Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media industry newsletter. If you've received it, then you either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you.

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Quick hits

I'm probably not the only one who starts up a podcast with his thumb poised to skip past multiple programmatic ads. Even the once-bespoke host-read ads are now dynamically-inserted, which makes it difficult for the hosts to bake the ad read into the show. [WSJ]

Texas is a huge state and it inches closer to turning blue with every election cycle. It makes sense that liberal activists see an opening for a left-leaning media outlet to cover the state's politics. [Semafor]

I've always found it amazing that Hank and John Green built a massive education media company and yet no one talks about it, mostly because they never raised massive VC investment. [Hank Green]

What makes a chat podcast successful? In a lot of cases, it has less to do with subject matter and more to do with host chemistry. [NYT] FROM THE ARTICLE: “A fortuitous frisson between friends can propel an otherwise ordinary show to the top of the charts, while bad or dull vibes render even a well-funded podcast dead on arrival."

Major podcast networks are getting smarter about how they structure deals with star hosts; rather than guaranteeing a lump payment, they tie compensation to a show's performance. Too many of these networks have been burned by celebrities who took home huge payouts without producing hardly anything to show for them. [Business Insider]

How Jared Newman built Cord Cutter Weekly, a TV streaming newsletter with 32,000 subscribers

When Jared Newman launched his Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter back in 2016, the streaming TV market was much smaller than it is today, with most TV networks either not having their own streaming app or requiring a cable subscription to access it. But as it turned out, he timed his launch perfectly, as it was only a matter of years before virtually every Hollywood studio pivoted to streaming. Today, his newsletter has over 32,000 subscribers, and a spinoff newsletter that gives tech advice has also grown to 1,200 paying members.

In a recent interview, he discussed his motivation for launching the newsletter, why his editor let him promote it at the end of his columns, and whether he ever wants to leave his freelance career entirely to just focus on growing his two newsletters:

I remember getting an email from somebody in that 2017 timeframe. It was like, I don't know a lot about technology, but I'm trying to learn. And they didn't say specifically what kind of technology. And I was like, huh, maybe I could, you know, broaden the scope a bit, and it had been on my mind. How would I monetize? How would I make a paid product? And maybe having it be somewhat distinct and not something that's just specifically about saving money, but just about being a savvier technology user in general.

More quick hits

This is an interesting comparison of metrics between a normal newsletter and a LinkedIn newsletter. Basically, LinkedIn newsletters can grow very quickly, but subscribers are much less engaged than those who subscribe through a more traditional newsletter platform. [The Science Marketer]

It wasn't long ago we were talking about a podcast market crash, and now here we are with multiple $100 million+ deals signed in the last few months. [Variety]

"More than 43% of Gen Z audiences participate in a fandom that no one in their personal life has heard of, according to YouTube Insights. The report adds that about 53% of Gen Z create content for the niche fandoms they participate in. Teenagers are spending more time within worlds that people in their lives don’t know exist and they’re spending more time creating for those smaller worlds." [Posting Nexus]

Several former TV anchors have found success at moving audiences over to their new independent channels: "The Megyn Kelly Show’s YouTube channel, which has 2.3 million subscribers, had 116.8 million views in July — more views than the official channels for NBC News (78 million) CBS News (83 million), Sky News (87 million), the BBC News (72 million) and CNBC (17 million)." [Semafor] Traditional cable news outlets should definitely consider this a threat. They spend millions of dollars building up the brands of their on-air talent, and now that talent is quickly becoming the competition.

Many of the channels across the cable dial now mostly rely on reruns as their parent companies invest in expanding original programming on their streaming services, but Warner Brothers Discovery has greenlit multiple new shows for TNT. [WSJ]

I’m looking for more media entrepreneurs to feature on my newsletter and podcast

One of the things I really pride myself on is that I don’t just focus this newsletter on covering the handful of mainstream media companies that every other industry outlet features. Instead, I go the extra mile to find and interview media entrepreneurs who have been quietly killing it behind the scenes. In most cases, the operators I feature have completely bootstrapped their outlets.

In that vein, I’m looking for even more entrepreneurs to feature. Specifically, I’m looking for people succeeding in these areas:

• Niche news sites

• Video channels like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram Reels

• Podcasts

• Newsletters

• Affiliate/ecommerce

Interested in speaking to me? You can find my contact info over here. (please don’t simply hit reply to this newsletter because that’ll go to a different email address. )

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