BellGab.com Archive

Imgur is excellent. Incredibly well-run organization too, considering its size and the fact that until last year they never took any funding and they have like ~10 employees. Great guys too.

Oh trust me, I care. The time I spent with the Oculus Rift at CES 2014 was the highlight of the show.

http://mashable.com/2014/01/16/oculus-rift-crystal-cove

(yes, I wrote the article)

So I don't know a lot about Art Bell (other than what little C2C reruns I've heard over the years), but I know a lot about podcasting. A good friend of mine runs a successful tech podcasting network -- and I know what his subscriber figures are across his shows (and also the bandwidth for each show, which is often a better measurement than the feed numbers). Another friend works for a company that focuses primarily on selling ads on podcasts (including big names like Marc Maron and Joe Rogan). Many of my friends have podcasts (and I used to have my own semi-successful show) and I've been a guest on some of the bigger shows in the podcasting sphere.

You can get a lot of listeners that way -- and I would argue that the right ad team could get better rates for a well-targeted podcast than a show on local AM or even a syndicated show -- but with very few exceptions, you won't ever see numbers that even approach satellite tune-ins. That's not to say you can't be successful -- or that you can't build a business off of it (as my friend has and as Leo Laporte has) -- but most of the top 10 podcasts -- hell, the top 20 or 50 -- are either directly associated with a brand that is on the radio (NPR, KCRW, This American Life (which is Chicago Public Media), WNYC, ESPN, NBC, etc. -- or associated with a well-known entity/celebrity. With the right outreach, promotion and understanding that podcasting isn't just recording a radio show (because even when it airs live and you have callers, there is an expectation that people tune-in later and time-shift), Art could totally be in that top list -- but I'd be shocked if his figures would ever approach what was potentially possible with a Sirius deal.

That's not a knock on Art, just reality. NPR is a good benchmark to go off of because they have a very wide radio reach -- they also stream online -- so its a good barometer to look at it terms of podcast figures. This American Life is consistently the most popular podcast in the world. They get like 750,000 downloads an episode. That's extremely impressive, but it's also less than half of the weekly radio figures -- which Chicago Public Media puts at like 1.8 million a week. And that's with a huge level of brand-awareness and the type of user base that is tailor-fit for podcasting (young listeners, commuters, those who live in urban areas).

That said, he COULD absolutely match or exceed his Sirius numbers (at least those Sirius figures in the first six weeks) with the right promotion and outreach. But to think it could ever achieve more or even on the level of what a Sirius show has the potential to deliver -- let alone AM on clear channel -- is fantasy.

The trouble with podcasting is -- although getting a specific number is difficult (because of the way feeds work, stuff is cached and the way certain apps/services treat those feeds), you get a very real idea of how many downloads you get and how many subscribers you have quite quickly. The same goes for any live stream. It's not like radio where you have a sample that designates your ratings base -- that you can either attribute to a bad sample (or rejoice if it oversampled your actual user base). What that means is that you very quickly realize how much your audience is growing (or not growing) and you can gauge a good sense of its overall size. My fear for Art would be that if he couldn't deal with mediocre or low numbers on Sirius, how does he deal with the reality that have 50,000 downloads a week on a podcast would be a huge deal -- and something that would take time, energy and investment to reach and sustain?

Quote from: Juan on February 03, 2014, 11:57:43 AM
Welcome - this is make a Bigfoot costume from your leftover Halloween sNoory moustache and rug set week.

AWESOME

I sent MV an admin email asking to check on my account getting flagged for spam so I might as well actually post. I'm not a fan of C2C, past or present, except in the ironic sense. But I stumbled into some Google hole over the weekend about the Art Bell drama (which I must admit I missed), found the Gabcast and Spec Sheet and thought, aside from generally thinking anyone who goes on C2C and its ilk or anyone who is an unironic believer in half this shit is nuts, this sounds like my group of people! I mean, just putting it out there -- I like to silently lurk/troll the Bigfooters and other conspiritards because the subculture is full of so many seemingly mentally ill/challenged people that it's just fucking fascinating to study, but you folks seem to have a good time and I enjoy the energy.