A podcast is just one piece of the whole for the brand you represent, how might you aim to think bigger, and create a broader environment of engagement around your podcast? In this webinar we will hear from independent creators who have embraced this thinking, innovated, and expanded the influence of their podcast brand through myriad avenues of engagement; live events, social media, email campaigns, product offerings, merchandise, institutional partnerships, and more!

Joining us in conversation are Sarah Azoubel and Bia Guimarães of 37 Graus, Dan Saks of Noodle Loaf, and Katy Osuna of Copper & Heat.

Transcript

Alexandra Blair [00:00:11] Great, it's so good to see everyone. It's so good to see and hear so many familiar faces. Hi, everybody. I think we're just about ready to get started here. Cool. Hi, everybody, thank you so much for joining us. It's so nice to see so many of you. Please continue to pop off in the chat. We love that. My name is Alexandra Blair. Hello. I am a 30 year old woman tuning in from my apartment, and I am the project manager for the Google Podcasts creator program, which is a partnership between Google and PRX. That trains and mentors and provides resources to voices in the podcasting sphere all around this big, wide, beautiful world of ours. And this is the second in a series of webinars that we are hosting to bring some skills sharing elements to indie podcasters the world over. So if you tuned in with us last week, you'll be familiar with this process, but otherwise I'll give you some pointers if you have questions for our lovely panelists throughout our panel. Please use the Q&A function of the Zoom. Questions that have a tendency to kind of get lost and buried in the chat. So use the chat to share resources and to connect with other podcasters who are tuning in. But please put any questions you have for the panelists in the Q&A. And an important note that this is a panel about pitching, but this is not a pitch panel. So please refrain from asking any kind of specific "Can you hear my pitch?" questions or, "Hey, what about my show?" That's this or that we are going to be talking about pitching, but not so much receiving pitches. So please feel free to use that Q&A throughout. We will be taking questions at the end, and I would love to introduce my panelists who are joining me today. We have joining us Lauren Silverman from Gimlet. Lauren, would you like to unmute and say hello? Oh, Lauren, you're muted for some... I can't hear you for some reason. Hmm no. OK, we'll go to Christian while Lauren sorts out. No, can't hear you for some reason.

Lauren Silverman [00:02:35] Weird OK ...

Alexandra Blair [00:02:37] Oh now I can, all of a sudden.

Lauren Silverman [00:02:37] We were just working on this! Hi, guys, I'm Lauren Silverman. I'm a supervising producer of How to Save a Planet at Gimlet and have worked on new show development at Gimlet off and on for a few years before this, I ran the second season of the show Conviction. And before that, I worked on the show Start-Up. Happy to be here!

Alexandra Blair [00:03:01] Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us, Lauren. We also have Cristian Jatar joining us from Sonoro Media and correct me if I...if need be.

Cristian Jatar [00:03:14] Everyone, Cristian, I work at Sonoro Media and a development team. I am a department coordinator/ development executive. I am the guy who gets the pitches and puts in a good word with the head of development. Thank you for having me here.

Alexandra Blair [00:03:28] Cool, thank you so much for joining us, Cristian. Also joining us, we have Jason Saldanha of my own lovely company.

Jason Saldanha [00:03:38] Thanks, Alexandra, thanks for having me. I am Jason Saldanha, I'm the Chief of Business Development and Content. What that means is I oversee revenue for PRX and I oversee all of content, which is Radiotopia, TRAX, and all of our podcasts outside of that, which include the TED Talks, TED Audio Collective. Welcome to Night Vale, The Moth, Snap Judgment, a bunch of other shows. We're a public media company. But we have our feet in both lanes of public media and digital audio, so I'm very happy to be here and talk about pitching.

Alexandra Blair [00:04:10] Great, thank you so much for joining us, Jason. And finally, we have Justine Lang joining us from Pushkin. Hello, Justine. Good morning.

Justine Lang [00:04:18] Morning, hello. I'm Justine Lang. I'm Director of Development at Pushkin Industries. I'm based in L.A. But Pushkin main headquarters are in New York. At Pushkin, I was executive producer on A Slight Change of Plans, season one, which just been named Apple Podcast of the Year. So that's very exciting. And now I just work in development, which is I receive all the pitches and we make pilots. I receive all the pilots. And yeah, previously I was with the BBC for 10 years and before that with CNN. And before that I was in documentaries and before that I was a newspaper editor. I've had many different careers, but very happy to be here and try and help people make great pitches.

Alexandra Blair [00:05:11] My gosh, so interesting. Thank you so much to everyone for joining us. I'm really excited. I want to dive right in because I know we have a lot to cover and this has been one of the most requested panels ever. People are always asking this question. I think a lot of indie podcasters really don't have a great sense of how an idea becomes a finished product in terms of development. So I would love if you guys could just kind of go around and give us like a bird's eye view of what development looks like at your organization. Maybe Justine start since you finished last.

Justine Lang [00:05:49] Well, I think a lot of people don't understand what development is and interestingly we just did a kind of a showcase for just Pushkin, for them to understand what it is exactly we do because people go "oh development, what happens there?" And how I... we like to explain it is that development is where ideas land and live with the aim of turning them into new ideas and turning new ideas into hit shows. So some pitches come in a few lines and some come in fully fancy decks. And you know, it doesn't really matter how it comes in as long as you've got all the right information which we'll get on to. But yeah, so so I feel, I call ourselves like a coffee machine, the sort of coffee beans go in and out comes the coffee and we help develop talent. We work with a lot of talent, a lot of hosts kind of working out what they want to do. So a lot of sort of host management. We also make pilots. I oversee two to three pilots at one time. And yeah, that's it's kind of it's ideas... and once the ideas have been formed, once we've kind of created the baby, we then hand the baby over to production and then we don't really have much to do with it, except it does grow and and either continue or not. Yeah.

Alexandra Blair [00:07:16] Amazing, thank you. Maybe, Jason?

Jason Saldanha [00:07:21] Yeah, I'm happy to step in. We operate a little bit differently in that we, we make things in-house and we have networks within our portfolio that we are there to support. So there's inbound all the time of pitches, but there's also needs that we have that we are targeting as part of our content strategy that we're looking for outbound, whether that's acquisitions or ideas we want to make or have made for us. We are thinking all the time about how are we reaching audiences we don't reach. So that is a prime... using a rubric to understand where we want to sort of land our content strategy is a very important piece for us. And additionally, making sure that our producers are always the sort of center of the organization is a different positioning for PRX as opposed to some companies out there. So our goals are just to make sure that we are working with the best producers, the ones that have the most unique voices, and that we are super serving audiences that are in sort of this new, nascent space. And when you started, Alexandra, one of the reasons why it's so hard to pitch in audio is that we're less than 20 years old as an industry and we don't have an infrastructure that is similar to the infrastructures of movies and television. In some way that's challenging. In some ways that's opening, and that creates an open system that allows for an equity of your voice that doesn't exist in other mediums. So I think if you're a nascent producer out there, this is the moment to really try to get your, get your show or idea made because we're in a very flexible and growth period in this industry.

Cristian Jatar [00:09:08] In our case, at Sonoro Media, we're a startup, we're a Mexico-U.S. based startup. Our mission statement is basically to amplify as many Latinx voices as we can. So we're always on the lookout for new ideas to, as Justine said, grab and kind of foster and turn into like quality product that we can share with the world. We sometimes develop those ideas internally and we sometimes work with outside writers. But always the goal is to have the best quality product that can help us dispel certain stereotypes in the Latinx community. Yeah, it's pretty...it's pretty fun because again, you see the idea from its inception. It's a very small thing. It has all the possibilities in the world. And then you kind of work to make it more of a tangible product and something that we can put out into the world and audiences can relate to it and share and want to talk about. But yeah, it's pretty development for us is our main thing and the most exciting part for sure, for me, at least.

Lauren Silverman [00:10:09] Hey, sorry about that, my internet is a little on the fritz here, anyways, at Gimlet, we have a few people who are in charge of receiving pitches and also going out and scouting for content. So it goes both in-coming and going out and looking for people who might be interested or have potential things that could be turned in turned into podcasts. And our priority really at Gimlet is we don't pilot a lot, probably compared to the rest of the folks on this...on this call. I think we maybe pilot less because where... We take a lot more time and to go through pitches and maybe a little bit slower because we're often looking for things that can be in a... amongst a group of, say, a dozen shows that we have. And it's not quite as expansive of a catalog. And so we're investing a lot of time in making sure that what we're what we're looking for is going to be able to exist potentially ongoing and potentially have a really big audience. So we get a lot of pitches and it takes us a while right now to sort of get through them as I bet it does for everyone else. And we are really looking for crazy new ideas, different voices, diverse voices geographically across the world and within the United States as well.

Alexandra Blair [00:11:44] Cool, thank you guys for sharing that so much, I think it really helps to kind of get a get an understanding of how each company really approaches development differently. And I loved that reminder, Jason, that we are at such an exciting period and also from Lauren, you know, like different studios looking for exciting new types of content. We already have some questions coming in the Q&A about different or less common types of content, so I'm excited to tackle those. But I think first, pretty much everyone is here to hear the answer to this question, which is like "what makes a good podcast pitch?" when you're looking at pitches. So I think we have a couple of different ways we can tackle this and we can separate it out a little bit. I'd love to hear from you guys first about the things that make a podcast pitch really stand out, things that make a really good quality podcast pitch. Go for it, Jason.

Jason Saldanha [00:12:38] I'm happy to.

Alexandra Blair [00:12:38] Or Justine, yeah, whoever...

Justine Lang [00:12:41] Jason you go first

Jason Saldanha [00:12:43] Clarity. Clarity is the single most important piece of a pitch. If you don't... cannot articulate the thesis of the show or the idea, it's not going to be a pitch that will move forward. So being clear, having a distinct set of goals that you're trying to achieve. "This is a limited series where we're talking about X Y Z. We see this type of frequency..." Those those things really matter. Then I'm interested in getting into the aesthetics. What idoes the deck look like? What is the concept fleshed out in what the core value proposition of the pitch is going to be the differentiator between me reading it and not reading it. If it is a PDF that is 100 pages long and full of text that you know, takes me 10 minutes to just understand you're not going to get through it just because you have to understand all of us here are dealing with significant volume of pitches. And so use that to your advantage, really create a clear opportunity value from the get-go and then get to the sort of fancy decks and the imagery secondary. That would be my biggest piece of advice.

Justine Lang [00:14:02] Yeah, I... I'll add to that, I mean, I always say, if you can't give me a logline and I think loglines at the top of the pitch are just great because then I immediately know what it is, what you're trying to kind of sell me. Essentially, you're selling something right? And so make it clear, short, you know, describe it in one sentence. Like, imagine it's on the you're on the rolodex of Apple, Overcast or whatever and and you're reading what this podcast is about that if that's what you should have somewhere very at the top and then go into the detail, you know, I love getting little bits of audio, even if it's just two minutes just to kind of hear the host, because host is king really. Like, you know, if you're if you're not good on audio, it's kind of not going to work. And then, you know, format, you know, what's the form? What is the show? As Jason said, is it limited series? Is a weekly talk show? Like what is it that I'm looking at here? Like how many episodes? I'd make that very clear because we have kind of definite buckets like so we have our weekly talk shows, we have our limited seasons. And then, you know, we're always developing new formats. So you know the zanier, you know, if you come up with new format ideas, then that's all the better because, you know, it's a new industry, right? And so, you know, the more it will continue to evolve, like I always say, like, you know, podcasting is going to have its Big Brother moment, right? Remember when Big Brother started on television, it was like, "Oh, wow, that's an amazing idea" Well, you know, podcasts one day will have that Big Brother moment. So, you know, I think always looking at different formats, how we can do audio differently is always a kind of, "Oh, this looks interesting" so try and pique the interest up the top. Yeah. Don't send four pages of dense text, but I can get into more kind of how we like to see the layout of pitches later on. But yeah, that's...

Lauren Silverman [00:16:06] I'll jump in and just say that, yes, I will second everything that's been said. Clarity is important, but but also like or in that category of clarity is is a specificity about why you are the person to be making the show or if you're hosting it, to be hosting the show. So your not just your skills in pro tools or your skills like writing, although that's helpful, but also why your perspective is unique is something that we're always looking for. And keep in mind, like, you don't have to have all the pieces in place to pitch a show you don't have to have the host or be the host of a show to pitch it. Like we'll often go out and look for hosts of shows if we really like the idea for something. So if you're not the right person to be the host, don't sell yourself as the host because then it probably won't get very far. An example of that is like our show at Gimlet, Not Past It, which is a history show. It came to us in the form of the idea of a daily history show and didn't have a host. We liked the idea of a daily history show at the time and really looking at moments from the past and how they shape our world today. Each, you know, regularly, whether that's daily or weekly, it became a weekly show. And we have a host who was not included in the pitch originally. So also like, it's great to be specific and clear about what you want, but also communicating that you're open to change. It's nice to and that you're not stuck on your idea and your format completely, but that you understand what you think would work for whatever outlet you're pitching to given their current catalog and that you're familiar with what they make.

Cristian Jatar [00:18:06] I mean seconding what everyone said, because that is exactly it, I think the main thing is clarity, because sometimes you get pitches that are so long and they go all over the place and it's very hard to make out exactly what they're trying to say with it. I think clarity is a perfect point and something to really take from this. Also, for me personally, I want to see that you're actually genuinely passionate about your own idea. It's an idea that you have absolute control over. It's an idea that you in a way, you know, you wrangle that beast. It's something that if I... If this leads to like a pitch meeting, I can ask you questions and you start about different possibilities and you take constructive criticism very well. Like, there's all of that technical stuff, but there's also how you present things even in the pitch deck or one pager or elevator pitch. Everything needs to really, you know, push across that this is an idea that you really genuinely want out into the world and it's something that you're going to do your best to work with us to have it be the best, most high quality content available that, to us, is also very important.

Alexandra Blair [00:19:10] I'm getting a couple... I'm seeing a few questions kind of pop up, and so I just want to surface this as you're talking about this clarity. Can you talk a little bit about the the difference between clarity and concreteness? So some of the questions are around, is it OK if some of the, you know, I have an idea for a host, but I submit an audio sample with my voice in it, like what is the level of imagination that you have as a pitch receiver or what kind of wiggle room do people have to be flexible with their ideas? Is it possible that you would even say to someone, "Hey, we like this idea, but we want to provide these notes and take it in this direction"? What's that wiggle room like for you guys?

Jason Saldanha [00:19:50] I'm happy to go again, I think to Justine's point that the clarity in the logline is the most important piece, like what is the synthesis or how would you describe this outcome of this piece of audio or series of audio that is the single most important piece. And then all the other things are fungible after that, whether that's the host, the length, the sound design and any of those things are movable objects. But "what is the thesis" has to be very clear, and that will be the single most compelling piece of evidence for me to either continue reading or not to continue reading.

Justine Lang [00:20:27] Yeah, I mean, very much kind of...you know, we also go out looking for hosts, so we're always kind of open to hosts' ideas. I mean, you know, you have to have something about you like kind of, you know, so sell, you know, sell yourself as a host. Why you? Which is really important. But I think that lots wiggle room, we always say that, you know, even once the show is out there in the world, we're continually developing it. So, you know, development never really stops on a show. You know, that's we've, you know, bits of segments you have in a show are movable and, you know, they're like furniture, you just move them around the room. And so, you know, I feel like we're an industry that's very flexible. You know, if we like your idea, we're going to work with you to make that idea come into the world.

Lauren Silverman [00:21:19] One thing that we've sort of mentioned a few times is like what type of show it is and this is really important, I think, and not clear. It was not clear to me before I started working on new show development of like, yes, there are distinct categories and it's good to know where you fit in this world. And we, all of us at our companies have to meet different and we have different goals in terms of our strategies and what we're coming up with in context. And some people, some places might be more focused on daily shows. Some places might be more focused on in-depth, documentary series. Some outlets might be more focused on chat shows. And so really, familiarizing yourself with what a place makes like Gimlet and being very familiar with the types of shows is fundamental because we're not going to most likely go completely adrift and make something that doesn't sound anything like our current shows. At least that's not...that's rare. So if you're coming up with a show that you think can be weekly, we want to see, how do you plan to make that sustainable? Is it really weekly or is this just a 10 episode limited thing? Or are you going to run out of ideas or run out of new things to say after 10 episodes? And sometimes you can pitch something for a feed that exists at a place. So for a show like Conviction is a good example at Gimlet. We feature different investigative, crime, justice stories in that feed for different seasons, and so you could pitch a season of a show that would fit in an existing feed that does that, which is another way to think. You don't always have to come up with a completely new idea that has its own identity and can't maybe exist in something that's already been established and sometimes at least for us, we're looking for those types of things. So we got a cold pitch for the third season of Conviction from an investigative reporter, which we're working on right now. And it was a cold pitch that was not for at the time, I don't think it was targeted at the Conviction feed, but we were like, Oh, this would be an amazing story that fits in what we've already made in the past two seasons of Conviction. Different host, different place, but the same sort of idea. So that's also something to think about, at least for us.

Cristian Jatar [00:24:04] I mean, I think to that same point, like if the general, if the idea is concrete enough, if it's solid enough, then everything else is kind of flexible. I think if you come in with a lot of little details and stuff you come in with, like an audio mood board, if you have a general idea of casting, even if it's just like a moon shot of casting, like all that helps and all that is very flexible. But the main thing is that you really have to have a clear idea of what you're selling and what you're pitching and how we're going to understand it and how we're going to take and how and if we're going to want to produce it. Like that first idea has to be extremely solid. That logline has to be extremely specific and, you know, go straight to the point for us to then and say, OK, this idea is great. Everything else, format, the time, the genre, whatever can change. But that first idea has to be solid enough and you have to be willing to actually be able to like, you know, give a little wiggle room to change everything else. You can come with a bunch of stuff you can offer to be the host. But maybe that's not the correct avenue for us. So you have to be willing to kind of kill your darlings a little bit in a sense. It's great to have all sorts of papers, all sorts of one pages, elevator elevator pitches, audio and mood boards, everything to give us. You know, again, the same thing I said before that's showing that you're actually passionate about this idea. That you're going to do everything you can to get this idea out in the world, but then be flexible enough for us to kind of like, shift that idea and make it something that fits our culture, our companies like ideals and stuff.

Alexandra Blair [00:25:35] That's a great answer. So it sounds like you guys are all kind of saying, you know, like that core concept needs to be very clear, very strong, very compelling. And then everything else that kind of exists around it is supporting evidence in some way. But it sounds like a really important part of this process is making sure that you are pitching the right company and the right studio that's actually ready to take the kind of concept that you have. I wonder if you have any advice or could speak to, you know, how podcasters can figure out who to pitch. So you know, you go out, you find a company that is producing shows that have a similar tone or sound or sort of they seem to have a paradigm that aligns with you. How do you figure out who to pitch to at these organizations? What are you looking for and where do you go?

Justine Lang [00:26:26] I mean, I think it's working out kind of where would you see your show fitting in given the kind of slate that the the production house has? So, you know, Pushkin is best known for Revisionist History, right? That is our kind of flagship show. Our other flagship show is Happiness Lab. So we have to kind of big pillar shows and then, you know, so we we do a lot of history, philosophical, but you know, we are constantly expanding. So you don't we're not going to do. I don't know... We're not necessarily going to do a cooking show. You know, it's sort of we very much stay in our ballpark, which is, you know, we're venturing into true crime slowly, but it's sort of very reported, journalistic. You know, a lot of our stuff is we have a lot of writers as hosts. But, you know, always looking for new hosts that that don't fit in that mold. And this comes to the kind of diversification of hosts and ideas. And so I think, you know, find the shows that you like and where, the show that you're pitching, where it has to sort of fit in. Because if you just bombard companies, all the companies you, you compulsively bombard, I think be quite strategic. It's a bit like selling a book, right? You kind of you send it to a publisher that you think would kind of work for that book. And so I think, you know and or TV show, so be quite, you know, look around, what is it you, you know, shows you like, do you like the way that they're made? You know, sound design, you know, how much narration... So yeah, I think be quite strategic. I used to work on a news desk, a newspaper and just get bombarded with press releases. And it's just like, why are you sending this to me? This is for a medical journal, you know? And I think that's quite important to kind of and then, you know, then to make sure that you know who you're sending to. So, you know, which is very hard, I know. But,, in the whole people development, people tend to take pitches and, you know, often on the website, there will be an email address sort of info at the email that and to say, you know, who's the best person to send pitches to? And then they'll answer, rather than just bombarding the info, like be targeted is my advice.

Jason Saldanha [00:28:52] I'll +1 that and give you some tactical advice. To Justine's point, figure out where you fit in landscape, in terms of what company or what brand would be aligned with the type of product you're making. If there is a show that exists in that company and there's an EP of that show, those EPs are great people at the tap to say, "Hey, I want to pitch, who do I pitch to in your organization?" We don't actively seek pitches at PRX because we have so much inbound organically, so it's hard to navigate our website and figure out to do that to, kind of intentionally, to be honest. So look, look for those people who are operational in those companies to then find the best person to give that pitch to. Generally, that's the head of development. But secondarily, the people who are making the shows went through that process before you did, so they have a disproportionate amount of knowledge about how to get it done.

Cristian Jatar [00:29:55] I mean, in our case, we are more actively looking for pitches, so for us, we try to find them like sometimes talent agencies send us names and pitches. We sometimes have a friend of a friend who's sends us a pitch. Sometimes we have like little events where we allow people to put pitches in and we do that whole song and dance. But we're always on the lookout for pitches. I would say that like it sounds very obvious, but like looking people up finding a company that is a good fit for your idea and then looking up people that work at that company on LinkedIn, like go to the web page, look for "about" information and all that and just try to get in somehow and try to find out a way into the development team, even if it's the assistant to someone in the development team. If you have like "in" in that area of things, that's also extremely helpful as well as like executive producers and producers and all that. But I'd say it's like if you can look up people online, Twitter, Facebook if people still use that, LinkedIn, and just try to contact someone that works at the company, that's a good way to kind of like find your way in, especially in like start ups, in my case, where like, we're actually actively looking for pitches all the time.

Alexandra Blair [00:31:04] Great, we have...I'm actually also kind of perusing the Q&A as we go, just because this panel has been so requested, I want to make sure that we're covering everything other people want to know, just not what I want to know. But we have a lot of questions kind of about the specifics, and I get this feeling a lot from the indie podcasters that I work with that if they say the wrong thing in a pitch, somehow their pitch will be disqualified from consideration. So we have a lot of questions like what should I put in a budget? Should I just leave a budget out? Because people are afraid to ask for a certain amount of money, for example, and then hear, you know, in their mind, a studio person would read that and say, "Well, we can't be on that show." Same thing about IP. We're getting a lot of questions about that. So I'm going to ask a few questions about that. But a big one that keeps coming up in here is definitely about budget and whether, you know, if a budgets too high, if that kind of disqualifies someone. And also about kind of how much of a show should be produced before it's ready to be pitched. So do you prefer to see episodes being made or no episodes being made, is a pilot necessary? Those are two kind of specific questions I'm seeing here. I wonder if you guys could speak to that a little bit.

Jason Saldanha [00:32:17] I always like to see budgets because we are a nonprofit and we have a limited pool of resources to support products, and so if you are serious, is going to cost $500000. It's a different challenge than if it costs one hundred thousand dollars and where it fits in our portfolio will depend on those budgets too. So budgets are always good and but they're always fungible, so we know that um, and I always love hearing any audio, particularly scratch audio or two and a half minute long sample pieces. They really helped me understand the vision, along with the text a little bit better and a little bit more clearly. So I highly recommend doing scratch cuts or things that give give a sense to us, both qualitatively and within the content of where this story might be going.

Justine Lang [00:33:14] I would say for us budgets, I've got a cat issue, the cat won't leave me alone. Budget for us is less important. It's really the idea and the host at the very early stages, we kind of, we don't... It tends to be the next stage. So if we like your idea, often a pitch will come in, if we like it will meet with you because we need to hear the host. We need to hear the audio, we need to hear you and see what your dynamic's like. And then budget is something we work out once we're really interested. But obviously, there's kind of, sorry, there's two... I mean, you know, someone asked in the chat the kind of narrative versus weekly. Obviously, your narrative shows are hugely expensive, they take a long time to make. And you know, they can take up to six to nine months to a year to two years to make, right? Everybody comes to us and says, I want to be I want to make a show like This American Life. Well, don't we all? You know, they spend a year, right? And those kind of... they're not over those days, but it has to be really special, you know, think about The Experiment, Floodlines. You know, some of those great shows they took a long well, probably Floodlines lines more...they take a long, you know, time to make. And they're, you know, a lot of work goes into it and they're expensive. And so I would say they're kind of not decreasing, but definitely weekly talk shows are kind of the weekly shows, you know, because the more, you have the the more ads you can have. So it's about, you know, we're a small company, you know, we're three years old. It's about revenue, you know, and we we're not a podcast charity. We're not kind of putting them out and then, well, we're not a public broadcaster, you know, and so we have a remit. We, you know, they have to, we have to be profitable. And at the end of the day, we're not going to make, you know, five narrative shows. You know, and in one Q, in one quarter. So I would say, you know, budget is hugely important. You know, we have a range of kind of making very expensive shows to, to making shows that just get popped out weekly, you know? So it's not it's... not the best answer. But you know, budget, of course, is key. But for us, not straight out out the gate...

Jason Saldanha [00:35:40] If I could just jump in there, what Justine just said, is something I talk about literally every day with producers. Most of you, many people came into the space because of Serial, and the way the Serial used the efficacy of the short form format to reach a huge audience. But ironically, that is not the best way to monetize or make money today. Like frequency will always trump short form series in terms of revenue. So knowing that going in will help you tremendously in positioning your pitch. If I get presented a limited series, it is very hard for me on the monetization side to break even on those areas. If you present to me a fifteen week series, that is much better in terms of frequency. So what Justine is saying, ad impressions across fifteen episodes are greater than ad impressions across seven episodes. And the lift it takes to market a small series is disproportionate with the lift it takes to market an ongoing series. So those are market forces that are affecting the way things are being greenlit across the industry, and it's really good for people who are making things to understand that a little bit better.

Cristian Jatar [00:36:59] I mean, in our case, budget is not the primary thing we focused on when we were getting our pitch. Sometimes we get a good pitch and then we have the pitch meeting and then the pitch meeting goes terrible, like sometimes a pitch meeting...you have high hopes for this specific idea or this logline, and then you meet the person and the person is completely unprepared. It seems like they just woke up. They just have a page of paper and it's just bullet points. Like for us, it's very important again to see that you've actually thought the whole thing through. And if you have like, to Jason's point, like if it's bigger than just a limited series, if it's like something that could branch out into something even bigger, all that sort of thing. But I think, to us, it's extremely important that when we meet with you, you're able to actually like, get across what you want to do with your idea and make us excited to get on board and help you produce it and help it get out into the world. There's something about that pitch meeting that is extremely important, and the more prepared, the more professional you look at that pitch meeting, the better your chances are because you're going to leave us thinking about you in a positive way instead of like, "Oh, this person had a piece of paper, all crumbled up full coffee with just bullet points and nothing else." They didn't come up with, like, an elevator pitch or present to us like images or a pitch deck or whatever like it's very important to try as hard to like, make the best first impression, especially at the pitch meeting.

Alexandra Blair [00:38:28] Great. I'm seeing a lot of other questions that are about sort of intellectual property. So I think a lot of people are curious what really could a creator reasonably expect to retain or what will they need to be prepared to sort of give up? And I think that I have seen that extend so far as some creators want, you know, they have an idea and they don't have a team and some creators have a team that they want to bring in with them. And so I'm curious how that process works. The IP part of it and the sort of all-hands-on-deck and the production team elements too.

Justine Lang [00:39:04] Yeah, well, for us, we we do 50/50 with the creator. We're very straight with that. I think we've done it once when the creator has 100 percent, but it doesn't really make sense for us revenue-wise and also, then that extends to IP. So if we if we sell the idea to a TV production company, then the revenues also 50/50. So that's that's kind of how Pushkin works. I mean, some people allow... We often have people come and say, we want to 100 percent keep the idea and we say no. So we've lost projects for that. But that's just the way we think 50/50 is very fair. And, you know, it's a partnership. You come to us with the great idea and we make it work, In terms of teams, I mean, we've taken on one show that was already out there in the universe and we brought it into Pushkin, which was Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso. That's just moved over to Pushkin. So he came with his own team. And so we just provide executive producer support and engineering. But on the whole, we provide... Pushkin on the whole, provides the whole production team. So you'll have a lead producer, an AP, an editor, an executive producer and an engineer on the team. Very occasionally, people will bring their own producer, but it can be difficult, right? And we find this way works really well. So, you know, yeah, sometimes with with with sort of young, nascent ideas like it's all ideas like we say, well make one. And give us a sample of what it's like. So you know, you take on the risk of making something and then give us something more concrete. But on the whole, Pushkin provides the whole team or sometimes if it's already an existing show we provide distribution and marketing, which is another formula, but that's for existing shows who want to move into the Pushkin stable, who have been kind of working on their own Patreon and raising their own finances. And it's hard work, right? And so Pushkin kind of gives them the relief to go and be kind of creators rather than doing everything else. Distribution and marketing is a huge part of podcasting. There are so many podcasts out there, and if you can't find them, then you're not going to listen to them. So Pushkin marketing is a massive part of our ecosystem is making a noise about the podcast coming out.

Lauren Silverman [00:41:58] One other thing I wouldn't worry about your ideas, at least for us, getting stolen like that is not a thing, that is not a thing that happens. We don't have time to make your podcast without you. And like theoretically, your pitch should be so centered on why you are a person telling it that we wouldn't want to, because it wouldn't be, you know what I mean? Like, it just wouldn't make sense. So that is not a thing that like, don't be afraid to share your pitch as it's not like you're giving a blueprint and it's going to go get made in those initial phases. And then the IP question for us at Gimlet, it's changed over time. So a lot of it is negotiated. There isn't like a flat... I wish we had a flat answer, like you do, Justine, about 50/50, but it still it just depends.

Jason Saldanha [00:42:47] For PRX, we have always operated as a scaffolding company for independent producers, so we don't take IP for the vast majority of our shows. For instance, if you're in Radiotopia, you generally have your own show. You make it. You keep all intellectual property. We share advertising revenue with you and a small percentage. But our mission is to support independent producers. And so we're differently positioned. The corollary, though, is that we don't have we don't throw money around in the same way because we don't...our margins are much smaller than for profit companies.

Cristian Jatar [00:43:28] I just want to say that, to Lauren's point of we're not going to steal your pitches is fantastic. We don't have the time to steal pitches. And that's not a thing at all. But in our case, it kind of depends. It's like on a case by case basis. Rarely is it 100 percent on the writer's side. It's mostly a 50/50, but it really depends. Yeah.

Alexandra Blair [00:43:55] Thank you. Thank you, guys. I'm seeing also a lot of questions about the fiction versus nonfiction space, so I wonder if you could speak to that. I know not all of you produce fiction podcasts, but for those of you who have experience in that, I would love if you could just talk about the differences, if there's any differences in how you would expect to see a pitch come in from a fiction podcast.

Jason Saldanha [00:44:21] I'm happy to go first. Fiction is a growing space. There's a lot of interesting fiction out there. For the longest time, it was done pretty poorly, but I think we've reached a new stage of maturity in the content space of fiction. It is also the most expensive and the most difficult to monetize. So I'd say if you're interested in doing fiction, you know, be aware that most companies look at it with some challenge because it's very hard to fund and make any money back. However, with the advent of subscriptions, I think you're seeing a little bit more. You'll see more fiction coming into the space because if you can make quality fiction and build a loyal audience, there's potential for renumeration on the subscription front. But it is probably the most challenging vertical that we work with at PRX.

Justine Lang [00:45:13] We just don't do it at the moment. It's just it's very hard to monetize. And we will one day, we hope, but you know, we're only two and a half, three years old. And so we're kind of building out our nonfiction slate and audio books is a huge part of our business now. We do audio-first books, all nonfiction, but you know, so Talking to Strangers was Malcolm Gladwell's first audio-first book. And so the audio comes first, and then he prints the book, or we just have audio books. So that's kind of...we're not doing fiction at the moment, but we hope to one day.

Lauren Silverman [00:45:57] We do fiction at Gimlet, and that goes through like a different pipeline, I've never produced fiction, so I'm not the best person to ask for what the pitch should look like, but that goes through. Let's look at who runs fiction at Gimlet, and I would reach out to her directly to Mimi O'Donnell.

Cristian Jatar [00:46:18] Well, in my specific case, I handle a lot of fiction as well as nonfiction. I have a great time reading scripts. But we... It is a very complicated space. It's it's very hard to pull off the fiction because of budgetary reasons. Thankfully, we have a very robust team of producers who are very capable, but we generally do get a lot of fiction pitches and it works the same way as any other pitch. And I'm going to keep repeating myself till I die. But if it's like a very robust pitch, if you're very excited about the pitch, then it will give us a little bit more, it'll make us feel more comfortable to kind of put the money down to make that a reality. It all goes together like pitching is the same process for everything. You just have to be great at putting your idea out there and showing that you actually want it to be shown to a wider audience and that it's going to work. But we do get a lot of pitches all the time for fiction, and it's the same thing. It's pitch deck, maybe a pilot script, something that shows that you're actually capable of writing in audio because that's like a big thing, since it's such a new space. There's a lot of writers who come in with scripts that are just very visual, like you have to be willing to unlearn certain things and show to us that you were actually thinking of this idea in an audio sense for us to also want to get in and work with you on that. Because if you can be a great writer, but everything is extremely visual, how do we translate that to audio? How do we help you understand that you have to unlearn that? So thinking of whatever you're pitching in an extremely audio sense, especially fiction, because fiction is a very visual medium because it's been proven for a longer time. You have to be able to show that you can do this in audio. There's a way to actually get this idea across in audio.

Jason Saldanha [00:48:07] One more thing to add as I look at a company like QCODE who does fiction exclusively as their sort of main output, being nuanced and capable of explaining how your audio fiction can be convertible into multiple platforms is an advantage when you're talking to companies who specialize in fiction. QCODE's Entire business model is taking a piece of audio that is fiction and converting it to a television, streaming, movie platform because that's where the upside is on the revenue. So if you're able to articulate why this should exist as a piece of audio fiction and then secondarily, how it could exist as a secondary platform that will give you an advantage in a fiction pitch.

Justine Lang [00:48:51] Yeah. I mean, everything is... IP leads to derivatives, that's the kind of model, right? So whether, you know, it used to be before a newspaper article or, you know, ideas coming just in pictures and now podcasts, I mean, just look at Wondery, you know, podcasts are now being kind of every company is being approached by all the big TV companies going, you know, "give us stories, give us stories" whether it's for documentaries or for nonfiction, you know, or fiction. You know, they turn them into... and they just use the IP. So, yeah, that's a big part.

Alexandra Blair [00:49:33] That's... actually pretty optimistic. Yeah. You know, people are hungry for stories than ever before and being more flexible and working with creators. And that's why it's really exciting.

Justine Lang [00:49:44] And it doesn't just have to be true crime, right?

Alexandra Blair [00:49:47] Yeah.

Justine Lang [00:49:48] Whew, yes.

Alexandra Blair [00:49:52] [laughter] So we're pushing up on time and I want I have one more question. I want to ask you guys, but I wanted to give a quick shout out because I see a lot of questions in the Q&A and in the chat people saying, like, Can you give us an example of a good logline? And it just so happens that the lovely person who wrote the best logline of all time I've ever seen is here in the audience today. So I just wanted to give a shout out to Jo Güstin, who has a podcast called Contes et Légendes du Queeristan, The Tales and Stories of Queeristan, and her logline is "bedtime stories for people who are so woke they can't sleep." And I'll never forget that logline, and it's the greatest logline of all time. So I need to give a quick shout out to Jo. Thanks for showing up, Jo. Thanks for writing the best logline ever. But I'd love to wrap up on that optimistic note and just see if there is any piece of advice that you can offer. We still have so many awesome indie podcast creators who are hanging on the line, and I know we didn't get to a lot of questions. But if there is any advice that you want to just impart of these, these lovely individuals who are going to send their pitches off out into the world, what would that be?

Jason Saldanha [00:51:01] Be clear and go for it. There's never been a better time in order to get something made, and the people on this panel are just a representation of a very large space that is growing by the day and... both from a monetary perspective and visibility perspective, audio is ascendant. So, you know, understand what you're who you're pitching to, talk to them directly. But go for it. I think there's never going to be a better time.

Justine Lang [00:51:35] Yeah, I echo that, be confident and be brave and know, put your ideas out there. While we get a lot in coming and we go out there we're always, you know, there's just it's so joyous when a when a pitch comes across your desk and you're like, "Wow, this is really different, right?" Like because there's... It's good to kind of think outside the box. Let's kind of let's evolve audio and what can be done on audio. And I think that's a really important part, you know, and but I think also we kind of think of podcasting as radio on demand, you know, it's sort of it's that beautiful thing, right? If you you, you know, create something that you can access at any time. And so be brave, be clear. Know who you're pitching to and you know, and make sure you know what that company does, right? I don't just like randomly send it off like, look, you know, see what is on their slate and kind of really understand the company before you approach them, because otherwise it's just sort of slightly annoying. Sorry, the cat.

Alexandra Blair [00:52:45] I love it. I just love it.

Lauren Silverman [00:52:50] Yeah, just try and try again, try and try again, because rejection is part of this whole game and we've all... I get things rejected that I pitch in pitch meetings for our own show all the time. And like the more you can get used to it, I think the better it is and and it can be hard to let go of an idea. But if you can allow yourself to let go of an idea that isn't going anywhere and start with something new, sometimes that's like the most...the best way to go and just keep trying different, different things.

Justine Lang [00:53:24] Think of J.K. Rowling, it took her years to get her Harry Potter book sold. She has kept going. She didn't give up. Now she's a millionaire.

Cristian Jatar [00:53:33] Yeah, huge millionaire. Love your cat, by the way, Justine and I second everything that everyone said. Don't give up. Sometimes maybe the first draft of your idea isn't amazing, but maybe there's a way of retooling it say there is a way of packaging it differently. Maybe there's another company that you haven't thought of that might be more interested in this specific idea. Just keep putting ideas out there, keep writing and never give up. If it's your passion, if this is what you want to do, you will find a way to make it happen.

Alexandra Blair [00:54:09] Awesome, thank you, guys so much, this has been amazingly helpful. There's so much information, I just want to make something clear to everyone who is tuning in, so we will have a video of the recording with closed captioning. We also will have a transcript. Toni, I think you're sharing the wrong screen and that stuff will go up on the Google website pretty quickly within the next week, typically. And so you'll be able to see that in a lot of the resources shared in the chat as well. And any resources that our lovely panelists would like to share with me afterwards, I'll make sure they get it to the site too examples of pitch decks and whatnot. We also have one more webinar next week. At the same time, we're going to be talking about how to make your podcast "more than the sum of its parts." So we're going to be talking about how to up consider podcast optionality and think about merchandise and live events and all of these different things that happen in, on and around your podcast brand. So please join us for that. If you haven't already signed up for that, you can do so exactly where you signed up for this webinar. But thank you so much to all of our lovely panelists and for everyone tuning in and contributing to the chat and the Q&A. Let's all say thank you, panelists. Thank you so much.

Justine Lang [00:55:20] Pleasure. Thank you.

Jason Saldanha [00:55:22] Thank you.

Alexandra Blair [00:55:24] Thank you, guys. Cheers.