 We got, I think, a great, great opening keynote this morning. Norm Pat is from Podcast One. As I mentioned last night at the Podcast Awards, he also started a little company called Westwood One, really the pioneer of syndicated radio. And the fact that Norm is now in the podcasting business, I think, is really interesting for all of us here in the room. I can't wait to hear what he has to say. Noah Shanick from Stitcher Radio, also doing some pretty amazing things. And he just told me backstage, they have some other major announcements coming this week. So what Stitcher Radio is doing with podcasting, I think, is really important to us. And of course, Leo LePort, I call him the Pipe Piper of Podcasting. Cliff, I know, the fanboy is in the front row again. Leo hosted the Podcast Awards for us last year. It was so much fun. He wanted to be here last night, but I just had other stuff going on in conflict. And he's actually really sick. And he still came because he loves the community so much. He wanted to be here. So please welcome Norm Patis from Podcast One, Noah Shanick from Stitcher Radio, and our moderator, Leo LePort from Twitter. Well, it's good to see you all. So this panel, I don't know what this panel is going to be about, but it's kind of a great chance to hear from two really important people in the new media. Noah Shanick founded Stitcher as a way to, what was your plan with Stitcher? It's a way to make podcasts easier to listen to. Particularly the car. Particularly every car. And you've done that. You've brought it to Ford. Who else? Ford, TM, BMW, some Mercedes cars, and we've got a couple more big announcements. That's exciting. That's great. And I think if you're a podcaster, you're on Stitcher. I mean, that's a must. Norm Patis is a legend in the radio industry. He founded the number one syndication company, Westwood One. How many years ago? 30 years ago? 1977. Wow. I tried to work for him for years. He never gave me the time to do that. He never got to my desk. But he's also in the radio hall of fame. What's really interesting to me is that a guy with a background in radio would be interested in podcasts at all. Well, what's interesting to me is that a guy in radio wouldn't be interested in podcasts. I think it's the future of audio. We're going to have my heart radio here on stage, but instead we'll just bash it. It's easy. That is clear channel's attempt to basically do a Stitcher to get their radio content in your car via 3G and 4G to bliss it on the web and aggregate all their streaming stuff. Should radio be afraid of what's happening in the podcast? Well, no. I think that radio should be afraid of stating the course. Radio listening is not growing anymore. The beautiful thing about radio when I got into it was that it was a continuous growth pattern every year that more and more and more and more people listening to radio. Well, that's not the case anymore. There are many more options. I really can't understand why the traditional radio business hasn't embraced podcasting or on-demand radio. If you look at what's going on in the television business, on-demand is changing the nature of TV watching. Even awards for great programmers are made, heavily influenced by on-demand and my cable and so forth. I don't see why the same thing isn't going to happen to audio. You need to be able to provide the programming and the content that listeners, i.e. consumers, want to consume when they want to consume it. I still do a radio show. I work for Clear Channel. And I love radio. That's how I got into business at a college was radio. I think probably radio hates no one because you are the most direct threat right now to radio. I think the music radio is given up. Everybody had an iPod or some other form of music and there's Pandora. But talk radio is the last bastion in the car. And you're really threatening that directly. I don't know to the extent that radio is a content creator and they're the best audio content creator around the world. We're a great partner to them because we're allowing them to easily, without reinventing the wheel, get the content that they're already producing to listeners when the listeners want to hear it. So we've got great partnerships in the industry with radio but certainly the moving from AM FM to the internet in general is daunting for them. Well it's threatening because they have a business model based on the equivalent of a brick and mortar store. A radio station is like a bookstore and the idea of doing online is threatening their main business model, isn't it? Can I respectfully disagree? Look I happen to think that Stitcher is doing wonderful and terrific things. But just like I think the iHeart radio model is a failed model I don't think that radio is where you go to find the best audio programming and the most creative audio programming. That may have been the case many years ago when no single owner of radio stations can own more than five AMs or five FMs. That was just a handful of companies. Well yeah, I mean that's the five AMs and five FMs. That was in the country, not just in a market. Now you've got two major radio players who own most of the major market radio stations in the country and if you don't have some kind of an arrangement with them you're not going to get your independently produced radio program on their stations. So you can't build a big enough audience to sell to a national advertiser to support what they're doing. So I mean, you know when you take a look I mean if you go to iTunes with 250,000 or you go to podcast one with 200, you'll find a much greater variety of programming than you could ever find on local radio stations and certainly as a national source of supply. Some of our most successful programs could never find a hole in broadcast radio. I mean, you know, we launched, you know, Steve Austin, you know, and we launched Brennitz and Ellis. You know, those guys aren't going to get on radio stations but you know, they've got a huge amount of downloads because they've got an audience that follows them and they've got a fan base and social media can let their fan base know what they're doing and then by bringing on guests who have their own social media and promoting throughout a network of other programs you can build a self-perpetuating promotional machine. Radio can't do that. And I'm still at the radio business but interestingly enough, you know, one of my shows, Love Line, has three times the audience on demand that it does for communication. Wow. But Love Line started on radio so I don't think that was completely wrong. It's still on radio. Yeah, and some of the most popular content on Stitcher is traditional terrestrial radio content from the NPRs in the world to the Rush Limlas in the world and now people can consume it when they want to consume it. That's the good fit. That's why radio should embrace what we're doing but in embracing the successful things that are on radio to expand its audience, there's still a tremendous opportunity to create new programming that will develop its own audience that wouldn't be given a chance to start on radio. Wouldn't be given a chance and if they turn out to be really successful, it's going to be because of on demand and radio will become secondary. I don't know if radio will become secondary. It's a growth of the total overall... Oh, what a income. I know. In fact, I often despair about radio but I think it's very common for people to be very black and white and say, well, as soon as the next thing comes, the old thing's going to die, I don't think it's going to be that way. Now, if you were Howard Stern, what would you do today? He's a good example. He's got a great personal brand. It's a radio brand. He went to satellite because they offered him half a billion dollars. I don't know how well that's working for him right now. A lot of people said Howard, you should do podcast. What would you do today if you were Howard Stern? If I was Howard Stern, I would go to a subscription model podcast or video as well, audio video. I would go to a subscription model and make people pay for the content. He's one of the few people who can get away with having his content paid for. Everybody can do that. No, very few people can do that. There's only one. I'm thinking of Glenn Beck. When Glenn Beck... He said, well, that's good. He's got... That program probably is generating and paying subscription revenue, 40, 50 million dollars. Jeez. But you can do that. A year? A year. Sure. But that took a mainstream media starting point before he could get to that point, right? Sure. And he gave up. He was reaching millions and millions of listeners and viewers. And now he's got hundreds of thousands. But those are... He's like an evangelist. You know, if you can find somebody who has an evangelistic following and, you know, which is maybe evangelists and... We're looking at that. Yeah. And somebody like a Glenn Beck or I think even a Howard Stern, if what they're interested in is purely making money, I think that model works for them. For 99% of other podcasters, that's not going to work. But when you find an interesting personality like a Howard Stern, I think people will pay to listen to and watch Howard Stern if that's the only way they can go. Leo, if I were Howard Stern, I would do an exclusive Yellow Stitcher. What Norma's saying about Glenn Beck being... He's the most entrepreneurial personality that comes from terrestrial radio. He's really embracing the new medium. And a lot of folks could not... aren't large enough to be able to do that and have the following. But that's the model for... for someone the same size of Howard Stern. That's the model. Or join forces with somebody who's a leader in the space. And he was the inflection point between terrestrial radio and satellite radio. That's right. When Howard went over... That was a big deal. That was the pivotal moment. And this is the next evolution of radio. And... Yeah, Howard Stern. It was Stitcher. I like my serious subscription. There's nothing serious could bring me that I can't get on my phone. That's right. I mean, seriously, it doesn't take to be in their business right now. I thought it was a failed model from the beginning. Because... Well, you know, it's like that old Bruce Springsteen saw, you know, 57 channels and nothing on. Yeah. There are so many ways to get music, you know, on demand. You know, through... I mean, you know, Pandora's got what it does in other companies. They're doing very much the same thing. And it's a part of everything. Google is everybody. Yeah. I mean, you guys are just... You guys have access to music. Some of them. Yeah. Most of them. Are you going to stay with us? Talk. Yeah. We laser-focused on that. We want to continue to be the best at that. He doesn't want to eat the right species. He doesn't want to eat the right species. Yeah, that is that. I mean, we work more hand-in-hand with content partners. It's pretty clear that nothing's killed anything else. There's many models for paying for, many models for building. I mean, you could have a paywall, you could be subscription, but you could also be advertising-based. I mean, there's all sorts of ways to do this. Well, it looks crowd-funding now, too. Look at Corolla. He uses everything. He's crowned. He sells G-Quine. He... Have you ever had an angler yet? It's terrible. But he's selling, you know, he sells a couple hundred thousand cases of it. Yeah. I think Norm, aren't you selling it for him? No. That was before our deal. We do now represent him for advertising exclusively. We had to prove ourselves to do that, and we had to own Dr. Drew, you know, to make that work as well. Yeah, yeah, Drew said, okay, you're cool, you're cool. You know, but... So you totaled all of that and Corolla's representation is through you now. He has everything. That sounds interesting. Do you help him with distribution, production, anything else? We don't really... I mean, he's on our platform, you know, but, you know, Adam... Adam, for us in many ways, you know, is... We don't make a lot of money off of the tremendous amount of volume, but what was important for us to do was to have him. Right. And, you know, because... He's a great brand. He is a great brand. And then when we put him together with other great brands, you know, that were already out there, and now we're producing programs ourselves that... Is this work? I definitely not. Styrofoam. Yeah. You know, we're, you know, we want to build a platform of quality programming that people can go to to kind of short circuit the process of looking around. Actually, I've been remiss. I should let both of you guys talk about what you do. So tell me about Podcast One. Well, you know, it's very simple. I mean, the story of West... Calling it Podcast One was not by accident because it was an easy story to tell in a variety of areas, at least of all consumers, really. The story of Westwood One to Podcast One. Because at my advanced age, I didn't really need to do a podcasting venture, but I just couldn't understand why nobody was really doing it in the way that we're doing it. And so I decided to do it. And, you know, I was introduced to a young guy named Kit Gray, who'd been out there representing some podcasts and selling them to advertisers, and, you know, had done a nice job with it. And, you know, we were introduced by a mutual friend. And I thought, Jesus, Kit, reminds me of me when I started Westwood One. And the radio syndication business was very much like where podcasting is right now. No national advertisers bought syndicated radio 30 years ago. Well, maybe some direct-response advertisers. So I just thought, you know, the opportunity was very similar to what it was that I did, you know, when we sort of kick-started syndicated radio in terms of developing demand from national advertisers. And, you know, this was less expensive to do. And even though Westwood One, I didn't have any money when I started Westwood One, and I had $10,000 of working life. You know, today I had more than $10,000, and I no longer have that wife. And, of course, she's no longer working. So what does podcast One provide to a podcast? First of all, how many podcasts do you have? About 200. Okay. And you choose them. Do they have any new? How does that work? Yeah, well, we've had a lot of people come to us. We would like to keep the list fairly small so that it's a place where a lot of people who have already have a strong social following can come and find, you know, make it simple. But what Westwood One, I mean, with podcast One and Westwood One did, it primarily, it's a revenue solution to generate, we're trying to, and so far so good, build demand with national advertisers, Madison Avenue advertisers, Fortune 500 advertisers, the same kind of advertisers that you would see on network television or radio or local television, local radio. In order to turn the medium into a medium that can become, you know, at least a few hundred million and maybe, you know, a billion dollar business when we started in syndication. Very small business. Now network radio syndication is a billion and a half dollar business. What does it take to get those advertisers? What are they looking for? Well, first of all, I think they're looking for comfort. You know, we have a relationship that goes back 30 years. I think they're comfortable. They would know the podcast. Who's this guy? Well, with all due respect to all of the creative people who are sitting in this room right now, you guys are the product. You know, I mean, you guys are the creative energy primarily. If I asked for a show of hands, I think I'd see a very, very large group of people who are producing their own podcasts. But, you know, there needs to be, there needs to be kind of an organized industry in order to get serious national advertisers to take a look at us in a way that I think we should be looked at if we want to create, you know, a demand that advertisers feel comfortable with. So, you know, you've got to have the kind of reporting that they expect. You've got to have the kind of billing that they expect. You've got to have the kind of production values that they expect. You've got to have all the things that they expect. And normally, that would be paid for by an industry, but since there really isn't an industry, I'm sort of paying for it myself. And it's the model for them is radio. They see podcasts as just another form of radio. Well, I think they see it, and the way we present it is we present it as digital audio on demand. Okay. And which allows us to go to traditional radio buyers. Remember, traditional radio buyers are still spending $16, $17 billion a year. The digital buyers aren't spent, they're spending half that much. And the digital buyers are so granular that it makes it hard for us to get a decent rate when they start drilling down and saying, you know, we want young mothers, you know, with a certain birth defect and only one way. Right. You know, it's hard to charge a decent C.P.M. for those kinds of things. So Noah, what was the plan when you found a Stitcher, and what have you done since? Well, I saw, so by background, I guess I'm an internet entrepreneur. I was on the family management team of Stealth Up, the ticket company. And I started to get really interested in audio just personally. Right. I started a podcast, hired a comedian, started a podcast just for fun. It was basically like America's Funnest Home Video for audio. People would send in funny clips and listen to some folk on the best clips and we'd make a show out of it. And I realized that there was already all this great content out there in the podcast form from large radio to long-tail shows about everything under the sun. But it was very difficult to deliver the content and it was very difficult to find the content that you wanted. I remember being on the phone with my mom late one night and trying to explain to her how she could listen to my radio to her. It was impossible. You know, downloading and syncing. So I was an early adopter of Pandora I saw with a two-way internet connection how much better an experience can be a listening experience can be and how much more personalized it can be. I was also inspired by the number of people that actually went to the links that they did to listen to podcasts back in the iPod days. It was a clear signal to me of how important personalization actually is to people. Right. So a lot of it was a bet on the timing of the mobile internet and a bet on the timing of the automotive industry embracing a connected car. You saw your future as in-car. 50% of radio is in-car. And the morning commute is all talk. And so we knew that that was necessary for us. So we set about to create an on-demand internet radio company that focused on spoken word news, talking information. And what we believed to be the most important things was easy delivery of content so a listener can just press a button and start to listen. And it learns from you. And then so the second part is recommending shows that you may also like. Right. And so expanding the universe. We have 20,000 podcasts on Stitcher right now. So finding the ones that you want is not trivial. And then finally, so we're most popular now totally in downloads. And we're the largest distribution platform of podcasts on Android and second largest on the iPhone behind iTunes. But the car has been a long-term goal. So we were the first ones to announce alongside Pandora with Ford at the Consumer Electronics Show a few years ago. And basically the Danbrook, all automotive companies would realize that this was the future and that people wanted, they wanted in the car what they were already listening to that was in their pocket through mobile mice. And having an internet connection in your pocket on the go was one of the keys to that. So fast forward to where we are now. In 2013 there were 150 million plus podcasts downloaded on Stitcher. We will be in, there will be over 4 million Stitcher-enabled vehicles in 2014. And how do you make your money? It's an advertising model. So similar to Pandora or to Terrestrial Radio. But we were able to deliver a lot more value especially as we get bigger in terms of things like frequency capping which Terrestrial radio listeners are not used to and it becomes less invasive. Better targeting, better analytics, we still as an industry need to figure out what that measurement is and have a standard measurement. But yeah, it's an advertising base model. That seems like one of the things to be mature industry podcasting needs is metrics. Both of you have mentioned that. Now Radio has Armatron, TV has Nielsen. What is podcasting? Well now everybody has Nielsen. There is no more Armatron. Everybody has Nielsen. There's a variety of different companies that measure podcasts. The ones that you're probably the most familiar with are Libson, who's been around a long time and does a good job. Then there's Raw Voice with their blueberry application. Pottrack. There's a lot of different ones but all of the technology is proprietary. We use Pottrack members and you told me we shouldn't because it's too low. All I said was that's mostly from what I understand the measurement of Unix. What we found is ultimately when it comes down to value proposition for an advertiser those members are meaningless. As long as the advertiser is getting the results they want the return on their investment. With a Madison Avenue advertiser they don't know the return on investment within a multi-million dollar ad care. So they need to be comfortable that the numbers are going to be right. No one was talking about building the platform. We're a little bit different and that's where measurement is very important to us. We don't care how many different platforms our programs are available on. At some point we'll start focusing on building out the podcast one platform so that it's the place that people go but right now that's not what we're focused on. Well the beauty of podcasting is you can get it in a variety of different ways. Sure as long as you can count the downloads. That's what makes it hard though. If you take a look at the downloads that we're generating monthly right now on the 200 podcasts it's in excess of 100 written downloads. So monthly. Now the question is what is the download really? But everybody measures differently. I mean if you go to SoundCloud they don't measure the download the downloads per se they measure something else. And if you go to a variety of different mediums they measure in different ways but what you have to remember is all of these measurements are estimates. Whether it's Nielsen or it was arbitrained before or it is traditional radio whether it's traditional television network radio network television and also a lot of the digital. I mean it's as credible as the company that is putting out the numbers. If Google puts out a number people will leave it. If Joe Schmuck puts out a number a buyer is going to want to see more stuff to back it up. But the one thing that we know that all three of us know is that direct response advertisers love podcasting and they love podcasting because it generates leads and acquisition for their products. They can't measure the effectiveness of a single announcement of a single spot in all of the programs that they purchase and that message along with metrics that give comfort to advertising agencies has to be the nature of the presentation that you take forward to the big advertisers to say you're crazy not to do this. Is it ever going to call a less though single system that everybody knows and trusts as it is in television and radio? Yeah as long as people understand that they're audio assessments. I mean we're working on that right now we're working on that with Edison Research. I worked with that back when I was in the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors I was appointed by President Clinton and reappointed by Bush. So I must have been doing something right because those two guys don't usually but when I was doing broadcasting in the Middle East setting up Middle East broadcasting in Arabic of all things I brought Edison Research in and Nielsen to do market research in all 22 countries of the Middle East and they were able to put together credible ratings and information there and if we can do it in 22 countries of the Middle East in Arabic we ought to be able to figure out how to do it here. What is the response of advertisers today at the podcast? When you go out and pitch Stitcher what kind of response are you getting? So we pitch it we go in a different door at the podcast one we go in the digital door right now and so we are we're mobile and advertisers are looking for things that are safe and mobile because this is the you know we're still in sort of a wild frontier from a mobile perspective and we're internet rated so we're competing with the andores of the world. They are very enthusiastic about the fact that one it's Stitcher's brand safe and aligned with really strong brands and two that there are things you can do on the spoken word side in terms of audience targeting based on what we know the listener is listening to based on what their interests are. So you actually aren't tuning what ads are being played depending on what the listeners are doing. We need we're nowhere near pandora size so the more size we have obviously we can target but that's that's resonating with them and then the third thing as we all know and as terrestrial radio knows is relative to music spoken word is a much more lean forward experience that the listener is not only heavily engaged in what they're listening to they're generally doing they're doing something else and their mind is totally free to listen it's not like music it's sort of playing in the background with the host and the more long tailed content the more they connect with the host and one of the reasons that the DR side has been so effective so far is because a host that you love that you follow that maybe many people don't know about if they're asking you to buy a certain thing you're probably going to do it DR's direct response DR's direct response that's where they say call this number right now and order it today and they can measure the effectiveness of the ad directly that's right but we are focused more on grant as opposed to 3-4 Pepsi because you're hit with it so spoken word hosts works well with this direct response it works well with direct response we are focused more on grant there's a lot more DR's the first step in the opportunity there's a huge amount of grant ultimately grant is where the growth is going to happen that's typical in the new medium you start the direct response but you move to grant as you become more established people trust you what's the difference between digital and a traditional medium you're working with a different part of the ad agency we're going into the we're going in for the same dollars that's buying bear ads they're buying mobile they're buying they're not the ones buying radio see we've made a conscious decision to go with the traditional bias because we think we offer them a value proposition there's competition within the agencies themselves and at the client level between traditional media buying and digital media buying we think that we offer traditional media buyers a digital solution that that gives them something to be able to compete effectively with within their own within their own operations it's sort of like the first people who became interested in what I was doing were talent agents you know well you know first of all you know I've been sitting court side in Laker days in the last 30 years the seats between the Laker bench and the scores table four of them are mine and four of them belong to the William Morris endeavor agency so R Emanuel since next to me I was telling him what I was getting ready to do and he said you know that sounds really interesting why don't I put a meeting together I'll get my guys together why would established big stars be interesting because everybody's looking at institutions and their client base you know their client base has gone way beyond just movie stars and TV stars we're getting their YouTube stars coming in we're talking to them we're getting are they hedging their bets because they think this is the word this is the future or I mean you've got to be there the younger the clients that they have more personally involved and it seems that everybody is trying to figure this out absolutely and this is a simple solution to take somebody and plus you know you take a look and you think why is it that you know when you take a look at iTunes at the measurements that I took the rankings that comedians do so well well they were sort of forced into it I mean there isn't and very many comedians that are working today that haven't been screwed by a club over at one time or another and so you know they got into it not so much to make money they got into it initially to promote their club dates, merchandising all kinds of things that all of a sudden it was part of their marketing now it's a revenue source now it's a revenue source and you know like Mark Marin who's a very successful podcaster really has made a career as a TV show based on podcasting absolutely and you're going to see more and more of that you know one of the things that we're thinking about doing is we're thinking about opening up what we do to a larger group of podcasks maybe not the ones that are currently delivering big big download numbers but you know maybe call it the podcast one underground and make it available so people can come in and sort of sample what's out there and see if it builds organically so that it can move up the main platform and be saleable to national entities and it's peak how many shows did westwood one have not 200 no well when you consider the fact that westwood one was the mutual broadcasting system the cbs radio network the mvc radio network we had 3000 employees so this is very much like westwood one with a different delivery system it's like the westwood one programming side of the business in its early stages and the numbers even the revenue numbers are almost spot on for the first three years of what westwood one was now I think a lot of people here probably I don't know I've been in the podcast expo since the very first one it wasn't about money in the first one it wasn't about money in the second one it started to become a little more about money in the third one I hate to think that podcasting has suddenly become about how can we monetize how we make money at this you know a guy said to me one time a guy that I respect who's a lawyer he says you know something paddice who's a new york lawyer he says you know something paddice and they say it's not about the money it's about the money now look I've worked with talent for 30 years and I know that there are certainly people especially in the music business a lot of people in the music business especially back in the old album rock days they weren't going to sell out they weren't going to do this but just as soon as they get exposed to money it's amazing what a change takes place in their life you know that's the reason why we want to hook ourselves up with creative people who are interested in the product and let them be interested in the product and let us worry about the others there you go I'm here attracted to podcasting it's the freedom to creativity the chance to do something different and unique and I guess if you can make some money while you're doing that it's not such a bad thing but it develops out of passion but it has to start after so much time you need to eat right and it can stay a hobby or as we're seeing this is an industry transformation it does feel like there is a growing conflict between the hobby podcasters of which there are thousands well hundreds of thousands we know from iTunes and then people who have decided this is going to be a career and business and those are a much smaller number yeah but it doesn't eliminate the hobby podcaster from the marketplace as a matter of fact I think it gives the hobby podcaster a possibility that maybe what they're doing could catch on when you take a look at the viral nature of the business and predict what people are going to go out and find interesting do that right now that's the great thing about and why we put so much emphasis on the recommendation engine and on the rankings is that discovery is so important discovery it gives chose the opportunity to actually be found and for them to thrive on their own merit I think a good show will be discovered absolutely if we're doing our job a good show will be we'll be discovered and that happens kind of in a snowball effect gradually you accumulate listeners and more listeners they tell other listeners is it that however there's that and then there's mechanisms for Stitcher anyway there are mechanisms within the platform you like this so you might like that we also have fastest trending shows so if a show catches on we help it together do you find on with advertisers that there are some shows even if there is an audience for that show that they won't touch absolutely there's a little E next to it you know on the Apple an iTunes there's a lot of advertisers who don't want to be exposed to programming interesting case what we're doing is we're producing more and more of our own podcasts that's an economic reality we have to be able to produce more and more of our podcasts as opposed to represent other podcasts because we can make more money as well and with the money that we're having to spend are you looking for talent developing talent always always we launch Stone Cold Steve Austin okay because I thought that the wrestling space had a a group of rabid fans that's what you're looking for we launched him and immediately hundreds of thousands of downloads a few times NPR kind of numbers but you know not NPR kind of program no but we make sure we have enough NPR programs that we represent even though it's not exclusively well in a way that's what you're offering advertisers and you choose with Stitcher is kind of a safe place to be is why YouTube is difficult because you don't know what you're going to be on that's right well they're not going to get hurt on our platform if a particular show starts to under deliver I got 199 other shows that can make that audience so in the case of Boston as I was saying and the little E every other word in the Steve show was you know now this show can't be on Stitcher do you not have explicit content? I got a lot of shows that can't be on Stitcher we do have explicit content but we we have a way to filter it out well we have a creative way to filter it out what we did is we had a conversation with Steve he was an extremely bright guy and I said look I know you can work clean you did a wrestling for for 20 years so why don't we do this why don't we do a clean version of your show once a week and why don't we do unleashed once a week so now so he gets on the air and he talks to his audience and he says hey look I'm out there and I want to talk to the working man I want to talk to families and I don't want you to have to run your kids out of the room so we're going to do a family friendly version of this show so you can keep listening to Steve Austin but all of you other guys who want to listen to it in your band cave and get a little crazy so now we can sell the e-rated version and the family friendly version and there's a lot of people who want the e-rated version absolutely and they're both doing really really well so it's interesting that you do you have a separate channel for explicit no or for instance is it the same concern that people listening and hearing an expletive and their kids will get upset and there's that concern in in any so I just had a lot of podcasters did it so that they could say those words that's right there's no FCC right on satellite radio well yeah and a half a billion dollar paycheck yeah that helps so by show we basically classify it as explicit and do you notice in listening patterns that there's a difference do explicit shows not do as well no some of them do companies often explicit a lot of these Mark Marron's show is called WTF WTF we know it we know it those shows do great there's only a certain some set of advertisers that are going to be interested you should try an explicit show and see how your numbers it's interesting we decided for that for that reason we decided to make it family friendly because I didn't want people not to be able to have their kids listen I wanted people because we're cutting technology I thought people would want maybe their kids to listen to technology show but it's hard we're live now all the time the fleeting expertise yeah but Leo unleashed you don't think there's a markup Leo unleashed that's what we will late night show do you think you can do some of that it was my idea neither of you do video right well we do a little bit of video to augment what we do but we're primarily audio we don't do video at all we think that the live listening paradigm is fundamentally different and we're focused on audio experience so did I and the reason we started to do video is because video gives a lot of attention and then the other reason we started doing it is because we wanted people to be able to it's a different model to tune in and watch live at any time yeah but since the primary method I mean you know 70% of our we've done this across our platform 70% of our consumption is mobile and it's because of this and this is audio it's in the car sure I mean I drive between Santa Barbara and L.A. twice a week and all I'm doing is listening to podcasts and it's so easy that you know I mean look I believe that the in-depth solution and deals with car companies are very important but you know this like I said 70% of our audience consume this your stuff is on Stitcher yeah some of our stuff I think is on Stitcher there's no reason why I wouldn't no no we want our stuff everywhere that's the beauty of podcasts just as long as we're the only ones who can sell the inventory I don't care where it is and that's not exclusive I mean I'm not the exclusive rep for the MPR shows but we like to have them there but most of the shows that we represent we're the exclusive advertising sales representative and of course on all of our owned and operated's we are because we want to be able to walk into an advertiser and say here it is and most of this stuff you can only buy from us is all your stuff CDM costs per thousand is that how you build people or is yeah you know it usually has something to do with the rate structure it's loosely based on a number of impressions it depends whether they're going to they want you to show them uniques whether they want you to show them you know so you deal a lot you go in and you say let's say there's no structure here what do you want we don't exactly go into the structure but you work off the rate card a lot it's a negotiation I mean when you go in to sit down I've been doing this for 30 years when you go in and sit down with a media buyer job is to pay as little for it as they can and our job is to you know get as much as we can most of our deals are partnerships with our producers they're equity owners they own the program and we're involved as long as we produce you know a producer how do you do it though CDM we're able to do so many unique things that we can get away from I mean they're the same thing we produce CDM but we're able to get away from it by doing things like doing things that you can do interactively who do you think is going to be able to do the Super Bowl sponsored by you can vote right on the phone these are things you can do that you can never do before and those things are cool and it's a huge part of what we need to do and I mean it's almost I mean you are so you are so unique at what you do I mean you're kind of a 360 sort of package in your own space you deal with all of the sponsored needs that's fine but it will only take the business so far if the business wants to become a billion dollar business so that podcasting can offer tremendous opportunities for everybody who's sitting in this room whether they just want to do it as a hobby or whether they want to do it as a living then it's got to be a much bigger business they just start doing business with people who may not be interested in building the brand through the personal association with the podcast they just want to be they just want to be out there and cover every base and cover all of the people and we have to show them that our consumers are worth being part of that mix in fact they may be the most important part of that overall mix seems to me that as they look at their mainstream advertising dollars and try to figure out what the efficiency is of it and then they compare it with the efficiency of podcast advertising that that's in podcast is it not? and the kind of interactivity you can offer NOAA cannot be offered in one way traditional radio or TV that's right so those things are it's a unique proposition and ultimately does it mean that podcasting can take a lot of that advertising dollar away from mainstream media? well I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think that podcasting was going to grow while traditional media was going to do no better than remain flat so it's maybe you know art downward and you think I'm crazy to do video? no I don't think you're crazy to do video I don't think you're crazy to do anything I mean you're doing great you know that's I ain't crazy to me that's it's complicated we stream Love Line Love Line is on the radio every night from 10 to midnight we're now podcasting Love Line and we stream Love Line live every night it's something about live I really like you don't have a live component have you looked at that? we've dabbled in it but we have really wanted to be focused on the best being the best on demand and audio and spoken word here's what you can't do live you can't pause you know we're radio with a pause button yeah exactly and a consume it when you want button there are certain things that we will never be able to do that have to be done live news, sports things that require live interaction but you can still have your interaction with your audience by simply letting them know through social media when you're doing the program if they want to call in or if they want to use social media to communicate with you even news is very popular and some of the news providers are putting out news every 10 minutes it's almost live and if it's everybody wants to know when it is live everybody wants to know they have this feeling of safety that if God forbid aliens invaded the planet they would know immediately and we're able to provide that for them in the form of of a breaking news alert if there's a breaking news alert and they're listening to something else as soon as the aliens invade the planet they get the can I make a little personal aside here you're a much better looking man in person than you are in that picture it's a terrible picture I would do something about that picture actually I would do something about that picture too I guess right now you're making a facial video now my here's why we do what we do live video I feel like there's a shift in how people consume content from this notion of wanting to hear every word to wanting to have and I hope it's not background content like music but to want to kind of dip in and out of it like you would in this day show for instance and so what we're trying to do is produce content that's a river of content that you don't need to pause because there's just always more and you know twitter is like that a lot of content that people are getting used to is like that where it's just trying to read every tweet that happens since I've been there you quickly give that up and you just treat it as a kind of a real time 85% of our audience on our platform consumes the podcast the actual time of the download so basically they're not downloading they're streaming it so they want it and that's what happens when you get podcasts that are personality or subject matter centric that are very important to the fans of those people that's why we like to start out because we don't spend any money advertising because I don't think we have to well let's tell you about that because what kind of marketing does a podcast think of why don't we have to well because I got 200 podcasts with a loyal group of followers for each one which probably represents at least 100 different communities so if I'm going to take somebody who has a strong following already we're going to let their fans know that they're going to have a podcast then we're going to be selective about the people that come on as guests and so forth on that podcast and hopefully they'll have a strong association with us as well and then we promote it in all of the other podcasts so it becomes this sort of self perpetuating emotional shame let me just say this there's a lot of times you put a guest on who has no social following simply because it's the right guest for that program or you deal with the subject matter simply because it's the right thing creatively to do you can't get in the way of the creative process but you can do a few things that we've all learned over the years that will generate audience we do that too we bring other shows very often and it's a way of emerging we look happily different on the air because she's on she has a podcast it's happily incumbent she interviews a whole bunch of people she's interviewed her first show was with Regis Filman her last show was with Chris Jenner now her demographic is definitely not the way you traditionally think of as the podcast market it's housewives it's older housewives we're not worried about what it has been that's right the wider that's good we have about 20 minutes left so I want to give people a chance to ask questions we have two microphones I think there's one here, I don't know where the other one is so if you just get to the microphone and ask your question Norm Hattis and Noah Shaw go ahead Hi there, my name is Ben Adam Smith from houseplanninghealth.com and I'm a 4 month radio man I should say myself you sound like BBC fascinating discussion that you've had what I feel I've really learned is that podcasting has an engagement that radio does not and I've worked in radio, no the engagement is very high so can radio ever have the same level of engagement as what's going on in new media sure, make a podcast podcast you know I do a radio show that is a podcast my tech guy radio shows a podcast and I would say despite the fact that they're exactly the same content that you're right that the podcast version of it has more engagement oh yeah maybe it's because it's so hard to listen to a podcast as you were saying you actually have to be dedicated enough to figure it out and get it it's so awfully easy to punch a button on a radio and listen the in-depth solution is going to be complicated you know you're going to have a variety of different ways to access a variety of different media I mean right now if you want to listen to a program you can go to iTunes and just go to the category pick your show, you can go to Stitcher go to podcast and listen to a radio show I don't think it is you turn it on, you hit the app you pick the program, you push a button but if I can do it I mean seriously when you look at a Howard Stern or Love Line radio traditional radio shows which have a lot of engagement and I think it comes down to the personality yes but nothing compared to what's happening here this is not just a media revolution we get this right, this is a humanity revolution it's very democratizing I think that's true it is probably the most democratic way to be able to put content out there for people to determine what it is they want to listen to the beauty of radio always was it was a local medium and it focused better than any other type of medium on the local listener but they've gotten away from that because of the fact that now single groups can own hundreds of radio stations and they can supply those local radio stations with national programs which don't have a local focus radio can get it back the way that radio can get it back and I don't know that this will ever happen is for these companies that are so heavily leveraged with billions of dollars worth of debt you know which keeps them so strapped that they can't be creative eventually they'll have to sell off a lot of radio stations to service that debt and those radio stations can be bought by local owners who will get back to what radio was initially but even if they do that we've got to be here yeah and you know truthfully who needs a tower and a transmitter you can stream on the internet it's cheap, it's free it's easy and instead of 70 stations in the market there's an infinite number of stations worldwide I think the times have changed I'll move out of the way in just a second but I'll say that I've had a life changing experience here and I don't use that lightly because I've interviewed film stars and wealthy people who have traveled around the world I'm very very privileged but some of the people I've met here this engagement thing that I'm talking about you've got millionaires wandering up and down the corridor letting you speak to them even if it's for a few minutes that doesn't happen anywhere in the world thank you I actually have a question for Noah I get a lot of people asking me why my show is not on Stitcher and there's a very specific reason why your terms of service say that you have a right to remix, edit, use it in whole or in part hey that's cool my license says that's great as long as you give me an introduction I'm a Creative Commons license I've written repeatedly to you guys and I never get an answer of whether you'll still honor the introduction so it's a complicated answer if you haven't gotten a response from us that's more of an extremely responsive we should twice we should meet afterwards and make sure that you're in contact in the right place we do provide attribution our terms of service also we want it to be very content producer friendly it didn't get better from the first time I read it until the second time I checked again and it got better but it's got that what I really care about people knowing I'm the one who did it and you have so part of the answer is also helping listeners so on our front page which is the only place right now where we do segmentation of content and we do it with right now we're doing it with just a few content producers one of the things in terms of discovery for instance that what we found is if a listener knows that they're going to be listening to they see that they're going to be listening to a fox show and they're not a fox type person or an NPR show and they're not an NPR type person they may automatically kind of they may push that content aside and not give it a chance as soon as you're listening to the content you see very clearly that it's your content but we want to we want to help listeners to discover the shows that they like based on the algorithm and not to be basically to let the content aside and as soon as they're listening to the content they see that it's your content okay great thank you thanks Alison hi I'm Charles McFall Success Freaks and I have a question for all three of you I want to start with referencing last year Mr. Report's keynote I asked the question of you last year Mr. Report of my show was on the edge of looking at syndication versus sticking with 100% podcast format and making our own way and your answer was everybody's right on the wave of this podcasting revolution breaking if you can hold out don't just go with standard syndication now it seems like the future has maybe changed playing field has changed what would your answer be to the independent content creator how to become more involved in creating their content and getting paid to do what they love because honestly you've been referencing big names celebrities you do podcasts how do we go from we want to make a career of this and still be honest content creators and get paid to do what we love to being in the so-called big leagues well let me ask you a question start off in syndication and you're not going to be able to be in LA, New York, Chicago and other top ten markets you're going to start off small in a local market and then move into some other markets how much do you think anybody's going to pay to do that hey I'll take five dollars I'll give you five bucks and you come to a podcast for me and we'll see alright it's hard when you start out no matter what is I think what Norm's saying yeah and there's no magic solution I think the key is to get to as many years as possible right, however you have to do that and as Noah said if you've got it, you'll make it but you've got to get to the years so whatever path it takes the money I think that's what's inspiring what Norm's saying is what you're talking about is down the road when this is becoming established medium and you have money flowing into it and it continues to grow there will be a trickle down effect smaller podcasts with long tail podcasts will benefit as well but they're never going to benefit to the degree that the big podcasts do it I mean that's the way of the world Adam Corolla's of the world that drives me crazy make a lot of money so how do you avoid what radio has become where you're even saying to yourself on stage that there's many people on radio today when we give them a chance second podcast, now of course we're all podcasting is still early but ten years from now, when it is an industry how do you avoid that it will always be democratic because the nature of podcasting anybody can start with, it will always be democratic the nature of broadcasting is fundamentally undemocratic because it's so expensive it's so capital intensive to create a network, to create a radio station that there are going to be gatekeepers big time gatekeepers, and only a few people will get that distribution whereas podcasting, that's what's changed that's what the internet has done it has changed everything because anybody can have a YouTube show anybody can have a podcast and if it's good, it can reach an audience and I think make money but I think what's happening is guys like Noah and Norma are doing the legwork for all of us so that there is going to be revenue going forward for all of us just do your thing and get to as many years as you can good luck thank you, this is a great panel I keep your day job that's right I'll stage it by a stage a lot of excitement from the Independent Media Network in Connecticut, really appreciate the panel on behalf of the audience forum we love your shoes, I can see I was just curious about journalism local journalism, it is incredibly expensive from an overhead perspective not necessarily from broadcasting or equipment, but in time local journalists have to show up to things when people don't answer questions we have to go to the press conferences and get on planes and knock on doors is there ever going to be an appreciation on the part of advertisers that some content just costs more to produce with fewer views and needs higher CPM, when do you see that going journalism is really in trouble right now advertisers are not altruists I would guess right, true if they see the value of being in news oriented program because it delivers a certain kind of consumer or because it's instantaneous and and the people that they're trying to reach through all of their research are the kinds of people that are attracted to this kind of stuff they'll pay up for it NPR gets advertising sure absolutely NPR can get a whole lot more advertising but NPR is very restrictive about the advertising that they will accept but I think the answer to that question is yes there are advertisers out there that recognize the value of news and especially the kind of news that exists now you just got to find them thank you hi I'm Brock Warner podcast cowboy just got my first episode up on Stitcher congratulations Brock the last couple questions already started answering my question about advertising over trying to get a premium subscription on your website yes however I didn't want to sit back down so I just wanted to I had a satellite in college I didn't have a south facing apartment so I had the satellite and so it was a pain in the ass all the time cat would knock it out of the windowsill but and then I went to my iPod and that was a pain in the ass waking up getting all of my podcasts ready for the day and Stitcher radio I love it it's the best and thanks a lot for creating it thank you good morning I'm Brock from Sydney Australia channel at dot com oh question for Leo I know it was some time ago that you did make a statement about podcasting his dad do you regret that comment and what has changed since that comment I was I think at the second or third podcast expo and what I think what I meant was to think that we should not think of ourselves as I don't know what I meant that really we are creating content on the internet and so it's a mistake to do I felt like was demeaning to say we're podcasters we are creating shows on the internet now podcast one you using the name podcast Stitcher does not use the name podcast I didn't want us to be in a niche I don't think we're a niche I think we're the world I'm not using the name podcast so much because I think it's going to resonate with consumers so in fact it may be actually not beneficial within the financial community to use the word podcast because in the financial community they think a podcast is being something was tried and failed but since I don't need the financial community I don't care what they think I'm more interested in establishing the relationships with advertisers and not enough of them ever tried podcasting to have formed an opinion that it worked or that it didn't work they just never used it and now all of the data is showing that there's a much that podcasts have been consumed by more and more people that the mobile applications of podcasting are becoming wider and wider and wider and I wanted to be able to tell the story of Westwood one to podcast one because I thought that would get me into a lot of doors that a lot of other people couldn't get into and so far so good No one ever used the word podcast since the year? We have very mixed feelings about the P word that the reason when we don't and the reason that we don't is because it's probably the same reason that you said podcasting is dead but we do not want the future of radio we're on demand and on that radio that's what we are a lot of podcasters use the word podcast so we're kind of doing a balancing act we would love it if we went away from that word and we try to it's what everybody uses so I've kind of acknowledged it to me it's like blogging there's this perception of blogging but there's more blogs than ever before and it's a vital medium what it is is writing on the internet what we're doing is audio and video content on the internet so why give us this kind of demeaning name we are so much more than that and I think it was also linked to me when I said podcasting we got one more minute one more question hey guys thanks for doing this it's been really fascinating I didn't know that much specifically about podcasting once so I'm really interested in that and I want to know how I can pitch my show to you well send it to normpattice at podcast one if you go to our website you'll see our address and there's websites and stuff there just send it to me tell we met here and send it to me and we'll get back to you and tell you what we've done are you actively soliciting new podcasts? oh yeah sure we're being fairly selective but like I said I'm not concerned about where it's been I'm concerned about where it's going to be so just because something has been tried out of somebody's garage and it hasn't really connected if there's a community or a set of verticals that I have that might fit well with what you're doing we might be interested in something how does somebody get their show on Stitcher? go to the website and there's a whole section for podcasters and fill out a form thank you Noah thank you Normpattice have a great podcast we'll see you next time