Buzzcast
Buzzcast is a roundtable discussion about podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. We'll cover current events and news, podcast strategy, tools we are using, and dip into the Customer Support mailbag to test our podcasting knowledge. If you want to stay up-to-date on what's working in podcasting, Buzzcast is the show for you.
Buzzcast
Podcasting Is The New Late Night TV
The cancellation of Stephen Colbert's show highlights a major shift in the media landscape as expensive TV production gives way to more cost-effective, audience-focused podcasting formats. When Stephen Colbert's show got axed, the immediate cultural response wasn't "start a YouTube channel" or "join TikTok". It was "launch a podcast." This reaction speaks volumes about where audience attention and creator opportunity now resides.
Mentioned in this episode:
- Why Colbert Got Canceled by Nate Silver
- 100 Best Podcasts of All Time
Our thoughts:
- The Late Show cost $100 million annually with 200 employees, making it financially unsustainable
- Traditional TV's aging audience (average 68 years old) doesn't appeal to advertisers seeking younger demographics
- Conan O'Brien's successful transition from TV (280,000 viewers) to podcasting (1.3 million listeners)
- Podcast production costs dramatically lower at $20,000 per episode for major networks, often under $100 for independents
- Creative freedom in podcasting allows hosts to maintain their authentic voice without network interference
- Many former TV personalities finding success in podcasting: Trevor Noah, Bill O'Reilly, Rosie O'Donnell, and Keith Olbermann, for example.
- Podcasting becoming synonymous with independent media creation in public consciousness
Send us your podcast artwork questions for next week's episode by hitting the fan mail button to texting the show!
Contact Buzzcast
- Send us a text message
- Tweet us at @buzzcastpodcast, @albanbrooke, @kfinn, and @JordanPods
Thanks for listening and Keep Podcasting!
Jordan. Stephen Colbert has been canceled and everyone's saying he's got to start a podcast, and I got to agree.
Jordan:Okay, well, hold on a second. Stephen Colbert has not been canceled. His show was canceled. No his show was canceled. It's a completely different thing.
Alban:Okay. So I saw an article that said Stephen Colbert has been canceled and I was like what does Stephen Colbert do? And yeah, you're right, Stephen Colbert has been canceled. And I was like what does Stephen Colbert do? And yeah, you're right, the show's been canceled. And that was 100% clickbait. That's why I clicked on it.
Jordan:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely no. The late show with Stephen Colbert was canceled. The late show with Stephen Colbert has been canceled.
Alban:Okay, very good point. I read a good article, I think it was from Nate Silver, kind of going through why was the show canceled? I mean, the top line one that just makes so much sense is the show cost $100 million a year to run, $100 million.
Jordan:Which is insane.
Alban:Insane, very expensive show, like over half a million dollars an episode. Apparently they have like 200 employees. Everyone's making bank it's very like who you know to get a job there and so they ended up just cutting the entire show. But there was a couple other points. Maybe it's not like political, but there is something to Stephen Colbert overall has kind of gotten a little bit watered down, lost his edge a bit bit. Watered down, lost his edge a bit and it might be something with like network TV just not wanting to get anybody angry or get anybody offended, and so he kind of got toned down. And then when you look at the numbers, they're just not good. Not many people are watching and the people that are watching, the average age is 68 years old, so retirees are mostly watching the show, which is just not who advertisers are trying to get in front of. They're trying to get in front of people who are like 19 to 34 and who are going to be buying stuff for the next 50 years?
Jordan:Absolutely yeah, and I think the reason why everyone is saying like, oh, colbert should like go start a podcast is because we have who is basically like the poster child of late night to podcasting, which is conan o'brien. When his show was canceled on tbs, I think it was it was something like 280 000 viewers.
Alban:Yeah, like a fifth of what colbert is getting now so like that makes sense.
Jordan:But then he goes on to have this podcast, conan o'brien. He's a friend and and he's now at like 1.3 million viewers per episode on this. He has the like. There's the Team Coco network, and then he also went on to do a HBO Max series called Conan O'Brien Must Go, which is based on the podcast series that he did during COVID where he like met fans, and so now he's like going to actually meet these fans in person. I mean, he's gone on to have such success with this that everyone's like, yeah, go start a podcast, that's all you got to do.
Alban:And if you think of like the three potential reasons that Colbert was canceled, or at least like the three pieces that kind of fed into it, all three of those have kind of been mitigated by podcasts. They're cheap to make. We're not talking about half a million dollars an episode, we're talking about you might just have a team of 10 people for a big podcast but for a small one it can be two, so very inexpensive. Your audience is your audience. So the risk of like losing your edge because you want to make advertisers happy or maybe the network doesn't really like the joke you made, there's no risk there. And podcasts, compared to linear TV, are being consumed by people who are much younger and so you're reaching people that advertisers want to get in front of and I think you kind of mitigate all three of those risks.
Jordan:Oh yeah To your point about like just how cheaply a podcast can be made. So we're, if we look at the like top podcasting networks, the top podcast production companies. So I know Gimlet I was listening to one of their podcasts about how they produce podcasts and I think it's something like every episode is $20,000 per episode, which, as a podcaster, I went that's ridiculous. Who would ever spend that much money? But you know they've got researchers and editors and talent and all these teams putting stuff together and going out on the road and interviewing people, you know whatever. So like I guess $20,000 an episode makes sense. But when you look at that compared to-.
Alban:Half a million dollars. I think 20 grand sounds like a lot of money when I compare it to the two of us doing this show, I go okay, this is like a $80 episode, and then when you compare it and then you realize half a million dollars to 20 grand, the cost savings are incredible.
Jordan:Yeah, Colbert, his show is losing I don't know 40, 50 million a year for the network, and this is a big guy, this is a celebrity television host and he's just hemorrhaging money through his TV show and so, yeah, it'd be so much easier just to do a podcast.
Alban:Actually, if you think about it, that means everybody who's listening to this show, their podcast, makes more money than the Tonight Show. Oh, that's true.
Jordan:I hope so at least.
Alban:I think what we're seeing. You sent me a bunch of other articles about podcasters influencing legacy media.
Alban:And I think we're just seeing more podcasters filling legacy media's role, and so there used to be these companies that had radio spectrums and stuff could get into your house. They had a cable that actually came into your house, and so there are only a handful of shows. They had a cable that actually came into your house and so there were only like a handful of shows and the networks kind of picked it and they were popular because there weren't a lot of options. And now we're just seeing so many people either rise to fame by starting podcasts or they're getting big somewhere else and then they pivot into podcasting because they know, once they are good at what they do, that they're able to kind of capture all the value from the show that they're making and not send all that money off to NBC or CBS or Fox or whoever it may be.
Jordan:Yeah, and one of the things I'm really loving about seeing podcasting and just like the power and influence of podcasting in all these headlines this week is that it's not saying like TikToker goes to policy summit or you know things like that. It's always like podcasters, and so it's it's really fun because you don't have people shouting from the rooftops like Stephen Colbert needs to make a Tik TOK, he needs to get on mine. We don't have that. Or even YouTube. Honestly, like I haven't heard anyone say like, oh, he needs to start a YouTube channel. It's just podcast.
Alban:Maybe what podcast is starting to mean, not to us, not to our audience, but maybe to like the larger world is. Podcast is the word people are using for a very small media group. You know, it's like one main host. Maybe it's a round table. It's a small team and they're doing audio, but they're often now doing video on YouTube and probably somebody on the team chops it up and throws it out as clips, but it's kind of this like lean media creation. I don't know that that's a half a thought.
Jordan:I mean I agree with you and I love that it is something that can be chopped into clips. I mean, joe Rogan is like a classic example of this. His clips perform so well on YouTube and a lot of people you know share it and it's, you know, because he has fantastic clippable moments out of this like two hour interview. You know what I mean. And it's funny because I mean sometimes Josh and I will watch like Jimmy Fallon after dinner or something like that, if he has a guest on that we're really interested in. But it's such a bummer because we'll be really interested in this guest and then they talk to them about like one story for five minutes and then they go on to someone else and I'm just like ugh, I wanted more.
Jordan:And so that's. I think that's really like where we're seeing things go, and it's so funny that the show that takes millions and millions and millions of dollars to produce is leaving me feeling dissatisfied. And so I go to podcasts where it's like these guys like sitting in an armchair with like an iPhone set up and I leave feeling fulfilled.
Alban:We keep hearing. You know, maybe this is the beginning of like a bigger shift, but I'm almost, as I read these this week, kept thinking maybe this is more of the end of the shift.
Jordan:Why.
Alban:Well, I started thinking of, like all these shows that have been canceled or just kind of shut down because they weren't performing, that the host went on to go do something. Really, well. So you brought up Conan, probably the best example, but, like Rosie O'Donnell's, show was canceled.
Jordan:Oh yeah.
Alban:Keith Olbermann his show. I think he had two and they were both canceled and went on to do a podcast. Bill O'Reilly was canceled. He went on to do a podcast. Trevor Noah, I don't think was actually canceled, but it was like mutually decided to leave, went on, did really well starting a podcast. Yeah no-transcript shows it's really you're paying for the talent and a few employees to help do the setup. It's so much leaner than what we were seeing on late night.
Jordan:Well, and also, you know, having control of your own IP. So I'm trying to remember what episode it was. It was a few episodes ago. We did the Celebrity Podcast, graveyard, which was like such a fun episode. But, yeah, we talked about all these celebrities that like quit podcasting and that and that's the key word is they quit podcasting. It wasn't that like a network decided to like drop them. It was that they just were like yeah, it's not really for me. And I think that that's the cool thing about podcasting is, if you have someone who's upset with like a stance that you take, or maybe you, you know, have a brand deal that someone doesn't like I don't know, agree with, no one's going to come in and say you can't podcast anymore. They can keep doing it.
Alban:Okay, so this ties in. There was this story this week Andrew Schultz I don't know if you know who he is he's a comedian. He has a kind of like a round table comedy show, but he interviewed Trump and then later on now he's interviewing more like Democratic candidates on the podcast and then he naturally had, you know, some of his listeners were like oh you know, we liked you when you did the conservative stuff.
Alban:We're not really loving all these new guests, but the controversy is over because he's like well, this is what I want to do, so who cares? But I think if it's Colbert, if it's network TV, they seem to be so much more reactive to any level of pushback and I think the podcasters are showing just by the fact that they can interview whoever they want and when there is like a quote unquote controversy they can weather it that there really is a bit more opportunity to just stick with what you believe in. If you think someone's an interesting guest, you just interview them, rather than going through a bunch of gatekeepers who are much more risk adverse.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:All right, Jordan. So what's your prediction If Colbert goes and starts a podcast, is it going to make this next Times Top 100 podcast of all time?
Jordan:Conan's did. Yeah, oh my gosh, this list. I feel like Apple Podcasts really did the list pretty well, this one.
Alban:No, here's the problem. There's two.
Jordan:I've got at least a couple of takes here At least two right.
Alban:One of the things is, when you do a list, you actually have to pick a few things, and so when you say, hey, we're doing 20 for 20 years, you're making 20 picks and no one's really mad that their show was left off. When you say we're going to pick the top 100, most important, influential of all time and I went on there thinking I'm going to see the Daily Source Code, the first podcast I'm going to see the Ricky.
Alban:Gervais show, I'm going to see Crime Junkie, I'm going to see Smartless and Rogan, and none of them are on there.
Jordan:It's wild, it is wild.
Alban:Sometimes you just I think I have to remember the point of the list is to get clicked. Yeah, and it got clicked. When I saw people write wow, they left like 10 of the most important shows off of here, and then I clicked it and I've loaded all the ads on the page and then they went to Time Magazine. It's like here we go, we got them.
Jordan:Well, you know, what's funny is I don't know if they, like anticipated this or if it was in response to people being like what the heck Where's? Where's this podcast, Where's this podcast? But they wrote a follow up how we chose 100 best podcasts of all time and I'm like here's how we determined the hundred best.
Alban:So what criteria did they use? Most likely to like trigger people.
Jordan:Basically, they said that they try to pick podcasts that felt entirely evergreen, have a hefty archive that can be revisited, and crack jokes that haven't gotten old, or cover books and movies you can still watch.
Alban:That doesn't sound like criteria.
Jordan:Basically they were just like we tried our best. It literally says I endeavored to find the best. That was the reasoning for it. Yeah, maybe Stephen Colbert's will be on here someday on a mediocre best of list. Every podcaster dreams of that.
Alban:Jordan. One of the things that Colbert's going to need is some excellent podcast artwork, which is coincidentally what we're going to be talking about next week. So, for everybody who's listening, hit the fan mail button, text the show and send us your questions about Podcast Artwork. We've gotten a few. We need more. We want you to influence the show and maybe Stephen Colbert will pick up some of your questions and use them when he makes a show.
Jordan:Love it All right. Well, until next week, keep podcasting.
