The Podcast Pedant

(This rant began life as a post at Podcast Alley.)

So the advertising deal that Mommycast has with the Dixie brand¹ is back in the news again, thanks to an article this week in USA Today. The article, about parenting podcasts in general, is actually decent reading and presents a good list of pointers (even if they get the name of 101 Uses for Baby Wipes wrong.) But of course the “Oh, wow” part, the one that caused excitement at the Alley, is this:

Vogelzang and Paige Heninger combine coffee-klatch banter about their families and interviews with parenting experts. Vogelzang estimates the show attracts more than 300,000 downloads a week. In March, the twice-a-week Mommycast begins a one-year, $100,000 sponsorship deal² with Dixie, making the paper-goods company the first major corporate advertiser of an independently produced podcast that’s not about technology, says radio industry researcher Tom Webster of Edison Research in New Jersey.

Ferg (of the unusually spiffy couplecast Air Ferg) put up the pointer to that news and said “Cha-ching!” And I can understand the reaction. Six figures is a lot of figures. If you write it on a check you have to write the numerals pretty small to fit them in the box. But does the cha really ching?

Let’s do the math…

• Mommycast is with Podshow, and their 60% commission is notorious in the community. It’s always possible Mommycast has a different deal with them, but I’ve never heard of any exceptions to this part of the Podshow contract, and I have heard about major podcasters who were told it was non-negotiable. If you take it as a given, then Mommycast’s cut of the deal is actually $40,000. Hmmm. Okay… Let’s say cha-ching.
• Mommycast has two hosts. $40,000 over the course of a year is $770 per week. Income per host, before taxes, comes to $385 per week. Cha-ching?
• The article says Mommycast does two shows a week. That’s 104 shows a year, but let’s be generous and give them a couple weeks off, simplifying to 100 shows. That’s $400 per episode. The article also says they do 300,000 downloads per week… Splitting that evenly and assuming archive exposures also even out, that comes to 150,000 downloads per episode.³
• Advertising rates are generally quoted as CPM, which means “cost per thousand exposures.” There are no standard rates in the industry yet, but Kiptronic is pitching CPM rates to advertisers of around $50. Podtrac is pushing to raise rates into the vicinity of $100 to $150 for brand awareness campaigns. Even the Tech Podcast Network, who’s been doing ads longer than just about anyone, sets rates around a $10 to $15 CPM, or so I’ve heard anecdotally. And Rocketboom’s recent EBay sale for a single week’s ads at $40,000 comes out to a $40 CPM for them.⁴ Mommycast’s effective CPM rate for their cut of the Dixie deal? $400 / 150 = $2.67. Even if you assume they’re keeping all the money, it still comes out to only 6 bucks and change. And if they grow their show over the course of the year then the per-listener revenue plummets. (That’s why a year is way too long for a contract like this. Your show’s value goes up, but you can’t capitalize on that.)

“Cha-ching” my delicately scented posterior. It sounds good on the surface, but compared to what a show of their audience size should be doing, the hosts are getting royally shafted in this deal. A talk radio host with a couple hundred thousand listeners can make a very good living. This is one of Podshow’s signature shows, and the highest-profile deal Podshow’s been talking about. If any of the numbers here are close to accurate, then these podcast superstars could “quit their day jobs” for salaries equivalent to gas station attendants.⁵

Think carefully about your role models and business models in the podcast community, folks. That’s all I have to say. Do the math, and think carefully.

1. A division of Georgia-Pacific, which is now a division of Koch Industries, which is owned by the richest family you’ve probably never heard of. ↩
2. According to this one article. Other press on the same news has said “North of six figures” and other such vagaries, but you know it can’t be much more than $100K. If it was, they’d have said “More than $120,000″ or “Nearly $200,000″ or whatever sounds more impressive. ↩
3. Although other stories about them as recently as November indicated downloads of half million a month. So either the USA Today story is overshooting or they’ve had incredible growth in three months. Still, it is the most recent source, so let’s take it as correct. ↩
4. People have pointed out that the Rocketboom sale represents a single high-profile incident, and that they’re unlikely to sustain it. Good point. But that’s still the math for that week. And I like Rocketboom. ↩
5. Yeah, I know they don’t have day jobs. Lucky, lucky them. ↩

I love in-jokes. Especially when I’m the one making them up — because it’s the only time I really know I’m “in.”

The Drinking Game will only make sense to anyone who’s been living on the Yahoo! Podcasters list for the past few months. I started it in a message there because I was tired of Todd Cochrane ragging on Feedburner for the umpteen thousandth time.¹ I figured it was time to reward people with a good drink the next time it happened. And once you start, well, other ideas present themselves…

Since then Paul has immortalized it on the Podcasters Wiki, for which the world shall one day forgive him.  If you have ideas for expanding it, put them there.

1. Yes, Todd, we know you think the guys there are just waiting to get their big sweaty hands on your sweet virgin feed, have their evil way with it, then throw its body into their wood shed. This has never happened and it’s easily preventable if they tried. But your way works too: never let your feed leave the house. ↩

When it’s been a bad day, and you’re alone in the house, and the hot tub just gets you thinking more and doesn’t relax you… The best pleasure in the universe comes from Glenmorangie Port Finish. It’s entirely possible that better Scotch exists, but this one goes straight to my heart and keeps it warm.

Drinking it while watching Cylon baseships launch a nuclear missile assault on Battlestar Galactica, of course, is almost too much indulgence. But someone’s got to measure the limits of decadence. I do it for the greater good.

Because I’m tired, that’s why. Because I had a bitch of a day at work, and it’s finally occurring to me that 50 hours at a stultifying day job hacking at finance databases and 30 hours working on a very elaborate podcast and a wife and infant son are reducing me to a pool of very thin gruel. I’m up until 2 or 3 AM every frigging day. Hell, just look at the time I’m posting this.

The wife and child are non-negotiable. I will spend time with them no matter what. That leaves my podcast and my job. Something’s gotta give. Ten years from now, which will I be more proud of having worked on?

Right. So I need an exit plan. I need a way to make a living, or at least most of a living, doing podcast-related things. That’s the goal.

Why a blog, then? To vent. To get my name out. To have a single place to put all the smartassed stuff I’m always hurling at the walls in other communities. And because it might get help. Isn’t writing shit and giving it away for free the way people get rich these days? That’s what Wired says. It must be true.

And if not, it should be. So we’ll make it so. Who’s with me?