Hearing Audible's Channels Loud and Clear

It’s been some time since my last entry here, for unexpected reasons. Since then, although I haven’t been digging into thinking about podcasting as a business and seeking compelling observations in that vein, I have been consuming tons of podcasting content.

In mid-July, I wondered how Amazon’s Audible Channels foray into podcast-like programming with the multitude of free offerings already available in this format.

Amazon recently opened up Channels to all members of its Prime service, so I’ve had a chance to dive in. A few of the featured non-fiction shows have yet to start regular runs, and have just first ‘pilot’-style episodes up.

“The Butterfly Effect with Jon Ronson” is akin to “This American Life,” or perhaps even “99% Invisible,” as a documentary podcast exploring a business or societal trend in under 30 minutes. Similarly, “Mortal City,” which features stories of real inner city (New York only?) characters, backs into the importance of its subject, “Commander” Rocky Robinson, but once it does reveal his character, is fascinating.

There’s also comedy and fiction offerings, and blends of both. “Bedtime Stories For Cynics” features true collaboration – comedian Dave Hill writes his own crazed takes on children’s stories, introduced by Nick Offerman and read by performers like Maria Bamford and Lewis Black. Comics Eugene Mirman and Roy Wood Jr. have comedy shows on Audible Channels also, but they don’t quite surpass great podcasts already out there. Mirman interviews Mike Birbiglia in one episode, and lets him just repeat stories that Birbiglia already had in a special years ago. Wood hosts what amounts to a compilation of stand-ups’ bits about politics.

Lastly, in this presidential election year, there’s a raft of presidential-themed podcasts out there, notably “Presidential,” which is nearing the end of its run, devoting an episode to each and every US president, having just released its hour about Jimmy Carter; and Slate’s Whistlestop, in which CBS newsman John Dickerson shares in-depth takes on campaigns past. Audible Channels’ own presidential-themed show is much more whimsical, with each episode being a more comedic take on certain presidents. Jon Stewart and John Hodgman appear together on an episode about early 1800s one-termer James K. Polk. The FDR episode contains an audio skit about static with his mother in law (which really did occur).

The offerings on Audible Channels are voluminous, and include short fiction pieces also, building on Audible’s brand as a source for full-length audiobooks. In my July blog entry, I was critical of the value of including offerings available elsewhere such as audio of Charlie Rose episodes, but actually that may have some value for subscribers who aren’t going to be in front of a TV or don’t have a video service that would include Charlie Rose’s show on demand.

Overall, Audible Channels actually as a stunning amount of content to explore, that one probably cannot come even close to consuming in full. Some may duplicate other sources, but there appears to be enough original and exclusive material here, since it can be subscribed through Prime, to make it very worthwhile. The content offered can only grow, also.

 

Podcasts of the Week:

 

Revisionist History “The Satire Paradox” episode, August 18, 2016. The last episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10-part podcast series cuts deeply and authoritatively into Saturday Night Live, characterizing its satire as toothless in many respects, critiquing how the show deployed Tina Fey as Sarah Palin in 2008. This is especially relevant more recently since SNL let Donald Trump host, and Jimmy Fallon (with Lorne Michaels also his executive producer) has been criticized for being too “chummy” with Trump as a guest on the Tonight Show.

 

“Throwback: Jim Morrison 11-6-69” from Audible Channels. The “Throwback” series is a collection of diverse audio programming from past decades. This piece is a mellow interview with the Doors frontman, full of thoughtful pauses, at a time when the band’s career had been declining because of Morrison’s issues. Morrison doesn’t come off wild like one might think from some of his legendarily extreme behavior. The piece does transport the listener to another time in American culture and society.

What’s wrong with IAB’s Podcast Upfronts. (A statement, not a question)

Some people criticize the effectiveness of live reads of advertising in the podcast medium. So one wonders how podcasters are presenting themselves to advertisers. It's hard to know because the podcast upfront presentation being hosted by the International Association of Broadcasters (IAB) next month in New York is a new phenomenon, only in its second year, and IAB has not set up much of a mechanism for media to cover it.

While other events, such as July’s Podcast Movement event in Chicago, next month’s Mid-Atlantic Podcast Conference near Philadelphia, and the upcoming DC Podfest in November, are dedicated to promotion of podcasts, which is fine, they do not have direct impact on where it may really count for podcasters – attracting advertising.

So it’s very disappointing, after asking IAB about provisions for media (and hopefully, having built a track record for those of you who do read this blog, as a concerned and credible venue for critical thought about the podcasting industry), to receive no specific response about how to attend, other than notice of how to sign up for a vague waitlist – without any differentiation about the purpose of the waitlist. That waitlist could possibly be for podcasters who are hoping to present to advertisers. There’s no way to tell from IAB’s materials.

Broadcasting – especially radio – could in some ways be seen as the enemy of podcasting, or at least a major competitor. So why are podcasters allowing IAB to mediate their relationship with advertisers? Especially when IAB is not well organized to promote its event, the way TV networks clearly do so professionally with their upfronts. It’s time for members of the podcasting industry to band together and organize their own upfronts, and do so the right way.

Podcasts of the Week

Mystery Show, episode 1 – about a video store that suddenly disappeared. This is a shorter length inquiry podcast reminiscent of “Thinking Sideways”, but more about personal phenomenon than stories that are known about somewhat in other forms.

Modern Love podcast from the New York Times -- (check out three episodes in which Jason Alexander, Sarah Paulson and Judd Apatow each read a non-fiction story about matters of the heart in one form or another).

Considering Ad Servicing

Even if podcasting is a medium that only has about 2% of all audio entertainment listeners, as Edison Research says, it still has a pretty mature ecosystem.

This is evident in the existence of companies that perform functions like distributing advertising, handling both the business and technical aspects of placing ads on podcasts. A couple of the more notable newer players in these spaces are Art19 and Performance Bridge, the former combining business support with technology to measure audiences, and the latter providing technology for advertising affiliates to support podcasts.

The closest analog to the advertising support functions these companies are taking on for podcasting is “ad insertion” in the TV broadcasting industry, which is a decades-old sub-industry within television. Yet this industry is itself trying to innovate, and seeing introductions of new technology such as “dynamic ad insertion,” according to a Wall Street Journal story from July 2015, which reports that this new wrinkle on TV advertising is a response to dropping ratings, but has yet to take off. 

Google is said to be working on its own dynamic ad insertion capability for TV or video programming, in partnership with DoubleClick. In “conventional” TV, Black Arrow was established in 2005 and AdGorilla, which specializes in cable TV, in 2011. The structural similarities that ad insertion as a piece of TV operations and business has with podcasting are not the only area where comparing the two industries can be instructive (a la carte bundling, or the lack thereof, is of interest, as written in this April 13 post).

The ways that podcasting does or can serve advertisers, and can best present their programming, are likely to play out in a manner similar to what is happening in television, and they can cross-pollinate. That podcasting already has the foundations for a mature advertising services industry in place is remarkable. It’s even more remarkable that a much more mature industry, television, is still striving to innovate and improve upon this function in its own operations. It’s unlikely podcasting could support companies like Art19 and Performance Bridge if it was only reaching 2% of the audio programming audience. If companies like these are succeeding and growing, that shows the strength of the medium.

Podcasts of the week:

The Bill Simmons Podcast episode 113, July 22, 2016, (38:30 mark) – a truly hilarious moment where Ringer writer and comedian Brendan Lynch discusses how his obsession with true crime and in particular the “Serial” podcast led him to go way out of his way to see the non-descript Best Buy parking lot, near Baltimore, that figured in the Adnan Syed case covered on that show.

“True North Story” episode 2 – Bruce Bavitt, the co-founder of Subpop, the independent label record label that released Nirvana’s first album and singles, discusses 8Stem, his new venture that aspires to bring an innovative approach to consumption and distribution of music. 

Real Crime Profile – “Making a Murderer” has become like the Bible, with a raft of podcasts and podcast episodes serving as its Talmud, dissecting every fact from the case as depicted in the Netflix series, as well as how the makers of the documentary series may or may not have distorted the picture they presented by omitting certain information. The best and most level-headed of these, however, might just be this series, which devoted its first six episodes to Steven Avery’s case (and has since gone on to dissect the murder cases of O.J. Simpson and Oscar Pistorius).

Interim post -- extra "Podcasts of the Week"

I’m currently working on the next idea for a post, but in the meantime, some good “Podcast of the Week” recommendations have been piling up, so I would like to share a few of those.

The Nerdist, June 13, 2015 with Jim Norton

Comedian Jim Norton and host Chris Hardwick have a thought-provoking conversation about the nature of sexual compulsion or addiction. One key insight – hopefully without giving away too much – is that as men age, whatever the compulsion might be, they are more likely to find themselves realizing they can be happier without it.

WTF, July 21, 2016, with Chuck Klosterman

On the heels of Klosterman’s new book “But What If We’re Wrong?”, he sits down with Marc Maron, and together they give you a taste of what’s in the book. A couple highlights: arriving at some points about how technology and culture change human perceptions and experience; also, Klosterman wonders how historical perceptions of the past radically over time – like, could a US president who is considered to be good or great now eventually be re-evaluated as poor. And what if that were Lincoln?

99% Invisible, March 29, 2016, “The White Elephant of Tel Aviv”

Very interesting story from the podcast about design, architecture and the like, about the central bus station in Israel’s capital city, a development project that is widely seen as a failure. Imagine an even more vast version of New York’s Port Authority bus station, but with more than half the retail store locations vacant. In a succinct 35 minutes or so, reporters from Israeli radio tell the story of the station’s architecture, the way it was proposed and carried out, with a first skeleton built in the 1980s then abandoned until the economy picked up again in the mid-1990s. Then, after its completion, the station quickly became dirty and poorly maintained within just a couple years, and a lack of foot traffic for retail stores tucked into far flung and maze-like corridors caused more and more stores to close as time went on. It’s an interesting story, well told, with pieces of audio including the sales pitch made to the retailers, promotional advertisements, interviews with key players in the story, and more.

Podcasting singularity? Nevermore.

In previous posts, I’ve written about Amazon/Audible’s new entry into podcasting-style programming, Audible Channels [July 17]; about streaming music service Pandora picking up podcasts to distribute to its users [May 5]; and about the emergence of podcast aggregators, and their future [April 7].

Thinking about these different developments in spoken word audio and podcast distribution makes one wonder if these various distribution outlets will ever come together. Or to re-direct that thought, if content will ever become totally agnostic and non-exclusive to any one platform. That is now the case in television, with networks and channels making themselves available through cable; satellite; online; and devices such as Roku, Apple TV and Chromecast. HBO Now and Showtime streaming through Hulu or Amazon services can now be accessed using computers, smartphones or the previously mentioned streaming boxes.

Back to the podcasting landscape -- Audible Channels has a few exclusive shows, as previously noted, but also many shows that appear in numerous other outlets. Pandora has picked up two of NPR’s biggest hits and is said to be after more, but doesn’t have its own original podcast content yet. Howl, the service closest to Audible Channels in price point and inclusion of exclusive content, doesn’t have the breadth of subject matter that Audible Channels can offer. Its value may be that it does cost less than Audible Channels, for subscribers who are only interested in the comedy-centric content it offers.

Podcasting distribution may never have a “singularity” – meaning there won’t ever be one way to get all major podcasting content, just as some cable packages or systems would be missing an obscure channel or two, in the past. But podcasts may have to make sure they are on all available outlets, pursuing deals or licensing with Pandora, Audible Channels, Howl and more. The burden does fall on the podcasters themselves to find income, whether from sponsors or licensing. It’s less likely right now for distributors to commission more than a handful of podcasts – although the potential for more of that is there, if distributors think it will help them compete.

Podcast of the week

Episodes 11 & 12 of “Criminal” [“I’m About To Save Your Life” and “Break the Internet”] from fall 2014 – the first one is like one of those astounding stories you sometimes hear about someone who was so sadly gullible that they pay a fortune teller hundreds of thousands of dollars over time. In this case, a man was extorted by a criminal for over two decades, repeatedly, with a combination of tales of woe and threats – and his extorter was eventually put on trial even after the victim died, because the court admitted testimony the victim recorded. The second one is about a teenager who hacked AOL in its early days, just to get free time to use the service, when it was still charging hourly or monthly fees.

 

Audible's Channels: Are They Being Heard?

Audible, the Amazon-owned audiobook service, debuted a beta version of “Channels,” a foray into podcast-style programming, in April. The service is not yet widely available, but the effort raises a few questions about its place in the audio programming competition.

Channels  is a de facto competitor for both free podcasts and subscription podcast apps and networks like Howl and Gimlet, as well as, in some respects, to satellite radio.

The first question is whether Channels’ few original shows are enough of an attraction by themselves, especially when so many popular podcasts are free.

Second, Channels has what one could call “syndicated” content from other media outlets, including several WNYC public radio-generated podcasts, highlights of the Risk storytelling podcast, and the Charlie Rose show (in audio form). These, of course, aren’t exclusive, and the only value of including them on Channels is the assumption that a Channels user lives only within the Channels firewall and doesn’t access any other audio content in any way, even free content.  Also, if Channels does grow exponentially in popularity, producers of this outside content could start demanding licensing income, or higher licensing fees – just as that happened with Netflix.

Third, numerous channels on the service are generic with titles like “60 Minutes of Fear,” “The Appetizer for Food Lovers,” “Entrepreneur Accelerator” and “Learn Something Amazing.” Without more detail on what these are, how much content they have and how frequently they add new content, it’s unclear how much of a draw these are, or what their quality is.

I don’t have the answers to these questions, but once they become evident, which is likely to take some time – possibly even years, not months – those answers will determine just how successful Audible Channels could be. The “market cap,” if the initiative works, could be far higher than just the audiobooks service.

Podcast of the week

I left this feature hanging, but promise to be more diligent to add it to each post going forward. The first episode of Chris Gethard's "Beautiful Stories From Anonymous People" was an intriguing listen. It was exciting and moving to hear Gethard urge his caller to get out of a rut and go out and seize life.

The broader threat of patent trolls

This entry will stray a bit outside the bounds of being strictly about podcasting, but will start in that realm.

For some time, well-known podcasters were backing and helping promote the efforts of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to fight off patent trolls, companies formed solely to attempt to capitalize on patents by stretching the definition of what patents actually cover. Patent trolls were suing popular podcasters or sending them cease and desist notices, claiming they owed licensing fees for the use of a patent that supposedly covered the practice of podcasting, in what any reasonable observer would say amounted to extortion.

The patent trolls were dealt a disabling blow in April 2015 when the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office invalidated Personal Audio’s patent on podcasts because podcasting is “prior art,” meaning information or technology that was already publicly available and not a trade secret.

EFF is still fighting a much more pervasive and broader battle against patent trolls, however. Podcasting was only the tip of the iceberg, apparently.

Universities’ research, funded directly from federal and state grants that come out of citizens’ tax dollars, typically produces patented technology or biomedical discoveries. The trick is that some of these seeming innovations are akin to “prior art.” Universities actively market their patents through technology transfer departments. Third parties can buy these patents and profit from them – legitimately, by producing the technology, medication or other products derived from the patented material – or illegitimately, by taking the patent troll route.

Now, even in the legitimate route, one could argue that the public deserves some royalty or licensing income for contributing to the funding that made these discoveries possible. The counterargument is that society benefits from the innovation and discoveries – and that is the payback, which does make sense, now that I’m writing it.

As the EFF cites, though, patent trolls have taken questionable patents, like one from Stanford University on a natural amino acid, and used them as ammunition to sue workout supplement manufacturers. As John Oliver once related in an episode of “Last Week Tonight,” supplement makers aren’t the most ethical bunch either, but being able to extort any industry on flimsy claims of ownership is also wrong.

The point I want to make is that this phenomenon is exactly the sort of thing that should spark constituent and citizen demands to legislators and governments, since it’s public money supporting extortion. For more details on the story, I encourage you to check out EFF’s background article.

Moving podcasting to the next level

I had meant to add on to each recent blog entry some recommendation of a podcast episode that I enjoyed. I’ve been remiss on that, but I now have one to explore more in depth.

The “StartUp” podcast, begun in 2014 and now in its third season, follows the story of a start-up business with each season. The first season, which I’m past midway through now, tells the story of the Gimlet podcasting network itself, which began with this very show.

Gimlet set out to challenge podcast networks and aggregators such as Panoply, Earwolf and Howl, and become the “HBO of podcasts,” as several stories about the company called it. At present though, only one of its current stable of six shows, “Reply All,” is showing up on the Stitcher and iTunesChart.net lists (see previous blog entry). That doesn’t mean this still can’t happen, or Gimlet won’t continue to grow, but it can’t be deemed a runaway success just yet.

At different points during the first season of “StartUp,” host and Gimlet Media co-founder Alex Blumberg speaks to investors and advisers who tell him, first, that he should consider pivoting his idea for a podcasting start-up to offer functions previously (and apparently still) unavailable, such as social media sharing of excerpts from shows, or a Netflix-like algorithm for recommending programming based on what listeners have already heard.

Instead, Blumberg went forward with what Gimlet Media is now, another programming network. This blog aims to advocate for good ideas in the industry, or better ways to evaluate podcasts, or better ways to grow the medium. It seems like the route taken by Gimlet was an end run around any of those goals, because it’s so similar to what was already there. So, what does that mean for where podcasting is now?

As interesting as “StartUp” is, it’s not an innovation for the medium, only an exceedingly “meta” endeavor – a podcast about podcasting – as Blumberg freely admits in some of the episodes. Technology venture capitalist investor Matt Mazzeo tells Blumberg in the podcast that he would be more interested in a game changing idea that can take podcasting from an audience of millions to an audience of tens of millions or more. An innovative idea for how podcasts are distributed and consumed will inevitably do more for the medium than one or two breakout hits.

Picking the 'truthiest' podcast ranking

In my previous blog entry, I dissected some obvious flaws in the new Podtrac monthly ranking of a top 10 podcasts. Since then, it’s been found that there are several respected podcast groups, including The Ringer, Earwolf and Maximum Fun in the comedy and culture genres, as well as CNN news podcasts, that are not being evaluated or considered for inclusion in the ranking. Apparently Podtrac chooses what podcasters to include in their sampling, or maybe the podcaster have to respond to their inquiries.

So, what are the alternatives? There’s the Stitcher top 100 podcast list. Although that list seems like a more relevant cross-section of podcasts that people are talking about, it does not disclose its methodology or what the rankings are based on. Stitcher does have two other top 100 lists where some indication of their methods is given – one for “top movers,” which have risen the most in Stitcher’s rankings. But you can’t see the full rankings, and many of these top movers do not appear in the overall top 100 list. Lastly, Stitcher also has a top 100 for the “most shared” podcasts, which looks more similar to the overall top 100. Overall, the assumption is that the Stitcher top 100 lists are all based on – and only based on – what is being heard through Stitcher’s app, which discounts all the other distribution methods available.

Another ranking, iTunesCharts.net, inspires more confidence. iTunesCharts.net operates by culling Apple’s published iTunes rankings of podcasts at the end of each day. Apple’s rankings are fluid and can change in real time – and Apple does not publish past ranking data, so iTunesCharts.net’s records are the only available history. The major attribute of iTunesCharts.net is that its measurement is based on a more universal means of podcast, so its rankings are likely more representative of the listener following that podcasts on its list actually have.

At this relatively early stage in the development of the podcasting industry, without a truly universally accepted standard for measuring the listenership of podcasts or ranking their popularity, the best any observer may be able to do is choose a ranking that feels like it has “truthiness” (the Stephen Colbert-coined word for something that most seems like it is true, even if might not be completely true). So, for now, iTunesCharts.net has the truthiness crown.

The Nielsens of Podcasting?

We’re never going back to the days of the big three TV networks, in which the ranking of the networks was a much bigger part of pop culture. CBS ruled in the 1970s; ABC was in the basement for a long time. NBC’s woes have attracted attention in recent years, but its situation was still not dire.

In previous entries here, I’ve looked at how podcast audiences and success are measured. The podcast measurement and advertising services company Podtrac has launched a new ranking that aims to become a standard for the success of podcast networks in the way that Nielsen ratings measured TV networks.

The list ranks a top 10 of podcast outlets based on their monthly audience in the US and globally, but appears to be weighted to favor greater numbers in the US. This becomes more relevant in the bottom half of the list in which The Moth and Roman Mars (the owner of the 99% Invisible podcast) rank higher than the Nerdist and WBUR (Boston’s NPR station) because they have more US listeners, even though they have fewer listeners globally.

The top 5 of the list’s first edition, for April, have numbers that are consistent as they scale from US to global, but this certainly could be an issue anywhere in the list in the future. NPR currently is dominant at the top of the list, but the next three, This American Life, WNYC and HowStuffWorks, are close together in either US or global numbers, or both.

The list also has another obvious issue – comparing podcasting outlets that are very different in scope, scale and focus. CBS, which ranks fifth on the list, is drawing from the entire CBS TV News and CBS Radio operations for its material – plus CBS Sports, yielding 474 different shows that collectively have 1.5 million listeners. (Presumably Podtrac is referring to Play.it, which is how CBS branded its audio offerings last year).

This American Life, which ranks second, offers just that show and “Serial,” and has 5.6 million listeners. Even if you sloppily divide the number of shows by the number of listeners, This American Life and Serial have much more reach than all of CBS’s efforts. There’s also no indication given of just how small the listener  figures may be for some or many of the CBS shows, and how far above or below the average.

That means CBS should arguably be ranked way lower on this list, or maybe not at all. It’s possible that NBC, ABC, Fox or any number of media entities outside of network television, have individual podcasts or small handfuls of podcasts that reach more listeners than many or most CBS ones.

Perhaps other commentators out there have similar criticisms of Podtrac’s top 10 list, or other ones I haven’t considered. The point is that it’s too simple to go with the numbers Podtrac uses if you’re really going to measure a media company’s success in podcasting. Having one or two great shows with large audiences or a small roster of such shows could be worthy of greater advertiser support, which is the purpose of such a list. A “big three” TV network may not necessarily be a “big three” podcaster, if there really can be such a thing.

Web content marriage of equals: Pandora and podcasting

I had been writing this blog weekly, but took a forced hiatus the past two weeks or so, just because other responsibilities were taking over and because I was searching for a worthy idea to explore.

This entry will be a short one, but it’s an observation worth noting. The Pandora streaming audio service has made two very popular podcasts available – This American Life and its spinoff, Serial. But these are the only podcasts Pandora currently streams. It added stand-up comedy a few years ago, and that’s still most of, or the only, spoken word on the service. The browsing functionality has improved in its newest or newer versions, but there’s no visible category for podcasts – you have to already know those two shows are on there, to find them.

So how useful is this? According to Fast Company, Pandora has 78 million listeners and few of them subscribe to podcasts. In this story, John Paul Titlow theorizes that by going on Pandora, This American Life and Serial will reach many millions more listeners than they had through iTunes and other channels – even as very big hits in the podcast genre. I’m not sure how much that rings true or will bear out, if the Pandora interface continues to neglect promotion of these podcasts’ presence, or have any obvious indication that these shows are now there.

What does this even do for Pandora? It may not do much for the shows, for the aforementioned reason. Adding to Pandora’s success or quality depends on whether it plans to sign on many more podcasts and build a reputation as a destination for such content.

It’s curious that Titlow, writing for Fast Company, views Pandora as the “mainstream” and places podcasting outside that mainstream, even though Serial, as he notes, had 40 million downloads for its first season. That’s only one big hit podcast, but having that many millions for an audience means the programming or content is mainstream. If Pandora does go further with podcasts, we’re talking about giants joining forces, not a big fish swallowing up small fish.

The Medium and the Message

You certainly can binge listen to interview shows, as I had done while traveling on business recently, but shows doing creative audio fiction like “Welcome to Night Vale” (most recently ranked 65^th in Stitcher’s top 100 podcasts) and its spinoff, “Alice Isn't Dead,” are a better fit for this. They are, in effect, reviving what radio dramas used to do from the 1930s through 1950s, only with far less content constraints than that era.

If podcasting is truly going to become a binge medium, appealing to audiences who like shows like “House of Cards,” “Orange Is the New Black” or “Transparent,” it will need more shows like those -- series that are more like audio theatre than audio books.

A cursory search finds plenty of podcast audio drama efforts in the sci-fi and horror genres, but few if any of those have become part of a broader cultural conversation like the true-crime podcast “Serial” has. “Night Vale” isn’t the only one out there, if you look for general interest audio theatre. “The Thrilling Adventure Hour,” “The Truth” and “Limetown” are bubbling up just behind “Night Vale,” as far as gaining notoriety and attention among those who already engaged podcast listeners, who like fictional audio theatre rather than any other type of podcast.

Is it even possible for podcasts like these to catch on and make an impact as binge-able entertainment – on the same scale that streaming TV series have? Is the format of audio podcast theatre too idiosyncratic and specialized, at least at this time, to have the same reach? Wired pointed out back in the fall that “The Message,” a fiction podcast backed by podcast advertising network Panoply [referred to in this entry], advertising giant BBDO and General Electric, as its sponsor, is significant because it is one of the first, if not the first, podcast whose creation was actually driven by corporate entities.

Podcasting began as a grass-roots medium, and one could say it still mostly is that, but is it possible – would some call it heresy? – to say that to have broader cultural impact and reach, it needs more shows like “The Message”? As it took the corporate engine and technological advance of Netflix streaming to bring binge watching (and specific series) into the general public consciousness, so it might be necessary to have an organized business with deeper pockets to muscle content into that consciousness.

Reader survey

The "Shash On Pod" blog wants to hear about your binge listening preferences and experiences for consideration in an upcoming entry. Please make a comment here or email directly to Michael.shashoua@gmail.com

Here are a few questions as a guide to what I'm looking for, from your responses:

1. What podcasts do you find yourself listening to in large chunks of episodes at a time?
2. What is it about those shows that leads you to "binge listen" to them?
3. What's your preferred mode of listening? When you're deskbound and working on other tasks that may not require full attention? When out for a walk or at the gym? When commuting by subway or train? Or when commuting while driving?
4. Do you think "binge listening" is becoming or can become a phenomenon in the same way "binge watching" video programming already is?
5. Do you personally prefer "binge listening" to "binge watching," and in what situations do you prefer one of these means of entertainment to the other?

I greatly appreciate whatever attention you can give this informal survey and whatever insights you can share as food for thought for a "Shash On Pod" blog piece.

Podcasting's lesson for cable television providers and channels

This week I want to indulge in a detour from podcasting but still within media as a field. A few years ago, as part of a graduate class on innovation in media business models, I presented a proposal for a la carte cable television packages that aimed to split the difference between consumers’ interest and the interests of the cable companies.

 

The plan was to offer packages of 25, 50, 75 or 100 channels – but not pre-selected by the provider. Consumers could assemble a custom list of channels. The intention of this plan was to slow down “cord cutting” (customers dropping cable in favor of online streaming video services and sources), and keep customers on board by offering greater choice in programming, within certain price points. The plan wouldn’t go as far as offering single channel choices for $1, $2 or $5 a month (depending on the popularity of the channel) but instead require the customer to pay at least $25 a month (or some price point close to that) for 25 channels, to guarantee some level of income for the provider in return for services.

 

To date, I haven’t seen or heard of any cable provider offer anything like this. The only attempt to retain or recover lost customers I’ve seen is a Time Warner Cable offering lost customers a streaming service for basic broadcast channels through a Roku box at no more than one tenth of the price of typical cable box service. But this doesn’t extend to or include any basic cable level channels, except perhaps C-SPAN, because that’s a public service on some level.

 

The Roku box or Google’s Chromecast could be ways for cable companies to offer the kind of a la carte plan I proposed in the course. Several basic cable networks, on their own, already offer their programming as apps on Roku boxes and smartphones, but these are predicated on already having a cable subscription being used at home. HBO and Showtime, as premium channels, have now made themselves available without a cable subscription, but the basic cable channels are dependent on the carriage fees, so it may take them a lot longer to go independent. Cord cutting apparently hasn’t yet hit enough of a tipping point to make them follow HBO’s lead.

 

The industrial interests of the cable industry remain too strong. They’re more entrenched and dug in than something like Howl, covered last week and earlier in entries of this blog, the podcast aggregator that is battling to succeed with a collected programming offering that in some ways is like a cable TV package with varied channels – if you consider the audience for more serious Slate or NPR style audio fare completely removed from the audience for stand-up comedy.

 

The podcasting medium doesn’t seem ripe or varied enough yet to make a paid a la carte model realistic. But that model is still one that could become necessary for the cable industry once it can no longer rely on inconsistent strategies used by different cable channels – USA, FX and others do allow cable customers to view their programs through apps on both mobile devices and the Roku box, while TBS and others only offer smartphone apps that are purposely do not offer the ability to transmit through a Chromecast device to traditional home flat screen TVs. Cord cutters might not be bothered to pick up on channels whose online versions are not as easy to access.

 

Podcast of the Week

 

I had meant to do this a few weeks back already, but I hope to give a listening recommendation with each blog post, based on what I've enjoyed most in the past week. For the first one, go check out the iTunes podcast versions of Opie Radio from January 7 and 8, where Opie, Jim Norton and a few other comics dissect the Netflix documentary series "Making A Murderer," in their own special way.

Evolution of support and delivery models for podcasts is happening, but where it's going, no one knows

We are at a moment when podcasting can evolve as a medium, but that’s dependent on how listener preferences emerge.

Nicholas Quah, the author of the Hot Pod newsletter about the podcast industry, wrote last month that both terrestrial and satellite radio programming, along with subscription audio services, will merge with podcasts into a new, as yet unnamed media genre.

However, there are such big differences, particularly in business models, between podcasts and streaming subscription programming, whatever the delivery method, that this seems unlikely.

There is still a lot to sort out about delivery methods for “spoken audio entertainment.” Let’s call it that to differentiate it from the music channels on SiriusXM, Spotify and Pandora. However, it gets tricky with Spotify and Pandora, which as Quah reports, is considering offering more audio/video “shows.” Anyway, the automotive industry is said to be looking at embedding more streaming audio technology into vehicles, which could streamline the possibility that Quah envisions.

SiriusXM already has audio “show” offerings. Spotify and Pandora could also be joined by Google Play in trying to turn podcasting into a streaming medium. The other entrant into the streaming game that is actually here now is Howl, the podcast network described weeks ago in this blog. We have not yet seen what interfaces Spotify, Pandora and Google Play plan for streaming podcasts. In the case of Google Play, we don’t know what price point or price plan they would offer or what content they would include in a streaming podcast subscription service, and whether it would compare favorably with Howl’s $4.99 per month. If Google Play has far more podcast or “audio show” content to offer, at a lower price, it could undercut Howl severely, though.

The prospects of SiriusXM, Spotify and Pandora could depend more on their interfaces. Their subscription or advertising models are more established. SiriusXM has the audio show content, although accessing it on demand is more feasible on mobile devices than in vehicles. Spotify and Pandora would ostensibly just be adding audio shows as new content – but their problem might be allowing listeners to access specific episodes easily, the way one can with iTunes or an iPod.

Podcast or spoken audio entertainment listeners have a choice to make – whether the free content, advertiser-supported model will persist, or subscription models like Howl or Spotify and Pandora, if they enter this area, will win out. On either side of that choice, the delivery and interface technology can vary, including streaming in vehicles, streaming on mobile devices, on demand selections (as on SiriusXM), and on-demand as offered through iTunes or other online distribution channels.

There may end up being room for combinations and permutations of all of these put together, or there may be a dominant leader. We just haven’t seen how it may evolve yet.

A statistical analysis of two leading podcasts

 

I was inspired a few weeks ago by a story that Five Thirty-Eight did analyzing the fields that guests on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert came from, in its first 100 episodes, and how they compared to the other late night talk shows.

In short, Five Thirty-Eight found that Colbert had a significantly higher percentage of guests from the worlds of technology, science, politics, literature and culture – outside of the usually dominant categories of guests – actors and musicians, or movie, TV and music stars.

So I wondered what the numbers would show about the nature of guest bookings in a long-running podcast, and whether the numbers would show that a given podcast, or podcasts in general, have more varied kinds of guests than TV talk shows, news programs or other larger media.

Choosing Chris Hardwick’s “Nerdist” and Marc Maron’s “WTF” for this comparison naturally does mean the results will be skewed toward entertainers of some kind, but these seem like the forums closest to a late-night TV talk show for evaluating in the same way.

You can see the findings in the attached chart. The percentage figures given are the percentages of that kind of guest out of the total number of guests to date on those podcasts – for “Nerdist,” this is through episode 797 and for “WTF,” through episode 695. The sample sizes therefore are different, but a few obvious conclusions spring up once all the data has been collected in this way.

Maron has a far greater emphasis on comedians as guests than Hardwick, while Hardwick has a far greater emphasis on actors than Maron. This is a little tricky, because there is some overlap between actors and comedians. For this comparison, I lumped guests that could be called both into one field or another, depending on quick judgment calls about which was their primary emphasis, or which pursuit they were better known for. On “Nerdist,” this meant 23 shows included as comedians could possibly be classified elsewhere, and 41 shows featuring actors. The percentages of his overall total for these are 2.8% for comedians and 5.1% for actors. For Maron, it’s 36 actors (5.2% of his total) and 38 comedians (5.5% of his total).

So I don’t think these significantly change the picture you’re seeing in the graph, but let’s say you did arbitrarily switch them. You could only potentially increase Hardwick’s percentage of comedians by 2.3% and reduce Maron’s percentage of comedians by 0.3% -- and therefore vice versa for actors.

Anyway, onto other interesting conclusions about the guest rosters. Hardwick more frequently had no guests – with episodes he calls “Hostfuls” where he banters with co-hosts Matt Mira and Jonah Ray. Maron’s miscellaneous episodes, as placed on the graph under “no guests”, are actually mostly live panel episodes, with panels consisting mostly of comedians – if you moved these to the “comedians” category, it would increase his percentage of comedians even more.

Maron shows a deeper interest in music, but the percentage of his guests who are musicians isn’t that much more than Hardwick’s. And the percentages of guests for both shows who are anywhere outside their strongholds of entertainers, such as authors, writers, fellow broadcasters and podcasters, and even film directors – if you consider them a little more specific or specialized than actors and comedians, is relatively small – possibly even smaller than some of Colbert’s percentages of such guests on a network TV talk show.

Both podcasts had a negligible percentage of guests from areas not shown on the chart. Hardwick has only had 7 guests from the world of comic books – and I think that’s counting two different Stan Lee appearances. Visual artists, film and TV producers, entrepreneurs, business people and chefs number under 5 appearances on both shows.

So, what’s the point of all this? What the numbers really bear out here is that podcasting (or at least these two popular, well-known and successful podcasts) may not be so much more rarified in the professions of their guests than TV talk shows are. One could even make a case that “The Nerdist” is not really so nerdy since it has such a small percentage of guests from the comic book industry, video gaming, science or technology. Although to truly back that up, one might have to tally how many of Hardwick’s guests were from The Walking Dead, Star Trek or other nerd favorites, and analyze how much of the content from his “Hostful” shows covered that ground.

Mapping the Podcast Content World (Part 2)

To return to the mapping of the podcast world I began here two weeks ago, this week I’ll cover the broad range of shows aside from comedic ones covered in the previous entry. This may not seem like it pertains to the business and marketing aspects of podcasting to which I’ve dedicated this blog, but the content that is being sold in this medium is also important to consider, and does affect how the medium is used.

Comedy does drive a large and varied range of podcasts, and that’s a big chunk of what I listen to, but there is an equally large range of podcasts being done that are simply informative or educational, or that fit in genres including pop culture, storytelling, sports, politics, technology and business.

The shows I will mention here are simply the ones I’m most familiar with and can be called good examples to illustrate what the genre is. This is by no means an exclusive list. If I look at it three months from now, I might have a lot of changes. I’ll break it down by categories.

Educational – This is the broadest category, and can cover a lot. 99% Invisible, which has shorter episodes than most, clocking in at 15 or 20 minutes each, covers topics that are related to design in some way, even if those topics don’t adhere to what is conventionally thought of as design, like the ins and outs of metering parking in a city, or how incidental sound is added to sports broadcasts for realism (bet you never realized that).

I’d also cite Thinking Sideways and the Bowery Boys New York City History shows as podcasts of this nature, which take a certain topic within a realm or philosophy, and explore it. Thinking Sideways is about mysteries in recent history, i.e. the past few decades, or at least the last century – topics such as the Max Headroom broadcast interruption, the Tylenol poisonings, conspiracy theories about the Denver International Airport, and more. It’s a podcast that raises questions among some about whether it’s actually any good (to cite podcasting favorite Bill Simmons sometime blunt question about specific movies, TV shows or athletes – ‘Are they any good?’), because its hosts sometimes vamp too long about the most basic parts of their stories.

The Bowery Boys similarly pick out a location or phenomenon from New York City history going back to any time from before the actual founding of the city to more recent decades. They tackle that topic or place in depth, quickly laying out some basics and then telling interesting stories about its development or history. This podcast is much better and more authoritatively researched than Thinking Sideways.

Pop Culture – “The Bill Simmons Podcast” spends most of its time on sports, so I could place that in a sports category, but there are way too many sports podcasts to enumerate in this blog entry, and the ones I hear (“The Jonah Keri Show,” to name one) are such a small percentage of what’s out there that it would not be authoritative to mention them. But once every week or so, Simmons veers off his usual routine on covering football or basketball with guests who can illustrate other angles about sports in general, or other topics entirely, such as Chuck Klosterman, Malcolm Gladwell, movie critic Wesley Morris and now colleagues from various other shows on his “Channel 33” grouping of podcasts. Among “Channel 33” shows, another stand-out pop culture one is “The Watch” with Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald, which is focused mostly on TV, but some movies as well.

True Crime -- I also have a longtime interest in true crime, and there are plenty of podcasts that cover this ground. Serial is very well known of course, and although I haven’t completed the second season yet, its host Sarah Koenig has an interesting and thorough manner of pondering every aspect of the cases the show covers, and taking listeners through how her views on the cases change as she investigates.

Two other lesser known podcasts are worth recommending – Criminal and True Murder. Criminal is focused on smaller offenses and how people think about them – such as counterfeiting – and also psychology around law enforcement and investigation, as heard in an episode about a family of coroners. True Murder, on the other hand, is much deeper and darker. I can attest to its quality, even having only listened to one episode, but the crime covered was extremely gruesome, so be forewarned, although the treatment of telling the story was sober and compelling. The stories covered in other episodes also are graphic, judging by the episode descriptions, so I have to give that caveat.

Miscellany -- This last category may not be so consistent as the previous ones I’ve mapped, but I’m noting them here as worth hearing – either for journalistic storytelling, interesting interviews, or simply an entertaining take on their subject. From NPR, Radiolab, and the venerable Fresh Air with Terry Gross, in podcast form, are worthwhile. Dan Pashman’s “Sporkful” podcast is an entertaining take on food and dining, without any snobbery. Re/Code offers a couple different podcasts whose topics are on the cutting edge of media, covering subjects such as the history of the Yelp reviews site and also interviewing accomplished media figures such as David Remnick and Andrew Jarecki.

Combining both this and the previous entry, it’s still not a comprehensive list. It’s just meant to give a picture of what’s out there, what content I think about and where I’m coming from when thinking through and relating ideas about podcasting as an industry.

Setting a standard for measuring podcast audiences

Note: Part 2 of "Mapping The Podcast World" will appear here later. This discussion of audience measurement felt pressing to publish first.

Nicholas Quah of the Hot Pod newsletter recently posed the question of whether there are not enough advertisers to support podcasts, or not enough podcasts that are attractive enough as advertising venues. One of the reasons for this problem, Quah says, citing several sources including the Wall Street Journal and technology business news site The Information, is the lack of an accepted standard measure of podcast audiences.

Quah adds that such a measure would stabilize podcasting as an industry and gain the medium more respect with advertisers, but stops short of a solution, saying this makes now a good time “to play around and figure out what works.”

That seems like a vague prescription, however, for podcasters who need a reliable standard to earn the trust of advertisers. A possible avenue could be something modeled on CPM (cost per thousand views), the longtime standard used for broadcast and print, which also mutated to mean cost per thousand impressions from online advertising on text or image pages (excluding audio or video streams).

Such a benchmark still leaves a lot of definition questions, though. What constitutes effectively serving an ad? A complete listen to a whole podcast (especially if that ad might be halfway through an episode)? A mere download of the podcast episode? Or the equivalent of actual “click-throughs,” which for podcasts, would mean someone using an offer code to try the advertiser’s service, or otherwise indicating when surveyed by the advertiser that they chose that product or service based on a particular podcast ad?

For its podcasts, a group of public radio broadcasters have issued an attempt at a standard, but this largely consists of technical specifications to prevent multiple counts of the same download (which can happen if requests are being counted, since sometimes multiple requests are needed to complete a download), or ways to make sure downloads are indeed correctly counted if they happen to be coming through the same IP address.

Either way, this presumes counting, correctly, the number of downloads, is the correct measurement. That may be so, and this effort is an attempt to ensure consistent standards within the public radio podcast world, to make its podcasts competitive with commercial podcast advertising networks like Midroll and Panoply. That doesn’t mean, however, that this standard is consistent with the way those commercial networks do their measurement to justify their pricing.

Still, download numbers may be the easiest measure, but to convince more advertisers of the maturity of podcasting as a medium, the industry not only has to get consistency on how to measure those numbers, but also arrive at accepted measures for engagement with the advertising, or response rates.

Mapping The Podcast Content World (Part 1)

I am writing these blogs because I listen to many different podcasts, and enjoy and appreciate the form. The mission of this blog right now is to unpack trends in both the practice and business of podcasting, and how it fits into all media discourse. With so many podcasts for even a casual listener to choose from, what one may normally like or follow closely may not always necessarily be what one’s in the mood to hear.

Instead of just listing favorite podcasts, let’s categorize some favorites by tone, style, structure and subject matter to create a helpful map that you can refer to, to think about and find what kind of shows fit certain moods. This week I’ll cover podcasts with roots in comedy – the ones that attracted me to podcast listening in the first place.

The easiest to group together are, indeed, comedians’ interview podcasts, where the host is or was a stand-up comedian or comedic actor, and their show largely consists of an interview with a comic, actor, musician or other personalities or accomplished guests. 

The hallmarks of this format include WTF with Marc Maron, The Nerdist (Chris Hardwick) and The Adam Carolla Show. To a lesser extent, Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast and Penn Jillette’s Sunday School are doing a looser, longer, less structured version of this kind of show. But among those first three, there are still distinct differences. Maron precedes his interviews with 10 to 15 minute personal riffs, which fellow comedian and podcaster Pete Holmes once joked should inspire someone to create an app to skip those and get right to the interviews.

Of these three, Maron’s interviews are probably the most incisive and likely to be revelatory about their subjects. Hardwick, on “The Nerdist,” does the barest of introductory banter, with a couple of colleagues (Jonah Ray and Matt Mira) who occasionally chime in on the interviews. Hardwick’s style of interviewing is much looser and more deferential to the subject, but also more likely to get the interviewee to share an extended story not previously heard elsewhere. Lastly, there’s Carolla, to whom the guest is often an accessory to whatever discussion he is driving – and this may be why he has frequent repeat guests (like Jo Koy, Dana Gould, Dr. Drew, Judd Apatow and Matt Atchity), rather than Maron’s usually one-time only chats, or infrequent repeat visits as Hardwick does (Hardwick’s favorites usually only return once a year or less frequently, when there really is new ground to cover with them).

 Beyond these mainstays, there’s at least three other subgenres of comedy podcasts – ones that have some aspect of radio sketch comedy to them, such as Comedy Bang Bang, The Dana Gould Hour and Paul F. Tompkins’ different efforts; solo comedian shows without guests, like Jim Florentine’s “Comedy Metal Midgets” and Bill Burr’s “Monday Morning Podcast”; and live interview podcasts, recorded with an audience, like Jeff Garlin’s “By The Way.”

I know there are probably many more podcasts I’m probably missing here or failing to categorize – Aisha Tyler, Allison Rosen, Todd Barry, Todd Glass and Pete Holmes are stand-ups who all have interview podcasts as well. My current tendency is to want to hear a lighter take, and for that I’d say Hardwick rates the best. Others that I’ve just mentioned, like Carolla and Florentine, and Maron in his introductory riffs, are better when you’re primed for something more caustic. The artistic sketch style podcasts are an even deeper dive, requiring more focus. You won’t get much if you’re just letting those wash over you.

Next week, a look at the wider world outside comedy-based podcasts.

How podcasting is saving independent, in-depth journalism and commentary

BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Gawker, the Daily Beast and other online news sites are influencing journalism by pushing it toward shorter and shorter stories and items – in a way that critics say is debasing journalism and public debate about important issues. Podcasts, however, are changing journalism in a manner that those critics are likely to applaud – by popularizing longer treatment of stories and discourses about topics and issues.

The ability of broadcast radio to support open-ended entertainment programs like Adam Carolla’s show has declined. But some might say public radio has bloomed and expanded, with ever more long-form journalistic shows, like several offered on WNYC in New York, and through its associated smartphone app. However, even public radio may not be suited to the full range of what is possible for radio or audio format journalism.

The most prominent example of successful long-form podcast journalism is “Serial,” National Public Radio’s spin-off podcast that devoted 10 hours last fall to the case of Adnan Syed, the Baltimore-area high school student imprisoned for murder in 2000 based on questionable evidence. “Serial” has devoted its second season, still underway, to the mysteries around the apparent 2009 desertion of U.S. Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured and held by the Taliban in Afghanistan for five years.

“Serial” was spawned by the NPR program “This American Life,” and has attracted an audience of millions. “99% Invisible,” a podcast about how design works in various facets of life and influences people, originated as a radio show in San Francisco, but reaches far more listeners as a podcast than in its airings on some public radio stations, currently ranking 22^nd on the Stitcher List of listener figures compiled by the on-demand Internet radio service.

The Stitcher list, a top 100 of podcasts, is a barometer for what genres of podcasts are popular. The list currently has a varied mix of news or politics shows, comedy and entertainment shows, and specialized technology, science and medicine programs. A majority of these shows are independently spawned; a healthy contingent originate from NPR or public radio; and only a smaller handful are generated by pre-existing media entities such as ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Fox News, USA Today and Time.

So, aside from being a vibrant home for the kind of content that seems to be challenged in attracting an audience in text-based online outlets, podcasting also appears to be the last bastion of independent, but still popular, points of view that are not owned or controlled by the biggest media companies. That same Stitcher List contains programs including the storytelling shows The Moth and Risk, and personalities such as Glenn Beck, Alex Jones and Dan Savage – to name three whose points of view vary widely.

As this blog continues, I plan to explore multiple angles on the importance of podcasting, how the podcasting industry is developing, how to compare and contrast quality of specific shows, and whatever else comes to mind that falls under the umbrella of podcasting as a topic – and maybe even items that stray into the broader media landscape. I’m sure the point of view, the tone and the content will evolve, and I hope you’ll keep following.

What are podcast aggregators' prospects?

Housekeeping: This blog, begun last week, will now have its own homepage and has been named “Shash On Pod.”

In the first entry, I considered what the prospects are for podcasters or radio broadcasters planning to add video or virtual components to their offerings, as technology improvements make this more possible and less expensive to accomplish.

The more I thought about this development, the more it seemed that it goes hand in hand with what the business model for a podcast, satellite radio service or video entertainment service may be. Paid programs like Howard Stern on Sirius or Anthony Cumia’s independent video podcast, discussed last week, attract more resources to develop video content.

This week, let’s look at another aspect of podcasting – aggregation and networks. While even the most successful podcasts are often free, relying on a sponsorship model and including live reads of commercial copy in their episodes, the most popular ones, especially those in the comedy genre, only keep the most recent 25 or 50 episodes available for free and put older ones behind a paywall.

What are some of the most notable aggregations? One is Howl, a podcast “network” created by Midroll Media, a podcast advertising network owned by the E.W. Scripps media company. Howl’s foundation is a collection of “mini-series,” archives and recent episodes of Scott Aukerman’s Earwolf brand podcasts, its own “Wolfpop” podcasts, a library of comedy albums and extra premium content from Marc Maron, its most recently acquired member, and other popular podcasts. Howl charges $4.99 a month – a cost close to that of CBS All Access, the online offering of CBS television shows, to place it in a broader perspective of online media.

Is a paid podcast network viable? Last week, I critiqued Anthony Cumia’s offering on the basis that it was only one show for the subscription fee, so you really have to be a die-hard fan of him to want it. Howl offers numerous shows – all audio, of course – and that may save one the tedium of picking them out and managing all of the downloads manually through iTunes. One has to decide if that’s worth $4.99 a month – and whether throwing in about 80 comedy albums, some by performers with podcasts on the service, sweetens the deal enough, if easy access to all those podcasts hasn’t sold you on it.

The answer may be that a network like Howl has to start somewhere. If one could drill down into the numbers – comparing the proceeds based on the number of subscribers Howl has, with the overhead the service has to run its operations – it’s unlikely right now that the profits are large enough for it to be massively profitable.

Howl’s chances would be strengthened by two things – first, adding a lot more content. Howl has been called the “Netflix of podcasting,” but the size of its offering, compared to all available podcasts out there, is a very small fraction, if you compare it to the size of Netflix’s library as a portion of all available movies and video content. Secondly, growing the subscriber numbers exponentially. Addressing the first issue – content – could go far toward addressing the second issue.