Will Podcasts Survive the YouTube Era? With Emma Sweet, Libby Absten, Carly Baker, and Chris Boniello

Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription software errors.

Jeff Umbro: Welcome to Podcast Perspectives. I'm your host, Jeff Umbro. This week we have a very special episode. This is a panel that was recorded live from Austin, Texas at South by Southwest on March 13th, 2026. This panel is actually moderated by Podglomerate Vice President of Production Services, Chris Boniello, and it features Emma Sweet, the Global Product Activation Manager of podcasts at YouTube.

Libby Abston, the Director of Strategic Growth and Partnerships at Podcast Nation and Carly Baker, the Head of Media Partnerships at HubSpot. This panel is called “Will Podcasts Survive the YouTube Era,” and it is all about the idea of the fact that YouTube is becoming the fastest growing podcast platform, and creators are scrambling to add video to their podcasts.

And a critical question has emerged, is pure audio dead? This is structured as a head-to-head debate. However, it really turned into a conversation about how people can adapt in this new space. I was in the audience during this panel and I can tell you, uh, this was, I think, like the best panel of the entire week at SXSW or Podcast Movement.

So it was, it was very, very cool to hear and to see, and I'm really excited that we get to share this with everybody 'cause I think it's gonna be really, really useful. If you enjoy this, shoot us an email, listen@thepodglomerate.com and let us know, and we'll try and get Emma, Libby, and Carly on future episodes of this show.

Join us in two weeks where we are going to have an episode with Jerry Kolber, who is the founder and CEO of Atomic Audio. And make sure to check out the back list of this podcast where you can find a bunch of really amazing episodes that talk about video podcasting and a bunch of similar topics I think you all may enjoy if you're listening to this episode.

So thank you so much and we'll get right to it.

Chris Boniello: Hey everybody, it's Chris here. 

Before we jump into the panel audio, unfortunately we were missing the first few minutes of the recording, so what we're gonna be going right into is Libby answering a question about how creators are using video in their podcasts.

Libby Asten: What we are talking about is how video can lend towards your audience growth towards discoverability. And so every time you hear video, you're kind of having this conversation around discoverability. When you back into like how to treat it per platform, each platform is different. Like you can be really agnostic and open to every single platform, but you can't treat each platform the same because they're all different products. They all have different things that they're offering you, and it's an algorithm. The more you use their product, the way that they want you to use it, the more that they're gonna push content into the discoverability tools and drivers that they have on their platform. So I don't know if that necessarily answers your question. I kinda went on a right there, but.

Emma Sweet: I just wanna contradict that you can monetize on video in addition to your audio monetization. And we can get in, get more into that, but I think it's all incremental. To your point, it's incremental audience, it's incremental monetization. In addition to the ads in DAI, it's incremental analytics that you can learn more about your content, but. We'll get into it and more.

Chris Boniello: Carly, are you seeing the same thing in the B2B world, or does it shift in that world from the creator side?

Carly Baker: Yeah, it's definitely interesting in the B2B world and in the business content space as a whole, as a, as a media network. All of our shows are on YouTube and we were early adopters. I mean, My First Million, we've had I think a YouTube channel since 2019 for the show. So we were really early in terms of creating content.

And of course HubSpot is a business. We've had a really strong presence on YouTube for a really long time, both with the parent business and on the media side. What's particularly interesting, I think about the business content space with our video strategy is we kind of think about having two different buckets of content that we create for YouTube specifically, we have kind of a browse based channels, and those are more designed and packaged and positioned to sort of show up on your homepage and be something that, you know, they're browsing, they see something that could be interesting and they click in and watch. And then we have our intent and search based channels. And so those are really designed to, you know, because so many people are searching for answers on YouTube to be packaged and positioned and entitled to sort of come up as answers to those questions that people are asking. So we have channels that, you know, tend to do one or the other and, and benefit us in different ways on that side of things, we also use a lot of other, you know, video specifically on LinkedIn. Of course, we know there's a huge, you know, it's like the biggest business audience in the world, and as someone who's speaking to those upmarket business leaders, putting clips on LinkedIn is great just not only for sort of building our host as subject matter experts, but also just tapping into the fact that that's sort of a closed ecosystem for those business leaders.

And so we are really big, of course on long form, but also on those shorter form and on those mid form clips that are tailored specifically for audiences on LinkedIn. And we've seen a lot of growth there.

Chris Boniello: Do you have differences between older media legacy brands and newer brands that are coming to you?

Carly Baker: What do you mean?

Chris Boniello: In how you're gonna build out where those products are going? LinkedIn versus YouTube versus Instagram, how are you gonna present them to those audiences being either coming from radio or the audio only version of your show versus newer media coming from reels, TikToks, and, and that type of content?

Carly Baker: Yeah. We really treat our video products and our audio products separately so we're not just, you know, making a long form video and then ripping the audio off of that and publishing that as our audio episode. So we treat them as completely different products. Part of that is because we know that the audience expectation and what people need on YouTube to stick around is a lot different than what people need on the audio side, like they need a hook. They need engaging storytelling. Your host has to have a certain sort of presence and comfortability on the audio or on the video side. Whereas the, the audio audience demands a lot less. And I think it can be a product that's a lot more polished, right? If you think about someone sitting in their, in their podcast closet, in their pajamas, you know, you're able to do, read off a script and no one's watching you. You're able to do a lot of editing and post, and those things are really hard to make look natural on the video side. And so there's definitely been a little bit of a learning curve on, on that side of things. I think what can be hard about some of the upmarket content that we create is like if we have a show that's, you know, for CROs at a company like are CROs actually on YouTube, and if they are like, what are they searching for? And maybe they're actually more on LinkedIn and that's more of an accessible platform. So for us, we really have to tailor our strategy to where those targets are and, and to meet them there and, and give them a format of video that they're looking for.

Chris Boniello: Yeah, that's a good reminder. The lift on the production side is something that we deal with and confront a lot, figuring out, shifting an interview based show or a longer show into a video format. What's gonna be true to that show? But then what is the guest, the host, and all those added production hurdles gonna do for the backend for post-production?

Are you gonna now have instead of tiny audio files, are you gonna have 4K video files that take up a hundred to 200 gigs that need to get sent around that now you can't edit this show in a couple hours afterwards? Is everybody gonna need lighting, camera, makeup? Is there a bunch of branded stuff in the background that we don't now want on the show or an advertiser's not gonna want?

And so there's those things to take into account for us on the production side, and then on the post-production, we're now trying to figure out what is the best backend to present those things on YouTube or on Spotify for Video.

And Emma, I was wondering from your point of view in YouTube, are there some tricks or tips or things you tell a creator now who's starting a new show? Or they have a show that they're shifting over to YouTube, some things to focus on that's gonna help them be successful on that platform versus what they have been previously doing for an audio only side?

Emma Sweet: Yeah, definitely. I think first, just consider what's reasonable for your resourcing. I think I mentioned this slightly earlier, but if you're producing an hour long podcast and doing full video is very scary. Don't start there. Start with clips. There's some great podcasts. Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway started with clips and then over time they worked up the muscle to then get into long form and now they do both. So I don't think by any means you need to jump into doing it all on YouTube. I'm still learning things about YouTube and have been there for almost five years. Like it's, it's a huge platform with a lot of products. So I would, I would start with that and also start with what your audience wants. If they don't care if you're on camera, and video doesn't make sense, don't do it. If they'd really love the value of engaging with you and getting closer with you because they get to see you. If you can build your community on YouTube, in comments in our community tab, if that feels valuable to you. If you want to go live and chat with them there, video might make sense for you. So that first and foremost is just do what's reasonable.

Second though is YouTube is different because it's the top discovery surface because it's the second largest search engine in the world. And I do think that that's different than a Spotify, than an Apple might be, where your titles and your thumbnails matter way more than they probably would on those platforms. I think, at least for me, on. Spotify, it's very intent based. I'm not really using Spotify to discover new podcast shows, kind of as a little messy on home or in their podcast tab to do that. YouTube, most of our audience finds content either through Home or Watch Next, and so having thumbnails and titles that can stand out on the sea of videos on the homepage really matters. And so we have title and thumbnail A/B testing. We've had thumbnail A/B testing for a while. Title A/B testing is a bit of a newer feature. I'd recommend using both or in YouTube Studio, start there and see what works because you can do the same titles as you have on Spotify or Apple. It just might not be what's best for the YouTube audience that tends to skew younger, can skew more male to be honest. It's something that we're working on as a platform too.

And so I would use both of those. I would also use, I've been talking a minute, but our video clips tool can help if you are doing longer form. We just rolled this out. These AI suggested clips for where in your video makes sense based on audience retention to clip and publish to your channel. It's really seamless. I. I love that product. I just think it solves a lot of pain points, kind of what you were saying, of sending those huge files or having them on your desktop saved and it, it takes up a lot of storage. But, so I would say both of those. And then lastly, analytics are the most important things. So using watch time, of course, but you can see key moments of audience retention.

If you're just watching your own video, you can see them, but we also display them in YouTube analytics. We also show you other podcasts that your audience is watching so you can look at those and learn from them which I think is powerful 'cause you can typically know in your genre who else is succeeding. But this can be a powerful tool to just understand on YouTube what your audience likes. And then of course, retention matters just like it does on audio if people are engaging and where you can trim down or what you can learn. And we just rolled out a feature too called Ask Studio, which is an agentic experience. It's AI driven in studio, and you can ask it plain text questions. Like, what was my most successful podcast episode in the last six months? Or what other true crime podcasts are my audience watching?

And that can be a little bit easier because YouTube analytics, like all YouTube is massive and there's a lot to look at. And so it can simplify it a bit.

Chris Boniello: What would you title this panel?

Emma Sweet: Can podcasts continue to thrive in the YouTube era?

Chris Boniello: Nice.

Emma Sweet: Just YouTube era. It's all of, it's everybody's era.

Chris Boniello: Can and why.

Libby Asten: Oh, you're turning on me. Yeah. I mean, I was being sweet to Emma, but I do think that, I do think, yes, of course we're gonna survive. Of course you have to.

Podcasts are gonna thrive in the new video era because we're expanding our audience and driving discoverability. There's that word again. Like what, we all win when that happens. I don't foresee the RSS feed ever going away the way that we approach it. I, I'm sure it's the same way that you guys both approach it, or at least you, Carly, but I, I had mentioned earlier like, we treat each platform differently and there's a reason for that because we are of the belief that every platform has consumers by it, that behind it, that have specific consumer habits. The person that is listening on Spotify is very different than the person who's listening on Apple is very different than the person who's consuming on YouTube back into the social on that. The person who discovers your podcast on TikTok is not gonna be the person to go to your RSS feed and listen to your podcast. They might, but they might not. Like, my guess is that they might not, the person who discovers that on Meta is also not the same person.

So we have a strategy where we carve out every audience. We're creating content for every audience, but we're also monetizing every audience. So to your point, yes, of course you can monetize on YouTube. I mean, come on. It's like a amazing monetization channel. But I, not everybody can do that strategy. I would say like getting really granular if we are talking about strategies, bringing your video to market. I think one of the good things, like you talked about a bunch of strategies, but like you have to do it for a period of time. I think working with creators on audience growth, it's so painful and so hard because when you are providing audience growth as a service, you are working with creators who are sometimes expecting like growth overnight, and we all know that that's just not feasible. So anything that you do, I would suggest like doing it for a period of like at least 90 days and you have to back into the data. All the data is there. But then I would also say like, do not throw all the pasta at the wall. Like, oh, we say it often, but like video can break a podcast before it makes it more often than not because it is such a heavy lift. And now with even more opportunity to do video everywhere, like you're gonna break your back before you even get to put your video out.

So I think if you are testing video, obviously, I would assume like your very first channel is gonna be YouTube. I mean, that's like just the main roadmap. Maybe you're doing clips first. Actually clips I think is a great place to start because you can put them on social, you can put them on YouTube, and you can kind of test and like you're saying, get an idea of what your audience is interested in before you go all out on video. But yeah, test a channel first. Don't do all of 'em. See if it works. And then if it doesn't, switch channels, test that channel. It takes a while, like it's not overnight.

Emma Sweet: I would, oh, sorry. I would, the only little thing I would add to that, that I agree with everything you just said, but last year I was at the NAB, the National Association of Broadcasters Conference, and I met someone who said, oh, I love, I love watching podcasts. And I was like, oh, where do you watch? And they said, TikTok. Period. And so mentioning that it is a really powerful place for people who, especially young audiences, but I see a ton of clips on of podcasts, on TikTok of shows that I'm not listening to or watching, but I enjoy seeing the clips on, on TikTok, and so I think that's an audience that you can't discount and it's short form.

So it's, again, it's a great place to start.

Libby Asten: It is an audience you cannot discount. But I will say like I'm a network, right? So like I'm monetizing an RSS feed, period. I get to monetize on YouTube. Great. And actually, I come from the digital background. Our network does, so we sell social, very unique. It is a huge topic in our industry of how to sell other channels outside of YouTube.

YouTube and the RSS is the only place that people really know how to do it. So it's great. But that's what I'm saying is that is less of a, there's an audience there, but that's discoverability at the end of the day, that's not a download to my RSS feed that will translate to an impression that will translate to dollars in my creators and my bank account.

Emma Sweet: Unless you're pedaling products on TikTok shop?

Libby Asten: Yes. Unless like they have a product business, but I'm also not in that. So.

Carly Baker: We've talked a lot about one of, kind of the, the main things that's attractive about video, especially about long form is just discoverability. But I think that there's a lot of other things that are great about video that we haven't necessarily talked about.

I'm happy to sort of selfishly chime in here with some of the things that I love the most about discoverability. I think when you're thinking about it from a host and a talent perspective, it really. You really expect the person who is on camera to really have to level up their deliverability. Like they have to be comfortable being on camera. They have to be comfortable speaking and either reading a prompter or really being internalized with the content that they're sharing and looking directly into the camera. They have to be really comfortable with the way that they look with embodying confidence. It's like you're, your audience can tell when you're like really uncomfortably reading off of a teleprompter.

And if someone's watching your long form video, they're immediately gonna click away. And so there's a lot of just training and reps that by being on video, either through clips or through long form, that will really just help you be a better host. And honestly, it'll help your audio product be a lot better too. You'll have to pay a lot more attention to your, To your delivery, to how you're speaking about the topics, to how you're interviewing people. It just really, the expectation and what you're able to deliver just has to be that much stronger. And if you think about, especially on YouTube, you're competing with people who are professional YouTubers. It's their main channel, and they have sets, they have a high level of production, they're very comfortable on camera. They're embodying that confidence and that's one of the main reasons why the audiences are attracted to them. And so from a from a media training perspective, there's a lot to learn and it can only sort of help you kind of level up as a host.

So from a talent perspective, we really love that and we invest a lot in helping our, our hosts really get to that level of comfortability so they can really shine and, and be comfortable and, and be engaging. It really kind of comes down to like your audience and people that are watching, they don't wanna feel like they're being talked at. They wanna feel like they're being talked to. And there's a very big difference in deliverability on the video side with that. I think the other thing that I love about this for us and especially in the B2B world, like one of the biggest challenges with just producing audio content, although this is different now with Spotify, is you're kind of just releasing the content into the wind and then there's no place for your audience to engage either with one another or directly with you, you don't have that direct feedback channel, a lot of places that people are consuming that audio content.

So what's great about YouTube and, and about other places where you're posting clips is you now have people that are, you know, engaging in the comments with you. They're engaging with their fellow audience members. You can do a ton of social listening to understand like what other potential topics they wanna hear from you about. What types of formats do they wanna see? Like just from a research perspective and from a content planning perspective, it's super valuable on that side of things too.

Chris Boniello: Yeah, I think that's a great note on the talent side and the training side to get people media ready that then it has that extra work on the front end, but it can really add on the intimacy and the relationship with the audience and can help with live events too.

You now, your host or guests who have been on video shows and are prepared for live events and people know the face, they recognize it. They are excited to see you. You're not just a voice sometimes disconnected from the head.

Emma Sweet: I was gonna gush about YouTube for a second. Obviously I'm biased, but I think when I, honestly, when I was interviewing for my job at YouTube, one of the things that I, that stood out to me is that I think podcasters are doing all of those things on disparate platforms. They have their long form on RSS. They're going to Instagram for their community and to have their q and a and polling of which should my next episode be. COVID, of course, there were tons of virtual live events using third party platforms to do that. They're using TikTok for their clips and reels.

YouTube, of course, has all of it. It's like the comments that you were talking about. It's our shorts for short form. It's community. You can go live, you can monetize in live, you can monetize on channel memberships. You can, you can do it all in one place, and I, of course it is work. But if you're gonna do it on all these different places where you have to grow audience across all of these social platforms and maybe your Patreon and things like that, you, you could do it all on YouTube and it makes it more cohesive and allows you to really build and engage with that community.

Chris Boniello: Do you see something from the data where you can give a tip to people looking to move their engagement that they have in something like Shorts over to long form or on their various spread out platforms here?

Emma Sweet: On Shorts, you can actually link to your long form. You can use the related video feature, which I would.

Chris Boniello: Do people click it? I always wonder, I feel?

Emma Sweet: People do clip it. I don't have the number in my head.

Chris Boniello: I do it accidentally, and then I'm stuck watching like a three hour cooking video.

Emma Sweet: More percentages, no more died after I threw out my like five data points that I had in my head of, you'll notice they were all third party, they were first party. People do click it. I, I do think though, and I think this applies to RSS too, you can't, you were saying you can't just have your RSS feed in your episodes and then set it and forget it. It is really powerful if you have an Instagram community to say, I'm now on YouTube, or I have listened to podcasts on RSS, where they've, they've said, you know, if we reach 20,000 subscribers our host will do an apartment tour. I, I did watch that. I was gonna actually gonna say he did a pole dancing class at one point, which was just funny. And it was engaging and it allowed audiences to engage with these hosts in a new way. And so, offering fun, extra content for your audience if they subscribe, and being able to call that out and cross promote, I think is actually very helpful to growing your YouTube presence because it is very difficult, I'll be totally frank, to grow a channel from nothing.

Chris Boniello: Do you see people going from like the descriptions on the longer form shows into the content on other platforms, can you see those clicks and are those working through YouTube?

Emma Sweet: The structured description matters for sure. I think it matters from an SEO perspective, and it also just matters for promoting your merch shelf, your own website, your live events, your, so we see a lot of our top YouTubers, Bailey Sarian is very good at that. She leverages the description to promote all kinds of things. Chapters is another tool that you can use on YouTube for your long form, and so creators will often put in the description what's happening at each chapter marker in case people want to jump around. But I would, in addition to, of course, the titles and thumbnails that I mentioned, I think the description can be a very helpful tool.

Chris Boniello: Do you see a version of the future where someone was building a new show and didn't use RSS feed at all?

Libby Asten: Well, I mean we.

Chris Boniello: I guess we see it now with like Netflix.

Libby Asten: We acquire creators all the time that started on YouTube. There's been, I can give you a handful of pitches that I've received this year from our agency partners, so like your UTA, WME, CAA, where they have YouTube native creators and they come to us. And they're like, Hey, we wanna launch it on RSS, which I was not trying to go toe to toe with Emma, but I'm, as you were talking through, like building an audience on YouTube, it's like, that is an amazing strategy and you win big there, but like how long is it gonna be before you're like, and now I need to expand into other channels because I think everybody here who's in this panel room, like audience.

Chris Boniello: A ballroom.

Libby Asten: Yeah. This ballroom is probably thinking that. It's like you can't sit here comfortably, at least on my side of the fence and say, yeah, I'm just gonna double down on YouTube. Like I, my creators would be so unhappy with me if I was like, no. Don't do Spotify video. No, don't do Apple video. Go all in on YouTube. It's an amazing strategy. And actually I'm, I just told you like, go after one channel and win there first before you expand into other channels. I think you can't, if you're a product for everyone, you're a product for no one. So, yes. You do have to niche down into a specific audience, but there's just, that's not the world we live in anymore. Like video is evolving everywhere and you have to have fluency, at least from a publisher side of how to reach all those audiences.

So I don't know if that answers your question.

Carly Baker: It's really interesting. We have a totally opposite strategy of this, which is that we only post our video, our long form podcast content on YouTube.

And that's it. And if anyone wants to watch the content, we direct them to our YouTube channel and we give them a lot of opportunities both through our like ad placements And so descriptions on the audio side and let them know like, Hey, we're on YouTube. If you wanna watch, that's where you can hang out.

But again, we're very different, right? Because you know, we're not, we're not, yeah, we're, we own all of our content and we're also our own advertisers. You know, from a monetization standpoint, it's not something that's important to us, but instead of having fractured audio or having fractured video audiences for long form, we tend to just send everyone over to YouTube.

Libby Asten: Yeah. I think your initial question also was. I was saying YouTubers have expanded into the RSS, which is great, and it actually, they bring their audience with them and they discover new audiences in RSS because people do wanna listen and consume. But yeah, we we're different. We, we don't own our content. We work with creators who own their own content. So when they wanna expand audiences, we have to be able to have the fluency to get them there.

Chris Boniello: When you're moving those audiences, are there things from the YouTube ecosystem you'd like to see move over into legacy podcasting that would make things a little easier or a little harder?

Libby Asten: I would like to see like the evolution, like I think YouTube creators are so unique And so cool and I mean, you're talking to a network who markets to millennial females, gen Z females, so it's like, and I'm a millennial, so I think I'm excited by the youth, if that's the right word that comes from YouTube creators.

I think there's just so much, like the world is their oyster and I think to your point, like it is so hard to build an audience anywhere, but if you're winning on YouTube, like I just don't know where else you can't win in a video format. Like YouTube creators are cut from a different cloth, so I think I'm excited to see that innovation come into like more of a legacy format, like audio, like RSS, like we're all adapting. I think that's why we're seeing so much innovation specifically behind video. I think it's meeting a creator need because there was demand there And so now everybody's keeping up with that demand.

Chris Boniello: Yeah, and I think one of the points too that we kind of got a little away from is that this is really focused on kind of the interview, the chat show, that world that's really blows up between YouTube and legacy audio. But if you're doing a longer form narrative show, something really big, heavy work, you're not gonna on the backend, then make a feature length documentary to try to match it.

And I think there's other innovative ways to do fun things with that content. I always like to try to push creators to use some sort of animation or even just clips that are honest to them, walking around filming themselves, saying what's coming out and putting those content on YouTube or on Instagram reels and on Shorts. But I always just like to plug, try to have fun doing some animation, do something creative, even DIY to make sure you're on those spaces and not feel like, Hey, I worked really hard and made this amazing piece that's narrative, that's long. And how do I put that entire thing somewhere else 'cause that's not honest to what you made and it, you're just making weird decorations on top of this beautiful thing you already created.

Emma Sweet: That's the genre I would say we hear the most strife from, and I agree. It's literally a documentary. If you tried to turn an hour plus narrative non, and I love narrative nonfiction. There's, I, I feel like you have kind of seen a decline in that genre with the rise of video and I hope more of it comes.

But with that. Sorry, I've worked for YouTube, so I'm gonna plug some YouTube stuff. We announced it made on last year. It's our event every year where we talk about the latest features that are coming. A feature called audio to video. It is hard to succeed when you're audio first on YouTube. We have RSS upload. It's static image content that does work for a lot of creators. It's what the New York Times does with The Daily. But it's not necessarily the end all be all, and audiences do prefer dynamic video. And so we're building a tool to help with that audio first conversion into more dynamic forms of animation. And you can choose from a range of styles, and I'm excited for that feature to launch just to kind of show our commitment to helping all types of podcast creators succeed on platform. But there's also tools that already do that today. You don't need to wait for YouTube stroll to come out, but there's tons of great platforms that you can do that on and make audiograms or cartoons or anything like that.

There's so, there's such a realm of possibility.

Carly Baker: On the thought leadership side when we're thinking about shows that maybe have some interviews, but also have some solo episodes where we put publish YouTube content. If we're doing an explainer, we like to still package and position it just like a normal sort of regular YouTube explainer would be.

So having those graphics, having them show sort of step by step on the screen and post-production, like really investing in that versus it just. Being a talking head video of someone talking about sales strategy for 30 minutes. We really do try either through animations or through sort of those post-production things to still make it engaging and almost just treating it again, sort of like an a native YouTube explainer. And we've seen a lot of momentum with that. Also, you know, instead of thinking about again, having separate audio and video products. So for those long to those long form videos, instead of it just being the host, we now have the host and the producer. They're in a studio, he's asking him questions. It's really interactive, like it's highly produced. Like we're just finding ways to sort of treat the same content differently and make it more engaging and sort of more native for sort of the type of content that people on YouTube are just watching in, in general.

Emma Sweet: I would just add too, related to that, you could do bonus content.

I, one of the other things again that I've just thought about for a long time is I think people think that on YouTube you have to do either your exact full episodes or clips of your full episodes. Obviously, I've been talking a lot about that. But what if in your narrative nonfiction show you showed a behind the scenes of, you know, you're interviewing a subject and you're on the road and you wanna show the progression of how you were recording and what you were thinking about, or exactly like you said, the, as a former producer and, and still I guess, the producers don't get enough credit. They, they're never on camera, they're never a part of it, even though they're so intimately involved with the creation of the show. Producer and host interview could be a really cool way to give audiences more insight into your content without doing all the legwork of taking your hour plus long video and and or audio and turning it into video.

Carly Baker: There's actually a show that I love that I'm gonna plug. It's called Talking Too Loud, and it's one of the few shows that I've seen where it is the host and the producer and the guest for every single episode. And whenever they do live episodes, the producer is there and she's a part of the conversation. And I love it because it's someone there who kind of just breaks up the energy of the interview and has a very different POV and it's more of like a round table conversation and it's just like, it's so nice to see the people and I mean, Chris, I'd be curious for your perspective about it, who are really on the backend doing a lot of the social architecture of the episode and the positioning and the content, like for them to be a part of the conversation I think is something that's really exciting and, and really unique on a lot of shows.

Chris Boniello: Yeah, having the producer on, I think is all similar to this broader conversation of when they're dedicated and really part of the show and authentic to the experience of the show and the host and the guests, and they give good insight. I love it. I like seeing behind the scenes what they're gonna joke about, cutting, whatnot, where they wanna move things along.

If they're just someone who's fact checking every once in a while, sometimes I'm like, I would cut that out on the back end. But it, it can build the environment, the intimacy of your show with your audience as well, to have more characters and people moving around within, even if it's just audio then, then you're throwing it to producer so and so, oh, I haven't heard them in a little bit. Fun. I wonder what they're up to. You get that fill in and that just broadens out the people your audience can connect to, and I think looking at this whole conversation, one thing I want to hit on from the production side is that everything we're talking about here, you can start talking about in pre-production, and it doesn't have to be after you've recorded your episode and worked on it. You can work on figuring out some of these strategies ahead of time. And one of the things we work on with some of our shows is even doing short clip recordings ahead of the interviews, knowing either topics that are possibly gonna be successful on those various formats and asking a guest, Hey, can you answer this question in 20 or 30 seconds, we're gonna do a quick little hit here.

And that way on the back end, you're not taking someone's five minute long answer and trying to cut it down. And then if you're also adding that as video, they're all Franken-bit and they're bouncing around and syllables don't work. So any of these strategies here should also be added to the front end.

I think people worry that video is an afterthought and sometimes it's so much more work that on the front end you realize, okay, it's not gonna be worth doing all of these extra things. And it helps you put up some walls around what you're making so that you can creatively solve the box that you're stuck in a little bit easier.

Well, I just want to thank everyone in the audience. I want to thank our amazing panel and guests here, Libby, Carly, and Emma. Thank you.

Libby Asten: Thank you.

Emma Sweet: Thank you.

Carly Baker: Thank you.

Jeff Umbro: Thank you all so much for listening to this episode of Podcast Perspectives. You can find Emma Sweet, Libby Absten, Carly Baker, and Chris Boniello all on LinkedIn. I encourage you all to check them out and shoot them a message if you have any questions.

For more podcast related news info and takes you can follow me on LinkedIn at Jeff Umbro. 

Podcast Perspectives is a production of the Podglomerate. If you're looking for help producing marketing or monetizing your podcast, you can find us at podglomerate.com. Shoot us an email at listen@thepodglomerate.com or follow us on all socials @podglomeratepods. 

This episode was produced by myself, Jeff Umbro, Chris Boniello, and José Roman. This episode was edited and mixed by José Roman. Thank you to our marketing team, Joni Deutsch, Madison Richards, Erin Weiss, and Sheeba Joseph, and a special thank you to Dan Christo. 

 Thank you all so much and we'll see you in a couple weeks with our episode featuring Jerry Kolber.