How ‘Masters Of Scale’ Intends To Leverage Podcasting

Speaking yesterday at the What’s Now series organized by Reinvent’s Peter Leyden, Wait, What? co-founder June Cohen stated that “most people don’t listen to podcasts,” although she added right away that the audience for podcasts is doubling each year and growing quickly.

Podcasters are breaking into the broader culture. Established media personalities, such as Katie Couric, are turning to podcasting, seeing it as worthy of their time. The hosts of podcasts such as “S-Town” and “Pod Save America,” to name just a couple, are getting booked as guests on late-night talk shows.

Despite Cohen’s assessment, the first project by Wait, What? is a podcast, “Masters Of Scale,” featuring LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Cohen, who has a long history of innovating in online media, first at Wired and then with TED, approached the development of this podcast in a novel way.

In Cohen’s view, the first product of her new company just happens to be a podcast, and content is the platform, rather than just something that is made to put on a platform. That means devising the product first, and then figuring out ways to adapt it to different media or distribute it in different media. “Masters of Scale,” launched in May, has succeeded in finding a big audience, but podcasting is only its first format. The company plans to animate segments from the show to reach still greater audiences through YouTube and the online video medium.

It’s a game plan similar to what Cohen did at TED – taking the non-profit’s popular online lectures and finding other platforms, such as terrestrial radio, to increase its reach. Working with NPR, they created the “TED Radio Hour” (also available in podcast form, of course) by adding music, effects and sound production to enhance the dynamics of the material in the lectures for audiences who would only be getting the audio.

Wait, What? isn’t just re-purposing content, however. The company sees podcasting, virtual reality and online video as media that can be used, but it’s the programming and the content that rules the day in the approach the company takes. Whatever the content or media product, it has to be “genre-defining,” Cohen said, adding that the company is concerned with what the users’ experiences will be.

Although “Masters Of Scale” may not stay planted only in the podcast format, the choice to begin the program (or product) in that format is a testament to podcasting’s potential – if a media innovator like Cohen sees it as a channel that can most effectively launch a program and the ideas it contains.

Podcast Of The Moment:

The Trap Set With Joe Wong, Phil Collins interview, June 21, 2017. If you know me well, you know I’m a big Phil Collins and Genesis fan, but despite that, even if you know nothing about them, or have no interest in them, this is a compelling and candid interview that is interesting to hear. Wong’s podcast specializes in conversations with drummers, so he has excellent credibility, which no doubt helped him get this interview. Wong gets insight from Collins on music, his career, but most importantly, Collins’ wry personality at age 66 – his philosophical perspective at this age, his thoughts on life and what’s important.  

What’s In Pandora’s Podcast Box?

There’s a further development to note in the ongoing saga of Pandora’s podcast distribution efforts.

According to Variety earlier this month, new Pandora CEO Roger Lynch said he wants the company to create a “podcast genome project” that will operate the same way its music service does – allowing listeners to custom build stations based on related traits of the music. In this case, however, Pandora would stream podcasts with similar genes (or subjects, one assumes) in their content.

As mentioned in this November 2017 entry, Pandora had done little to expand upon its first podcast distribution effort begun in 2016. But Lynch had begun saying he would revisit Pandora’s non-music programming. Lynch’s latest statement provides some idea what direction that effort may take, but raises more questions.

The first question is what the value might be in streaming related podcasts, when the format is typically an hour long, not a three- to five-minute song. Listeners who would stream multiple podcasts for hours on end are probably a rare breed.

The second question, or idea about how a “podcast genome project” that Lynch proposes would make more sense is if the streaming of related pieces was done with clips rather than entire episodes. This would operate using the short clips that are the basis of Spoke, the social media sharing app developed by SiriusXM, which has become a big backer of Pandora.

From this logical progression, a third question would be whether the Spoke method or the “genome project” method is more likely to catch on with listeners. It seems likely that the listeners either method is likely to attract are ones who are not habitual podcast listeners, but rather those who are new to that kind of spoken word content. It could be a gateway for many more streaming audio listeners to get hooked on full-length podcasts.

Podcasts of the Moment:

Reed Birney on “Little Known Facts,” June 28, 2016. Actress Ilana Levine hosts this podcast, which focuses on interviewing experienced theater actors (including some who are also well known, or somewhat known for TV and film work) for their life and career insights – capturing both industry and general interest observations. It’s a different spin on what Catie Lazarus does in her “Employee Of The Month” podcast and live show. In this episode, guest Reed Birney, who may be best known for playing the vice president in “House Of Cards,” described how he dealt with a fallow period in his career some years ago, by taking forced time out to go tour Europe and have a different kind of life experience.

“Trials of Dan & Dave,” June 27, 2017. This episode of ESPN’s “30 For 30” audio documentary series (a spinoff of the channel’s video documentaries) chronicles two sprinters who were the subject of a big Reebok marketing campaign in 1992, and what happened when the narrative of their Olympic quest took an unexpected turn. It’s well produced (as is this series as a whole) and it included firsthand interview accounts from its subjects.