Why Joe Rogan Beat Late Night TV

When I was a kid, hearing Johnny Carson’s theme music meant it was time for bed. Today, nobody has to stay up for anything. And that one shift explains a huge part of why late night is fading and why your podcast has to work harder to earn attention.

Conversation vs Promotional Appearances

In the early years of Johnny Carson, the show was 90 minutes and they actually had conversations as apposed to the "tell me about your family vacation, and let's roll the clip" interviews we see on late night shows

Appointment Viewing is Dead

The days of "must see tv" on Thursday night died with the VCR and DVR. I haven't watched live TV in years. So now the audience that is staying up to watch live is much older (somewhere between age 60-70), and is about HALF of the audience comparing it to the days wheh David Letterman get almost 7 million a night.

The Celebrity Mystique is Gone

I once stayed up to watch B.B. King on the tonight show. Why? Because I couldn't hear him on the radio. I was too young to go to a concert. If I did that today and wanted to see Joe Bonamassa I wouldn't need to wait to see him on TV. I could see him on his YouTube channel, or multiple interviews on podcasts.

#1 in Late Night is a Big Fish in a Much Smaller Pond

Keep in mind that Steven Colbert being #1 in late night in 2026 is way different than being #1 in late night in 1993. Late-night TV revenue has reportedly fallen from about $400 million a year to $200 million a year—a 50% decline—while some shows that once drew 7–8 million nightly viewers now struggle to reach 3 million.

YouTube Doesn't Pay the Same

According to one report, YouTube pays one tenth of what a network ad spot would go for. When you audience is cut in half, you have less advertisers. When the advertisers you have are paying you 90% less and your expenses stay the same that is a problem.

Keep Control of Your Content

Remember big companies with big payouts WANT CONTROL. Conan focused on owning his content and that resulted in a 150 million dollar payout.

Only Amazing Content Will Stand Out

If you want podcast growth, you need to make sure you are doing as many of the following as possible.

Make them:

• laugh
• cry
• think
• groan

Make Sure The Content

• Educates
• Entertains
• Saves the audience time
• Saves them money
• Makes them FEEL something

If it's information you can get any place else, even better. A great podcast can be boiled down to content and delivery. So this episode is focused on content.

Be Ready to Promote

When someone says, "Oh, you do a podcast?" be ready to explain what it is, what its about, and how people benefit from consuming your content (and say your website). We hear how Macaulay Culkin dropped the ball so bad on the Ellen show.

Housekeeping: How to Pitch a Podcast

I am still preparing to launch this show and I'm accepting stories. I had some things pop up that are taking my attention as they are time sensitive. It's coming...

Mentioned in this episode:

Live Appearances

I will be at the Empower Podcasting Conference (Year 3!) in Charlotte North Carolina. This is my favorite type of conference with a cap at 250 people, it's a great crowd without being overwhelming. Great speakers, great networking, and a great location.

Where Will I Be?

Podcasting in Six Weeks Starts Soon

If you've tried to start a podcast before and got lost in the jargon, and felt overwhelmed, this is the course for you. We will meet LIVE for six weeks and go step by step in launching your successful podcast. The best part, we are only charging $1 Check it out at www.schoolofpodcasting.com/sixweeks

Podcasting in Six Weeks

Question of the Month

This might be harder question to answer because when I ask people, the sometimes freeze. The question? How do you measure success for your podcast beyond download numbers? I need your answer by June 26th, 2026. Don't forget to tell us a little bit about your show and your website address so I can link to it in the show notes.

Question of the Month

YouTube Matching Just Got Cheaper

The amazing YouTube Matching feature available at Podpage was previously available on the top "Elite" tier, but is now available on the "Pro" tier. This give you MORE value for LESS money. Start your free trial today at Podpage.com

Podpage

When I was growing up, hearing the theme music to Johnny Carson meant it was time for bed. Today, nobody has to stay up for anything.

And that one shift explains a huge part of why late night is fading and why your podcast has to work harder to earn attention. Hit it, ladies.

The School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson.

And we're going to talk about that today along with the Late show going off the air, but not from a political standpoint, but from a business standpoint. And obviously there's a political thing going on there as well.

I'm not that stupid, but I want to talk about it because there are a lot of lessons there. This show is brought to you by PodPage and the School of Podcasting. I'll tell you more about both of those a little later.

Now, if you're again new to the show, our website is schoolofpodcasting.com and there's a guy on YouTube named Michael Gurdley, and I liked his take on this.

I've watched a lot of videos about the fall of Late night and I assembled a bunch of stats and the one here's the thing and we'll talk about Johnny Carson in a bit. I grew up on Johnny Carson. When I heard his theme music, I knew as a young kid it was time for me to go to bed. And that was kind of the whole point.

Late night television, at that point, you got to realize there's no VCRs, there's no DVRs, and if you want to see it, you got to watch it live. And there really wasn't that much in terms of competition back then.

It was Johnny Carson or some documentary or news or whatever that's like, everybody talks about this guy in the 50s named Milton Berl being Mr. Television. He was up against a test pattern. Okay, it's pretty easy to beat a test pattern. But Johnny Carson was the man.

It's late and I absolutely, David Letterman got me through college. There's no way I would have made it because he was goofy. In fact, he made fun of the fact that he was on tv.

He couldn't believe that an actual major network had given him a tv.

And he would do things like the suit of Seltzer, where he'd be in a suit just covered in Alka Seltzer and they would dip him into water or the suit of Velcro or throwing anything off the top of the building. It was very weird, very different. And it definitely had that I want to see what happens next factor going in.

And so at that point, David Letterman, his first episode drew 25 million viewers. That is roughly 1 in 5 U.S. adults at the time. That is amazing.

Now, during their peak, the major late night shows, they would get somewhere between 7 and 8 million viewers per night. And some of those franchises were generating more than $100 million a year in profit, not in revenue, in profit.

So if you had a slightly bigger staff and you had a band and you had cameramen and all these other things, he had a hundred million dollars to carve up. Now, across the industry, the whole thing was bringing in around $400 million in annual revenue.

Now the interesting thing is Letterman went on for a very long time. He didn't get the job on NBC. He was supposed to take over for Johnny Carson. And that's a whole other backstabbing, fun filled story.

But he went on to cbs, did that for many years. And then Stephen Colbert took over. Now, Stephen, remember Letterman was getting somewhere around 7,8 million.

He peaked around 3 million viewers per night, which was, you know, half of what the top late, you know, night shows were doing, especially during their peak. And also where before you had NBC and that was it.

And then when Letterman started, you had NBC and cbs and now there were three, if not four different channels and cable. So there just weren't that many people.

The other thing that's interesting about late night viewing, in fact, the all the, the Jimmies and Seth Meyers came on to Stephen Colbert's show and they were talking about the fact that really nobody watches late night here.

And I do want to say, like, I appreciate that he is watching linear television. Yeah. You know, right. He's the only one level, Seth, more people are Watching Late Night than ever before.

Yeah, well, if I would make my case for Late night, it's that, you know, leaders of the free world are watching him when it airs. And so again, when I talk about David Letterman, I was watching Letterman sometimes at night while I was doing my homework, but often the next day.

And I've also found this. Cause I still do this with Saturday Night Live.

I don't watch any live television, even sports, because I want to fast forward through the eight gazillion ads. And so I found that Saturday Night Live, which I thought was very funny in my 20s. And obviously this is probably a case of.

Yeah, they don't write it for me anymore.

But even when I was younger, watching Saturday Night Live, when it's been pre recorded and I'm watching it instead of, you know, midnight, I'm watching it at noon. I found it wasn't as funny because I wasn't as tired. But here's something to think about.

We talked about Stephen Colbert getting somewhere around 3 million viewers per night. Joe Rogan is cited as drawing somewhere between 8 and 11 million viewers per episode. Now Stephen has a crew of hundreds I've heard.

And Joe, from what I've heard, the biggest crew number I've ever heard is four. It's like him, Jamie, a booker and a publicist and really interesting content that you can't get anyplace else. So let's talk about the format.

But one of the reasons she quit doing it, besides the fact that that poor person had to do it through Covid, was she really didn't like the format of Late Night. In fact, if you talk to or hear interviews with people that have sat in that chair, it's restricting. There is a format and you follow it.

So I wanted to talk about this. Let's compare apples to apples because some late night interviews are just horrible. And they also lost their mystique.

When I was growing up, I remember I was allowed to stay up because I was this little kid playing the guitar. And they weren't playing BB King on the radio. He's this blues guitarist.

I was too young to go to a concert and so BB King was going to be on Johnny Carson. And so I stayed up. It was something information that I couldn't get anyplace else. And I could only See it on the Tonight Show.

But if we fast forward today, if there's a young guitar player and they're on the Tonight Show, I'm probably going to hear the same thing they said on their YouTube channel, on their Instagram, on their TikTok. I don't have to wait for someone to be on TV to get to know them. I probably got to see what they ate for breakfast.

So when Paris Hilton comes on to push her bored ape. Nft. I don't really need that. This is your ape.

It's really cool. Like the hat, the shades.

How did you pick? Because you can pick your ape. Yes.

I was going through a lot of them and I was like, I want something that like kind of reminds me of me. But this one, it's. It does.

Riveting. And let's compare apples to apples. So I saw where Colin Jost from Saturday Night Live was interviewed on Jimmy Fallon.

And I also saw where he was on the show Hot Ones, which is a show by Sean Evans, which is amazing, where he has A list and B list. You know, people come on and eat spicier and spicier wings while he asked them really insane questions.

So here are the questions from the Tonight Show. How did you develop your Pete Hexworth impression?

Who is the head of the war department or whatever in the US and if you've seen this, Colin Jost is not really doing an impression. He's saying words that writers put in his mouth and he's doing it in kind of a bro way. But he doesn't really sound at all like peak Hegseth.

I've seen Pete Hegseth in real life. He was at an event I went to and I'm like, that guy doesn't sound anything like him.

And then the second question was, what was it like portraying Pete Hegseth as some of the guy's real life actions Seems even stranger than the ones rejected on snl. So what is that? That's really just a promotion of snl. How is it working alongside Matt Damon in an SNL sketch?

Again, pointing to snl, Were you intimidated acting with Matt Damon? And then he had him go into a story with former SNL person Kate McKinnon. Had to go up and do a talk.

And it was weird because they were comedians and everybody else was real serious. And then of course, because it's Tonight show, what can you tell us about the upcoming movie the Breadwinner with Nate Bargazi?

Because that's really why Colin is there. And then what projects are you working on outside of Saturday Night Live. All right, pretty, you know, so it's pitch, pitch, pitch.

There's one story in there that had nothing to do with SNL or the actual, you know, movie that he's there to promote. And if you just. Here's. Here's a question from Hot Ones. You've been punched in at least four Saturday Night Live sketches.

What stands out as the most memorable physical beating that you've taken on live television? That's an interesting question. Then he goes in and says, do you have a proudest journalistic achievement from your time at the Staten Island Advance?

So this lets us know. Oh, besides being a comedian, I didn't know Colin Jost had a journalism degree.

And it's just, it goes on and on where these really introspective questions that open up to great stories. What was the most harrowing experience you had covering the Olympics? And he had a great story. It was amazing. So it's better interviews.

And that's what makes the show so weird, is he's asking these really good interviews, causing people to think while their mouth is on fire. So here again, the late night format worked for a time when it had no competition.

If you're listening to today's podcast, Johnny would actually just have a conversation with people.

Sure, there might be a roll the clip, but there was a lot more conversation to Johnny Carson than there was to the current status of late night, where it's like, oh, I heard you went on vacation with your family. Okay, let's roll the clip. So what happens when you get competition and you're just not as engaging as you used to be? It's old hat.

Well, the whole late night audience got cut in about half. And so consequently, remember, you don't monetize a podcast, you monetize an audience.

And when half your audience is like, yeah, I'm just going to watch it on YouTube the next day. I don't have to stay up late.

Because we went from that monoculture where we'd all go in, we'd be gathered around the coffee machine at work and going, man, did you see Sam Kenison on, you know, Johnny last night? And everybody's like, oh, my gosh, I saw. Yeah, that's gone.

Nobody watches everything together unless it's maybe the super bowl or something of that nature.

So when half your audiences left and half your sponsors have left, because I'm not paying what I normally used to pay because there's half the audience, they started, which, this makes sense. You've got to go where the audience is. And so since the audience went to YouTube, they started finding their best clips and putting them on YouTube.

Because of course, right, you can make money on YouTube. And that is true. But according to reports, YouTube pays about 10 cents on the dollar of what you would make on a, you know, national network show.

So you used to make a dollar, now you make a dime. And now when you have this giant staff of people to put on this giant production, something's got to give.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I know I said I wasn't going to do politics, but here's the thing that most people don't realize. They're like, well, Colbert shouldn't have been going after the President. He should have been talking politics. And I get it. But here's the thing.

When he first came on and started doing the show, he followed the template that the almighty Johnny Carson had put out. And if you're not familiar with this, this is how Johnny thought about doing political humor on the Tonight Show.

I said, now tell me the last time that Jack Benny, Red Skelton, any comedian, use his show to do serious issues. That's not what I'm there for. Can't they see that?

But you're neither.

They think that just because you have a Tonight show that you must deal in serious issues. That's a danger. It's a real danger. Once you start that you start to get that self important feeling that what you say has great import.

And you know, strangely enough, you could use that show as a forum. You could sway people. And I don't think you should as an entertainer.

And so Stephen's ratings were horrible. And I guess they just thought, well, there's nothing else to do.

And apparently Steven leans left, so he went hard left into politics and he ended up being number one in late night. But let's not forget when we say number one in late night, it's not the late night of the Johnny Carson era. It's, it's half the size.

But she had, you know, she was the first Indian descent, a woman of Indian descent, and one of the few women ever to host a network late night talk show, even though it was at 1:30. But speaking of the 90 minutes to 60 minute cut that Carson did, that basically helped make David Letterman a star.

Because the interesting thing about Conan, like he even mentioned it, he did an absolutely insane appearance on Hot Ones. That is a YouTube channel again with Sean Evans that does amazing interviews.

And he was on there, was completely unique, very wacky, very weird, and got 10 million views. Let's think about that number. 10 Million views.

And Conan said, if a guy can do world series numbers with overhead, that looked to be about $600 and you have every big star lining up to do that show. That is when I profoundly understood that late night shows are in trouble.

I am of the mindset that, yes, these shows are going away and will become something else. And so he did jump ship. If we go back to do a little Conan history.

He started, of course, he had the weird Tonight show debacle and that was not great. But he ended up on tbs. Not a huge channel on cable, but you know, it's up there with like Comedy Central. He got paid 12 million a year.

It's a lot of money in my book.

And that again, just, it mirrored the whole late night thing. And so Conan got smart. He wasn't about ratings, he was about ownership. And this is where podcasters can start to learn.

So as part of his TBS deal, he negotiated ownership of much of the content produced by the show, which by the way, is straight out of the playbook of Johnny Carson, which was passed down to David Letterman. Own your stuff. And so this was the team Coco.

That's kind of what he calls his team YouTube channel, the Social media, the podcast network, live events and merchandise, and about 1 billion billion with a B annual video views from that roughly 180 to 200 million podcast downloads a year. A year. That's a chunk of downloads, more than 17 million social followers.

And so in he was on TBS here again, he cut his show down from one hour to 30 minutes. Because the other thing you got to think about when you're on a network show, you don't really get to pick who the guest is.

So when I see I kind of get mad when Conan does so many ads in his show, I'm like, dude, quit calling it Conan O' Brien needs a friend. It sounds like Conan O' Brien needs some cash because he got 32 million when he left. That whole Tonight show thing, it's been kind of crazy.

And so he became one of the first major late night hosts to successfully transition from traditional television into a creator owned podcast in digital media business. But that move likely generated more long term value than the TBS show itself. So the late night. Tell us about your family vacation. Roll the clip.

That format is tired. The magic of having a list celebrities doesn't work anymore because they're everywhere. So that format is not going to work.

They've got to come up with something that maybe I haven't seen before. And that doesn't mean, you know, Bradley Cooper playing face kit ball on the Tonight Show. That's kind of Jimmy Fallon's thing.

Let's get him on and play a game because I don't really want to see Bradley Cooper play faceketball. So we're going to talk about what makes a good podcast. I've talked about this before and I've got some new content right after this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The school of podcasting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right. For years I've been saying the ingredients that make up a good podcast are it makes you laugh, cry, think, groan, educate, or entertain.

Those were the things when I asked myself, why did you watch that? Why did you read this? Why did you listen to that? That was it. Laugh, cry, think, grown, educate or entertain. And then I went to a conference.

And somebody brought up a great point that if you want somebody to pay you for something, you better save them time or save them money. Last night I was going to go home. I had things in the fridge I could have eaten, but instead I ate at. Where did I eat last night? Chipotle.

Because I could go in, it was not at peak time and eat. And that time that I would save, I could then go to another location and buy something that was going to make it easier to dig up my lawn.

So I was spending money to save time and to make things easier to solve a problem. I'm trying to grow grass on a yard made up of rocks, basically. So I have to de rock my front yard. That's why people spend money, typically.

And even if you're like, well, what about Patreon? Look, if you are doing a comedy show, it doesn't seem like you're solving a problem, but you are.

You're solving the I just had a horrible day at work problem and you made me smile. That's worth money. I'm paying you to make a horrible memory go away.

So now we got laugh, cry, think, groan, educate, entertainment, save them time and save them money. So if you're into YouTube, there's a great channel and it's called Colin and Samir.

So let's stop. Let's do the math. Not six weeks, not six months, seven years.

And that was a video you have to share.

When I talk about making content so good that you have to share it, because I shared it with my brother, who then shared it with his kids, who then shared it with their kids, that's wow kind of information. So Mark was on the Colin and Samir show and was explaining, how do you make a viral video now if you're not doing video? This still applies.

Check this out.

All you have to do is create a visceral response in the viewer. Like, they have to feel happy, they have to feel amazed, they have to feel shocked, they feel angry. So a lot of stuff goes Viral these days, right?

They just have to feel something. For something to be remarkable, it needs to be able to be remarked about. No one shares a video they don't finish watching.

I love that line. Nobody shares a video they don't finish watching. So when you're like, I got 20%, is that good? No.

So then he started talking about some of his more popular videos.

You just have to create. And a lot of times that's why it's world's largest blank. Because by definition, if it's the world's largest, you've never seen it before.

So that's likely going to create a reaction in you that's like, whoa. I'm amazed by this. This is incredible. The glitter bombs. You feel vindicated. It's funny to you. Like the squirrels.

It's like, what?

I've never seen this.

I say this all the time. Anytime you share something, go ahead and share it. And then ask yourself, why? Because there's a lesson there somewhere.

Give someone a juicy nugget, an aha moment, just a feeling.

And he goes on to mention here, if you want to reach someone's head, you start with the heart. It's a really great video. And it's amazing to see how Mark has grown into now because he's a.

You know, he's a guy that's really into science and he's got his own product and he got some really rich people to back him to where now he is making science content and curriculum for schools. Because the US Especially is just tanking when it comes to teaching science. I know. Here's a true story.

My seventh grade science teacher would basically, he had a dark room for photography and he would go in there and smoke pot.

I remember the first whatever part of that class I was doing the homework and stuff, and I think I got like a C. And then for the rest of the class, he would always be up front talking to his friends. And Mr. Hensel was one of those guys that kind of laughed more than he did. Probably because I just got out of the dark room and I found a.

If I just sat there and listened to him, I would get a C. So I did that as well. But science is something that not everybody's going to get, and he is very passionate about it and now has a $60 million project that he's doing.

But his big thing there again is, okay, laugh, cry, think grown, educate, entertain. Save them time, save them money and make them feel something. Watch the news. They want you scared and afraid all the time.

And so people Start talking about it. Did you hear that? Oh, my gosh. We're all going to die. And now go watch a late night interview. Did they make you laugh?

Eh.

Cry? Nope. Think. No. I have client. Think. Grown probably right. Did they educate you? Well, I got to learn about, you know, Ben Stiller's family vacation.

I got to see a clip that I could have seen online. Did they save me time? No, actually, they. They kind of wasted it a little bit. Did they save me money?

Oh, they saved me money because you showed me a clip and the clip was probably pretty awful because the movie's probably pretty awful. Okay, but did. What did you make me feel?

Well, you made me feel that these celebrities singing Imagine while I'm locked down in Covid are completely out of touch and I don't like them anymore. There's nothing more than watching a millionaire complain. That's the best. So keep this in mind, because I've said it before.

I said podcasting can beat big media at their own game. And there are things like Hot Ones is an amazing interview show. And watch this.

When you watch a Hot Ones, you will hear people say, oh, man, that's a really good question.

Oh, I've never talked about that because Sean Evans is a journalist and yes, he's down in Hot Wings along with the celebrity people, but he's dug into things and doing things that other people don't do. And part of that is it's not a daily show.

When you listen to the host of Late Night, the minute they get done with their show and they're like, hey, that one only kind of sucked, they're on to the next one because you've got another, you know, hour to fill. And they're doing their best. So there are lessons to be learned here. And here's the lesson that's kind of frightening.

And it's true.

And I was like, so here's the thing that Michael Gurdley always says, the thing that made you will also be the thing in many cases that tears you down. So here's the good news about podcasting. Anyone can make a podcast, and they often do. Now how is that going to tear us down?

Because any one, or maybe now we should say anything that makes a podcast can tear us down. And so I'm going to play a clip I think I've played this before. Her name is Janine Wright. She's the head of Inception Point AI.

I was calling it Insolption Point, but Janine made a point and I went, oh. So here's the first one that set me off. I was like, oh, AI Slop Factory. Because she said this.

The lazy approach to reviewing AI generated content to just dub everything as AI slop.

Now, I found this very funny that she said reviewing everything because they don't review almost anything at Inception Point AI, which is why this slop stuff is coming out. There's no quality control. But she went on to say this.

The conversation in AI has moved beyond just taking the hand wavy approach of labeling everything slop. It's not all slop. There's definitely good, high quality stuff coming out there.

We can have a conversation about quality and what we've been doing and quality.

And so if anybody interviews her and she drops that one, please ask her, yes, what are some quality shows that you are doing? Because I want to go check them out. I was kind of bummed Rob didn't go there, but that's what I would ask her because she says that a lot.

We do a lot of quality stuff. Great. Name one. One, name one. But later in the interview, she said something and I went, oh.

Every time people want to have this conversation around AI Slop, I find it interesting that we never have a conversation about human slop.

Ooh, zing.

The standard is for AI and for all AI, it's just in general this kind of better than human expectation. You see this happening across self driving cars and all sorts of different industries.

So I understand that I'm being judged by a different lens than the lens everybody else is being judged by.

When people go through the public databases of all the new content that's released that day, nobody is going through all of the human made content and evaluating it on quality and shaming people publicly telling them that this does not reach a bar of what should be released into the world. But they're certainly doing that with my content so that they can decide to label something as this is slop or this is of low quality.

And that's just, you know, people have higher expectations with respect to the stuff that comes out of machines than they do with the stuff that comes out of humans. Right.

And she's wrong. There is a human that's checking it. Every human produced podcast has the host going, is this any good? So that's not entirely correct.

And the other thing is, yeah, there may be thousands of podcasters creating shows on a single day, but that's thousands of individual ones. And so if we were to go to them and say, hey, you should probably have somebody listen to this before you put it out, would be very hard.

But you are one single source putting out thousands of just content. And I don't know, call me weird, but when you say that this is Dr. So and so and it's not Dr. So and so, I think that's called lying.

I could be wrong, but there's that. Do I think she's trying to change the subject when she says, well, electric cars and blah? Yeah, I think she's doing that.

And also, by the way, do people get canceled sometimes when they lie in public? And. Yeah, so I. But I. I thought about it.

I was like, you know, if we look at it as a, you know, a content creator doesn't have another human, or in the case of Inception, point the first human listen to it before it goes out the door. I think the humans are guilty as charged because. Or if we go back to not always not lying, but not really telling the truth, we ask Mom.

And the one thing that has always kind of blown me away, we do these things at the school of podcasting called listener parties. And every time we do one, the person walks away with amazing insights. And yet. Are we doing one every day? Nope. Are we doing one a month? Maybe.

But it's. I. I find it very odd aside the fact that it's my art, man, that people don't really want feedback on their show, that I think is interesting.

Even though authors have multiple drafts of their book.

If you're going through a publisher and when you're an actor, you will hear about how they spent hundreds of hours working on a dialect or, you know, they put in a lot of work. If you hear what Sean Evans from Hot Ones does to make an interview, it's amazing. And that's the thing.

If we go back to the original idea, I brought up Hot Ones, and that is, you know, started off as an independent show. It's insane. I'll put links to it out in the show notes.

But there are other ones I've heard about Chicken Shop Date, haven't watched that one yet, but it started independently and became a major cultural force. I've heard of.

I've watched diary of a CEO Watch the first minute of a Diary of a CEO episode on YouTube and try not to watch the rest of it, because it is the king of sucking you in. Obviously, we could throw out Joe Rogan. Cause He's Joe Rogan, but that's a guy. Again, team of four, just crushing it.

But he frequently reaches millions of viewers every single episode. And it's. His audience is larger than almost every traditional talk show. You know, I brought up Mark Robert. He's a guy. There are tons of these.

Even if we go back and look at Mr. Beast and you know, that guy's got bazillions of people on YouTube following.

But he started off as a whatever 14 year old kid who spent, I just heard the story. He spent a thousand days, a thousand days with his friends going over content to make sure it's not slop.

And that doesn't mean you have to wait a thousand days to put out your show, but you should get some feedback.

And if you want to be a podcast consultant, one of the hardest things that you have to grasp and be able to live with is that someone will ask you for your opinion and you'll point out something that's fairly obvious and then you will say, oh, well, I would move this to the end because it's very fluffy and we need to get to the point. And they will then ignore you. And I'm not saying I know everything, but there are. I'm just here to tell you.

Or when I say, yeah, your audio on A scale from 1 to 10 is 2, and they look at you and go, really? I'm like, yes, you're using a built in microphone on a laptop where it sounds like you're standing in traffic. It's very bizarre.

And so the one point when I talk about or when I hear about, I'm not talking about it, but actually I have been talking about it for over 20 years is human slop. And this is where I now start to feel a little compassionate for Janine Wright. When people call your art slop.

But there's always room for improvement. Pat, what's his name, the sports guy? Pat McAfee is another guy. Started independently, he's a sports guy.

But here's the thing you have to think about when you look at these hot ones isn't trying to be the Tonight Show. Diary of a CEO. They're not trying or he's not. Stephen Bartlett isn't trying to be 60 Minutes and Joe Rogan isn't trying to be network radio.

Instead, they serve a specific audience. They build direct relationships with their viewers. Direct. That's the cool thing. They own their distribution. Thank you, Conan.

Thank you, David Letterman. They generate revenue from multiple sources. I only know a few people that only do stuff from Ads. I'll talk about ads in just a second.

I just had a very eye opening experience. But they have ads, they have sponsorships, they have memberships, they have merchandise, they have live events, they have products.

I've always said when people go, I'm going to start a podcast and I want to get ads, I'm like, that's one of the worst things. Why? Because I just, I have one show left on Libsyn. I don't mean to poo poo on Libson.

I still have friends over there, but I do a show that's really an audio diary. I put out an episode, if I'm lucky, once a month, if I'm crazy, twice a month. And I made, and I'm not making this up.

I'm just saying there are better ways to make money. Oh, and I almost forgot, that's for downloads in April that I will get paid for in July.

Yeah, just keep in mind that many of these creators, they rival and in some cases exceed traditional late night shows. 10 Million views on a single video for Hot Ones. Give me a break. And the late night shows would love an audience size like that.

And they're operating with a fraction of the staff. And so am I saying that there weren't political things that caused the Late show to go off the air? Absolutely not.

But I'm also saying when they say that guy was losing 40 million a year, I'm like, yeah, that's probably true. And I really think we're going to see what we'll see. Because right now CBS has sold just like radio does.

You can get on radio if you want to be on radio. It's, you know, hundreds of dollars for a shift depending on, you know, if it's an AM radio, they might actually let you go on for free.

And then you sell sponsorship to your show and they'll take a cut of the sponsor. It's not something, if you really want to say, I'm on the radio, you can do that. Because they'll do anything to make money.

Because in some cases radio and TV is losing money because the audience isn't there anymore. And the thing that makes me kind of wet my pants is you don't monetize a podcast, you monetize an audience.

And with so many shows out there, people go, what does podcasting need to move forward? We need more people consuming what an actual podcast is. And by that I mean something delivered via rss.

I don't want to open up that can of worms, but we need people, and it's going to be hard to get those kind of numbers because there are so many creators. And look, I hate it every time I hear it, as Janine hates it when people call her stuff AI Slop.

I hate that so many jokes about podcasting are about, ugh. Okay, well, what happened to so and so? Well, he's really down on his luck. In fact, I heard he's doing a podcast. So it's not enough to be authentic.

It's not enough to stay consistent. I've been saying, look, every week I could hit record on this microphone and go, ah, ah.

For about a minute and a half, I'd be consistent and it'd be authentic. But I don't think I'm going to grow an audience just going, ah. I could be wrong. Maybe I need to try that. How do you grow your podcast, Dave?

By making them laugh, cry, think, groan, educate. By saving them time, by saving them money, by making them feel something.

And instead of, you have all those ingredients that you can use to make a better podcast, and instead you're using a compass that says, just follow being authentic and consistent. And yes, that is true, but it's authentically amazing content.

It's consistently scheduled in a way that you can actually live your life and not want to jump out a window. As Mark Rober said, this is your clip.

This is how you make a vowel video.

So you better have a lot of passion for something and enjoy the art of creating your content, otherwise you're not going to make it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The school of podcasting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're not done yet. One thing I and notice, I'm doing this near the end. This is not the end. I got another thing after this.

But if you're a person that sent in your story to how to pitch a podcast, which you can [email protected] and you're like, hey, what happened, man? I sent in the story. I have had multiple things happen in my life, especially around my house, and it just takes priority.

They're time sensitive, and I got to get them done in the spring and the summer and things like that. And I operate with a pretty small margin so that when life throws me a curveball, things get put on hold.

And so I just wanted to let you know you can continue to send in your pitches. I would love that. And again, this is just you open up your email, somebody pitches you a guest that would never, ever, ever be on your show.

Just read that out loud. You can keep it anonymous. We don't need to throw people under the bus.

Tell us a little bit about your show, give me your website address, and then explain who your perfect guest would be. And I will play that on a future show. Honest. It is coming out, but I just wanted to keep you informed.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I realize we're running long, but since we're talking about growing your audience, this is the bonus track. Macaulay Culkin, years ago, had a podcast, and he was on the Ellen show. So obviously it was a while ago, but think about this.

You should be ready to promote your show. So we're talking earlier about it makes, you know, having great content. Yep, that's definitely part of it.

But also, when you get the opportunity to explain to people why you should listen to your show, it shouldn't sound like this. So you have this podcast that you're doing.

Yes. Bunny ears.

Bunny ears. What is bunny ears?

And what do you explain that?

Gosh, I mean, it is me and my buddy Matt Cohen, and we kind of just talk about things and stuff and stuff.

Things and stuff and stuff. Oh, man, I've been waiting for a show about things and stuff and stuff.

And we do. Sometimes we have guests. We do a lot of themes. Like, it'll just be.

It'll be a theme about first, like, just first, like any things or conspiracy theories or sometimes we just shoot the breeze.

Macaulay Culkin, shooting the breeze with somebody. I don't know, man, how lucky am I that I discovered this podcast?

We got some really great guests. We've had Seth Green and Brecken Meyer were on together, which is great.

That's great. That's great. And that's all. She asked him about it because he didn't give her anything. That made me go, wait. Tell me more about the stuff and stuff.

So have your pitch ready. So when somebody says, school of podcasting, what's that about?

I go, well, if you're a person that wants to launch a podcast, I help you plan, launch, grow. And if you want to monetize your show, that's pretty clear on what it's about. I don't know how clickable that is.

But it's, it's in a very Dave Jackson way. It's a very logical answer. But be ready to explain what your podcast is and I don't know, say, oh, by the way, my website is.

Is schoolofpodcasting.com now this is shocking the bunny ears, which is a horrible name podcast by Macaulay Culkin and his friend where they talk about stuff and stuff and occasionally do themes. Sure. Is no longer in production.

Apparently he got bored because he's Macaulay Culkin and he has a life and probably a wife and kids and is no longer needing money because he made a bazillion dollars when he was, I don't know, nine. But be ready to promote your show now. If you need help with your podcast again, check me out. Schoolofpodcasting.com Need a website for your podcast?

Check out podpage.com I'm Dave Jackson. Been helping podcasters for over 20 years and I can't wait to see what we're going to do together. Until next week. Take care. God bless.

Class is dismissed. If you like the show, please share it with a friend. If you like the show, pretty, pretty please share it with a friend right now.

Yeah.