Megaphone Partner, Spoke Media, discuss what it will take to push the podcast medium forward
Founder and president of Spoke Media, Keith Reynolds, sits down with Megaphone to give his thoughts on exciting trends and concerns we can expect in the future of podcasting
What is your current day job like?
Keith Reynolds: I am the Founder and President of Spoke Media, so I’m lucky enough for my day job to be running a podcast company.
What gets you excited about podcasting?
KR: I really love Art with a capital A, and I am particularly enamored with Storytelling. I came from the music business so I have always been in a non-visual medium, and then I started working at Audible, engineering and then directing audiobooks, and found myself developing a deep passion for audio storytelling. So when podcasts really started to boom several years ago, it felt like this beautiful new space to experiment and create new stories and new Art. And that’s what we try to do at Spoke - push the medium forward, find exciting new ways to tell interesting stories, develop new sounds and styles, and to do it all while showcasing stories, personalities, cultures and demographics that we don’t hear from enough.
What news and exciting trends do you see in podcasting for 2021?
KR: We are going to continue to see steady movement towards film and TV. I think it’s no secret that TV/film IP is seen by many in the podcast industry as a golden ticket, and that podcasting is a means to that end. So I think that drives a lot of interesting content and business decisions. I think a couple of the things I’m most excited about are fiction & kids content continuing to grow, and the continued experimentation with form. What can a podcast really be?
One thing I have been saying for a couple years is that as podcasting brings in more listeners that are not accustomed to the medium, are not the legacy public radio listeners, content creators are going to have to keep finding new ways to serve those audiences to keep them engaged, and I think you’re going to start seeing the podcast content landscape look more like the TV content landscape. As we see that happen more and more (it’s already happening), one thing I think we could see is shows modeled after different Reality TV formats. So we could be seeing a lot of new shows that are non-fiction but are not chat shows or narrative documentaries.
Are there any concerns you have for the industry?
KR: I think there is always a concern with monetization, which is just a factor of the industry. The economics will continue to catch up, so that doesn’t really keep me up at night. But on the topic of economics, I think there is a concern with how people (both audiences and financiers) view the value of podcasts. One thing that always frustrated me in the music business was that there is this thought that making music is cheap and easy compared to a TV show or movie. Audiences & financiers have a tangible idea in their minds of how much it costs to make something in the audiovisual medium. But with music and podcasting, people only seem to see the easiest version of the thing. Yes you can write and record a great song in a day. Yes you can make a dynamite podcast that takes an hour to record and two hours to edit & publish. But you can’t make Serial for $100 and a sandwich. And everyone seems to want Serial, but are expecting the time & money commitment of a chat show.
What are some of your personal favorite podcasts?
KR: Just as a strict fan, I really enjoy Hey Riddle Riddle and Hello from the Magic Tavern. On the sports side, the UK soccer podcast The Football Ramble is another one of my weekly go-to’s.
Some of my favorite more in-depth podcasts - huge fan of RadioLab, that was my introduction to the form way back when and I still listen today. I also love Freakonomics, was a big fan of Carrier, I thoroughly enjoy Every Little Thing, and thought The Wilderness was outstanding.
What has changed in your new world of work? Any big lessons or observations from COVID?
KR: There is obviously the physical realities of it with people working from home. We had to make some big adjustments, figure out how to deal with recording and a variety of other things in this new reality while still maintaining the high standards we’ve always held our productions to.
But I think the toughest thing to deal with is the mental aspect. It’s been mentally taxing for everyone throughout, but I heard someone use the phrase “second birthday syndrome” recently and that really stuck with me. It’s this idea that your first birthday in the pandemic can be looked at as a fluke, an anomaly, a one-off that you can treat with a light bit of tongue-in-cheek fun. But you get to your second birthday in the pandemic and the weight of a full year (and more) under these conditions really comes down on you hard. And we’ve all been experiencing that feeling. I’ve been experiencing it, our whole team has been, our whole world has been. And so at Spoke we try to talk about these things, we try to give people space and grace. We are living in extraordinary times and I think it’s important for everyone, especially employers, to recognize that, and to do everything in our power to help our people get through it. Not just physically day-to-day with things like Slack & Zoom, but also mentally - day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month - with grace & compassion.