The Hosting Problem Riverside Just Solved for Podcasters

0:04 Good morning podcasting morning chat. Today is Wednesday, November 19th, 2025 and today the real cost of video podcasting. The rise of an AI production powerhouse raises concerns and Riverside's huge new feature drop and exclusive with Kendall Brightman. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button top right hand side of the screen and share it. However, Clubhouse lets you. And if you're catching us via podcast, chatter, YouTube, please share this with a fellow podcaster. And now give us about 30 seconds and we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here.

1:20 Good morning again, podcasting, Morning chat. Thanks so much for being here. I am your host Mark Ronick and on stage with me Currently we have producer Ashley Feller, Ralph Estep, Jonathan Howard, Dr. Faye, Sid Meadows and Nick Nolback. By the way, good to see you Chris in the audience as well. Chris is an old friend and community long time community member of the podcasting Morning Chat and has had trouble getting here in the mornings as of late. So good to see you here. That's why I'm calling you out Chris. And also by the way, Matt Bliss has joined us as well on stage. Yeah, today I'm excited. I think this could be one of our first ever news exclusives here on the podcasting morning chat. Kendall from Riverside, Kendall Brightman, the community manager.

2:11 If you use Riverside, you probably know who Kendall is. And she's joining us to reveal a new feature drop coming later this morning. So by the time this podcast comes out, the news will probably have broken. But if you're joining us live, you'll be one of the first to know. And I'm going to ask you just total trust, keep it to yourself until the official announcement comes out around 10:00 AM Eastern this morning. Before we get into the news real quick, just want to remind you tomorrow, 7:00 AM Eastern, we are live again and we are revisiting our podcast evaluation series.

2:52 The next podcast we will be evaluating is called The Space Between. It's by Sean McClellan, who came to us recently, came to our community by joining the Empowered Podcasting 2 event at the end of this past September. And he's going to be looking for things like feedback as far as content quality and depth, audio engagement. He wants to know about how we feel about his production quality, storytelling, flow. He wants it all. So we're going to dig into that too, in one area. I don't think I see here that he asked for feedback on. I do want to get a little bit into his branding because I think we can help him improve his discoverability among some other things too. I think what I one thing I like about it is it's 10 minute episodes and yeah, we'll share more tomorrow, so come join us if you want to learn a little bit about how a bunch of experienced podcasters would breakdown someone else's podcast.

3:52 It's been going quite well. We're looking forward to doing it again. By the way, Phil Better is also in the audience. I think part of the problem with Clubhouse is we have so many team members that it doesn't always add everybody to the stage when we first kick things off. And Speaking of. Kicking maybe, but I just think Clubhouse is acting weird. I know it's acting weird for me. Yeah, it well, they did have an update recently Dr. So you may want to update it might help. And that update changed things. If you hear my intro regularly, I usually say hit the share button bottom left hand side of the screen. Well, the update moved it to the top right hand side of the screen. That's why I changed that. So anyway, let's get into it some podcasting news while we wait for Kendall, who will be joining me, appropriately enough, over on Riverside.

4:44 That's how I'm streaming live to YouTube and Facebook right now. She's going to join me there so we can capture her on video too. So I'll let you know when she joins us. She should be popping in in the next 5 minutes or so. So in the meantime, let me give you some podcast data to kick things off. This comes from the Podcast Business Journal. Here's a little a new statistic for you that I don't share often. Did you know that there are 4.5 million podcasts in their directory, Podcast Business Journals? And they grab that basically from all the different platforms. And that means there's a total of almost 151 million podcast episodes out there, which it comes to an average of 33 episodes per show if you were curious. And as of this week, as far as new episodes published across all podcast platforms, 487,729, which is up a whopping 54.5% from the previous week of just over 300,000 episodes published. And by the way, the number one podcast today or actually as of yesterday on Apple, once again, the daily by the New York Times, that's been on the top of the charts for a few weeks now. And let's find out.

6:09 We also know that the number one on Spotify is usually the same person. So we go to Dr. to give us the top five on Spotify. So we don't just say that one podcast over and over again every week and then she'll get go ahead. I'm thinking maybe we should just do the top 6 because number one spot is always taken. OK, so #5 is a crime junkie #4 is Tucker Carlson's show. Put your finger on the timpani. Here we go, Number three. OK, the past weekend, this past weekend with the ovonne #2, the Matt Shane Secret podcast and #1 is the Joe Rogan Experience.

6:50 And just in case that number 2 Matt and Shane's secret podcast. I appreciate Dr. trying to race the the timpani, but in just in case she stumbles, I'll I'll back her up. OK, So what is our random chart of the week Dr. Random chart of the week is health and fitness and so the number 5 is the Doctor John Deloney. Doctor John Deloney show #4 is the Peter. Why'd you pick one with all the weird names? Peter Attisha sure drive the Peter Attisha. Dr. OK #3 is maintenance phase #1. Oh, I hit the wrong button.

7:30 Hold on. OK, hold on. I gotta hit this. #3 is maintenance phase, yes #2 is on purpose with Jay Shetty and #1 is the Huberman lab. Very nice. There there is your there are your top fives for this morning. Before we get to events, as I teased, Kendall Brightman has joined us here on Riverside. Good morning, Kendall. How are you? Good morning. I'm great. How are you doing? Doing well. Thanks all the way from Israel this morning. I appreciate you being here, Kendall. Before you share things, how are things going over on Riverside?

8:12 You guys are very busy these days. Yes. How are things going? We're we're holding in there with all the new feature updates that we're putting out. It's hard to keep up, but things are going really well. It's really cool to see when I first started. We I think that. Just rolled out the editor, so it's really cool to see how things just keep evolving. So yeah, yeah, one thing there's a lot to talk. About. Yes, there are. There is, and that's one thing I really, I talk about this on this very show. One thing I really appreciate about Riverside is that, yeah, you guys do add a lot of new stuff, especially this past year. But you guys, I feel like you guys do it very gracefully. In other words, you don't just push out the new features. Like you take your time to make sure that these are ready for the public.

8:56 And I really appreciate that about Riverside. Exactly. And that's definitely something that we care a lot about. So it's really gratifying to hear that that's how you're perceiving it, because that's something that we care a lot about. So that's great to hear. Cool. So, all right, content creators are waking up to a big surprise from Riverside today. Tell us what's? Happening. Yeah, tell us what's happening, Kendall. Yeah, so Riverside, we today are officially releasing hosting. On Riverside. So now you can record, edit, transcribe, clip, do all of that and host and publish your podcast all through Riverside. And some key things here are that you can bring in your existing podcast onto Riverside. So before we had released kind of bringing a new podcast and hosting on Riverside.

9:44 Now you can take your existing one and bring it in. It's no added cost, so you don't have to pay any extra. It's included in all pay plans. It should already be in your accounts if you're using Riverside, and if you're not, come on over. Yeah, that just makes it one place to do everything that you need to do. It really just simplifies the workflow. Streamlines, some would say. You had mentioned, and I knew this, we've talked about it here on the show. Riverside originally had offered this for new podcasts and I think it was somewhat limited, like you could only upload it maybe to or connect it to Spotify for creators. So now this is the whole gamut like we can upload or again connect to all the different directories now.

10:24 So you get your own RSS feed. You also can connect directly to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube. I mean, before that was our partnership with Spotify. So we've really just expanded being able to get an RSS feed and published street from Street from Riverside. OK. All right, very cool. And by the way, team, if you have any questions, by all means, I'm happy to unmute you and ask anything you'd like to. Kendall. OK, so we now know it's lots of different platforms. What about analytics? What? What kind of analytics is this going to provide for us? So right now you have some pretty basic analytics such as being able to see how many streams where they're coming from.

11:07 But as we kind of exactly what you were saying before, like when we put out new features, we continue to kind of build on them. So analytics is something that we're going to continue to build on. So you're going to see a lot more and more coming as far as like episode based analytics and being able to see retention rates, that kind of thing. Right now it's streams, being able to see where those streams are coming in from, where in the world. But yeah, we're going to continue to be, this is kind of phase one, as I call it, for hosting. So we're going to be getting a lot more analytics coming in. But one of the cool parts also is that if you're recording your content in Riverside, so you know that you already get those show notes, those chapter time codes for your edits and for the full recording.

11:49 And so when you're uploading it now on hosting in your RSS feed, it'll already have that information. So you could even just put your show notes right in there, put your chapter time code. So a lot faster being able to have to download, upload, take some information from somewhere, put it somewhere else. It's just kind of all in there for you. How does video incorporate into this? Because obviously Riverside allows us to record and edit video, and I know the integration is there already with Spotify. So what if I've got this video podcast and I want the video to appear on Spotify? I want the audio to appear on the appropriate audio platforms. How will that work?

12:32 So how that works right now, and again, we're going to continue to iterate on this. So how it works right now is that on YouTube, you'll have video, obviously on Spotify, it's going to upload from our hosting audio only. But the work around here is that you can then go into Spotify and add your video. So it'll be posted. You can go in at that video there. Apple Podcast unfortunately doesn't have that option yet because I have a podcast. Come on, guys. So right now the workaround is have to go into Spotify and add that video. But again, just kind of stay tuned on all this because this is Mach 1. Okay, okay, awesome. Not to jump ahead, but do we? Do you have an even an idea yet when a Phase 2 is going to happen? I know that the team's already working on it. It could be any day now.

13:13 I don't want to. I hate to give timelines because then the product team hates me. As you saw, like we're always putting out new features and it kind of feels like every day we have something new. I wouldn't be surprised if it's very, very soon, but if I can give you a little. Preview of some more stuff. Please. Yeah, fine, fine. Twist my arm. So you kind of already seen a little bit of a preview of it. We announced recently that you can now use two different microphones in your Riverside studio and have two different audio outputs so that you can or inputs so that you can record in the same room for an audio podcast and kind of have 1 camera. But it's really cool to see that more and more people are seeing like we started at Riverside as a remote recording platform, then we evolved to editing.

13:57 And I think that people more and more with all of the AI tools and everything that we're introducing are seeing that there's so much value in Riverside. So there's more and more demand to be able to be able to do in person recording. And so I will just say that we like, we definitely hear you on that. And it's something that you can expect to get some more news on soon to be able to do some in person stuff in Riverside. You know what's funny is we I was talking to the team last night telling them that you were joining us and Jonathan, who's here, was just he was trying to guess. Well, first he was saying with all the stuff they've added, what else could they possibly add? But here we are we that they're doing that. And one of the things he was saying was he was hoping at some point there's going to be multicam type tracking.

14:42 I won't ask you if that's where you're going with that, but. We hear you, Jonathan. We hear you. Yeah. Yeah. Cool anything. Else coming up, what will they do next? I'm kidding. Yeah. Anything else we should be excited about? I would say the two most exciting things as far as I like, as far as what I'm looking forward to selfishly, but I know that there are just a ton of other features that we're working on right now that you're going to see As far as editing, as far as I mean, the most important thing for us is always right reliability and stability. So that's always friend of mind. We introduce magic segments kind of responding to if you don't magic clips. It is our AIAI identifies the most engaging moments of your podcast and then makes clips for you.

15:25 So really makes it easier to get to repurpose your content. But then we saw like a YouTube trend that kind of 10 minute, three to 10 minute clips. We're also doing really well, not clips, but videos. So if you want something that's not that 62nd clip, but you also don't want the full hour long, let's say podcast, being able to give more content to people to kind of get your your stuff discovered in different ways. Magic segments is kind of our answer to that. That's AI generated like 10 minutes, three to 10 minute long segments. But we're really just responding to industry trends, responding to what people are requesting as community manager by I'm speaking a lot to product about the next, like what people are requesting.

16:07 And that really helps us identify where we're going to go next. OK. Thank you, Kendall. Now let me make sure, does anyone have any other questions for Kendall before we let her go? Yeah, Nick, go for it. Nick Naubach. Hey, Nick. Hey Kendall, good to hear from you and hear all the announcements. My question for you on the hosting side, I know this is brand new, something that is just getting announced today. What about like people that have multiple shows? Are they going to be able to manage multiple podcasts within one account or do you need a different account to do that? So right now, and I also even didn't even forget to, I forgot to mention that like I'm talking with you guys before the announcements later on today.

16:51 So you guys are getting a little bit of a preview. So that's very exciting. Of course, and so as far as multiple. Shows for every account. You have one studio, and so that should be it's. You're able to host one show for every account. So if you have multiple. Shows. The idea here is that you can get multiple accounts for now, but we may see that kind of evolve in the future. For now, it's for every account. You can host one of your shows there. OK, there you go, Nick. Yep, Nick's giving the thumbs up. All right. Cool. Nick's, Nick's the. Overachiever. You know Where am I? Multiple podcasts. Kendall, do you have a podcast? I mean, other than say River, anything with that you do with Riverside?

17:32 Do you have your own podcast? I don't, but I really want to. I really like, I really respect and like, admire everyone who has a podcast because I think for me. I want to do 1 for. Riverside I feel like there's kind of the the cloak of doing it for a company that makes me feel more comfortable. But like putting yourself out there is so hard. So I think that's really. The jump for me, like I know how to record and edit my podcast because of course I work at Riverside. I know all the. Back end on the best practices for promoting it and naming as far as SEO, like I know all of this. I think that a lot of people have the opposite information like they just want to do a podcast and they jump in. They're like learning all of this as they go for me. I feel like I have all the information front ended, but I just like, it's for me, it's really about just like putting myself out there and having that confidence too. So hats off for you for doing that. I just like I need to kind of get over it because I think that I'm the more and more that I do this and more I'm like, why don't I, why don't I do this?

18:36 Because I, I just think that it's so cool. Yeah. And I mean, you don't ever come off as nervous or uncomfortable when you're on camera on mic. So that surprises me to hear Matt. I think it's more about like like marketing it like like putting myself out and clips and like, I don't know why I have this big thing about like people that I know from like high school or something, like seeing a clip on their TikTok of me. I don't know what it is about it, but I get so just nervous about putting myself out there on my own platform, you know, like for other people's podcasts. I feel so. Comfortable, but it really makes me have a whole new respect for. Everyone who's doing it, I think that it's relatable what you're sharing.

19:17 I don't think you're the only one that feels that way, Matt. You have it something for us. Go ahead. I was going to start with a commiseration and hi Kendall, it's been a long time since we've Matt Bliss all together, I think. Oh, hi, Matt. Hi. Yeah, Hi. How's it going? Wow, the gangs are here. Yeah, love it. That's it, That's it. I actually interviewed someone recently on my forecast rethinking podcasting there, a podcast manager in Australia who had trouble going back to their own forecast for some of the reasons that you're talking about, even starting. I think we've all been there. And particularly from my experience, when you know too much about the discipline of podcasting, it's hard to come to the rest of it from the other side, exactly like figuring out what you want to talk about and, and all that kind of thing. So you are definitely no one there and I'd suggest. Well, Matt, also, I remember I spoke with you about when we were, I was like piloting one of the podcasts that I wanted to do for Riverside.

20:13 I spoke with you so you know, you know how long this journey's going to have been for me. It was a while ago. I didn't want to bring it up just in case it was, you know, NBA door, you got the silent no, and you couldn't tell anyone about it. But yeah, that was a great discussion. And I think if you wanted to do something similar to that, being a community manager, then that would be something really cool to see. But just a couple of questions about the hosting, not to make a whiplash kind of content shift there. For the hosting, 2 things that I'd be particularly interested to hear about is the IAB certification for the analytics. I'm sure that's a very quick answer. And the third party prefix stuff that some people want like OP3 dot dev is an open source third party analytics thing would be really cool to have as part of it.

21:00 But I know that pod roll is becoming a big thing that people are starting to use for recommendations on their show too. So yeah, two big ones there, I think. As far as certification, it's not yet certified, but we follow the IAB right where we followed their protocols. So working on a certification, but we are following all the protocols that they've laid out. We're just waiting on that certification. As far as your second question, I am going to be completely transparent and say that I am not sure of the answer of that one. I can, but I have your e-mail. Matt, I'll get back to you on this. I don't want to give you an answer that's not completely up to. Yeah. That's totally fair. And whenever you start to do a thing that offers like 80%, that last 20% is sometimes the the hardest thing to push across the line.

21:46 It's like someone putting concrete in your shoes, like when you're looking at the finish line of a marathon and just trying to get to that end zone. So this is just the the extra stuff that people will always ask about, so it'd be great to hear. But I'm yeah, but I'm sure that I'm sure that the team is working on that because whenever I do get a question from the community about like, is this in the works? It's always, I always write to them. They're like, Yep, we're already, we're already on it. So I wouldn't be surprised if they're already on it. Awesome. Thanks, Kendall, and thank you, Matt. Thanks for the question. Yeah. All right. Anyone else or shall we let Kendall go and do all of her Riverside things? All right. Was launch day thing. Yeah, the whole launch day thing. Kendall, thank you so much for reaching out and even offering to do this and then taking the time to come here and give us what we, what I really think might be our very first exclusive on the podcasting morning, Chad. So thank you for that.

22:37 We appreciate it. Of course, I'm really glad to get to come on this with you. And it's great to talk with everyone here. It's fun to see so many people from the community. Yeah, well, at least come back on the call. Yes, I would love to. This is a lot of fun. Let's do it. Awesome. Thank you, Kendall. Thank you. So with that, with our very first news exclusive, let me give you some events that are coming up real quick. I'm not going to give you a ton of these this morning since we have some other news to get into first, fixing podcast audio with Christophe Grosser of Offonic. That's happening Thursday, November 20th at 11:00 AM Eastern Time. And I know Ashley and I are very interested in this because as we've shared many times, we use Offonic in post production. After Ashley's edited the show, she runs it through there just to give it a Polish on the sound and full transparency. I've been frustrated with Authonic as of late. When I listen through the episodes. Overall, I still think it does a fantastic job, but sometimes it creates, I'll just call it weirdness. Sometimes people's words get swallowed or they sound really bizarre.

23:58 Sometimes the music or sound effects that we play either also come out sounding very strange or disappear altogether, and that can sometimes cause more work instead of expediting some of the processes and procedures to improve the sound. So yesterday actually was one of our first episodes that we didn't use Offonic, and I think today we're going to have to use it again because those of you listening live, you probably heard there was a ton of background noise coming from Kendall this morning. Sounded like maybe a fan or something was running in the background. So that's an instance where we really need it. Ashley and I are going to definitely do what we can to be there, at least one of us, because we have some questions and want to learn how to utilize it to its maximum potential.

24:49 Janae, I think I saw you had something. Go for it. Good morning. Good morning. Really awesome to be here. Awesome updates from Kendall and really cool that we got this exclusive. Yeah. On the show today, you mentioned something about a phonic and it's swallowing words and messing up with music. What I would recommend is to run the audio without the music design through a phonic before we put I'll apply all of that stuff. And I don't know how many audio files you're creating when you're producing it and recording in Rd. Caster because if you have those separate files for so if you have a separate file for Kendall, you could just run it through a phonic before we integrate it with the whole thing.

25:35 But that's what I like to do is put the music after everything is done with the audio part. Thank you for saying that. And admittedly, I haven't been recording with multitrack and I know that a lot of you editors and producers out there are slapping me on the wrist right now. And it's mostly just because of how big the each individual files are and thinking about transferring them to a cloud and then transferring them to Ashley. It was more to expedite the process. But Ashley's been asking me to do multi tracking. So I will make some changes to my Rd. Caster Pro and do that. And of course, I'm also recording here on Riverside, which does some multi tracking. It's putting me and everything that I'm putting out of my Rd.

26:18 Caster Pro all on one track. But we do have Kendall separately that we could split out if need be. The other thing is using Riverside, like I'm going to immediately after this show pull a clip from Kendall so that we can promote their new feature. And the nice, one of the nice features of Riverside is they have their own built in audio enhancement tool. So I will be clicking on that button for Kendall and that should significantly reduce the sound as well. But yeah, great tip, Janae. Thank you for mentioning that. I think it is important to run clean single tracks through Offonic first to really avoid any weirdness as I call it, when you're doing editing and post production stuff. OK, Dr. Do you want to take the next one, which is your event? That's your weekly event.

27:12 Yeah, but I have a question about the single track. Are you saying, So if I had two tracks, I'm going to run my client through Iphonic first and then run the person who she's interviewing next and then run them together? So iphonic you can actually I believe it does have multi tracking ability. So I think you're able to upload all the single tracks together. Don't quote me on that, but I'm almost certain. Yeah, OK, Ashley is saying you can do multi track productions. That's what I thought. So yeah, you can actually upload all the files at once. So go ahead with your event. Meet up and match up with podcaster speakers and authors Thursday, November 20th 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern Time. This is an event that I will be Co hosting this week. This is my last week of Co hosting and the topics this week are education, training, news, society, science and environment.

28:13 And I've said it in the past couple weeks that this is a virtual networking event and you're in this event with podcasters, with people who want to be on podcasts, people who are looking for that, you know, guesting gig. And if you want to get in for free, use the PMC discount code and it will get you in for free. And we have a link in the notes for you. I hope to see everyone there week after week. I think it's because we're promoting it. I'm seeing more and more and more people and it's just, it's so great. Congratulations on that. And yeah, I really please remind me on Thursday to come join. I want, I want to support you and I want to be there. And sometimes I just forget.

28:59 So yeah, please let me know and I will be there. And also, I do do want to say if you heard her Dr. list that long list of different topics, note that it's similar to going to a conference. You can pick and choose the different topics and rooms you want to join during that hour and a half. That's right, You choose. All of these are different rooms. Education is a room, training is a room, news news is a room. So you choose which room you want to go to, to basically network with other people. It's a great concept. I will be upfront and say the platform has its glitches and AS. Most of them do. But I love this event, I love what Rich Casanova is trying to do with it, and I'm a big supporter.

29:45 Awesome. So check that out. That is in the show notes if you're interested in joining November 20th at 4:00 PM Eastern. Also podcast. I'm sorry Pod Fest speakers, I have something for you specifically Podfest Speaker Town Hall Friday, November 21st, 1:00 PM Eastern Time. It's 1/2 hour long. It's hosted by Podfest and yours truly. I have been asked to be the speaker community leader over with Podfest and this will be our first networking type event and we plan on doing at least two more of them between now and Podfest which is a great lead in Pod Fest. Thursday January 15th through January 18th in Orlando, FL. If you want to get 10% off your ticket. If you are planning on attending, just use coupon code MARK Marc to get your 10% discount. Speaking of conventions, podcasting events, if you hadn't heard yet, Podcast Movement will be free to attend this March. And this time they're going to do this at South by Southwest in Austin, TX.

31:02 We know that they were recently there was, I don't want to call it a buyout, maybe it was more like a merger with Sounds Profitable. So I think this is one of their new moves. They shared this announcement along with a look at the new format and the values behind the event. Brian Barletta shared that if you enjoyed the hotel based setup of earlier podcast movement gatherings, the 2026 event will feel like a real shift. The teams moving the experience into an open event space on 6th St. at South by Southwest, which leans more into social Hangouts, live performances, and easier networking instead of the traditional ballroom and breakout room feel. I would like to challenge the networking thing, but I haven't been at South by Southwest so I don't know if that's a fair statement or not.

31:56 The article also highlights how the team is approaching diversity by following South by Southwest's guidelines, keeping panels small, and bringing in more first time voices. Their goal is to make the whole experience feel more inclusive, more accessible, and more representative of the wider podcast community. Interesting to hear and looking forward to hearing how that goes for podcast movement. All right, let's get into some news bites and then maybe a couple of headlines that we planned. We certainly won't be able to get to everything, but I do want to share with you that YouTube has rolled out some sharper time stamp tools and some AI driven comment replies.

32:42 They're testing new features that increase creator and viewer visibility. Like I said, improved time stamp control, built in app sharing for video chats. I'll explain in a moment and expanded AI powered comment reply suggestions. They're testing this new in app messaging flow. It's being tested right now in Ireland and Poland, allowing users to share video long form short form live streams and chat about them directly within YouTube. So in other words, think kind of like DM ING on other social platforms. Creators now have a drag and drop time stamp editing tool for clips, allowing them to fine tune exactly when markers appear during playback. So now you can choose exactly that time point where you want a chapter to occur, which I think is very helpful. Product related time stamps in mobile portrait mode are getting reworked.

33:44 Instead of intrusive pop ups, a product shelf is now placed beneath the playback window to reduce disruption. And I mentioned a moment ago AI driven comment replying. These are suggestions that there are they're expanding. So you may have seen this now, and I can only speak for iPhone users. This is something when you're similar to when you're texting. Sometimes you'll notice three different replies that it's suggesting for you. Not just words, but actual replies. It works similarly here on YouTube. Creators can tap to use or edit the suggestion that YouTube provides before you actually post it.

34:26 It's just designed there to be a time saver for you. The platforms also reinverse reinforcing policy enforcement. Channels that mass uploaded, auto generated or low value content or misled users are increasingly flagged and removed via automated systems. So that is your update from YouTube. I feel like I heard somebody was off mic. Did somebody have something? No, OK, this is something I wanted to get into. AI podcast Factory Inception Point AI surges, but disclosure gaps raise questions. Let me explain. A new paid article in The Wrap, also syndicated on MSN and also shared on pod news. That's where I heard about this highlights the explosive output of Inception Point AI.

35:15 That's the name of the company Inception Point AI. They're an AI driven podcast production company, now generating more than 3000 episodes per week with minimal human oversight. According to the reporting, the company has already amassed 12 million downloads and 400,000 subscribers and is on track to create 150,000 episodes by year's end. However, Pod News found inconsistencies in the company's claim that all shows include a verbal AI generated content disclosure at the top quote, UN quote, of each episode. Recent episodes reviewed by Pod News contained no audible disclosure and when approached for comment inception, Point AI acknowledged that quote.

36:05 Some new episodes still do not close quote, include the statement and say that they are prioritizing corrections. So this is really fascinating to me. I don't have any specific question for the group, just as far as trying to create conversation around this. I just find this somewhat disturbing and really fascinating. We'll call it case study for case use case of AI. Matt, did you want to add something? Just to add a bit more color for those who want to do some more research about it, it's super easy to find Inception Point AI stuff that is either degrading or just talks about the numbers. James Credland actually, and Sam Sethi I think was there too, interviewed on the Pod News Weekly Review, the CEO of Inception Point AI and asked her directly about a lot of these questions, Jeanine Wright of previously COO of Wondering, and it might illuminate a little bit more about the reasoning behind some of these things.

37:05 Awesome. Thank you, Matt. Appreciate that tip. So check that out and I will keep things moving and share. Speaking of podcast, hostingplatformsrss.com made an announcement via e-mail from Greg Wasserman. I got this in my inbox yesterday. rss.com has replaced it's 499 a month plan and nonprofit tier with a completely free podcast hosting plan aimed at students, educators, and community voices. The company says the new plan includes the same high level of service and support as it's paid tiers, making podcasting more accessible to underserved and niche creators.

37:52 Greg Wasserman called it a major step in helping creators quote, build connection, community and impact without cost barriers. And let's keep things moving to the 5th annual State of Business Podcasting Report for 2025 that just came out and it's highlights. It highlights what is happening across the top 100 business podcasts. About half of those shows are created with video in mind. This is, according to their study, their report, with B to B at 61% and B to C at 49%. As far as video podcasts go, a full 70% of the biggest shows featured a clear photo of the host on the cover art. The average episode runs 46 minutes and some stretch all the way to 3 hours.

38:50 About 3037% of the shows are part of a larger network. This paints a clear picture of how creators are showing up and what listeners are responding to right now. Just an interesting thing if you are a business podcaster or even another genre. Just interesting to see what other podcasts are up to and how they're producing podcasts and connecting with their audiences. Yes, they are. So Asha drops Pod Wars, a visibility weapon for Apple Podcasts. Now, Asha just launched Pod Wars, a free tool that lets podcasters check how visible their show is on Apple Podcasts by keyword and country.

39:34 With 70% of the listeners starting their podcast discovery inside podcast apps, Asha wants creators to understand exactly where they rank when someone searches their niche. Users can plug in up to five keywords and see instantly whether their show appears and who occupies the top spot. Pod Wars debuted as a hit activation. I'm sorry, yeah. Pod Wars debuted as a hit activation at Podcast Movement and now previews the company's full podcast. Search optimization features. This is great. Yeah. This is an interesting approach to analytics.

40:16 This is something that, yeah, like they're claiming we don't really see a lot of. And I think that, yeah, I think it can be helpful. Now you know what Asha does a lot for people who don't, You know our members of Asha are paying Asha. They do a lot of stuff for free, I'm wondering if this is one of them. That's awesome. Yeah. Thank you, Dr. And we have another exclusive, although not quite as exclusive as the one we just received. Nick hasn't. It has a little AI update and maybe not so little that he just discovered this morning.

40:57 So Nick, please share with us. Good morning. Hey, good morning, everybody. The last several weeks Google has been teasing Gemini three. I've been seeing a lot of content coming out. The Google has some big ambitions with Gemini 3 and it's I mean, we've seen all the AI now it's going to wipe all the other AI models off the map. This is another one of those Gemini. It was either just last night or this morning released Gemini 3. It's their next big flagship model. Everything that they do is going to be running off of Gemini 3 incrementally after this point. And with that, we're going to get Nano Banana 2 for the image generation editing, which is supposed to be pretty awesome. I think they've already started incorporated it into their video generation with video.

41:45 But I played very, very briefly this morning with Gemini 3. And the big promise of this model is that it's going to be more agentic, more multimodal, meaning that it can start doing things more for you and it can handle all the different inputs much better than any of the other models out there. And just as a quick run through this morning, as an example, I took an MP4 file from a YouTube video that I published a while back. Not even the YouTube link, just the straight MP4 file. I told it to pull out clips from the episode and this was, it didn't pull out the actual video clips itself, but it pull out time stamps with text and everything that went along with it.

42:31 And it is able to analyze every bit of that video to the point where when I had to pull out clips, it gave me a dead on accurate time stamps for the entire clips that it was like the whole list of clips that it was giving. And then I took it a step further and said, OK, that's great. I love those clips. But now I want you to kind of throw together almost like a highlight reel from that video that I can then post on social media. And it went through and it pulled out different time stamps throughout the entire duration of that video for me to piece together into one cohesive piece of content. And I did cross check. I was double checking, OK, in the video, does the timestamp accurate to what Gemini is saying?

43:16 And it was dead on. He was, I had not seen Jet GPT or Claude or any others do anything like that. And it was all just from an MP4 file. It watched video essentially. Obviously that was like the only thing I had to test this morning before I hit the road. But that already kind of blew me away. So I'm really excited to dig into more of what Gemini 3 is capable of, and I'm sure this is really just the beginning stages of it. I'm willing to bet we're going to see a lot of update updates and improvements to Gemini 3 over the next couple of weeks and months. Thank you Nick and Dr. I'm going to come to you in a second. I just wanted to throw out when Nick told me this morning about Gemini 3 O and he was telling me how accurate it was, especially with those time codes. I wanted to test it and I uploaded my transcript from Monday's episode with Lucy Werner and I wanted to see if it would do show notes and it would include time stamped chapter markers and it did, but it was completely inaccurate. And what I said to Nick and he actually, we both said it kind of at the same time that I think is more a result of the transcript and not Gemini's output. Because those transcripts, like for example, I'm using Otter and although they do mark the time stamps appropriately, you know, there's a lot of time that goes by between one time stamp to the next, right?

44:43 So the first time stamp might say 2 minutes, 24 seconds, the next time stamp might say 5 minutes, 32 seconds, right? So it's estimating all the time codes in between when it's creating those show notes. And that is why it's so important to check those time stamps before you just put it out there. Otherwise, you're just not just wasting your time, you're wasting your audience's time as well, 'cause they're going to click on those time stamps and be completely thrown off. It's not going to take them to the right place. OK, Dr., What did you have for us? I have a question now. The reason why ChatGPT is like my first love is because I have built these customized GPTS. Am I able to do that in Gemini?

45:33 Yes, they're called gems, right Nick? Yeah, it's the same exact concept of GPTS, but yeah, they're called gems. And as friendly, user friendly and as easy. It's exactly the same kind of process to set up. And actually, I would say, I can't remember if GPTS do this now or not, but when you give the instructions for your gem inside Gemini, it actually gives you an option to have it like AI rewrite the instructions for you. You can give it like a good idea of what you want that gem to do and then say, OK, make that better. And we'll go rewrite all those instructions and make them more detailed and more aligned with what you're looking for. It's pretty powerful.

46:16 I've been doing that lately in general, even whether I'm going from one AI platform to the other or even within the same platform, I'll give it my full prompt and then I'll tell it to make it better and it. Usually is that on the? Is that on the free tier or the paid tier? Well I use the $20.00 a month ChatGPT tier but I would imagine that's would still work. In theory. You can still give it a prompt that you've been using for a long time, ask it to improve it and it it will it should improve it. I would test it, but it should work. Interesting, I might be migrating then. Awesome. OK, Well, we have time probably for one, maybe two more stories.

46:56 Dr. Do you want to take the next one? I do, folks. It's an ROI showdown. Here we go. Audio punches back with video pickups with and video pickups picks up the tab picks up. Words are hard in the morning. Don't blame me. OK, video gets the attention, but audio still gives you the payoff. The real ROI winner depends on your budget and your bandwidth. Everyone loves to brag about video views and like it's like it. It proves something. The Podcasting Market Academy study says that some creators already suspect video will get you attention. Yes, but audio gets you efficiency. Big creators can afford the cameras, the sets, the editors, and the constant content slicing. Smaller creators get stuck bleeding money trying to keep up.

47:54 Video is not a magic growth hack. It is an expense with a potential upside, but not a guaranteed 1. The smartest creators will stop chasing the hype and start chasing the format that fits their goals, their budget, and their sanity. So here's some of the takeaways. Video podcasts deliver high higher plays, more watch time. The bigger cross platforms. I'm sorry, the bigger cross-platform audiences. Audio and video shows are 77% more expensive per hour consumed once real costs are factored in. Even video.

48:34 Yeah, I was just going to say, just to be clear, audio slash video, not audio and video. Basically it's saying video podcasting costs or yeah, video shows cost 77% more than an audio podcast. Even video creators see most engagement through audio, with 78% of listening time coming from RSS feeds. That's the important key for me. Video podcasts are more likely to break into 7 figure revenue, with 20% hitting that level versus 4% of audio only. I'm sorry, my cat just jumped on me while.

49:15 I was. I think I heard that. 90% of brands now want video included in their podcast strategy. Production quality, platform knowledge and strategy determine whether video actually helps or drains a budget. The report emphasizes choosing the path that matches creator goals rather than chasing. Yeah, Amen to that. This is pretty eye opening. I mean, in some ways not surprising, right? I think most of us here know that video usually costs more, both time and money. Yet so many of us seem to be rushing to produce video podcasts now. So are creators adding video because it works? Because according to this, I'm not sure it I guess it could depend on what you're going for or because everyone else is doing it.

50:08 Why are we really flocking to video so much? But how should podcasters calculate ROI before deciding to go either video or audio? Let's check in with Ralph. Ralph's got something. I think the reason that people are flocking to video so much is they keep hearing the discoverability benefits to video, but I don't think they really get into just how much work and listen all my shows. Are video, so I'll say that as a caveat before I get started. But you have to understand the production time, the production cost, it's a completely different animal. And the way you produce for a YouTube video is completely different than an audio podcast. And I think a lot of people just say, well off, I'm over on YouTube, I'm going to get more discoverability. I think that's the problem.

50:55 People don't really understand. They are completely different audiences. In my opinion, they absolutely can be. And I mean, that's, look at Ironic media here. We have dedicated editors that focus on just video podcasting and just audio podcasting. To your point, Ralph. Yeah. And Matt had something he wanted to add. And then we'll go to Nick. Go ahead, Matt. I will keep this short and simply say that just like when clips, social clips came around and the entire text stack around, creating them was so efficient before anyone could realize any benefits around it. I think video for podcasting is the same people call 2025 the year of video podcasting.

51:38 They called it in January. That should tell you as much as you need to know about it. Also YouTube putting out a playbook and a bunch of SEO gurus trying to guilt podcasters with cold emails telling them that 75% of their audience is left on the table just because they're not on YouTube. I think ROI wasn't the question, it was how much money can we make from people by incentivizing them to do it without any objective value being realized before it happened. Thank you, Matt. I'm with you wholeheartedly there. And yeah, something Ashley, it's similar to Ashley, what Ashley had said in the chat. It's.

52:20 Yeah, she thinks it's the pressure. That's why a lot of podcasters are going to video. And yeah, I'm with Ralph too. I think a lot of it is, is that a lot of us podcasters want that quick fix. We want to, we want to increase our chances with discoverability. And we're told, oh, video will do that. And so some of us blindly just follow that. Matt, I'll give you the chance to follow up and then we'll check in with Nick. Just one last thing that sometimes we are our own worst enemy in this sense because we seek out confirmation. We hear people say with video podcasts that are popular say Oh well I have a video podcast and da da da da da da da and then presume the two are related. But the image I love to refer to is the one of a seagull. 2 seagulls sitting on a metal fence, one of them sitting into one side of the fence with a big dip and the other one sitting on the other.

53:16 And when you look at the image you presume that the seagull is like 200 kilos and can bend the bar. Correlation is not causation. So when podcasters talk about video without any direct ROI discussion like we're hearing today, we should have our salt shakers nearby. Thanks, Matt. Nick, what did you want to add to this? It's less about having a video podcast than it is about having video for your podcast. I'm not one to sit down and listen to a YouTube video that lasts an hour long unless it's an in depth tutorial. But at the same time, I'm going to catch clips, I'm going to catch segments from episodes on YouTube. I'm going to still consume the podcast related contents on the platform. So even if you don't have a quote on Quote video Podcast, I still think from a discoverability standpoint, you do have something to gain from having the actual video of your show, whether it's posting on social media, YouTube, whatever. Wow, OK, so we'll see if Offonik does its job today. I know the podcast audience may not notice, but hopefully they won't.

54:24 But man, the background noise of Nick, that could be a first for me, just as far as the unusual loud sounds coming from mine sounded. Like he was shoveling all into the locomotive. Yes, and we did catch your opinions and thoughts there, Nick. So thank you for that. I think this is a good place to wrap up this morning and to remind you that we are back tomorrow for our podcast evaluation series. We will be evaluating the space between podcast one of our very own community members podcast. We will break down that 10 minute episode and also all the branding, all the all the other stuff around what makes a podcast go round.

55:09 So come join us for that tomorrow. And if you need any other information regarding this fine group of people, the Podcasting Morning Chat is available at Podcasting Morning chat.com until tomorrow. Make it a great day everybody, take care.