What’s going on with The Ones Who Knock podcast

For several years, Joanna Robinson and I hosted a podcast about Breaking Bad called “The Ones Who Knock.” This was one of our first popular recap podcasts together and led to many memorable moments like future-Star Wars director Rian Johnson doing a commentary with us on “Ozymandias“, one of the best episodes of TV ever produced.

Awhile after the Breaking Bad series finale, we converted this podcast into a Better Call Saul recap podcast. However, listenership fell off a cliff and pretty much never recovered.

Simultaneously, we’ve been putting a lot of time and energy into Gen Pop, a new podcast that is funded by listeners through Patreon and which features interesting conversations with awesome people about pop culture.

We’ve been getting a lot of requests to re-start The Ones Who Knock but ultimately the numbers are not there to justify us to bring it back as a full-fledged show. Instead, we are going to be doing a sort of “The Ones Who Knock” lite by posting podcast recaps every two weeks as bonus audio episodes on the Gen Pop Patreon feed. We’ll also likely do a full season recap that’s released publicly on the Gen Pop feed. So, to recap:

All Patrons at the rate of $2/month will have access to the bonus episodes.
All subscribers to the Gen Pop podcast [iTunes link] will have access to the season recap we will do after season 3 has aired.

I know this is not what a lot of “The Ones Who Knock” fans wanted, but it lets us put time and resources into a show that is a longer term investment for us, while making sure our hardcore fans are served. Thanks for your understanding and listenership.

S-Town could be the most popular podcast of all time

The New York Times has some statistics on downloads for “S-Town,” the new podcast by the creators of “This American Life” and “Serial”:

In its first week of release, listeners downloaded episodes of “S-Town” 16 million times. It took eight weeks for the first season of “Serial” to reach that number, and four weeks for the second season to hit it, according to numbers provided by Serial Productions. “S-Town” is the first series released under the Serial Productions banner — the outfit is helmed by the makers of “Serial” and “This American Life” — and by podcast standards, it’s a blockbuster […]

In just over a week, “S-Town” has attracted 1.8 million subscribers to its podcast feed. “No one’s done that,” Mr. Quah said.

Other stats revealed: “Serial” now has a combined 267 million download count(!), while APM’s “In The Dark” true crime podcast has 6.6 million total.

Some thoughts on these stats:

I remember when “Serial” was first released, there was much excitement about how massive its download counts were. It was, at the time, the fastest growing podcast (in terms of subscribers) ever. These “S-Town” numbers seem to indicate that it will outgrow “Serial.” That being said, “S-Town” was released all at once while “Serial” grew its audience (and buzz) by releasing episodes week to week. We’ll see whether “S-Town” can continue this trajectory.
I’d love to know the downloads per episode over time, which I think gives a far better sense of how quickly a podcast is growing (or not).
I’ve listened to the first few episodes of “S-Town” and it is excellent. One of the best shows I’ve ever listened to, and certainly that rare show that is worth the hype.

You can download/subscribe/listen to the “S-Town” podcast here.

The Tobolowsky Files has returned

After an 18 month hiatus, The Tobolowsky Files has finally returned. The first two episodes of the new “season” have arrived, and you can download them here and here.

The problem with creating a podcast that requires 7,000 words of writing each week is that it’s difficult to publish it on a weekly basis. Stephen and I discussed how best to handle this and we agreed that we wanted to build up a backlog of episodes and come back weekly for a significant amount of time. Plus, Stephen’s new book will be out soon and we wanted to get some promotional attention on that thing.

So, new episodes are here for at least 12 weeks. Possibly more later on. As Stephen has always said, the benefit of telling true stories is that they get to continue.

The Tobolowsky Files is not the most-downloaded show I’ve ever helped create but it’s the one that has the most passionate fanbase. So many people have found Stephen’s stories artistically insightful or emotionally meaningful to them. If you haven’t listened yet, I hope you’ll check it out on iTunes and see what people are so excited about.

Turns out, the internet can be used for good too

The other day, I re-blogged an article in The New Yorker about “how clickbait is killing criticism.” I was pretty skeptical of that piece, pointing out that in place of the old definition of “criticism” there’s now a whole new world of content out there that things like “clickbait” have enabled.

In a recent piece for The New York Times, Farhad Manjoo makes a similar point:

In the last few years, and with greater intensity in the last 12 months, people started paying for online content. They are doing so at an accelerating pace, and on a dependable, recurring schedule, often through subscriptions. And they’re paying for everything.

You’ve already heard about the rise of subscription-based media platforms — things like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Spotify and Apple Music. But people are also paying for smaller-audience and less-mainstream-friendly content. They are subscribing to podcasters, comedians, zany YouTube stars, novelists and comic book artists. They are even paying for news.

It’s difficult to overstate how big a deal this is. More than 20 years after it first caught mainstream attention and began to destroy everything about how we finance culture, the digital economy is finally beginning to coalesce around a sustainable way of supporting content. If subscriptions keep taking off, it won’t just mean that some of your favorite creators will survive the internet. It could also make for a profound shift in the way we find and support new cultural talent. It could lead to a wider variety of artists and art, and forge closer connections between the people who make art and those who enjoy it.

Some interesting stats on Patreon are also disclosed: $100 million has been paid towards artists thus far, and in 2016, there were 35 artists making more than $150K each.

The upsetting implications of the “Missing Richard Simmons” podcast

Amanda Hess, writing for The New York Times, has written a thorough takedown of the new (and apparently very popular) “Missing Richard Simmons” podcast:

The relationship between journalists and subjects shouldn’t be confused with friendship. Journalists have power over their subjects and a responsibility to try to minimize harm. But Mr. Taberski leverages his claim to friendship to reverse the equation, arguing instead that it’s Mr. Simmons who has the responsibility to speak to him, and to explain himself to his former acquaintances and fans. He compares Mr. Simmons’s relationship to them to the responsibilities of a licensed therapist. Mr. Taberski says he took care to ask Mr. Simmons’s manager “if there was something serious going on, like illness, so I could just let it be.” But is depression not an illness? Is a person’s gender identity not sufficiently serious to leave alone? Having decided that Mr. Simmons’s reasons for withdrawal are not “serious,” Mr. Taberski feels freer to pursue the guy.

“Missing Richard Simmons” speaks to both the possibilities and the limits of the emerging prestige podcast form. Many of the podcast’s tropes — the mystery framing, the crowdsourcing of clues from the audience and a format that focuses on the narrator as much as his subject — are borrowed directly from “Serial.” By turning a journalist into a friend and casting a man’s personal life as a mystery, “Missing Richard Simmons” has retooled the stale Hollywood documentary as an addictive media sensation. But it’s also turned it into a morally suspect exercise: An invasion of privacy masquerading as a love letter. Mr. Simmons is a public figure, and that gives journalists a lot of latitude to pry. But a friend who claims to want to help Mr. Simmons should probably just leave him alone.

Many recent true crime and mystery podcasts/shows have exhumed details from the lives of private citizens for public entertainment. While shows like Serial and Making a Murderer are ostensibly about correcting some systemic or institutional injustice, they still wreak havoc on the lives of those who are its subjects.

If we take “Missing Richard Simmons” at face value, then it appears to have all the devastating impact of other similar shows, only without the journalistic value — just the veneer of it. Truly upsetting.

Why audio rarely goes viral

This piece by Stan Alcorn for Digg is a few years old, but I think about it a lot. I don’t think I ever blogged about it here, so I’m sharing it now.

According to producer Nate DiMeo, “People will watch a bad video more than [they will listen to] good audio.” Why is this? Why does audio almost never go viral? A few possibilities:

“The greatest reason is structural,” says Jesse Thorn, who hosts a public radio show called “Bullseye” and runs a podcast network called Maximum Fun. “Audio usage takes place while you’re doing something else.” You can listen while you drive or do the dishes, an insuperable competitive advantage over text or video, which transforms into a disadvantage when it comes to sharing the listening experience with anyone out of earshot. “When you’re driving a car, you’re not going to share anything,” says Thorn.

The second explanation is that you can’t skim sound. An instant of video is a still, a window into the action that you can drag through time at will. An instant of audio, on the other hand, is nothing. “If I send someone an article, if they see the headline and read a few things, they know what I want them to know,” a sound artist and radio producer told me. “If I send someone audio, they have to, like… listen to it.” It’s a lot to ask of an Internet audience.

The end of the piece has some suggestions for how one might make one’s own audio more viral: Think about the sharing mechanisms, think about how to appeal to an audience beyond your existing one, think more carefully about things like metadata, titles, and presentation.

It’s challenging work but the rewards can be enormous.

Asgar Farhadi and the Oscars

This week on Gen Pop, we talk with Siddhant Adlakha from Birth Movies Death about Trump’s Muslim ban and how it may impact art in the U.S.

We received this email about the show last night, and it really meant a lot to me (I’m sharing it anonymously, with permission):

Hi Joanna and Dave,

I just needed to tell you how much I love this podcast. I listen to A LOT of podcasts and this is quickly becoming my favourite. Every episode has been fascinating with brilliant discussions and interviews.

Your conversation with Sid Adlakha actually brought me to tears. I’m an interracial woman (my dad is half Somalian and half German and my Mum is a mix of Norwegian and Italian) but both my parents were born here in the UK. So I of course feel British through and through. With the horrors of Brexit and the rise of the Rightwing (everywhere it seems) I have had things said to me that I haven’t heard since the 90s. I felt we had moved past me being told to “Get back to the Paki Market” or being asked “What actually are you though?” But here I am crying at a podcast because it is so beautiful in its diverse voices and open discussion.

You should be so proud of yourselves for the outstanding work you are putting out.

I hope you enjoy the episode.

Thoughts on 400 Episodes of the /Filmcast

The /Filmcast just recorded its 400th episode, a review of Martin Scorsese’s newest film Silence. Eight years I’ve been doing this podcast, most recently with my intrepid co-hosts Devindra Hardawar and Jeff Cannata.

Last night, we received the following email about the podcast from a listener I’ll refer to as Brett. I’ve posted an excerpt from the email below, with his permission.

I share this excerpt not as an act of self-aggrandizement, but rather as encouragement to anyone reading it: You too can create something meaningful for other people. In fact, you probably already are, just by being who you are, interacting how you do, sharing what you do.

When we started the podcast, we didn’t think we’d be creating something that would allow people to feel less alone in the world. Maybe we just wanted to create something that made US feel less alone in our passion for movies, and by doing so, it made others feel the same as well.

And so when I read an email like this, I don’t think “I’m amazing!” I think: if some nincompoop with a microphone and an internet connection like me can create this kind of feeling in people, then pretty much anyone can. And you should all keep putting yourself out there and doing so.

***
Dear David, Devindra and Jeff,

My name is Brett. I’m 36 and I live northeast Philadelphia, PA. I have been listening to your podcast now for quite some time. I’m a huge fan. I’m also a musician, audio engineer and a lover of film. My love for film eventually led me to find your podcast. Since then, I’ve been with you guys every step of the way. To me, it’s the best podcast, in my opinion, for movie lovers.

I am writing this as I lay in a hospital bed. In 2012, I was diagnosed with leukemia. And ever since then, my life has been one disaster after another. I went through a divorce with a girl I had been with for 15 years. We have a beautiful son together. His name is David.

So I’m currently laying in a hospital bed and I’m in extreme pain. All I want to do is listen to you guys. So I started playing episode 400 and this feeling of peace just came over me. I just close my eyes and listen to the three of you talk film, make Boom goes the dynamite jokes, or the really well-handled ad reads with David and Jeff.

I just wanted you to know that your podcast is truly a light in a dark place. Since 2012, I’ve been in and out of hospitals. More times than I can even remember at this point. Tonight, I had a mental breakdown and started feeling very sorry for myself. The nurse came in to give me my meds. I took them, turned the TV, went to my podcast app and there was the new episode. I’m 30 minutes in and I’ve already forgotten where I was.

I just wanted to thank you all from the bottom of my heart. You’re really helping people in ways you might not know. I am sure you receive emails like this all the time but I really felt the need to express my gratitude to the three of you tonight.

I write this not in the hopes that you will read it on the podcast but that you will read this and feel a sense of pride. You would be really surprised to learn that three friends talking about movies can make someone who is very sick actually smile. So I thank you as much as I can. Your podcast means so much to me. When I listen to an episode, it just reminds me of conversations and arguments I’ve had with my friends in regards to film. Please continue to do what you do…

Thank you for hearing me out,
Brett