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

Scott Galloway talks about how he had multiple broadcast TV shows cancelled because he wasn't willing to censor his language: "I got very lucky because I found these mediums where I could really say exactly what's on my mind ... The wonderful thing about these mediums is there's no one in corporate reviewing them ... I don't think I would have been as successful as a creator in a traditional media ecosystem." [Colin & Samir]

Reddit used to keep publishers at arm's length, even threatening to ban the domain names of outlets that did too much marketing on the platform. Now it's nudging them to become more involved in the subreddits catering to their content niches. [Digiday] Ultimately though, it's up to the moderators of any particular subreddit as to whether publishers can promote their content, so it's now becoming more common for publishers to reach out to those moderators in advance before engaging with a community.

A UK newspaper launched a political chat show that's generated over 30 million views across YouTube and shortform video platforms. [Press Gazette]

This is the first presidential election I can remember where the Democrat is being specifically praised by members of their own party for not meaningfully engaging with the press. [Public Notice] There are a lot of theories for why that is, but I think it's a clear sign that we've now reached an era of digital distribution where a campaign no longer needs the press to get its message to voters. And given that politics are a zero sum game, there's not a lot of upside to media interviews given that, as Public Notice puts it, "the press often asks insipid questions, and indeed can easily be manipulated to serve as conduits for entirely bogus claims and theories pushed by GOP partisans."

Could Google appease publishers by simply putting link citations within its generative AI text — as opposed to at the end of it? "It could even write, 'According to [publisher],…' the way one news outlet might credit another. We all know generative AI can be instructed to do that. Why isn’t Google doing that here?" [Nieman Lab]

How Gary Arndt built Everything Everywhere, a podcast with 1.5 million monthly downloads

What does a professional travel photographer do when all international flights are shut down due to a global pandemic? That’s a question Gary Arndt found himself asking in the early months of 2020. By that point, he had built up millions of social media followers and an entire career from snapping photos in exotic locales, and within a matter of weeks his income streams had completely dried up.

Luckily, he had already been batting around the idea for a podcast that didn’t require any travel. In July 2020, he started producing seven episodes a week of Everything Everywhere, an educational show about a diverse range of topics, and it immediately took off. Today, it generates 1.5 million monthly downloads and pulls in much more advertising income than Gary ever made as a travel photographer.

In a recent interview, Gary walked through how he found his audience, where he gets his ideas for new episodes, and why he weaned himself off the social media platforms that once delivered him huge reach:

Well, March, 2020, I come home from my last international trip from Portugal, February 28th, 2020. March 1st, I start getting sick. I probably have COVID. This was early enough where there weren't tests available and things like that. So pretty sure I had COVID. And then the two weeks after that, I lose 95% of my income. Traffic to the website dries up. Affiliate sales dry up. All the contracts I had canceled. I had an event that I ran called the Travel Influencer Summit. I was going to be running another one. We're talking to the host destination. We had it planned out. It was going to be a pretty sizable event. We bring in the top 30 travel influencers in the world, people with very big YouTube followings, Instagram followings. That fell through. 

And I began talking to some higher up people I knew in the travel industry, you know, because nobody was doing anything. So we were all just doing Zoom calls and stuff. And I initially thought in March that this was going to be over in like a month. Like this is going to be over in a few weeks and then, you know, late April, May, we're going to be back to doing whatever. That obviously didn't happen. And some of the people I talked to said like, no, no, no, you don't understand. This is going to be years to play out. This is really catastrophic. And then I began realizing, okay, I have to do something. I cannot rely on the travel business anymore. 

More quick hits

"Tumblr skipped so Substack could walk ... It really did change the standard for shaping your voice, as an individual, outside of magazines and corporate media, but within the context of a group of people all interacting with each other’s work." [Embedded]

Van Neistat reflects on why he and his brother split up from their creative partnership: "I treated Casey like my agent or my art dealer. I was the creative genius and he was to sell my wares ... Casey was always on the hustle, on the phone, taking meetings, developing and executing plans. I was inclined to smoke pot all day." [Van Neistat] Casey of course went on to become a huge YouTube star and revolutionize the vlogging format. Van floundered for several years and eventually joined YouTube a few years ago. His channel was given a huge boost when Casey promoted it from his channel.

Here's something I didn't know: a big part of Call Her Daddy's early success was due to Alex Cooper's editing style. She and her co-host would record three hours of audio and then she would edit it down to one: "the editing [for one episode] will take me about 7 hours to 20 hours. It's a multi-day process usually. And I'm proud of it. I think it's an amazing idea. I think that the Millennials obviously love the show and I think the editing is great. You never find a boring moment." [SatPost]

Niche social media platforms are "gaining traction as users grow weary of mega-platforms where intimacy and connection have become harder to find among large groups of followers." [Bloomberg]

One of Netflix's competitive edges over other streamers is its ability to generate massive audiences for foreign language content — a feat it’s accomplished by making huge investments in its voice dubbing capabilities. It regularly holds workshops to train voice actors to ensure cultural nuances are conveyed to foreign audiences. [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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