Podcast & Video: Implications and Examples
Part 3 of a series of posts about video and podcasts
Previously on Matt on Audio I said.. “I don’t think it’s any surprise that I’m suggesting if you make an audio-only podcast that could be visualised, then you should be thinking how it can be adapted to suit both audio and video environments. I’m not suggesting a pivot to video away from anything else. As I said before, if you’re making long-form conversational content, of course it should exist as a podcast in audio-only places, but I think it would be strange to maroon it there whilst consumers elsewhere would like it too.”
Working alongside the rest of the team at my marketing agency Podcast Discovery, the past year has seen us talk to lots of creators, from big media companies and podcast-first operations to individual talent. Video, both short-form and long-form has been a constant topic.
Some built strong video operations from the start, others have added it to what they do, whilst other companies are still finding the best way forward. Some shows have eschewed video completely. We had great fun working with the Penny 4 team on Up In Smoke, a drama podcast with Mei Mac and Adam Buxton. It used no video assets at all. However with the right mix of PR, platform relationships and really great content, the show sat in the number one position in the Fiction charts for most of November and December and had weeks in the top 50 overall too.
The nature of the show meant it wasn’t able to be filmed - that would be like making an expensive Netflix series. It was also designed to demonstrate the team’s skill at audio - they were already well known for video. But also it demonstrated successful IP that could be translated to screens. In other words they had a plan.
We’ve also worked on quite a few shows where the video and audio is treated in similar ways. Pod Save the UK, made by Reduced Listening and part of the Crooked Media network, was like many of their shows - full video from the start. When the show was being built, delivering for both was at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Initially sitting with the established Pod Save the World on YouTube to drive awareness and sampling, it now sits on its own channel that we launched shortly after the general election.
Having access to good video really helped establish the show on social media. At the launch, the host Nish Kumar was well known. It was important to demonstrate this was his podcast, and showing fans what they would get from him on the show was important. His co-host was a newcomer - Coco Khan. The video meant we could demonstrate their great chemistry and introduce them as a new duo.
I think if you want to see the best modern take on combining video, audio and social in the UK, you have to look at what The Fellas Studios are doing. Set up in 2020 by YouTubers Callum Airey and Joshua Larkin, they’re the people behind The Fellas Podcast, Saving Grace and Dad V Girls After Hours. These shows skew younger, do well on YouTube and Spotify with some audience elsewhere too. They are not your traditional ‘top show’ on Apple Podcasts.
They’ve built a great studio set-up for their shows, which really shines on YouTube and socials and they've kept a youthful feeling that very few other UK shows have. You can even watch their weekly behind the scenes show, if you want to understand more about their operation. They’re very much a podcast company, but they’re not obsessed with audio. Outside of Goalhanger, they’re probably the only people in the UK that have managed to launch a number of shows successfully, at scale.
We re-tooled a show close to my heart this year - my own! The Media Club had its roots as The Guardian’s Media Talk starting in 2006 (!) before becoming its own stand-alone thing in 2014 as The Media Podcast, produced by Rethink Audio.
I took over as host in 2021. We’d been producing a video version of the podcast since April 2023 - but it was very much a visualised version of the podcast that we put on YouTube. In other-words the video was sort of incidental to the show, we had filmed what we had already been making. The main benefit was that we had clips to use on social media, it was more about the marketing than having a video show.
Last year we wanted to re-brand, the name, The Media Podcast, wasn’t brilliant for SEO (or cut through!) and we needed to update the artwork and really think more about the show format. We were also keen to ‘dog food’ a re-brand and look at the issues when reformulating a show.
One of the challenges lots of creators find with ‘always on’ shows is to have the time to do this work. After 10 years it was probably due a rethink and a polish. We used our brief summer pause to re-brand the show The Media Club, update all of the socials, build a new website, give it a new look and tweak some of the format points. The other big thing was to think more about the video side. The key challenge was really a production one. The show is recorded on a Thursday afternoon and then comes out at Midnight. We needed the edit to remain quick. For the video side to work, we needed to use a proper video environment with minimal set-up time - it needed to be ready to work. We found a great studio in Podshop that had the look we wanted - a trendy living room that matched a media club in its feel. Generally we’re ready to go in fifteen minutes and we’re practiced enough that the show follows a prepped running order and recorded ‘as live’ without the need to do too many pickups. The show is relatively simple with three camera angles, a host, guest and wide, so the producer does a live vision mix. Changes for pace and relevance happen in the edit.
The show is edited in Descript and exported for audio. The video is then cut automatically by Descript, and tidied up by the Podcast Discovery team who can use the isolated shots to fix any vision mixes. They then export the final versions for YouTube and Spotify. Audio comes out at Midnight and the video version is ready by Midday. The video team then makes the short-form clips too.
Within the resources we have, the show works as a video experience. It looks like it's made for people watching. It seems high quality and worthy of someone’s time. It is perhaps not entirely optimised for YouTube. We keep in things like introductions, though we’ve shortened them significantly, something you probably wouldn’t do if you were only making a YouTube video. There is, like all these things, some compromises.
At the same time, for the thousands of regular listeners, I don’t think they notice that much of a difference. It still very much works as an audio podcast.
So what has been the effect of the changes? We changed a few things at the same time, so some of the benefits are likely to come from a variety of the alterations. The re-brand, though, gave us a reason to think about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. Getting off the treadmill of always-on to do some strategy was worthwhile. The changes we made to the look of the show on all platforms and a tidy up of the format made the show better. The increase in visual quality of the full video episodes and the short-form have made what we do look more professional. Whether people consume the full thing or not, there’s been a significant uptick of people talking to me about the show and a lot of that has been driven by how it looks.
Listening on the audio platforms (the RSS-fed ones) has increased since the rebrand. Growth has replaced a static listenership. Long-form video consumption has more than doubled since before the changes and some episodes have had 10x previous viewing if they catch a nerve.
We’ve been adding the video versions to Spotify. Now this is an audience that was previously audio-only, so I was fascinated to see how they would interact with the video. They were clearly happy with the audio, so there’s no reason for them to come to the show for the video. Generally around a third of the people who consume the show on Spotify see at least 1 minute of video and collectively it accounts for about 20% of the total time spent on the show.
I think this is pretty good, and higher than I thought it would be. I think it shows that you can’t make assumptions about the audience and how they want to consume what you make.
Our rebrand is designed to make the show platform agnostic. The Media Club, no longer The Media Podcast, is a weekly show about the media. You can listen to it or watch it, we’re happy if you do either. We are not making the decision for our consumers. Indeed, for some people, giving it 45 mins a week isn’t possible so they just watch the clips, or they subscribe to the newsletter.
The newsletter, sitting on a Substack at themediaclub.com, delivers a weekly edition explaining who’s on the show and the topics. It also has the links to all the stories we talk about, that we used to just send to the contributors. And you know what, I’m fine if people just want to get the newsletter for the links if the show doesn’t fit in with their lives.
The Media Club is niche, but it’s a multi-media brand. Video, Audio, Social, Email. We reach interested media folks on platforms relevant to them.
The other thing I’ve noticed since the changes, alongside more people talking to me about it, is that many more industry PRs have got in touch to get their bosses on, and the show will likely be better for it. That’s driven particularly by the high-quality video. Whilst the scale of the audience hasn’t changed that much and neither has the content, the perception has really altered.
Another big reason to do all these changes to The Media Club was that we wanted to see the specific implications of moving to include video so we were better equipped to talk to our Podcast Discovery clients.
As well as the things above, we learned a hell of a lot about the big decisions you need to think about with regards to RSS vs YouTube vs Spotify Video and how that can affect monetisation and marketing.
Let’s talk more about that tomorrow in the last part of this series. I’ll see you then!
This is part three of a series about video and podcasts. You can read part 1 here, part 2 here and the final part here.