owned by families. and that mattered, Scott, because before the world became so globalized Families had incentive to serve their communities with solid quality local news, especially because that helps their local businesses. A lot of times these families, they made, you know money in a constituency and news supported it. Fast forward to where we're at today The local family ownership has died out. Obviously you saw the Redstones have cashed out. now it's moving to the Ellisons, but all those newspapers, a lot of them have been gobbled up by private equity. We have a few families that still own some big conglomerates. So the new houses, you know, they own a lot over at Advanced Publications, which sister company the Konde and the Hearst Empire, which is tons of local papers, some local stations, a little bit of Disney and A andE They are trust that his family owned will eventually expire. So I think the thing that's happened is when families exit Billionaire individuals have been coming in, but I think I feel very, very confident that billionaires are not going to control all the media. I think the public recognizes the importance of a diversified point of view and they're putting their money where their mouth is Yeah, a lot there. So I would argue that Hearst is arguably the best managed company you don't hear a lot about. They've essentially transitioned out of traditional media and magazines into data driven businesses, whether it's Fitch, the rating agency, they have a great business tracking a flight time or engine upgrade cycles I mean, they have figured out, they have taken the cash flow from what we're essentially dying media companies including a twenty percent ownership of ESPN and they've transitioned into data rich businesses. and that company is stronger stronger than it's ever been. It's been outstandingly well run. And the traditional media companies The reality is theirir vanity. Most of them are vanity assets. James Murdoch just bought New York magazine It's I think it does seventy million. I think it makes a little bit of money. This is a company worth ten to fifty million as a private company. He paid a lot more than that because owning the local newspaper or a magazine, a hot magazine or a football team makes you the sexiest person in that city. It's just a very cool rap. I own New York magazine, I own The New York Times, I own the New York Jets. And so these assets will always trade well above their cash flows or any reasonable valuation. And therefore, the only people interested in Owning these assets of these valuations are the children of rich people So this is Billionaires are kind of the only people willing to buy at these valuations I mean look, whether it's Redstone, whether it's David Ellison, whether it's Bronfman, it's all the children of rich people, that's just a function of economics. But again, I don't see it as an existential threat to the ecosystem. An closing thoughts here? I agree with you. I love your sober take. There's one other group that I'm eyeing that does have a lot of vested interest in our news brands and that is Eastern Um business mouls or corporations that need the authority of Western brands. because they couldn't build homegrown brands with journalistic excellence due to oppressive free speech culture So if you think about it, Niay buys the FT Hi billionaire byice forortune Forbes is still owned by a Hong Kong based private investment firm This trend is something I've been following a lot of. And the reason it's notable is they often care about these Western business brands becausecause they can take their logos and put it on coffee shops or upsell conferences or build up authority in their own businesses back home and That is that is a trend I'm following Tlevisy Univision, another great example of that. you know, the FCC was hesitant for a long time about giving Mexico's most powerful company access to the majority ownership of a U.S. caster that uses our public spectrum So the foreign investment in U. S news media Um for reasons other than just financials is also very interesting to me. They're another group outside of billionaires that I'm watching It's a really interesting one, and I'm generally torn here because I've never been as excised about foreign ownership. now. when four of fourteen billion dollars of foreign money coming into US universities is coming from one nation Qatar and into Generally departments called Middle East Studies I think that's reason to be alarmed. I think they want more than You know return the The return they're looking for in that investment might not be congruent with Americans's interests Whereas I think if so far, I think the Gulf Nations mostly coming in and funding like a media business. or a technology company. So far, I haven't seen their ability to Let the tail wag the dog here. And I'm again and I said this and was very unpopular a few years ago when Uber was getting a lot of shit for Raising money out of the golf, my attitude was cash their check. that ultimately downstream that results in our ability to have many of the programs that are progressives are fond of I'll give you the last word here I agree with you. I just think that we need a better mechanism as a society to determine where the line is. You know, that's the challenge. That's why I brought up Sythius because Sythius is ultimately controlled by the president and the laax DOJ enforcements of the line as it currently stands. I agree with you that we're often too precious I talked to one big text CEO who says, this is the ultimate vulnerability of Lisse fair economics and capitalism and democracy And it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be getting rid of our systems because as you know, they tend to support our society in ways that have a greater impact than maybe some of the risks we take. But it is a vulnerability that we all just have to acknowledge All right, we'll be right back after a quick break. Su for the show comes from built Rewards. Whether you rent or own, your housing payment is probably one of your biggest monthly expenses Most of us just accepted as money that's gone for good, and for a long time that was true. But now Bill lets you earn rewards on your rent or mortgage payments, turning an expense you already have into something that gives back, and the benefits go beyond just putting extra money in your pocket As a build member, every housing payment earns you points you can use toward trips with top travel partners, including United and Hy. Plus you can use them toward lift rides, ammazon. com purchases, and much more. Build members also get access to what they call a neighborhood concierge. It works kind of like a personal assistant baked into your place of residence. 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Sign up for your one dollar per month trial today at shhopify dot com slash profG. Go to shhopify dot com slash profg. That's shopify dot com slash profg. Welcome back. Question number three comes from the David Sambless. Have podcasts become too saturated if video killed the radio star What kills podcasts? All right? So first some data and then I'll turn it to you Podcast listenership is strong. one hundred and fifteen million Americans are weekly podcast consumers spending a combined seven hundred seventy three million hours per week. Nearly a four and a half X increase just in the past decade, about one hundred sixty million Americans are one in two. Our monthly podcast consumers is up from forty six million in twenty fifteen Audio is still a very important medium. if you think of this as being audio. ninety two percent of podcasts consumers say they' have listened to a podcast in the last week, with only eight percent say they exclusively watch on whether it's saturated That's an easy one. Yes. There's almost five million podcasts U, about four hundred or forty thousand or almost a half a million actively published L this, the median active show gets fewer than thirty downloads per episode. That's right podast right in the middle gets an average of thirty downloads per episode. justust for reference, podcast you're listening to now over thirty days, we'll get about one hundred fifty thousand downloads. Property Markets gets about two hundred thousand downloads and Pivot gets about four hundred thousand. There's definitely a crowding effect podcasts, what's interesting here, Sar earlier was talking about trust is we were talking about sixty In terms of trust, they beat out every other media format. Podcast hosts are the most trusted influence category. fifty six percent of weekly listeners say podcast hosts matter most versus twenty percent for social media influencers, fifteen percent for TV, movie celebrities, ten percent for radio hosts Um, and I'll come back to that because it's I have experienced that personally Again, the takeaway from the data, conventional advertisers won't sponsor a show unless it hits at least five thousand downloads per episode. I would say it's more like fifty and a threshold that really only the top one percent, if not the top. point one percent. And last piece of data here There's Approximately, this data says a half a million. I think I read six hundred thousand podcasts put out something every week generenerously, six hundred are self sustaining economically, but realistically only zero point one percent are economically viable. So while as a whole, the industry is booming This company or this industry started from a digital footprint. and anytime there's digitization, there's very much a win or take most. environment here. I am very bullish on the sector. But unfortunately, I think you're going to see greater and greater like a genie coefficient or inequality within the industry. Your thoughts, Sar. I agree with you. The Peretto principle holds true here that you eighty percent bring in twenty percent of the revenues. And I've talked to experts and analysts that say both in music and podcasting. So in both forms of audio, the Pereto principle is actually much worse in terms of the eighty twenty. It probably is more closely to like ninety five to five I'd say with podcasts, though. I always look at the numbers in terms of how do the traditional industries migrate to digital in the television industry, seventy billion dollars went to linear television advertising. And so we're constantly mapping how fast Scot that moves over to CTV, which is like streaming ads In the linear world, radio, which has both spoken word and music, You know, about a twenty eight billion dollarsar industry today casts for advertising. is about five billion dollars. And so you wonder, why hasn't it moved over fast enough that it's much more equal? Because at this point in television, CTV and traditional advertising are actually about equal. And there's a couple of answers to that. One, and this came from Chrisp Valf, who is the CEO of a company called Red Ventures. They do podcasts and talent management for conservative radio podcasters mostly they were acquired by Fox. Chris saids me The five billion dollar number is the wrong number to be viewing the podcast industry because Advertising supported podcasts, the Peretto principle absolutely prevails But a lot of people from podcasts they make Money from other ways, whether it's selling subscriptions or selling merch or patreons or what have you or live events Or podcasts are a marketing expense for their Broader communication goals and missions. So he said the number that's a better proxy is probably like the one hundred billion dollars creator industry, not just assigning podcasts to five billion dollars ads, which I thought was so fascinating because if you look at it that way, it is much bigger than radio. And then two,, for your point of very few podcasters make enough to actually sustain a living on this It goes back to what I was just saying about podcasting has become a really great marketing tool and especially Scott in the AI era in the era of LLNs, they are so they're going to get so good at picking up Insights from audio and from radio' not quite there yet, but they're getting there. And so if you are recording a podcast and maybe you're doing a blog post about it That's a better way potentially to get your name and brand out there for your company, for yourself than it is, you know, to just simply do paid advertising. So the way I would describe it is lines are blurring and what are podcasts? Podcasts are becoming television shows They can be produced for cents on the dollar such that they can more money can go to the talent So if you're Stephanie Roll or your're Ari Melbur or your or Gutfeld. they're getting anywhere fromzo point five to if there were stars ten percent of the Revenue casters capture you know, seventycent to eighty percent the talent. So you're seeing a pretty serious migration of talent from traditional media to podcast. So Meghgan Kelly's show on Fox probably generated a lot more top line revenue. She's making a lot more money on a smaller revenue based of podcasting because she gets to hold on to seventy percent of it. The general split Among distribution and advertising in the talent, if the talent is iconic is seventy thirty So that's why you're continuing, I think, to see these things grow. In addition, advertisers going back to the trust issue On proty media, we get CPM's or what we're able to charge advertisers forty five dollars for every thousand people that listen Because when you're in people's ears and they're doing something more intimate, walking their dog or doing their dishes, They don't skip the ads and again, they trust podcastters that triple the rate of broadcast cable hosts or influencers shock influishers have any trust at this point And so advertisers love it They so you're getting, you don't need to build as big an audience to have a more profitable business. In addition, the audience is much more attractive. So The average age of CNBC, Fox and CNN is between sixty two and sixty nine The average age of a podcast listener is thirty four. Sws. it's kind of half and half doeskew a little bit male and it skews wealthy. So a wealthy young us male or professional is exactly ground zero for advertisers. They absolutely love it. And then the other X factor here that kind of, in my opinion, took podcasts over the top is Trump And that is a lot of people credit Trump's election victory or at least the scale of his victory with him embracing podcasts And the stat I love is by him flying to Austin and going on Joe Rogan He got more listens and views. then Vice President Harris would have garnered if she'd gone on CNN Fox and MSNBC every night for two hours for two weeks And so everyone is embracing podcasts. I can call pretty much anyone who claims they're not running for president, but they are. and they'll come on tomorrow on this podcast because they now realize this is a medium for swing voters. That's the good news. The bad news is that you said the Preto principle, you know, twenty percent ads, eighty percent of the value I'm not exaggerating. I think there's probably data that it'szero point one percent get ninety eight percent of the revenue and probably one hundred and forty percent of the profits because anyone in the bottom ninety nine point nine