The Future of Film and Podcasting: Avoiding the Same Pitfalls

I remember when I was probably six, maybe seven years old, I went to the Linda theater with my family, and they did a giveaway, like, they actually had a stage that the screen would come down, and there's a guy on the stage, and he gave away a six pack of Pepsi.

Now, back then, Pepsi was in bottles, and I won a six pack, which was interesting because I wasn't old enough to drink it yet.

My parents wouldn't let me do that.

But I remember this because the Pepsi would sit in front of our phone, which hung on a wall, and I could balance myself as I stood on the Pepsi bottles to reach the phone.

And maybe that's why I've always loved movies.

I remember my father, who rarely, if ever, laughed, was that guy that somehow Barbra Streisand in the movie, what's up, Doc?

Hit his funny bone like nobody ever has.

To the point it was, like, embarrassing.

You're like, okay, enough already.

Please quit laughing.

You know?

And there's just something different about movies in that you get to enjoy the art of storytelling on a screen with music that's vibrating your butt in the seats.

I love that through this amazing sound system, but also, you're experiencing it with other people.

And I love when we all jump together and then laugh in a scary movie, or we all belly laugh at a comedy or we all cry in a drama.

The crowd experience is something you can't get at home.

And I started going back to the movies.

I hadn't been to one in years, probably like you, thanks to our good friend Covid.

And when I went back, I was like, ooh, holy cow.

And so it sounds like I'm talking about movies today.

But I'm also looking at this as a podcaster, because we're both in the entertainment business, and I want to make sure that we go into podcasting looking at maybe the mistakes that movie theaters are making so that we don't fall over the same thing and make the same mistakes that they're doing.

So let's see what we can learn together.

Let's start the show.

The School of podcasting with Dave Jackson.

Podcasting Sense 2005.

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So let's talk about where our good friends in the movies have gone, because I didn't know it was this bad.

The last movie I saw until this month was Top Gun Maverick with Tom Cruise.

Doesn't seem that long ago, right?

It was 2022, and that was the last movie I had seen.

And I decided I was bored one night, and I was like, you know, I haven't been to the movies.

And Beetlejuice had its sequel out, and I decided to go.

Now, notice the last movie I saw before that, a sequel.

The movie I got me out of my chair to go see was a sequel.

And Beetlejuice sequel was okay.

But did I tell anybody when I came out of the theater, hey, you gotta go see the new Beetlejuice movie.

It's amazing because it wasn't.

It was okay.

Something I would watch, like, you can definitely wait till it shows up, till it streams.

But all in all, I was like, hmm.

And so the next movie I saw, which was like, I don't know, a week later, was the Joker sequel.

Now, I would say the Joker sequel name, but you can't pronounce it.

It's def something in French, which goes back to maybe have a good name for your show.

We'll talk about what podcasters can learn from this.

And what was interesting is that one, right?

It's a DC.

It's a comic book thing.

I went on a Friday, and I went at 06:00, right out of work, and I thought, okay, there's nobody here.

And by nobody, I mean there's nobody there.

And I was like, well, I'm early.

So I go in, and it was me and one other person.

When I saw Beetlejuice, that sequel, I was the only person in the theater.

There might have been one other person.

And so I watch this Joker movie, and I'm not going to spoil it for you, but I will say that the makers of that movie, their goal was to upset the people who watched both the Joker and the sequel.

That's not good for business in my book.

But I walked out.

Now it's like 815 ish, and I'm here to tell on a Friday.

And there was nobody in the theater.

So I was talking with the guy that gave me my popcorn, and he said, yeah, regal theaters has, I think it was 343 theaters in the US, and they ranked 340th.

And he said, the only reason they were in business is Regal owned the building.

And I was like, wow.

And he said, yeah, if you like movies, you should sign up for our you.

Basically, I pay $19, and I can see as many movies as I want.

Why?

Because they still sell popcorn at those things.

And that's a ridiculously price, by the way.

Uh, it was $13 for the ticket, $13 for popcorn and a drink.

So I'm putting out $26, something like that, for the thing.

But when I came out of the Joker, I was fired up to tell.

To tell people about this movie.

Why?

Cause it was horrible.

Absolutely, like, unequivocally bad.

And I went, because I love Lady Gaga.

Was not an early fan, but she, when, you know, a star is born, came out when she appeared on Howard Stern with any time there's a cute female that can sing with just a piano, you got me.

Doesn't matter who it is.

Demi Lovato, Adele, Lady Gaga, you got me.

And so I love Gaga, even though I know she's not going to sing in the movie.

Well, I was wrong.

It turns out it's a musical.

And we'll talk about that.

Like when.

When people listen to your content and they go, wait, what?

Yes.

Because guess what?

Today it's a musical.

I'm going to sing the rest of this podcast.

Gonna sing.

He's gonna sing.

He's gonna sing the rest.

Wouldn't you be like, what the heck is this?

No, I'm not gonna sing the rest of this podcast.

Crazy.

Horrible.

Bait and switch.

So there was nobody in Joker, and yesterday I went to see the movie Saturday night.

It's about a show here in the US called Saturday night live.

It's been on tv forever.

And it's funny because I still watch it, and every week I go, yep, still not funny.

But it's part of my routine.

We talk about that a lot.

And it was not a bad movie.

Why?

Because it had a lot of.

I wonder what's going to happen next.

It's a lot of tension and release.

Tension and release.

Oh, my gosh, what's going to happen?

Are they going to make it?

And so if somebody said, should I go see that?

Are you.

Are you going to the movies?

Yeah, I'm going to the movies.

Yeah, it's.

It's.

It's worth seeing.

It's.

Okay.

So that's the thing that we do.

We have the same marketing strategy as the movie.

So let's talk about some of the things that we have in common with movies, because there's a lot.

Number one, we're storytellers even if it's a narrative style, even if you're doing the news, right, you get to shape what part of the news makes it to your audience.

But we're storytellers in terms of production quality, right?

Our sound comes into play and how we look.

If you ever look at movie posters, they're really detailed and beautiful, right?

So the, the movie poster gets our attention and then the trailer, right?

They have trailers.

And the idea is to generate buzz.

So when you launch your podcast, you ready?

You want to learn how to launch your podcast?

First of all, do what they do in the movies and do some sort of screening and have people tell you how the movie went.

Ron Howard.

Ron Howard.

Opie Cunningham, right, has made so many movies, has been in the entertainment business since he was a kid.

Paul, how do you do?

Right?

He was that little kid on Andy Griffith, won so many oscars and Emmys and everything like that.

Every movie he puts out, he sits in the audience and watches because he knows when they're supposed to laugh and cry and if they're crying when they're supposed to laugh and vice versa, he knows he needs to do an edit so he makes sure that it's going to work.

Then you generate a bunch of buzz and then you hope those people tell their friends.

And so when it comes time to launch, first of all, put your show and apple and Spotify and all that stuff.

All of them.

And then once you're sure it's there, then pick a day and you say, hey, everybody, we're launching on the 21st.

And you send out an email and you announce it on social and you say, not the 19th, not the 20th, not the 22nd, it's the 21st.

I need you to follow the show.

Go to my website.com follow, which is automatically created by your friends pod page, right.

Have a page to go.

Don't tell them.

Find me wherever you find your podcast.

And you say, everybody needs to sign up on this day, the 21st.

That's your launch.

That's it.

That's how you launch your podcast.

And that way, in theory, you will go up the charts.

And if you get high enough on the charts, that then might get you a little bit of exposure, which will keep you on the charts, hopefully.

I'm not sold on the idea that being a top 20 and apple, I don't know, a lot of people are going into the apple charts to look for stuff.

I know sponsors are, so enjoy the spam, but the studios spend millions of dollars to get the buzz going.

And then they hope that you go into the seats, watch the movie, and then tell your friends something else that happens in the movie business.

They do a lot of collaboration, right.

You have, you know, Batman and Superman in the same movie, and Godzilla and what's the other monster, King Kong.

They're collaborating now, trying to pull audiences together because they're losing their shirt.

I'll talk about that in a second.

They also then do audience engagement.

So we do things like podfests where we get together and there are actual other kind of podcast events where somebody will do a live podcast in front of a bunch of their, you know, audience, and you'll get three or four shows together to do that.

I've attended those.

I kind of go, hmm, not sure this is working for me.

We also do listener surveys or we should be, I'll be talking about those in a couple weeks.

And we also have diverse content, if you think about it, if we get into indie films, especially, there's a much more diverse content because right now they're not getting too diverse.

And they also try to monetize via merchandise.

And I'll be talking about that in the future.

But here's the thing that's going on that I was like, holy cow.

All right, you ready for this?

Like, I saw Saturday night.

On a Saturday night?

No, Friday night.

And I think there were eight people in the theater.

Now this theater probably holds 60 people.

So its kind of weird.

I was like, okay, but the attendance is down 38%.

And in my neighborhood, Weve had a couple theaters close.

The Linda theater that I mentioned earlier used to show movies when they got off the big screen, but before they went to streaming.

And that now if you blink your eye, there is no time when it goes to what we used to call the cheap theaters.

I love the Linda theater.

Its now also, unfortunately, not in a great neighborhood anymore.

Its a great place to get your car stolen while youre watching a movie.

But the theater, the Linda theater is struggling.

And after only seeing two movies in the last four years, I decided I wanted to support these.

And so this very nice guy, because there's nobody else to talk to, it's me and four people waiting to give me popcorn, said, if you like movies, you should buy or consider doing this monthly pass where you can watch as many movies as you want to.

And I'm really not that much of a movie guy.

And if you think about it, when you go to the movies, you're blowing a good 3 hours.

And I thought, you know what?

I want to help support these guys.

Value for value I went to buy my unlimited movie thing, and it didn't work.

Like, I go through, here's my name, here's my address, here's my credit card.

Type Y, typee, type e, type e, type e.

Okay.

And I finally figure out which one I want.

I'm like, I want this one.

Order it.

Then it goes, oh, we're.

We're sorry.

We're having a glitch now.

Glitches happen.

But I was like, really?

You?

You can't even take a simple order?

Please try again later.

So I waited 1015 minutes.

Go back.

Nope, typey, typey, typey.

Nope.

Sorry.

Nope, nope.

And then I thought on.

I'm like, okay, what do they say in every single movie theater?

Download the app.

And I'm like, ugh.

All right.

So I download the app.

Typey, type, type Y, copy, paste.

The credit card number goes right through.

So what can we learn there?

The actual process.

If somebody wants to follow your show, if somebody wants to sign up for your newsletter, if somebody wants to buy your book or your course or whatever it is, write a review.

Is it there?

And does it work?

Because go to your website and make sure that every action you want them to take is takeable.

Because I was like, you got to be kidding me.

I'm trying to help you.

I don't even really want to go to the movies, but I want to support the arts, and I go to give them my money.

And it was like sad trombone.

Exactly.

So here's another one.

From 1995 to 2009, they had six major studios, and they released an average of 112 movies a year.

If we fast forward to between 2010 and 2023, that number has dropped to 83.

So, from 112 to 83.

And tickets, as we said, those have fallen off by 38%, while ticket prices have increased by 33%.

So, remember, we want to deliver value for value.

They are requesting 33% more value from you to see their value.

And so far, I am batting 30% on value.

Right.

The one movie, I was like, that's pretty good.

The other two.

Yeah, you could pass them.

The one I would definitely like not.

Don't even waste your time on it.

So I was like, well, what's wrong?

I know, Covid, and people aren't, you know, blah, blah.

Really.

What's wrong?

And as I looked at it, they're playing it safe, and I get it, because they're putting out.

Movies are more and more expensive to make.

So when you make one and it doesn't bring in what it's supposed to, that hurts.

And so what they do is they play it safe.

Case in point, what did I go see?

Top gun.

Build in audience.

Beetlejuice.

Build in audience.

And then you have nostalgia.

I remember Beetlejuice.

Let's go see it.

Let's see if it's any good.

And it's often cheaper to do a reboot than to get the rights of something new.

And the other thing is, you can't rely on what you always did because life changes.

So they're like, well, you know, we've always got Blu ray.

Yeah.

No, you don't realize, as content creators, yes, we like to be comfortable, and we want to continue to deliver value, but we need to keep our eye on the horizon, because things are always going to change.

Now, the other thing, and I'm not going to blame a lot of this, but another reason why movies have gotten safer, because I remember when I was in my twenties, right, where, like you, I liked a good, raucous, r rated comedy with outrageous things, you know, the Will Ferrell movies and, you know, National Lampoon and, you know, Animal House and things like, they just don't make those anymore, at least that I've seen.

Well, one of the things you have to look at is China.

China is a huge market.

They have over 1.4 with a b billion people, and it represents about 23% of the box office in 2023, $7.5 billion year over year, and 83% growth over 2022.

All right, that's a lot of people.

It's number two.

But do you put all your effort into number two?

Well, maybe because there's more people, but the movies have to be safer.

So it was kind of interesting when I looked into, like, what do you mean?

Well, Ghostbusters.

Yeah, that's been banned in China.

Why?

Because it has ghosts in it, and that has something to do with something that they don't like.

Back to the future.

The one movie was banned.

Banned, not even allowed in because it had time travel.

Lara Croft Tomb Raider depicted China in a not so great light.

Banned by the government.

Deadpool, one of my favorite movies.

If I had, I'm not a big superhero guy, but if I had a favorite, it would be Deadpool, because he's so sarcastic.

But it was banned for its violence, nudity, and graphic violence.

Banned.

And there goes your number two audience.

So why aren't they making r rated, raucous movies anymore?

Cause they want part of that 7.5 billion.

All right, Dave, I get it.

Congrats on doing some research.

What the heck does this have to do with podcasting I'll tell you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In China, do movie creators have a direct connection to their audience?

No, they're.

Their direct connection is the chinese government.

And the government says, nope, we don't want that.

You said booger.

You got to take it out.

And so we need to make sure that we don't have anyone between us and our audience telling us that you said Booger.

I mean, Conan O'Brien was on tv for 20 years.

He's wacky.

He has bears that masturbate.

You kind of know what you're getting.

And yet they still, and his show is still growing.

Conan O'Brien needs a friend, and yet they still gave him a report.

There is a high sensitivity among advertisers now, higher than ever.

It seems to be associated with brand safe content.

So I think for us, we should just be monitoring your language every time we go into an interview or do a segment.

But, Adam, you're coming dangerously close to being the man censoring the artist here.

And so Conan got a 78 for explicit language.

It's Conan O'Brien and he's not on tv.

Duh.

What do you think?

And a lot of this does not make sense.

Here's Rob Walsh talking about Roseanne Barr and what happened to her on YouTube.

I mean, Roseanne Barr was de algorithm on YouTube for the stupidest of reasons.

I mean, they literally deplatformed her for being, saying she was anti semitic when she's jewish.

I was like, are you kidding me?

She couldn't believe it.

So maybe we should follow the steps of Ricky Gervais, who offends people on a regular basis.

Yeah, well, that's the thing about offense, isn't it?

When people say they're offended, it's that just because you're offended, it doesn't mean you're right.

You know, it's offence is about feelings, and feelings are personal.

Some people are offended by equality.

So what?

You know, so you can't second guess people.

If you try and please everyone, you'll please no one.

With comedy as well.

You've got to, I think you've got to deal with taboos and contentious issues, and sometimes you deal in irony and some people don't get that, but, you know, you can't legislate against stupidity, otherwise you'll be doing nothing.

So we have to be careful when we put all our eggs in some of the bigger baskets because it gives them a lot of power.

And I'm not saying you need to go out and be vulgar and offensive and things like I'm just letting you know that when you try to be everything to everyone, it doesn't work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now, in addition to the money that I put out to these theaters, when you go to a movie, I'm a person that, like, I want to get all the value I can.

So I'm the person that goes there to watch the previews, then I watch the movie, and sometimes I'll sit through the credits.

So it's 3 hours by the time I've gone to the movies, not even counting the time it takes to drive there.

And we'll talk about that in a second.

But remember, people are paying with their time, and that is their most prized possession.

Edit the show.

Make it so that it doesn't waste their time.

For the record, I just cut out ten minutes of this episode.

I was like, okay, Dave, we get it.

The movie industry is going down the tubes.

The other thing that we can learn from them is to make sure what's in the title, what's in the trailer is an accurate representation of your show the Joker.

I just went back and watched it.

I watched their trailer, and the trailer showed him outside the courthouse, dancing around.

Outside the courthouse with chaos and fire.

Outside the courthouse.

And nowhere in the trailer were they singing.

They were dancing, but they weren't singing.

So was I surprised that it was a musical?

Yes.

And there were just times when I was like, do we really need to hear, I don't know, some song from Burt Bacharach that I don't really want to hear Joaquin Phoenix sing?

I'd like to see him act.

And for the record, both he and Gaga totally committed to their role, but it was kind of like, hey, can we kind of skip the song and go back to the story?

What?

There's, there's no story.

There's no story, Dave.

Oh, all right.

Yeah.

So don't bait and switch because that will turn people off and really, really make them mad.

With theaters closing around now, for the record, that was one of the reasons why they were closing theaters is there were too many, there weren't enough demand for their product of having another theater.

But nonetheless, when you're used to having one right around the corner and now there's 118 minutes from you, it's harder to get your content.

So make sure it's easy to get your content.

Don't say find me.

Wherever you find your podcasts, get yourself a domain.

A domain is $20 a year.

Slap it at whatever you're using and put those links on your website.

Why?

Because when people share your follow page.

It boosts your SEO and it reinforces your brand.

Make sure you're giving them what they want, because sometimes you're like, hey, here's my show filled with mediocrity.

I know what you want.

Here's more mediocrity.

Five days a week.

No, I'll give you an example.

There was a theater when I lived in Cleveland, Ohio, and they had really nice seats in them and that was cool.

And you had to reserve your thing online.

So that made it a little hard.

You couldn't just go to the theater and buy a ticket, because if you did, you had to go over to this thing and self serve, of course.

No, they're not going to actually help you.

You have to go over there.

And my favorite was a, they added a bar.

Cause when I got a big bucket of buttery popcorn, the next thing on my mind is, you know what I need?

Jaegermeister.

Yeah, I never understood that.

And then I, I would go over, order my popcorn and then, you know, not actually have somebody go get my pepsi.

No.

Now that your hand is full with a bucket of popcorn the size of your head, and you're trying to figure out, where am I going to put the napkins?

No.

Now they hand you a cup, a cup of nothing, and they point you at one of those machines.

Have you seen these?

I hate these.

It's like a really huge refrigerator and they're like 37 varieties of drink in it.

And you put the cup in this little holder and then you have to push the button and it puts the stuff all together.

But now you're trying to hold your popcorn, put the lid on the, on the whatever you just poured and take it.

And so consequently, everybody spills their drink.

And so you haven't even made it to the theater yet, and you've got the whole, as you walk to the theater, not a great experience.

So with podcasters, make it easy to follow the show, make it easy to buy your book.

To sign up for your newsletter, you know, I have schoolofpodcasting.com subscribe I have schoolofpodcasting.com follow I have schoolofpodcasting.com newsletter.

And when you go to those places, it's pretty obvious what I want you to do there.

And it's a few clicks to get it done.

So make the experience of your podcast so that they don't go, oh, they go to their podcast and then you gotta click on the button that says whatever, and then you click there and, oh, here's a list.

Of the podcast.

Now I gotta click again and I go to the other page and now I'm like, okay, is there a play button anywhere in the vicinity?

Wait, scroll, scroll, scroll.

No.

Make the the actual consumption of your podcast a great and easy experience in the same way that I don't have to pour my own coke.

Why don't you do it?

I am paying you mister or misses theater worker.

Why are you making me go find my apple link or my Spotify link or whatever?

No, just make it easy for them.

The key to any good content is leave them wanting more.

I wonder what's going to happen next.

And that also goes triple for teasers, for trailers.

And so I was listening to the show the darknet diaries and I was like, this is just a great example of hooking people in at the beginning of your show.

So instead of playing a clip of you interviewing somebody and they go, yeah, my first car was red.

It was a Chevy.

That doesn't really make me want to hear more.

But this did.

We're 150 episodes into this podcast.

That's 134 hours of me yapping.

I've gotten a lot of feedback over the years.

Most of it is positive.

But today, today I've got to correct something I got wrong, really wrong.

Come on, do you not want to know what he did wrong?

And if you're a regular listener to that show, you know, he does a ton of research.

So the fact that he got something wrong was a kind of vulnerable to go, hey, I got to admit it, I did something wrong.

That's a great tease to get people to listen to the episode.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I thought it was really cool.

You want your sponsors to fit your audience.

And so when I saw the Beetlejuice movie, I appreciated the fact that I think it was Ford, some sort of car company, and another, I think it was insurance company, something like that.

All of the commercials were custom made with a Beetlejuice theme.

And I was like, hey, that was really cool.

So make sure if you have sponsors that they fit your audience like a glove.

And get creative with the sponsors.

If you don't want people to skip your read about the sponsor, do a better read.

We work hard on the content, work just as hard on the sponsorship reads.

Think outside the box.

When it comes to monetization, movies have ticket sales and, you know, vending.

That's it.

So as I was sitting there and there are ten theaters in this building, all of which have, I don't know, maybe 20 people.

I sit down and one of the first ads is hey, you can rent this room.

Do you need a business meeting with a bunch of seats?

And stadium seating will also bring in food.

And they show all this popcorn and strawberries and blah, blah, blah.

And they're.

I'm like, you know what?

Kudos to these guys.

They're not waiting.

Well, maybe they did, who knows?

But as the old saying goes from Georgia Harbinger, dig the well before you're thirsty.

And they're like, okay, we have all the spaces.

Who needs these spaces?

And I have no idea what it costs, but it is something that I was like, huh?

Cause that's the other thing.

As you're sitting there watching ads, they're like, hey, your ad could be here.

And again, unfortunately, no prices.

I do want to look into this, though, because I know a few people that have movie podcasts, and the address he said, pulling it up on his phone was admanager dot ncM.com.

and I was like, if it was cheap, I might look into that.

All right, we're going back to give them a what they want.

So why wasn't I going to the movies?

Well, the last time I remembered, they were expensive, and they're still not cheap.

But I looked at how much it was to rent them online, and it was like $20 for Deadpool.

Or I could go get a ticket for $13 at the theater.

And again, the one thing you can't get at home is that experience of watching a movie with more than one person.

Yes, your family counts.

Okay, so there's four people.

But I love it when there's a full theater and we're all in it together.

But in my case, I was like, yeah, do expensive.

So what do they do?

They were getting how much money from me?

Zero for years.

And they said, look, you can watch as many movies as you want, and for the price of two movies, you can give us a monthly income, $19 plus tax, and you can watch as many movies as you want.

Knowing that I'm not just coming in with a ticket, I'm going to hit the popcorn in the coke.

And even if I get small of everything, it's still another $13.

So how much are they getting from me now?

$20 for the thing.

And if I get two movies, that's 26.

So we're looking at almost $50 a month because they did what they quote, lowered the price.

So sometimes you have to get creative with your packaging to get people to work.

I always mention, if you're going to monetize, tell the sponsor it's x amount of money to have me talk about your product on the show.

It's X amount of money to feature you in the newsletter.

You do have a newsletter, right?

And X amount of money to have you listed in the show notes on the website.

But hey, today we've got a special, all three for the low, low price of x amount of money per episode.

And there's a three month minimum purchase.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So do I think movies are going to go completely away?

No.

Do I think it will be different?

Yeah, it's the music.

In the same way the music industry is changing, so is the movie industry and so is radio, for the record.

And as much as we go, man, radio, I don't listen to that stuff.

Yeah, until a hurricane comes through your town and washes it away.

And then all of a sudden radio talk about value for value.

All of a sudden that was very valuable.

So in the same way they thought the VCR was going to kill movies and it didn't.

And is streaming going to kill movies?

No, because I think there's other people like me that like to watch movies with other people as long as it's not a pandemic.

So keep that in mind.

But a edit your show, make it good.

Because if I keep going back to the theater and they waste my time, I don't care how cheap the movies are, I don't want to waste my time.

Make it easy to consume your content and don't be afraid to take risks if you try to make content that's safe for everyone, that no one will be offended.

And again, I'm not just saying go out and be offensive, but you know what I mean?

Be you.

And if somebody doesn't like you, okay, that's your feelings.

Doesn't mean they're right, you know, but everybody's entitled to their feelings.

And then get creative.

Think outside the box when it comes to marketing and make sure your trailer and your titles of your episode represent what's in that episode.

There's nothing I hate more than seeing a great title.

And I'm like, this is what I want.

And then either a now you might say, dave, I do go to the movies early to watch the trailers.

That's my choice.

What I hate.

What if I didn't want trailers?

You know, what if I went when the movie started and all of a sudden there was another 20 minutes of trailers?

I think I saw two trailers.

But get to the content as quickly as possible.

I don't think you're going to have people complain, Dave, I like your show but, man, I hit play, and you give me exactly what I was expecting.

I don't think you're going to hear that.

I really don't.

And the last thing that I didn't really mention, Dave, why are you going to the movies again?

Because for me, I am a never ending student of storytelling, of crafting content in a way that engages and holds people's attention.

And so I kind of watch movies through two different lenses.

One, the person that's there to be entertained, and two, the person that's going, ooh, how did they do?

Ooh, that's an interesting twist.

I didn't see that.

I really want to know what happens next.

Now, that was cool.

How did they do that?

So, I'm always kind of watching through two different lenses when I consume any kind of content.

But keep thinking, keep working on making it better, and maybe we can avoid having all the issues that the movie industry is having.

The school of podcasting, a little housekeeping.

If you are using charitable.

Charitable is being shut down by Spotify.

I know.

Shocking that.

You know, there's this interesting service that a lot of people are enjoying.

Spotify bought it, and now they're shutting it down.

Look, it's their business.

They can run it however they want.

But the bottom line is there's a prefix.

So you put this thing in so that when somebody clicks play, goes over to charitable, and charitable goes, yep.

They listen to it, and then it sends them to your mp3 file on your media host.

Well, if charitable goes away when people click on it, it's going to go to charitable, and it's going to go.

And none of your files, zero, nada.

Your show is dead if you leave that charitable link in there.

So don't wait.

I think it goes away in December or something like that.

Just kill it now, because you're going to forget, and then you're going to log into your media host and go, why have I had zero downloads for the last three days?

Oh, yeah, that charitable thing that Dave talked about.

Because I've always kind of wondered, unless you're running ads and you need that lovely attribution thing where you're mildly spying on people.

Well, yeah.

If you don't need that, then what kind of stats are you getting from this that you can't get someplace else, like your media host?

And if you're just really obsessed about.

Yes, but last week, I was 136 on the charts, and now I'm 134.

Maybe spend a little time examining your.

Why, that.

That would be my advice on that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just a quick shout out to Todd Cochran, celebrating 20 years of doing geek new central.

Todd's a great guy.

I've known him for many years and just wanted to give him a quick shout out.

Also wanted to give a shout out to my buddy Courtney.

She does the podcast insider secrets to a top 100 podcast podcasting, marketing psychology.

Courtney Elmer and I attended one of her webinars, and it was kind of funny because she kind of was like, hey, Dave Jackson's here.

Like, legend.

And I could kind of tell in her voice.

She was probably thinking, why is.

Why are you here?

You don't need this.

And Courtney's been on the show.

We know each other, and we do.

We overlap each other a little bit.

And the reason I was there, just something to think about.

I wasn't.

Not that I was completely ignoring Courtney, but she would be doing the same thing to me.

She knows what I'm going to say.

That kind of podcasting 101 stuff.

I was there to watch the chat room and not to.

I didn't even say a peep.

I was there to just be a fly in the wall, because, look, that's her jam.

I'm not there trying to poach people.

I'm there, how do I say, grow your audience.

Go to where your audience is and see what they're doing and see if you can get any topics.

So I was watching the chat room for any questions, because if those people that are trying to start a podcast had questions, it would probably apply over here where I talk to people that are trying to start a podcast.

So that may be something you do.

I've done.

I know my show called your podcast website was based on me watching a chat room of an SEO talk, and all these people were like, wait, what's a bounce rate?

And I'm like, you don't know what a bounce rate is?

And so I started that podcast based on a lot of questions in that chat room.

So if you're looking for content, you don't have to wonder.

I wonder what people are talking about or what they have questions about.

It was a free thing.

And just if it's, you know, because technically, Courtney's my, you know, my competition, if we put up quotation marks.

So I was there not to be a jerk and try to steal people, because that's not cool.

I was just there to observe and check out the chat.

So it might be something you want to do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Last but not least for you people using buzzsprouth, they have added the ability to adjust where your mid roll ads go.

So it used to be, and this was an interesting service.

It was great for people that were moving with a big catalog where you could import stuff and it would basically somehow through AI, figure out where to put your advertising spots.

And as you might imagine, I always say, AI gets you about 80% there.

So 20% of the time you're like, don't really want an ad there.

And you couldn't really adjust where you could turn it off and say, look, I don't want one at the nine minute mark.

So you could turn it off, but you couldn't say, hey, can we take this one at the nine minute mark and put it over here at the 22 minutes, 32 2nd kind of thing.

And now you can do that in buzzsprout.

So if you're using that particular service, you can check that out.

And if I didn't mention it last week, captivate has their dynamic system.

So this allows you to insert things like, for example, my question of the month, and I didn't do one this week, but where am I going to be?

Those are dynamically inserted so that if you go back and listen to a couple months ago, you're listening to where I'm going to be now, not where I was, basically.

So that's dynamic content.

And most people assume dynamic content with ads, but captivate now has Aihdem that will go in and give you titles, give you show notes.

And the one I thought was really cool is they will say, hey, if you need places where to put your dynamic content, here's where.

And here's why, like, here's why we think it's a good place to put an ad here.

So I thought that was interesting.

So both buzzsprout and captivate now have these AI tools and a little more flexible, dynamic stuff.

I still, I still lean a little more towards captivate.

Their dynamic tool is amazing.

But the good thing is if you go with buzzsprout, captivate, blueberry, Lipson, those are all really solid choices.

They all have their different set of features and depending on, that's why I always, when somebody goes, who should I use?

I'm like, we should probably do a consulting call because as always with every podcast question, it depends.

And speaking of that, if you would like unlimited consulting that comes with your membership at the School of podcasting, along with the step by step courses and our amazing podcast community, go over to schoolofpodcasting.com, join, use the coupon code listener and I will see you on the inside.

I can't wait to see what we're going to do together.

If you like what you hear.

If you like what you hear, someone.