Battered over 11 rounds in their 140 pound junior welterweight fight trainer Buddy McGirt was praised for what he told his fighter in their corner after the 11 was. Sitting despite did Ossian's objections the fight was stopped on his way to the dressing room his legs buckled and he vomited several times he was rushed to a hospital where he had surgery for bleeding on the brain dosh of his survived by a wife and young son Tom Goldman n.p.r. News severe storms cut through an equally severe heat wave in the Northeast and Midwest starting last night 800000 had no electricity in Michigan almost a quarter of a 1000000 people in New Jersey lost power along with heavy rainfall and winds they were as high as 17 miles an hour trees and power lines fell on social media video showed flooding in parts of New York City deep enough to float cars and Connecticut a lightning strike set a private school Jorma Tory on fire the violent weather. A spell of cooler weather on Louise Schiavone n.p.r. 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And Boston I'm Meghna Chopra Bartie and this is on point there's a podcast for that and that and for that too and that other thing as well more than 7 100000 podcast to choose from and at least 29000000 individual episodes listeners can face podcast decision paralysis when it comes to finding what to listen to next Now while some are wandering wondering if we've hit peak podcast others are saying the industry is only just getting started Spotify is planning to spend $500000000.00 on podcast belated acquisitions Apple might start bankrolling original shows too so this our own point the Big Business of podcasts and you can join us is podcasting here to stay what keeps you listening or makes you tune out how do you figure out what to listen to when there are 700000 options and counting available and also what do podcasts bring to you that you don't get or you can't find in other media we're at 180-423-8255 it's 843 talk you can also join us anytime and on point Radio dot org or Twitter and Facebook at on point radio Well joining us 1st today from New Haven Connecticut is Nicholas Chua he is the proprietor of hot Pod media where he writes edits and publishes the leading trade newsletter about the podcast industry he's also a contributing writer to New York magazine and to vulture where he covers podcasting Nick welcome to on point as they go on it's going great it's great to have you know going to put a shameless plug in here for the on point. As well which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcast Ok but Nick 1st of all let's just start with the this New York Times article that sort of had put the podcast world in a bit of a tizzy in the past couple of days headlined Have we reached peak podcast I just you mean you're the one of the most knowledgeable people about this industry what was your response to the Times asking this question you know all of the to exert a. Love that they Anything that are it's like a star response obviously touches upon sort of longstanding sensitivities and sort of questions of that people in that community have been having it is the piece captures the feeling for sure but the sort of underlying analyses of doing the pike as he has in a structured way was think about it sort of fact that it has more than one kind of participant in the space it's kind of the gods over a lot of technical aspects of it but you know for all of its sort of like shortcomings and the way in which it rankled some people in pockets community it did just her towards this feeling that I think culturally lots of folks are aware about and are feeling right now so what is it that what part of the analysis rankled the podcast community because you know from look just from the perspective of regular every day listeners of which there are millions of podcast listeners we just got all these comments coming in to say someone's name podcast remind me of cable t.v. $500.00 channels and nothing worth watching Ellen or spend says podcast like web pages vary in quality and usefulness depending on who's producing and editing them and Jane says I like podcast a lot but I agree there are too many so it seems as if you're right it's capturing a feeling so what why why were podcast producers rankled by it I think so let's set the question about why folks around go into sort of like address the structure reality of it podcasting to this state of nature of this medium is over abundance because it is an extension of the Internet specifically as an extension of blogging the whole premise behind the creation of the technology about 15 years ago is that it increases the means to access for people who previously could not publish audio to an audience or to the world and give them the means to do it and so much like us that Internet like the state of nature is that there's a lot a lot a lot of those things and so but you know the story of pockets in the past couple of years particularly past almost decade is that there's been to sort of structure of business and industry growing on top of this sort of like why you go system of people to. Publishing stuff and I think what we're experiencing what we're seeing right now is this tension between this sort of creator let notion that anybody can publish and that's the point of this medium and the sort of consumer centric sort of focus of this which is do things already on day products and people would like access the things that they feel it's worth to time and so it's a bit of a harder consumer choice up like system to navigate a universe of 700000 cast and try to figure out what's the right one for them and so we're in the sort of interesting transitional period for sure Ok well so I mean I would agree I think we've seen in other as you as you just said in other in other media this sort of life cycle of this burst of. Entrants into this space because of the democratic nature of any digital development and then the quote unquote shakeout that happens so is this the right time for the the shakeout to happen in in the world of podcasting it really depends what you mean by a shake up right so from where I sit and what I've been sort of observing the past couple years it seems that we're heading towards some sort of bifurcation that there will be a separation between caste operations and teams publishing podcasts that are very much oriented towards you know building a business around it to drive big audiences to drive meaningful audiences and to extract advertising as it's given value from it there is a layer of that for you know formalizing over the past couple of years and the question is sort of what happens to the other chunk which is this notion of self publishing of anybody having access to just being able to publish an audio recording out and maybe getting some listeners for it the thing is that technology and tool for self-expression and so I do feel that if there is a shake out or have you want to frame it it's going to be along those terms who gets to be in the quote unquote money making industries out of it and who gets to sort of participate in the sort of broader publishing part of it right so you saying that does part of you hope that will never fully let go of the idea that. Because someone talks somebody out there might it interesting. You know I I maybe it's by average of my predisposition or sort of the moment in time I was born in but I always feel that when there is more opportunity for more people to access potential audience it's always a good thing I think the fact that we have an abundance of maybe too many is you know it's a net positive because it allows people who previously didn't have access to do you know radio broadcast like if I have if I was a certain kind of person or if I have a certain kind of idea for a radio show an audio show on broadcast radio I need to you know go through n.p.r. Or go through Cumulus Media or I heard media and maybe I'm not the right demographic or I'm not the right kind of sensibility to fits of those gate keepers and so you know I take this over abundance over smaller option of access I mean yeah agreed but of course from the listen again from the listener perspective the question is who gets ever harder to find the quality content he know even as a diversifies as well but you know what Nick we've got we're going to dig into sort of the business and development aspect of the burgeoning world of pod cast but I do want to get your take on what it is about this particular medium so many people are are drawn to and in order to just kind of launch us into that part of the conversation let's just take a moment to listen back to serial of course which debuted in 2014 investigative journalism series the 1st season focused on the case of the 1909 murder. 18 year old hey mainly now serial remains one of the most listen to podcasts in the world with Seasons one and 2 downloaded more than 340000000 times and here's a moment from season one. Only. From This American Life b.c. Chicago serial one story told me I'm sorry. So that's from season one of cereal and of course the very familiar sound driven by the wild success for many many years of This American Life and be easy in Chicago and we're going to talk about the very commercial podcast as well we're not going to just focus on the public radio sound here but but Nick what was it about podcasts like cereal that really sort of blew open the doors to this medium and Drew and drew people millions of listeners it. I'll give you 3 reasons of this answer one is you know radio you being a practitioner of it it's still a very powerful medium right but the sort of added edge here is the fact that as a consumer you can listen to a narrative like that or a radio sort of or an audio show like that on your own terms you can go back and forth you can start episodes and stuff it whatever you like so that just on a baseline level is the thing that's really important for that kind of reader experience and specifically that kind of narrative experience the 2nd thing here is you know dare is a way in which just the audio experience plays on the human imagination there is a way in which just the sound of it triggers an emotional relationship the key buzzword is like intimacy but there's this notion of it's a participatory medium in which the consumers minority listeners mind has a sort of create the images for themselves and that's that's really powerful but I think the real at least for me personally it's a feeling that this a media product is just for me it's always it's this feeling that like I am in this sort of story I'm in this crowd of people talking I mean this sort of narrative experience of telling me a story and it's just me and there's something very personal that feeling or something for a $1.00 to $1.00 and it sends and in contradistinction to the we broadcast radio works in which it's one to many and so all those things put together kind of comes in this package of something really really human and really really personal and I think that's the sort of through and through a lot of the of the popular pod cast that we see kind of blow up interesting to one to one versus one to many They're a fascinating analysis Ok So Nic stand by here for just a 2nd because I want to bring into the conversation now Gretta Come on she joins us from New York She's founder of transmitter media a creative podcast company She's formerly executive producer and head of the new show development at your wolf and mid roll media other project podcast developers and she launched a number of cod podcast those companies as well and she joins us again from New York so good a. Welcome to you hi how are you I'm doing very well so you you are a producer of podcasts here what do you make of this moment that the industry finds itself in is it is it sort of on the cusp of an even bigger breakthrough even more explosive growth or are we at the peak stage I think we're at still a beginning stage like Nick says I think we're still about to see bigger and better and more I can't tell you how many inquiries I get from folks especially now in t.v. And film who are really interested in getting into pod casting I think we're seeing many more media outlets wanting to get into pod casting a big part of our business the transmitter is partnering with other media organizations who have stories that they want to put out into the world lots of brands want to get into pod casting I think that in general there is a ton of ambition I think that the amount of shows that get the time and the space and the funding to go really big is still small comparative to the number of shows that are coming out perhaps in like a faster weekly basis but I think we're still at the beginnings for sure Ok well we'll talk more about where the industry may go next so so Gretta and Nicholas Chua stand on the stand by here for just a 2nd we're talking about podcasting it's more popular than ever and more than a 3rd of Americans over the age of 12 say they listen to podcasts there are hundreds of millions of dollars being invested in the industry now including from very big names like Spotify and half full and we want to hear from you are you have a regular listener to a podcast What are your favorites What draws you in about it or you just overwhelmed by the hundreds of thousands of choices already out there were 804238255 this is on point. 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This is 1.0 magnitude we're talking this hour about the booming world an industry of podcasts and you can join us 180423255 that's 80423 talk I'm joined today by Greg a comb She's founder of transmitter media a creative podcast company she's with us from New York and in Nicholas Quah joins us as well he's with us from New Haven Connecticut he's the proprietor of hot Pod media where he writes edits and publishes the leading trade newsletter about the podcast industry and Nick and Greg have got lots of comments coming in here online from fans of podcasts on Twitter Joe Cole says podcasting has opened up a space for some great learning opportunities I can get weekly content from experts in each fields an area in public he says I listen to podcasts almost every day I can listen to things I'm interested in that aren't offered on my local radio or anywhere else that allows the programs to also be portable so you've been in this business for a while and I just want you to sort of pick up a thought that we left off on before the break here how much has it changed in just say the past 5 years about pot podcast production Oh I think it's changed enormously I mean I think you point to cereal as a sort of watershed moment in the industry and I think that we've seen a greater hunger for serialized for deep storytelling I mean there is also a deep hunger for what that listener commented on which is a chance to make education and we want to learn we want to hear stories that help bias enrich our lives and be able to operate in the world in a way that we didn't consider before and we make a variety of those kinds of high Cassatt transmitter but yeah I think. That we're seeing a great a greater investment all across the board and high quality pipe casts what what's your thought about that. Yeah so I think what we've seen the past 5 years in particular if you would do want to use 2014 it's sort of like the sort of pivot point where there's been a lot more. Talent coming through the space that previously was in there and there's a lot more people who are new to this space that's taking more chances critically so that a problem for asian of a bunch of different formats and sort of the improvement of a lot of existing formats comedy parkas have gotten sharper better narrative park has been pushed to tackle stories that are more interesting and more interesting ways and you know they're also sort of previously like audio drama of sort of getting its its moment to shine and it's one way to have a revival in which there's a community of fiction podcasters now really sort of testing itself and pushing and trying to figure out what this new version of telling fictional stories over audio and radio sounds like and so. I think part of this is a result of the increased attention to the space and it's a signal that if you have an idea if you have a certain talent that you want to sort of work on this is a space that do it and I think and I think the past 5 years has been a reflection of that and I'm particularly interested in the resurgence of the rebirth of audio drama through podcasts we just in my in my household we just listened to an 8 part. Podcast from from gimlet media for kids essentially is like a kid's kid's audio drama and my my my offspring's were wrapped and I just thought you know this is harkens right back to the Golden Age of any of radio in the twenty's and thirty's where people were gathering around the radio to listen to dramatic storytelling but it's being done you know through through our phones now so it does seem to be quite. A rebirth or sort of reconnection with a fundamental storytelling medium that has been in existence in the United States or definitely worldwide for some time so do you see this as really capturing a completely new generation of people who may in a few days I hate to say this if you view we years never even turn on a regular broadcast radio because there's so many so much podcast content. I think that's very possible I mean I think anecdotally I hear that from people who as Nick said earlier you know we can take these stories with us wherever we go listen however we'd like pause and restart or rewind if we want to hear something again and so there is a way in which it's very personal experience and you can you know interact with it in a deeply personal way and so you know I think there's a reason why people often think of podcasts hosts as their friends that they want to hang out with and spend time with and it's be