In the afternoon.
Afternoon
delight.
With Todd and Rob.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I have no idea there. We kinda
pulled the trigger and then things went
went boom.
Yeah. Doing doing live streams with these live
stream platforms, there's a lot of timing involved.
Sometimes they go sideways on you. Yeah. And,
I did auto start on YouTube today, and
that may not have been the right choice.
Yeah. Well
Because, it it it,
it's kind of weird when you do auto
start because
even though it's delayed, as soon as I
saw it go live, it was during the
32nd countdown. So I I had to figure
something else out for that. But anyway, hey,
everybody. Welcome to the new media show. We
are back here. At least I'm back here.
Yeah. You're yeah. You're the one that traveled,
not me. I'm in the same spot. Yeah.
It was kind of funny because I I
went on a 3 day tour,
kind of a little Gilligan's Island pub there,
a 3 hour to a 3 day tour.
And, the morning that I was getting ready
to depart,
my
resort host texted me while I was eating
breakfast. He said, hey. You know, they they
went to typhoon condition
flag 4. Some whatever they use a flag
system over here. I'm like, oh, okay. How
long before the storm? Oh, it seems like
24 hours away. And I'm like, great. I
said, I'm still leaving on time for the
airport. And he says, oh, no.
He says they cancel everything immediately.
No ferries, no flights. I'm like, so
how do I leave?
He said, you don't.
Right? Yeah. You you're there for the duration.
Whatever that is. That's right. You you don't.
And,
about the time my flight was gonna leave,
the weather actually started to deteriorate. So it
wasn't really even 24 hours
and then I just got stuck and,
so I was supposed to leave on a
Tuesday and I end up leaving on a
Saturday and what they did was Friday night,
they lifted the flag.
So there's the option of riding a ferry
for 11 hours then taking 5 hours on
a bus, but there was floods and mudslides
and everything along the route. We were going
home or I was going home from the
ferry.
And the other right was to take this
banka boat,
held about 20 people,
about an hour and 40 minute ride on
the open ocean
right after a typhoon
and go to an airport called or an
area called Kataklion, which is close to Boracay.
They have a dozen flights out of there
a day. So
I got up at 3 o'clock in the
morning. Did a 2 hour bus van ride
from hell on this most
bumpy road you can imagine. And,
got in the bunk boat and landed and
booked my airline ticket in what's called the
tricycle on the way to the airport, checked
in
and literally boarded. I think I was it
was that quick,
and, was out of there. But anyways, back
here Saturday. So here we are. Welcome to
the new media show everyone in Todd's adventures
from escaping from Alcatraz.
At least it is. Yeah. So That's how
I'm terminally.
Yeah. So some of the big topics, you
can probably tell from the artwork we we
put up there is,
trying to kind of pull apart and expose
kind of the the download fraud that's been
in podcasting for many, many years. And then
also, let's, you know, let's talk about the
Joe Rogan and Donald Trump
event that happened on the Internet with podcasting,
which is, you know, it's always
a kind of a milestone moment,
oftentimes, because we've seen this happen, even back
with George w Bush
and and Obama,
getting on podcast many years ago. And I
think we can draw some correlation to that.
And then also
the rapid decline of mainstream media. So let's
let's let's dive into it. Yeah. So so
I guess the question
is who
of course, what the story what we're talking
about is a I guess it's a newspaper
in Italy.
In Spain. Spain that has made the top
podcast list,
by Triton
and,
I think, PodTrak as well.
And having these, you know, 18,000,000,
downloads,
which is a pretty, you know, remarkable number
for a news
podcast.
118.
No. 118
as missing a digit.
Yeah.
So you know, it turns out that it
was just auto loading. They were pre loading
the media every time their website
and that's
you know, here's a I basically has a
couple of questions on this.
Number 1, who's their host?
I don't know. Odds are it's probably a
host out of Spain. But yeah. And
number 2, this is a direct violation of
IAB podcast measurement guidelines.
You know, we had an issue
Blueberry did,
back, I believe, in January or February where
we,
introduced some code into our web player that
was causing auto loading and we caught it.
But we had to go back and
basically make sure that there was number 1,
no advertisers was
impacted
so that we didn't overbill an advertiser. Number
2, had to inform
our,
the folks that were affected and it wasn't
what was weird, it wasn't all
users.
It was just a certain subset of users
that were using a certain feature.
And,
and basically number 3, we had to pull
that data out of the stats.
So it's, you know, it's something now that,
we have specifically,
if we go in there and touch any
code with the player,
we we basically done or run a QA
analysis on the
embed to make sure none of this activity
is happening.
And so it can happen to anyone. It
happened to us, but you know, we were
we were monitoring for it
and,
the I don't. It appears after James sent
them
this email that this behavior stopped.
I don't think we've we've totally painted the
picture of what's going on here yet. I
think we're we're getting to the end of
the conversation before we've actually talked about what's
actually happened here. So the the, the episode
that is in question here,
so I guess it was being tracked by
Triton
out of Latin America,
is based on their their podcast ranker. So
it does have a connection to Triton Digital,
and it does look like it's hosted by
Triton. Oh.
So
that's the platform that's going on here. And
it it does contain, I I I guess,
programmatic advertising in the content.
So, you know, I mean, just think about
the implications of that around automatic
revenue and advertisers
going into this
and being being counted. It's a fairly small
download. It's only 14 megabytes. So
I I'm assuming that the content isn't very
long. Right.
But it's it's basically,
downloading
numbers
have predominantly happened over mobile
phones in the browser.
Oh, so So this is where most of
this has been happening.
So and if we look kinda historically to
this, that's usually where the abuse is, is
around
players that are on web pages that are
able to
automatically trigger a download. And we've seen this
in the past.
This is not not a new thing that
people have been doing.
So so each time you go to a
website, it triggers the download in the background.
The user doesn't even know what's happening. Right.
It's usually how it works. So anyway, go
go ahead and tell your story about how
you as a platform are attacking this. Well,
you know, we have to it's it's part
of our IB podcast measurement guideline standards.
Right. So we, you know, we had to
e we mail emailed the IB, said, hey,
we had an issue. Here was the period
of time that was affected.
Here's the remedy that we did to make
sure that Yeah. This wasn't gonna happen. Here's
what we did with our customers. Here's what
we did with any impacted advertisers.
But for us, it was fortunate. We had
no impacted advertisers because we have people on
programmatic as well.
So and it was completely our fault. We
just missed a flag
in in one of the settings. And,
so it was on us for this mistake,
but we
self reported,
announced it publicly on our website,
and really did everything we could from a
mitigation standpoint to make sure that
all affected parties knew how their stats were
affected for this period of time where this
issue was in place. And then I had
to go and set new processes in place.
But so the question is on their
website,
was it the player
that was triggering the download?
Well, it's probably either the player or or
the website code. 1 of the 2. Usually,
how this works in it, it's a fairly
simple,
adjustment to the player code Yeah. Is to
actually have like auto play. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But I think that can be
Well not
not actually going into a player. That that
that can actually just happen in the background.
Yeah. There's an actual setting
on
most HTML players within the code to,
turn off preloading.
Preloading. Right. Exactly. That's what it was.
So,
and and if if you preload,
that's against the measurement guidelines.
And,
you know, I would think, you know, we
we caught ourselves,
with with the issue and,
you know, of course,
it's it's ironic
because
Rob, you know, I've been a pretty
I've been pretty staunch on,
you know, this this particular issue and I've
called other companies out. So I you know,
the chickens came home to roost. I had
to call myself out in this instance. Right?
Yeah.
So
but And it's usually done by the
by the
the platform that's making
the content available,
on on the web.
Yeah. And it it's an easy adjustment to
to the players usually is how this works.
Usually very Yeah. Very simple fix.
But,
you know, all the big platforms like Spotify
and Apple and so like that don't enable
that kind of functionality.
So,
you know, I think that there is,
Now Iheart had the same type of issue.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it was
also done
over their their web experience as well.
That that happened back in 2018
over a 1000 radio show websites. Yeah. That's
When you think about all the
all the Iheart websites
playing their podcast episodes automatically and cashing them.
Yeah. That's bad news.
Right. So, you know, and for for us,
it was like,
you know, stop the presses and
you know, it's one of those emails you
get from the team member and I you
know, I'm like
you can swear like a sailor.
Because of the
you know, what we're gonna have to to
deal with.
So I I think that,
you know, and it's again, it's part of
the
regular auditing. You have to know one thing
that we is unique in our IB
measurement guideline certification
is that
the folks that are using a redirect,
that we do not have control of their
website.
In other words, they're using a different player
or whatever.
Before they can use our redirect, there's a
certification page that pops up that says, you
understand
that your
web player
cannot preload.
You know, you have to make sure this
is a setting that is doesn't preload and
we have basically a,
a self affidavit
of the podcaster that basically says, no. Oh.
Yes. I understand. I will not preload and
we make them go through a series of
steps
before we allow them to use the redirect.
Just because we can't control the player
on people that are using our stats and
our redirects. So and again, that was part
of our
sort of Well, that's the players that are
that are embeddable from your host. Right? Which
Right. Which if they were using a player
that came off of the blueberry platform Right.
Then you do have control over it. Right.
And and those folks, we don't make them
certified because they're customers. So non customers.
So,
you know, we basically have had that was
part of our
certification
requirements.
You know, basically, they said, hey. You have
to present this,
a notification and get people to sign off.
This is the only way we are going
to certify
your redirect
is if you basically have, and we're supposed
to self police that. Now it's very, very
hard
to in in what you really do is
you set a trigger. You set a trigger
for web browsers.
You because web browsers are usually,
you know, right now, depending on some blueberry
customers or make can be high as 10
or 12%,
but most most folks are very, very low
numbers on the web player. They're 3%.
So we basically, in our system, have a
threshold that says, once
a web stat goes above certain percentage
on a show by show basis, it flags
us in the system says, go look, that's
how we caught ourselves
was all of a sudden we started seeing
boom boom boom boom boom, you know, 25
shows are above the threshold and we're like,
what? What's going on?
Yeah. This does raise some questions around Triton
Digital's kind of practices
as well in my view based on what
you just said.
Are are they reviewing
clients that are using
3rd party players,
as a method of delivery that is part
of their
their, podcast ranker.
Well, that
is being gained here. Obviously, it was gained.
I don't think they were held to that
same level because
it was specifically for the redirect because we
couldn't control the player.
Well, that's what's going on here. If they're
part of the podcast ranker, that they must
be part of Triton's
redirect or,
you know, so Triton can gather that information
because they were ranked.
The show was ranked 12th the 12th biggest
show by downloads
in Latin America. Well, being that when we
did our first certification
with IAB, our hosting did not when we
did the hosting pure hosting
certification using raw log files,
they didn't have to do this notice. The
only time that came into effect was when
we
got our redirect
certified in round 2
and this is where these additional requirements were
put upon us,
to make sure
AKA
that something out of our control we couldn't,
you know, and be honest with you. Now
that I think about it,
there's nothing to stop a hosting customer from
using a different player.
So
potentially, that should have been an effect from
the beginning. So know, maybe this is something
for IB. Oftentimes, the hosting platform doesn't know
their client is doing that. Right? Because there
there there's no probably
way for Triton to know that
this newspaper was using its own player. But
this is something simple
to to monitor.
You know, you just have to like, you
know, and we just said, okay. What's the
threshold?
You know, what threshold should we set
for
this type of activity?
And that's how we we know.
You know, just how we knew if there
was an issue is that was our self,
you know, our flag that was set. So
I don't know. I'm
I'm sure this is gonna create some
interesting
conversations for Triton Digital if this show was
on their programmatic platform. Oh, it's it's this
is what I was scared about when we
had our
our flub
was okay. Did now do I have to
go back to SoundStack
and say, hey,
these x thousands of downloads
are
not to be paid.
And do we have to refund? Because they
the advertiser has paid for those downloads.
Do you know do we or they're obligated
to pay them whether or not they have
yet? That's the question. Do we have to
write a check
back to
the the because you know, that was my
big thing here. We were involved before
many, many years ago with an audit that
required
a media company, a significant one, to write
a significant check
back to advertisers
based on host read over billing.
So,
you know, I was I was quite concerned.
But you know, it was it was quick
enough. The damage was small, but we had
nobody on programmatic that was affected with this
specific,
issue.
Todd, do you think that there's any risk
to
regular podcasters
that maybe
they need to think about,
so they maybe don't fall into this? Or
do you think that every time this happens,
it happens with willful intent?
Oh, I think most podcasters
probably don't even know and it's not willful
intent.
So the question is,
was this
situation with this newspaper
was it just an accident? Was it an
accident? Yeah. Did someone,
you know, some developer have a flag set?
You know, again,
you don't know. And if they don't respond
and make a statement, which, you know, you
would hope that they would at some point
make some sort of public statement.
I think we went through a period of
time, Todd, when it was it was kind
of in vogue, I guess, to
to when you load a web page
that has a player on it to,
turn on the automatic play. Right? And I
think we went through a period of time
when it was like, no, that's not a
good thing to do. Don't don't automatically start
playing an episode when a page loads. I
think there's if I think there's 3 settings.
And if you're a developer, I might be
wrong. There is
autoplay,
there's cache,
and then there's
one more I think where you you basically
try to download the whole.
But it being that was only 14 megs,
then guarantee you that that triggered
the the download number because of the you
know, the 62nd play in a 14 meg
file, that means it's probably a 14 minute
show.
So just the pre caching alone would be
enough to trigger. Now this is, you know,
this is not a popular thing but I've
said for a long long time
that the one minute threshold should be higher.
And,
that has gotten much scorn and, you know,
me needing to wear a bulletproof vest because
the
I I think it should be 3 to
5 minutes of
content before you count it as a download.
But that's me.
That's not the other 30 some companies that
are involved in
in basically,
you know,
fostering measurement guidelines. Yeah. I think
and, Todd, I think you could take the
position that that may be good for the
advertising,
side of podcasting as well because
I mean, clearly the first three minutes of
an episode is highly prized by sponsors and
advertisers. I don't think I think what it
really is,
if you run the numbers,
there's probably
a financial impact.
So
Yeah. I I I think that is, you
know, a true,
you know, if if you if you because
it's very easy
then in in our algorithm to
flip the integer
from 60 seconds to a 180
and
and you can see the delta and I
know The numbers drop fast. I know I
know what the delta is.
So
yeah.
Yeah. So there's lots of layers to this
conversation. That's why I wanted to talk about
it. Is it it's it
it may appear, you know, I mean, this
this kind of news broke on pod news
dot net. Thank you, James Cridland. But, you
know, this thing has many layers to it
that I think podcasters need to understand
and have comprehension of because it has implications
for a lot of things.
And, and, you know, it's very easy to,
to do this and it's also
very easy to get into trouble with it.
And I think from a platform perspective, it's
it's a reoccurring thing. And that's
one of the reasons I wanted to talk
about it was is because there is a
history to this, and there is
a history of impact and and problems,
that people have. But yet, I I I
do know that there's this underlying
desire that some,
you know, engineers or programmers have or marketing
people have
that maybe the performance of the playback
may benefit from a a cash download type
of a situation. I know that this was
the conversation that we had
when I was talking to Facebook before they
entered. You know, I don't necessarily want to
bring them up, but,
came into
wanting to support podcasting was that they were
concerned about playback performance on their platform.
And so this this may be, you know,
maybe it's maybe it was an accident, but
maybe the intent really was
to provide a better,
more responsive playback experience. When that user hit
the play button Right. The show stopped started
playing right away. And there's not that delay.
Now Randy says, I've learned to take all
my stats with a grain of salt.
I've noticed some weird things with my stats.
I've noticed that when they're trying to get
me to upgrade my plan.
So what's interesting about that statement, Randy, is,
way we worked our stats at Blueberry
is,
as long as you're not running
advertising,
you're good.
You know, you you we've got customers that
use a lot of bandwidth, you know.
And,
and but if you start commercializing
your show and you are on a flat
rate plan,
then I have a threshold that I look
at and I say, okay. That shows busted
and I don't use
stats. I use bandwidth because I get a
bandwidth report for each show and you bust
that little threshold. I'm gonna go over and
look at your show and say, oh, yeah.
They're running.
They're not running ads. And I, you know,
they could go on with my day. But
if they are running
ads and they're become commercial, then I'll say,
hey. You know, we should have you on
the pro plan.
You know, the flat rate plans are designed
for folks that are not commercial, not running
advertising.
And there's a fine line there between 2
because what if the person just promoting,
shirts in a show? Well, I'm not gonna
go and they're not gonna count that as
advertising.
But if they're running a, HelloFresh ad,
then that's kind of like the threshold
that we set.
And we give shows the options are going
on programmatic too.
So you know, I think
but you know, I've never asked someone to
upgrade because of their stats number. I've asked
them to upgrade because of their bandwidth usage.
And again,
probably in the past 5 years, that's maybe
5 customers.
And I wanted to have one one last
little piece to this puzzle too for people
to think about in regards to what's going
on here. Is it,
each time this happens, it's another,
I don't know, chip out of the tree
of of the rationale for why we need
to move beyond downloads,
because this type of activity isn't gonna happen
in a stream.
So this, you know, you typically don't cash
a stream. Right? So
Well, you you can.
You can. The difference between a stream and
a progressive download is very narrow.
So this could happen in a stream too,
because let's be frank,
it's still a physical media file.
Yeah. But it's I think it's less likely.
I think it's more likely to happen as
a as a stream.
Well, most most streaming players don't necessarily cash.
Don't don't store anything. All they do is
just play as it as it gets delivered
to the players. But again, the it's it's
the same.
I I think you have a higher risk
because in streaming platforms, they want the experience
to be hit play. It goes. So I
bet you I bet you streaming platforms are
caching. I just I bet they are.
I mean, I've done a lot of work
with streaming platforms and they typically only deliver
what's
what the limitations
is. Because they're they're usually encoded in a
variable bit rate type of a type of
a delivery or a fixed bit rate. So
they're only gonna deliver to the player at
the bandwidth that it was set for.
And
and I don't know that there's a lot
of these players out there. I think it's
a good good question, but,
that that actually cache the stream content. I
think when the player closes up,
all the content's gone.
But as it comes in, it just gets
consumed, but it doesn't get stored anywhere. Again,
from a technical standpoint, the difference because you're
still serving physic and this is the thing
is so bullshit. So, though, we wanna go
to streaming technology. Well, guess what? It's still
a physical file sitting somewhere.
It's it's not if you it's you are
not yeah. But it's not sitting locally. It's
not sitting locally. It's only sitting in the
server.
Yeah. Just like now, Your podcast media is
sitting in a server.
So Yeah. But you can't,
download in the background a file that's,
streaming on a server. So No. Yes. You
can. Absolutely.
As soon as that That's unusual. As soon
as that page loads, that's got that URL
link in there. Absolutely.
So what you're saying is when you stream
an episode, a true streaming, I'm not talking
about progressive download No. We're talking about the
thing is you gotta be careful here because
storing that episode
because it transferred to the client player faster
than the set bit rate on the stream.
Saying is that stream that if you go
for podcast,
not what we're doing right here. Mhmm. There
is a physical media file somewhere that cannot
be changed.
I know but that's not what's being counted
in a player though.
Well, again,
I think you'll have the same problem. I
might be wrong but I'm sure you have
because it's it's it's it's all semantics at
that point.
And I think it's quite different. I don't
think so.
Because maybe we should bring on a streaming
expert to
define this, but it can be done in
a variety of ways. Most streaming
is not from
fixed media. Streaming is live. When you hear
when you when you talk to people who
have radio shows, you join in progress.
You don't join at the beginning
of streaming programs.
So that's the big difference here.
Well, there's live streams and there's on demand
streams.
Okay. I got most of my audience from
my early radio show from on demand stream.
Same thing. There's a physical file sitting somewhere
for the on the server, not on the
client. So what we're talking about here Yeah.
Of course.
Is a file that's being transferred as a
download
to the the player device. It's it's a
cache of it's a cache of media is
what it is. And it it looks the
same.
It's interpreted by the by the serving server
as a the same thing as a complete
file. I don't I don't think so. I
think streaming when you hit stream, it's the
same for podcast media, fixed podcast media. I
might be wrong, but it's
it's the same file.
But it's not being transferred. It's being played
to to the player. But still, it's
it's only delivering as much bandwidth as the
server is configured to deliver. Yeah. I I
don't know about
that. But anyway, let's hope we never go
to that. Well, Todd, I used to run
2 streaming
streaming servers.
1 for real networks and one for
for for Windows Media Server. And I I
had to go in and set the delivery
bandwidth to the players.
So so if that was set at 32
k or 64 k or whatever it was,
that's all that was delivered to the player
was exactly what that bandwidth was that was
allocated for that media file.
So it doesn't matter what it's encoded at
necessarily in the server. Well, face then when
if we go back to Facebook, all their
stuff is streamed.
So if they wanted to precash
But that's the same thing that, YouTube does
too.
So when you're streaming on YouTube like we
are right now,
that is truly a stream. Right. It's being
stored,
as it comes in
in YouTube, as it's coming in. It's being
it's building a a
streaming file on their servers that they can
be delivered
on demand as a stream. Right. And that's
that's probably gonna be a variable bit rate
stream, because it could be a 4 k
stream. It could be an HD stream or
it can be a standard definitions. Well, I
I think when you click play on YouTube,
you don't get a delay. It starts playing
immediately. So that tells me that they're cashing.
That's well, that's the behavior of a streaming
server, is that it's only gonna deliver it's
gonna start playing instantaneously,
as those bits come in to the player.
Same thing with the audio file. So
again
Well, it's it's different because the
the download,
it it can download faster
than the playback
on a on a podcast download. Right? So
it's progressive downloads, so it depends on how
fast your bandwidth connection is. But on YouTube
It'll deliver the whole media file but it's
only gonna play it at the bit rate
that the media file is set at. But
YouTube does the same thing. I can have
my Internet go off and my YouTube video
will play for 3 or 4 minutes before
it shuts off.
So
they're doing something.
Try it sometime. They're cashing into the players
is probably what they're doing. Cashing, but it's
not being Anyway. Well,
hopefully, we don't switch.
Well, this is the this is this is
really at the core of the bigger conversation
that continues
to bubble out there around this
this conflict between
the advertising industry wants
increasingly wants podcasting to be a streaming delivery
method because they get better metrics out of
that. Right? And why do they get better
metrics out of it is because they can
see when the stream stops and they can
see when the stream ends.
Right? And they have an exact measurement on
that because as
the content's delivered to the player,
there's a countdown clock there. And it's now
granted this could be done with podcasting too.
But as you've said in the past, it's
not as precise. Right? So,
you know, the
client side can track it probably better than
the server side. What's different here with the
streaming with, like, a YouTube is that the
server side sees
that same data that you would get out
of the player side.
And so with the progressive download, you're not
getting that data as as accurate at the
server side.
Well, anyway, we'll see what happens.
Yeah. Well, no. I think this is a
conflict. I think,
podcasting is gonna have to decide at some
point, and I think these big platforms are
gonna push the issue. And I think it's
already happening
that their advertisers are demanding to know
much more accurate and detailed metrics about when
their ads are heard. Yeah. Well, I I
don't know if they've
checked here lately or not, but I think
it's all bullshit because
they already have plenty of studies that says
podcast advertising works better than,
you know, any other
advertising. So I think they need to just
get off on,
you know, it's all about
chasing the big dollars and not worrying about
the average podcaster out there.
Yeah. I think that
that that is true.
And
and these advertisers or these brands, whatever, have
gotten used to digital buying. Yeah. And that
that that they're used to buying into streaming
radio.
They're used to buying
streams on
Youtube.
They're used to buying it in this method
and then then you throw into the mix
downloads
and it it complicates their decision. That was
all solved and we changed the methodology
from downloads to plays.
Right. But
we both know that that's that's kinda BS
as well. So Yeah. You know? So everyone's
everyone's got That's part of the Everyone's got
plays. What I'm talking about. Everyone's got plays
now.
Right.
Well, let's let's kinda move on and talk
about what we saw this past week with,
Joe Rogan and Donald Trump and what that
means
for
a few things. Have you seen all the
discussion? Did you see that Rogan put that
video up on x Because Twitter and not
Twitter,
you could not find the full video on
YouTube. You could only find clips.
So some well, some monkey business was going
on there. Let's be more precise about that.
What what was actually happening was,
you did a search for
Joe Rogan
and Donald Trump in the search box. Right.
You couldn't find it. That's right. Right? So
you had to go to actually Joe Rogan's
experience channel
on YouTube, and it was in the
the list of episodes that he had. So
That was really the only way to find
it. So,
something's got And he still got 40,000,000 views.
And he goes makes you go,
40,000,000 views and it couldn't be found by
search. And I Right. Nothing nothing Can you
imagine
how many views he would have had if
it would have come up in search? Think
think about the monkey businesses being who's stepping
on the scales over there?
Well, I think we know who. Right?
It's Google. Right? Right.
So but but looking at the big picture
of this Oh, yeah.
Amazing numbers. Trump going on podcasts,
just just the ones prior to the Joe
Rogan conversation has generated almost 24,000,000
views
on on Donald Trump being on a variety
of big podcasters. I mean, like like he's
been on
the
I think it's the 2nd largest and the
3rd largest podcast
on,
Spotify.
The Sean Ryan Show and the Theo Bond
podcast. And here here's the thing that I
think is is
my point I made,
on Twitter
was
Rogan stream that show. Right? It was was
it streamed? Does he stream that those interviews?
No. It's not a live show. It's not
a live show. It's it's totally recorded and
then published into Spotify and into YouTube and
into his podcast. So the question is,
did he edit?
And with a 3 hour program, I don't
think he edited it all.
Now I think he's got too much integrity
to to do that kind of stuff. So
was,
Call Her Daddy or whatever that show that
had,
Kamala. Am I pronouncing it right? Because I
don't wanna get yelled at
here. I believe so. Okay.
Did
did
did they edit that
interview?
I couldn't answer that one precisely either. But
So I think this isn't this is where
there's an opportunity here. You look at the
controversy that came out of 60 minutes replacing
an answer,
with another interview
doing a swap aru.
Now we're talking about mainstream media. Yeah. We're
talking about mainstream media. Right. So
if, if a,
if podcast
really want to throw a continual wrench into
old media, we're gonna call them old media
today.
What would be real interesting
is
for a show like Rogan, a show like,
caller daddy and, you know, whatever,
where if Theo Vaughn or whatever, it would
be nice to have a running,
a clock. Of course, it could change the
clock,
but it'd be nice to have a running
clock or something in there that would prove
that there was no
or disclaimer
that there was no editing done on the
interview.
So that
us, as consumers
of the content, whatever political side you're on,
know if you have gotten
the full
context
of an interview
without any monkey business being done in removing
words.
It's harder to edit video and make it
look smooth.
Audio very, very simple.
Matter of fact, I did on my show
the other day. I forgot
first two minutes of my podcast. So I
had to record the
re rerecord the first two minutes.
So
I think what we have here is a
situation where
trust
in media,
going back to podcasting is going to be
the
it's gonna be a linchpin here because we
can't trust. It doesn't matter if you're Fox,
CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC.
It doesn't matter what alphabet soup you
watch on mainstream or old stream media.
They can edit
and take sound bites and you don't get
the full context.
So I think context in this day and
age is incredibly
important because you can take anything that we
say here and take a 15 second
sound bite of that and make us sound
like the whole most horrible monsters in the
whole world if you don't have the full
context of something. So
it's not that extreme, but you get what
I'm saying. They've done this, repeatedly repeatedly to
fit their narrative.
So if you have a unedited
Theoban,
call her daddy. Is that the show? Call
her
daddy. Oh, yeah. As far as the Yeah.
The And the show that Kamala did. Yeah.
And then and then in Rogen
and now Vance is gonna go on.
These unedited
will actually show you
what you really wanna know about a candidate.
Yeah. Let's be I'm gonna pull it back
a little bit on saying unedited.
I do think that the Joe Rogan podcast,
probably
maybe has some edits in it, but it's
it's important to think about the context of
what the edits are. Right? If they're editing
for
the beginning and the end Right. And maybe
editing for
gaps in their content or whatever. So Oh,
great. Whatever.
Yeah. They'll say Joe had to go to
the bathroom or something.
It's okay to edit that kind of stuff.
Right? Yeah.
But it's it's not okay if you're editing
to change the There it is. What Donald
Trump said
or to change the
the question that Joe Rogan said, which
sometimes,
this is what has gotten, you
know, you know, out of control out there
in the political realm is when people take
snippets from Yep.
A conversation
and reinterpret it as something
unintended.
On the part of the person saying it,
because they didn't take the full context of
it. That's the real danger of this. But
but it yeah. It gets back to this,
Todd, that all the research is showing that
the trust in
podcasts
is so much higher than mainstream media right
now because of the authentic conversations. You know,
the 3 hour chats. A 3 hour.
Yeah. Even if they do even if they
Joe Rogan is the question. Even if they
do edit, it's 3 hours.
It's still 3 hours. Right?
You know, and but again,
if they haven't edited,
then you get to see
the beginning, the middle and the end.
Yeah. And all the superfluous interactions
that happen
from a question to an answer, not
not the 15 second sound bite.
Mhmm. And it
makes it doesn't matter which candidate,
but they've you know, obviously, we've seen this
be weaponized
in a big way against Trump in a
big way.
And maybe to Kamala Kamala too. You know,
they've taken sound bites from her that you're
like, what what is what is this word
soup? You know, but we maybe we didn't
hear the beginning and the end.
And maybe the perspective would be different if
we heard the beginning and the end and
not just the sound bite.
The news cycles can't go for 3 hours
because, you know, they're on a 30 minute
news cycle.
So Yeah. It could be taken advantage. I
mean, a lot of voters are fairly low
information
voters. Right? So,
you know, this concept of,
snapshots and sound bites is is certainly an
important,
factor in a political campaign. So I was
watching the Facebook and tick TikTok responses. This
because I was generally very curious what people's
if it would cause people to flip. Now
there were some people that said, oh, now
I'm voting for him and oh, no, I'm
not.
You know, so there was definitely people,
change their minds
and I think that's
the key here and having the ability to,
again, not just hear a sound bite, but
hear the beginning, middle, the end, the full
story.
Yeah. And, you know, I listened
I listened to the 3 hours and there
was a few things and I was like,
wow.
And, you know, and
and you know, the same thing with,
and and I listened to the other interview
as well and I was like,
okay.
But again, I don't know
on caller daddy if they
edited it or not.
I'm suspicious that they may have, but they
may not have. But I think it would
be good for all of those
podcasters to come out and say, yeah. We
we we didn't edit. Right.
In in k e, we didn't edit the
context to the beginning, middle, and end. You
got the full
It's the editing of the context of the
conversation. Right.
One other piece of this that we haven't
talked about, which maybe draws some
interesting,
contextual correlation around the distribution
of content like this right now is is
that the the numbers that I've seen as
of October 26th
was that the Rogan
audio podcast
got 3,100,000
downloads.
Mhmm.
I don't know what the total number is
today. It's a few days past that.
But
Twitter x got 18,000,000
views of the same
media file. Yeah. I was I was gonna
load it here and look. So you
you and then 40,000,000
views on YouTube. Yeah. And you kinda, you
know, you paint the picture
and I've, I've, I've said this before on
this podcast, you know,
was it Steven Bartlett from the CEO of
a podcast,
the CEO
of Diary of a CEO podcast. Mhmm.
We commented a podcast movement that he felt
that podcasting felt small.
And so I guess if you put it
on the context
of what I'm seeing here with the Joe
Rogan numbers,
let's just give give
Joe Rogan the benefit of a doubt on
his audio podcast that maybe he had 5,000,000
Mhmm.
Downloads of his audio podcast, but yet he
had 18,000,000 views of the full episode on
X and 40,000,000 views on YouTube. What does
that say about the
the media landscape right now around the same
content?
Well, let me do a do me Where's
the scale? Well,
how many people watch CNN primetime?
In the 8 to 11 PM, CNN averaged
893
1,000 among the 25 to 54 and 3.4
3.463000000
among
p 2. So,
p 2 plus, whatever that is. That was
CNN's strongest
Monday through Thursday prime time performance since the
week of the presidential Biden inauguration.
So
so 3 point let's say
CNN 4,200,000.
And that's again people that come in and
come out between
8 and 11. Now let's look at Fox.
So what you're talking about is the prime
time viewership
of of of CNN from 4 to 8
PM. Is that what you're saying? Eastern? Yeah.
So Fox News
averaged,
a little bit different time
here. Fox in total, Fox News averaged 1.4
3
viewership increasing year to year and a 194,000
plus 48.
In prime time, Fox News garnered 2,500,000
viewers
and 320.
So about the same about the same number.
Although I think when they look at the
real rankings, Fox is killing CNN
hand over foot,
in whatever their ratings, you know, when they
when they actually do the Nielsen ratings or
whatever.
MSNBC.
How many people watch MSNBC
primetime?
Oh, it's probably,
radically less. A 1.4 oh, here's it is.
Primetime Fox 2.5,
MSNBC
1.4.
Kind of a breakdown. I wonder if I
if they've got more here. Who has more
viewers, CNN or MSNBC?
CNN and Reek, the head of s MSNBC.
Which news station has the most Fox has
the most on 24 hour period coverage?
So yeah. So
looks to me like
Rogan kicked their ass.
Well,
yeah. I would say that's I mean I
mean,
Joe Rogan got more audience out of his
audio podcast than
than probably all those
networks combined. Right.
And then
So and that's not even counting the the
action that's happening on Facebook and YouTube and
and x.
You know, if you total all that stuff
up, you're talking, you know, close to a
100,000,000
views, which these networks are not even anywhere
near that.
So again, Rogan is a is a
is an outlier.
He is a big name,
but he is pulling numbers
bigger than old media. Randy says people out
there will chop up that for Trump memes
all over the net. It is getting hard
with AI and like 11 Labs to know
who
who is the who is true or fake.
That's true.
Yeah. It's true.
But it wasn't just Joe Rogan that got
these kind of numbers. Leo Vaughn. There was
Theo Vaughn. There was David.
Sean Ryan
and Lex Lex Friedman,
is pulling in huge numbers too. And that
totaled up almost 24,000,000
used. I saw a
a clip on
YouTube. Now was it Sean Ryan?
No. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe it was. Let me
go look at this guy.
Yeah. I I really like Sean Ryan. You
know, I I follow him. I do too.
I think he's terrific. Yeah. He's you know,
he does a lot of military seals, CIA
type of interviews. I really like his interviews.
He made a comment,
Facebook short that basically said, hey, we
this this is a monumental
event. And I think if you
think about
where we are in the world today and
the trust,
you know, I'm sure you're having a heyday
with this over on trust factor, but
it's it's a situation
where,
well, you know, no one trusts mainstream media.
It doesn't matter which channel.
You might be a diehard. They
pick sides. Yeah. You might be a diehard
Fox or CNN or MSNBC or Rachel Maddow
or whoever whatever your whatever your
flavor is and I don't again, we don't
care here.
But
don't you want
the whole story?
Well, Todd, that's a much bigger existential question.
Right? Is is what's the landscape going forward?
Is
the age or the the era of,
a bipartisan,
nonpartisan
media,
gone? Well, first of all, I think it
is. There's no partisan media anymore. It's it's
it's nonpartisan
media.
And Well, no. No. It's partisan media. Oh,
yeah. Partisan media.
That's right. There's no nonpartisan media.
Yeah. So it's and and because frankly,
I don't know that you're gonna build audience
these days if you're not partisan. So be
what would be really interesting here,
and let's be let's be just straight up
honest.
If if Kamala went on Rogen and did
3 hours
if she did 3 hours, if she did
the equivalent of what former president Trump did,
this would be the true
because then we could see the questions Rogan
was answer asking.
Because you look at the questions he asked
former president Trump, some of those were very
very hard questions. No no softballs.
There is no there is no softball pitches
that were going on there.
If you listen to it, most people,
have listened. They listened to a sound bite.
But I challenge people
if if
if she does go on and I hear
I think the chance of that is 0.
I don't think she's gonna go on for
3 hours. I just don't. I think it's
too big of a risk for her. I
think. Yeah.
She might go on the day the day
after the election if she wins, but she's
not gonna go on
before the election. I just don't think so.
Yeah. I did see a online poll
poll on x
that,
Joe Rogan put out saying,
should I have
Kamala Harris on the podcast? Yes or no?
And I did see in there that the
results were showing over 60%. Yes.
But then but still 40% of people said
no. No.
So why are they saying But that could
be very similar with Donald Trump too. Right?
Right.
It could be
the same thing. But it would be it
would be awesome
then to have
a side by side comparison and look at
the interview questions
and figure out, okay, did the hard questions
get answered? Did
softball questions get thrown out?
Was there
a parity
in
in treating the candidate
the same?
I think with Rogan, we would have close
to parity.
But, you know, the history has already shown
that even on some of the
when I watched to call her daddy,
those are some pretty softball questions that she
got.
She weren't as hard I would imagine a
lot of the talking points were probably pre
agreed to with that with that particular
Then they should just it'd be nice to
have them disclose that.
Well, because I I've heard that Joe Biden
does that with with the interviews. Well, they'll
talk to the host of whoever's doing the
interview, and they'll agree to a list of
questions. Yeah. I'm sure.
How could that not happen even with former
president Trump?
Do you think they do that?
I don't think. Well, that this I don't
know for sure. Yeah. I don't know. I'm
just saying that I don't get a sense
that anything was agreed to on topics, but
I could be wrong.
I don't know. I'm not behind But but,
again, I think this is all part of
would be important disclosure
as we move out of, you know, whatever's
gonna happen to elections, whatever's gonna happen in
the election. But as we move out of
this into the next season,
I think there's there's good
there's some things here that could come out
of this where,
you know, Rogan could say, listen. Hey.
He didn't get advanced access to the questions.
There was no editing of the question beginning,
middle, and end
of of the
if we did editing, this is what we
did.
I'm sure people in the space have went
through that video with a fine tooth comb
looking
for a way to put pinholes in
Rogan's commentary. So for his aspect, I'm 95%
sure there was no editing done.
Just because there's political mileage and being able
to say see at 3 minutes and 82
3 minutes 82. 3 minutes and 32 seconds,
there was a glitch.
You know, it's a cut. What happened?
Why was there a cut?
So I I don't know. I I think
there's an opportunity here for podcasting to
truly, truly, truly be the new media and
the trustworthy source of of all content when
it doesn't matter presidential or whatever.
Yeah. I thought it was interesting that,
as kind of a backdrop to this for
the Joe Rogan kind of situation, is that
he's got about 15,000,000
Spotify followers right now.
And
that that podcast is available in a video
form and an audio form. So you can
take your pick. Right?
And he has 17,500,000
YouTube subscribers.
So it doesn't say anything in here about
how many
how many Apple followers that he has. Yeah.
Or
but it says on Spotify.
That's because he's hosted on Spotify, and he's
a partner of Spotify. And They're not gonna
talk about Apple numbers. I kinda wonder
how much of that interview with Donald Trump,
in the back of Joe's mind,
thought about his relationship with Spotify.
Because if I think about the the history
of him being on that
on that platform, is that there has been
times when he's been very controversial on that
platform, and Spotify was, you
know, having some second thoughts. Yeah. It wasn't
that long ago. It was only a couple
of years ago that this happened,
and maybe wouldn't have been renewed or something.
I mean, I kind of felt that tension.
Right?
Back especially during during the pandemic time frame.
So I do kind of wonder if Joe
has to kind of, like,
hold back on some things, and maybe not
talk about certain issues. Because I think he
did get some heat for not challenging Donald
Trump about
the whole COVID vaccine and that kind of
stuff. So
I don't
I just wonder if he has to kinda
couch his questions and his conversation,
keeping in mind that his
his platform is who they are, right, and
what their what their values are. Well, that's
that's a good question. The only way we're
ever gonna know that is if Joe leaves
Spotify.
And then those stories will come out maybe
depending on the exit NDA he has. But
he's under contract right now, so we'll never
know.
Yeah. Because I did hear him say at
the very beginning of the interview that he
wanted to talk about this subject, but he
needed he couldn't play certain things on the
screen
because
YouTube would
ban him or block him. Yeah. Right? So
he said that at the very beginning of
the program,
which I thought was interesting. But, you know,
this gets back into our
earlier conversation about,
like brand safety and
these tools where
content creators have to censor themselves
around what they say and what they can't
say, the questions that they ask, the topics
that they cover, because they're concerned about monetization
and takedowns. Yeah. If they're on a platform
that
does that. It does that. Right. Which a
lot of the platforms do.
Well, you know, I
I you know, to be honest with you,
I had plenty of other things to do
I could have done for 3 hours.
But I wanted to be able to and
the reason I wanted to watch it versus
listen to it in this regard
was I was looking for those cuts. Yeah.
There's any language stuff that you can pick
up in the video. And I was and
I was looking for edits and I, you
know, I was looking for
things, you know. And and
so
from that regard, that's the reason I want
and normally, I would just listen to Rogen,
when I do. I don't know if he
has a guest that is is coming on.
But here, you know, if you think about
this,
this is a was an incredibly strategic move
by
the
Trump campaign and being on Rogan. And now
that his running mate
is going to be on,
that that's that's, you know, that's an that
shows you,
at least in my opinion,
that
they want the hard questions and they want
to be
challenged and
whether you like it or not,
you can then make your own judgment on
the
on the responses.
You know, no one when he when he
does his rallies
and all of them and even Kamala, they
do run the same playbook, same script,
same things. It's just a rinse, wash, repeat,
different city.
So
unless he says something outlandish or she says
something outlandish
or If there's something in the news that's
happening at that time,
then they'll pick up as a segment. So,
you know, what you see in the rallies
is the same same sound bites again and
again and again that make it through TikTok
and all the other places. Yeah. And
that's not what I wanna hear.
No. That's true. I mean, it and that's
what's great about them doing these long form
podcasts. And there's another piece of this too,
is that one of the problems that we
see in the media landscape, especially around politics
right now, is each side doesn't really wanna
listen to the other side. Oh, no. Right?
They they focus on getting,
sound bites about what the other side says.
Yeah. Right? And so nobody's really listening
to the whole
conversation,
really, of any of these candidates on the
opposite side. Right. Right. Yeah. So those that
are in favor of Donald Trump,
probably never
never listened to the entire
Kamala Harris conversations
on the interviews that she does. Right. Right.
And inverse the
the,
the Democrat
side of the fence probably never listens to
the entire
conversation that Donald Trump's because they're so repulsed
by him. Right? They can't they can't handle
it. Yeah. They they they they they they
wanna,
you know
yeah. Right. But it's so important for people.
I want I've been saying this for a
long time, is that it's so important for
all of us as voters in the United
States of America
to actually listen to both of these people
talk in long form conversations
and really get to know them, not just
rely on sound bites that comes from the
mainstream media.
Get into the details. Now here here's here's
I'm gonna take a People aren't willing to
do that though. I'm gonna take a little
different approach.
We kind of know what we're getting with
these 2 candidates.
There's kind of Some more know more than
others. Right? And some people know whatever they've
heard.
But in the real nitty gritty, if we
want real change to happen,
senators,
House of Representatives,
local state legislatures,
your county commission, your county commission, your
all these people that are on
things that do really affect you besides taxes
and the debt and everything else.
Your your local zoning.
This is where we need
more
because I I went to vote, Rob. I
got my absentee ballot and I've already voted
too. And I'm asking my sister, do what's
the story on this candidate? I don't know
who they are. I don't know what they
do. I don't know if I should vote
for the Republican or the Democrat or the
Independent. I said I have nearly a clue.
Especially in the local races. Yeah. So I'm
and I'm like
and and she's kind of tuned in, so
she gave me her opinion.
And you know, and to be honest with
you, I took her advice and picked the
candidate she suggested because
I trust her.
But if if I didn't have someone to
reach out to,
I would have had to if if I
really cared, I would have had to went
online, found their website,
tried to sort through their BS sound bites
and figure out, okay, what is this person?
If we could actually have,
I would sit through
5 or 6 hours of content to hear
the presidential candidates, the senators,
the House of Representatives.
I would listen to local
the local candidate and really know who I'm
voting for.
You know, my,
situation happened oh, it's been probably 10 or
15 years.
I was in still living in Hawaii and,
Hawaii is I mean, it's it's it's hardcore.
I think there's one token Republican, the whole
state.
And,
I was,
it was a 4th July,
event and I was hanging out with family
members and, department of our,
relatives who's now just a matter of fact,
I just went to his funeral
when I was in Hawaii.
Him and I were sitting there talking and
in walks the politicians. Right?
And
the question was asked, where did you go
to high school?
And no no real substantive
questions. So Todd, of course, I don't care
what high school you went to in Hawaii.
That's a thing. And I I so I
asked the candidate 3 or 4 things,
about
its issues in Hawaii and he responded.
And
I didn't
know until later that the guy was a
Republican.
And so,
you know, I'm kind of on my phone
and then, of course, my uncle's like wow.
I really like him.
He's that that those are great questions and
you get great responses. And
I said I said uncle, I said, who
who do you normally vote? I'll always vote
straight ticket,
Democrat. Oh, right. And I said you realize
straight down the line. Right. And I cross.
Yeah. And I said you realize he was
a republican
and he I kinda got this
kind of he had this like moment where
he
was like,
I could
tell that there was a shift. Now I
he may have still voted straight Democrat,
but at least set a flag
in his head. And I again, I didn't
know when the guy came in the tent
because he didn't say I'm so I'm running
for such and such district and blah blah
blah.
And,
so
for me, it just tells me that people
really don't know
who their candidates are. They don't know their
issues. They don't know what they stand for.
And if we did, if we did, this
country would be a hell of a lot
different.
Yeah. I actually
registered in the state of Connecticut as unaffiliated.
So I I I didn't designate a party.
I don't really believe in that. I I
don't believe you have to reg We we
we we should be put in these silos
to say, well, you're a democrat or you're
Yeah. Yeah. I don't think in Michigan, we
have to declare.
That's why I I register as unaffiliated because
I wanna be able to pick the Yeah.
The people by by who they are. I
don't think in Michigan I have to declare
which party I'm part of.
Some of the states actually re require that
because
one of the reasons is because of the
the primaries tend to be
either Republican or Democrat. Sometimes they happen at
different times of the year. So
those people need to be identified, I guess.
So we didn't wanna turn this into a
political show, but I think the the the
importance here What's the mapping back to podcast?
Yeah. The mapping is
is there needs to be more of this.
Right. And you know, we need to have
the ability to be educated on, you know,
who's going to
who's going to represent us and you know,
run up the debt or you know, spend
more money on defense or whatever your whatever
you want or don't want.
You know, you should have that education. Say,
okay, I don't want this person because
Right. And
and I think it's also safe to say
that, you know, mainstream media could do this
too. The problem is that they've lost trust.
No, no. They've lost the trust of the
of their audience and their audience is going
to where they feel like they can trust
to get more authentic and real conversations. I
mean,
I mean, of all the people that could
be doing this, it's mainstream media because they
have the reach, they have the ability, they
have the the reputation
from the past,
not so much in the present, but but,
you know, they could be doing this too.
I mean, they could be doing interviews like
this that reach this kind of scale, but
nobody trusts them. I think the part of
the issue is,
as well
is when they are accused of being biased,
they say, oh, no. We're not. We're not
biased. We give fair and equal coverage, but
there's so much inside
the tent.
They can't see beyond the horizon of what
they're involved in. Where the rest of us
see this big picture like, oh, yeah. They're
just a, you know, it should
be, d and,
d and c and b c.
Right. You know Well, I think that all
these big networks have made a mistake
by being a network that puts on a
debate.
I think it's been a just a blunder
on their part, because
what we've seen them do is expose themselves
as being biased Yeah. In a significant way.
I liked it in the past,
And because we
we we used to have a bipartisan or
an unpartisan,
election debate committee Oh, I don't remember that.
That used to put these debates on,
and they hired an independent video production company
to come in and create a video feed
out of that event. That's how it used
to be done.
Now what's being done is it's being earmarked
to be it's gonna be a CNN debate,
or it's gonna be an ABC News debate.
And if those networks are biased,
and they come into it and give them
the impression that they're biased,
then that's gonna taint them
as an untrustworthy
Right.
News organization.
So I think that that these debates should
be put on an an
unaffiliated
and unbiased
organization. Can you imagine having,
Rogan
doing the debate and having both candidates in
separate rooms where they can't see each other
or hear each other?
And
well, yeah, bring
bring Joe Rogan in, bring, you know, a
representative
of across the board media out there from
the independent side. And have them in separate
rooms
where they can't hear each other and they'll
say, okay. Here's the question. And one candidate
gets the question and the other and you
can't do they can they they can't rebuttal
because they haven't heard each other. I think
that would be a really that now that
would be a debate I would actually watch.
It wouldn't really be a debate that's not
a debate. You're siloing them so much where
there's no dynamic between them. That's that's kind
of the whole point. Well, then that's I
guess it's not called a debate. It's a,
you know, it's a it's a Just an
interview. That point. Right. They both get the
same question.
Right. But I think bringing in people that
are not affiliated with
the with the population has associated with as
a biased
one side or the other network. So so
as the This is key. So as the
podcast
listeners
are out there,
you know, do you see an opportunity here,
you know, for
the ability to add We've talked about local
podcasting for Yeah. For years or actually, especially
in the last couple of weeks. We've been
talking about it. The challenges is
no one would have went on Rogan unless
he had as big of an audience as
he has. So that'd be the another thing.
It's a economy of scale. So can you
get a
local politician
to go on a local show that may
have a small local audience? They may not
find it worth their time.
So it just depends
if it's a local candidate for, like, the
state house or the state senate or something
like that.
You're you're right. That's why there needs to
be
some local state level, city level podcasts that
are out there that that reach a large
percentage of the population for them to do
it. I Yeah. I I agree with you.
And I don't I think to some degree
those exist, but not at the level that
they're
that really needs to happen.
Because I think it would make a a
big difference because, you know, most of you
are so disenfranchised
with the election process at this point.
It's kinda interesting,
being overseas at this time because I'm getting
questions, like,
from people that
are here and expats from other countries. And
the basic question is is what the beep
is going on in America?
You know, that's the question I keep getting
asked. What the you know, have you guys
went insane? And it's not just about the
politics. It's everything.
And,
it's curious. It's curious to see
this external
feedback.
And,
what's even more interesting is they'll be very
vocal to tell me who they think should
be president.
And I'll say that based on the conversations
I've been having, you know,
Kamala better be happy that they can't vote.
Because the majority of people that I run
into,
they don't
know the nuances. They just see the personality.
And I did see that, Arnold Schwarzenegger
came out today with a public post endorsing,
Kamala Harris.
Well, that's not surprising because
well, maybe He's a former republican That's true.
Governor of California.
Right? So again,
but again, it is curious to hear the
commentary at least locally. And I don't like
to talk politics. Matter of fact, being
a visitor in the Philippines,
you shall never talk about local politics.
It's
a
it's a taboo thing. Stay out of their
business.
Don't talk about their policies. Don't
don't don't because most people are going to
not necessarily have positive things to say and
it can get people in trouble. So, you
know, and there's a lot of youtubers here
that
are on the borderline and I'm like, why
why go on the borderline and this is
our country, you know, they they're gonna do
what they're gonna do, stay the hell out
of it.
So, and I think that the reason we're
talking about it tonight is that we're just
seeing such a big impact on Yeah. On
politics right now, that is rooted in independent
created media. Yeah.
And that includes podcasting.
But I think it's it's an interesting maybe
we've crossed over a threshold here, Todd, where
this this medium that we call podcasting and
new media
and YouTube or, you know, it depends on
how much of an inclusion
that that that you wanna have here has
really taken over the mantle of being the
mainstream
media now. Right? People have
voted with their eyes and their ears.
Yeah.
How many if if you had 300 how
many what is the population of the United
States right now? 300 something. 365,000,000
or something like that. Population
of USA.
Let's see here.
335,000,000
people. 35,000,000. And so Rogan has had 36,000,000
views
on his 40. 40. Just on just on
YouTube.
So he has reached
10%
of the well, of course, there's probably some
I'd like to see that breakdown.
How much of that is US and how
much of that is foreign
from a listener standpoint?
But I would say probably he's reached at
least 10%
of the electorate.
Yeah. Yeah. Actually, if you look at the
18,000,000
views on Twitter x, you know, between those,
just those 2 is 60,000,000.
And then you add up the the almost
25,000,000
that were
on other podcasts that Donald Trump has been
on. And then You know, I mean, you're
getting some serious numbers. What was the numbers
that she did on, caller daddy?
I've I've I've never seen those numbers, so
I don't know.
And that would be the number I'd wanna
see.
But you I can't imagine that that one
hit the
this this much. I would think it would
be at least a1000000
or more,
but it's hard to say. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Someone knows someone knows a colleague
find out if you look it up in
in YouTube to find,
that conversation. There's gonna be a a view
count that's gonna be underneath that. Now granted,
we're not gonna know what the interview on
the audio podcast was, but
let's see here.
It's Spotify.
Again,
let me look for YouTube.
Again, I can't find it. It's not in
the search results. So
oh, here we go. Call her daddy.
Alright.
See okay.
744,000
views.
On YouTube. Not even a 1000000.
Wow.
Well,
yeah.
So in that regard then,
the Rogan man, he knocked it out of
the ballpark, didn't he?
If you can reach 10 if you can
reach 10% of the US population.
Just in one interview.
That's
that's that's incredible.
Yeah.
But it wasn't If that's what he did.
I mean, it was a lot of people
that probably consumed that from other countries around
the world. Yeah. But still, it's this let's
say 5%.
Mhmm. You know, that's that's a creator's dream
to reach that many people.
Yeah. And the cable mainstream media is not
getting anywhere close to that. And it wasn't
on new and trending on YouTube either.
No. Of course not.
There was saying, you know, there was a
I saw some TikTok video about what was
trending at the same time and people were
laughing about, you know, it's just bullshit stuff.
It was,
you know? Yeah.
Yeah. What I don't know. I again, we're
trying Some on the scale. Right? Yeah. We're
trying not to we're trying to give a
good perspective here, everyone. So don't get mad
at us. We're just, you know, we're just
telling the numbers that we see.
Yeah.
Well, the numbers tell a story. That's
that's why Well, I I hope she Numbers
can really tell. I hope she goes on.
I hope she agrees to come and go
on.
I do too. You know, she's got some
time. It's time is running short.
You know, today is Wednesday.
So I would say for it to be
effective, it either had to be Thursday or
Friday at a minimum.
It's not gonna swing the needle on a
Monday for sure because, you know, half the
population's already pre voted. So Yeah. That's that's
what I'm gonna say. I I think the
last number I saw was over 50,000,000 people
have already voted.
So
Yeah.
And they keep,
throwing more and more names,
noncitizens off of, the various
voter lists around the country. I see. Well,
to be fair, that that Supreme Court ruling
only affected 1600
people
in one state. So
I don't want to add to the hype
of
voter fraud and all this other stuff, but
it is nice to see that they were
able at least one state was able to
remove
non citizens. Now again, some states allow non
citizens to vote on local issues.
Yeah.
And
again, I've got a pretty strong opinion on
that. I think it should be,
What's the federal law that you have to
have ID, right? Well, no. No. Not at
all. It's state by states decide on ID.
California
California, it's against the law to ask for
an ID.
Now, so some states don't
state by state decides on. I think it
should be a federal law that you have
to show ID
or something that have a way to prove
if you don't have ID that you are
who you say you are. Every, you know,
there's not there's very few people that don't
have a social security number. But again, social
security number. Some sort of a state ID
because the state requires it. I mean, you
can't even do anything without a state ID.
Social Security numbers, though, can be issued to
noncitizens
too. So but I don't know if there's
a way to flag who is and who
isn't. The reason I know that
is,
Shoko had a Social Security number when she
worked
for duty free in Saipan when she was
just 19.
And when she
moved to the United States and we got
married and then we did the immigration thing,
her her social security number didn't change. It
carried over from
when she was in Saipan. I I I
was astounded. I didn't realize and there was
no special provisions on the social security card
at all. She just got a number.
So and she didn't know that she'd paid
Social Security taxes in as a non citizen.
So
Yeah.
Yeah. But curious. I'm sure that happens. Yeah.
I'm sure that happens. The IRS still wants
to collect their income tax. Well, some
too much about Someone paid Social Security on
my end. I basically someone was using my
Social Security number for a while and paying
Social Security taxes on it.
What? Yeah. Yeah. I had Social Security being
paid on my,
Social Security number,
from
another source. Someone used my,
and it caused some tax issues. So I
they they cleared it up. But for 2
or 3 years,
someone had gotten a hold of my Social
Security number and was paying specifically
paying Social Security.
So I'm sure someone got
a job somewhere and,
you know,
luck 1 in a 1000000. I was the
one the number they came up with and
or was it,
did this person have have the same name
that you have? Well Maybe they got confused.
Who knows? No. I don't think so. And
I don't know. This was this was in
the eighties. So,
it's just it seems odd that somebody would
pay Social Security taxes
or taxes
on the behalf of somebody else. Yeah. Well,
I've heard it's happened more than once. But
again,
in those early eighties, maybe the systems weren't
complicated enough to do that matching. They just
came in on a number or whatever. Who
knows? Yeah. And you think there would have
been an ABC matching. But yeah.
So yeah, I actually have still on my
Social Security records some credit for income that
I didn't actually earn.
Wow.
Never had that happened to me. No. I
guess I've been lucky.
But Yeah.
Alright. Well gonna be interesting here in the
next week to see what happens, you know?
Yeah.
I I think it's gonna be a bumpy
ride would be my
my projection here. I don't think it's gonna
go smooth.
Well, I don't think we'll know on Tuesday.
We'll probably not know until the weekend.
It's probably gonna be at least a few
days afterwards.
And then all the lawsuits that each sides
throws. And it's amazing how other countries can
do it all in a day.
They they vote and they report and they
have everything done in a day and then
they they require in person voting with an
ID.
I've been in countries before where they put
a,
it's either on the hand or on the
head. They put,
like a mark. They mark you if you
voted.
And so that way, that stops you from
it doesn't wash off for 2 or 3
days. I don't know if it's on the
hand or on the I can't remember where,
but that's how they they ensure that you
haven't voted twice.
I think I've seen pictures of, people in
other countries that have voted is that their
their fingers Or maybe their finger. Yeah. Their
fingers had a color put on it. Yeah.
I can't
They have to
dye their finger. Yeah.
Proves because if they voted again,
that that could be tray tray. Yeah. It's
something that doesn't wash off for 2 or
3 days. So,
can you imagine Americans being asked, put your
hand in this green ink?
Very barbaric. There would be there would be
lawsuits abound, you know. Yeah. I got him
traumatized because, you know, now people know I
voted.
Paper ballots. Right? I mean, that's how I
voted. I voted on a paper ballot here
in Connecticut. Me too. On my absentee ballot.
I early voted. Actually, I went into a
polling location Okay. And actually voted in a
polling location in a little cubicle thing. Right?
And it printed out your ballot. Right? It
printed out. It was actually right. I used
a pen and ink on a on a
ballot that had my name associated with it,
and I put it into an envelope
and I brought it over to the,
there was a person working Scanning machine. A
desk there that no. They didn't scan it.
They just took the envelope from me. They
you know, I sealed the envelope with the
ballot inside of it, and they dropped it
into a bin and said this will be
counted
on, November 5th. Oh,
The way
and when I voted in the primary, of
course, it was on election day,
the machine I used was digital, but it
printed out
the ballot. I know some yeah. Yeah. Some
some systems did. Yeah. And then it scanned.
And they only had one of those machines.
Everyone else was printing on paper ballots. So
it was kinda weird.
I think I've also heard that some of
those machines will,
happen,
seem to
print the wrong selections
My out. But but thank goodness that the
voter can see what that Yeah. That was
before they turn it in. My sister is,
the county clerk for our town or she's
the clerk. Excuse me. Township
clerk.
So she runs the voting in our township.
And, of course, I was asking her 82
questions on, you know, how they validate the
machine. And
she says, oh, yeah. She says, you know,
they're like, I think the day before if
there's a process that they run,
like, 30 or 40 ballots through this thing
and mismark ballots and making sure the machine
is calibrated. So
Properly to to credit the right Yeah. People
with the votes. Right? Right. So and she
says if the machine throws an error, she
said all those ballots come out and have
to be man hand hand counted. I'm like,
oh my god. So
Wow. Yeah. Okay. And it's a small township,
so it wouldn't be probably 6, 7, maybe
800 people. So not an unsurmountable task, but
I think that's why I don't think there's
any way to
game a paper ballot that has ink on
it. No. Right? Versus trying to do it
in a voting machine and have it output
something. I think there's a risk factor that
But I guarantee your ballot is going to
be put something. But I guarantee There's a
risk factor there. But I guarantee your ballot
is gonna be scanned
after that ballot that you had. Oh, it
will be. Right. Yeah. Right.
Yeah. I'm sure that's true.
So eventually, it's gonna be scanned anyway. There's
not a person there counting and marking a
note on a piece of paper. Yeah. Yeah.
They're not making a a towel. Yeah. But
to count, you know, like There's another 5.
The slash through it. You know, that's 5.
That's 10. Right? Yeah. Alright,
everybody go vote,
if you haven't voted. And,
we'd love to hear your feedback on what
you think all this means for podcasting.
And, Yeah.
Well, local
local podcasts are the key to all of
us being better informed about the candidates.
You know, don't do like I did have
have to make has to ask my sister
about local candidates, you know?
And then
yeah, I think we also have to ask
the question
at some point in during this path, do
we think that the mainstream or cable media
will learn their lesson? No. Right?
Not not until they're broke.
Which means that the path that they're on
is to complete
destruction Yeah. And
lack of relevancy over a period of time,
which means that podcasting and new media and
these platforms will continue in their escalation of
importance. The beauty of being where I am
now, I'm getting no political ads.
I don't, I don't have mainstream media. So
all I see is soundbites,
from anything that I may be flipping through
and TikTok and stuff like that. Yeah. Or
or x. So I'm not being subjected to
the pain
that the rest of you are in in
getting political advertisers. Although I did see a
GoDaddy ad being,
being run-in Spanish. So I sent a note
to my GoDaddy rep and I said, hey,
wrong language
for the country.
You know, they
they yes. They had a Spanish background and
some of the words mean the same, but
you should not be running that ad there.
And and I'd been seeing it for like
2 weeks
and,
2 days after I let them know, the
ad went away and was replaced with the
English speaking ads. So I thought, oh, so
the message did get through.
Yeah, Todd. And I think
you raise an interesting point around political advertising
too
is that I'm not sure that those those
political ads really work anymore because there's not
that many people watching cable television anymore. No.
But it's their cash cow. It's how they
survive.
Yeah. I I think it's kind of a
waste of money to be quite honest with
you. I mean, probably most of the play
that these ads get, or is when they're
taken,
and put out on x or,
YouTube or any of these platforms or a
part of a podcast. Right? People will play
these
in their shows. One tactic you can do
is if you if you specifically
hate a specific candidate
and you're on Facebook, make sure you let
their ads play all the way through so
they have to pay for them.
Right.
Yeah.
Spoke those brands. Well, you know, yeah, just,
you know, just play and make sure that,
you know, that's one less ad someone else
on the other side will not see.
Right.
Right. That's true. That's true because they do
by
large numbers of impressions. Well, I I've seen
mostly,
democrat ads on TikTok. They bought heavy into
TikTok.
So believe it or even here, I'm seeing
democrat ads on TikTok, which is kind of
weird.
You would think that they would filter that
so that, you know, me watching TikTok in
the Philippines would not go against their budget,
but it has.
Maybe they
they know that you're Oh, maybe maybe. Yeah.
Maybe that targeting is exactly right. That's probably
what it is.
They're not that I guess they're not that
stupid.
Okay. We we've, went pretty long here. So,
let me,
prep the
the the captions here. How you guys you
know, this new I'm using for those of
you that don't know, I'm using Restream dot
io right now
to do the show.
And,
it's it's a great it's it's it's $50
a month, but it's,
you can restream to multiple. We're streaming to
8 different platforms right now.
So it's a a viable replacement,
from StreamYard.
But you can find us at new media
show.comforward/live.
Of course, our Twitter account is at nmspodcast
or you can find the link at new
media show dot com.
If you have a comment for me, you
can send it to todd@blueberry.comor@geeknewsonxor@geeknews@geeknews.chatonmastodon.
And Rob?
Yeah. I can be find
I can be found at, rob.greenley@gmail.comorrobgreenley@gmail.com
also works. And on x@robgreenley,
the two e's on the end, and I
have a website,
robgreenley.com.
So it's safe to say I can be
found on all of the major social platforms
and on my YouTube channel too, where I
do a bunch of shows up there,
on, on variety of topics and,
and even even EV vehicles. So if you
have an interest in that,
and what's going on, that would be a
good good place to go. So And if
you have not yet subscribed to the show
and you're watching this, I've got a QR
code up there in the right hand
column above, Rob's head
that,
leads you to the new media show follow
or subscribe page. So,
make sure that you, you subscribe to the
show when you're over at newmedia show.com.
And those of you on YouTube and Facebook
and wherever else you've been commenting. I the
the listener count
says
pretty says,
where is it at? It shows me how
many people are
watching,
but I don't understand where they're all coming
from. So
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's usually just an aggregated
number. Yeah. Probably. So anyway, everyone, thanks for
being here and we'll be back next week
with another exciting edition of the new media
show, not the old
media. So everyone, thanks so much. And, thanks
to mom that's listening out there. She said
go podcasting. So,
everyone take care. We'll see you next time.
Bye bye. Okay. Bye, everybody.