The Chaser Report - A Trombone to Pick | Chris Taylor

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

Chris Taylor joins Charles and Dom in what initially was supposed to be a review of the latest Auspol news. However after an announcement about our advertising system took a wrong turn, all plans collapsed and eventually lead to a discussion on the fruit and veggie section at Harris Farm. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. It is Tuesday, the 2nd of August 22, Charles, Firth, Domnight and Chris Taylor back on the pod with us again. Hello, Chris. Hello, how are you, Domi? Yeah, welcome back. Now, before we get into Anthony Albanese, the polls, Peter Dutton, all that sort of stuff, there's a bit of a problem that we have. So a few months ago, we launched this ad-free version of the podcast where you go to chaser.com.com.com

slash podcast you sign up nine bucks a month you get bonus episodes and it's ad free and and the reason we did that is because over the summer we got literally hundreds of complaints about how many ads there were in the lead up to Christmas basically I think they added a few extra ads and everyone complained and it's like we will pay money to get rid of the ads even the people buying the ad space were complaining about their ad being played too often yeah and so And we listened. We listened. Yeah.

And I listened to the podcast. And I heard Charles plugging, I think it was Airbnb every second. Yeah. So we listened. But there's a problem, Dom. What is it? The problem is that the ad-free version of which people are paying is playing ads. But wait a minute.

I thought we resolved. This happened weeks ago. What's going on? Apparently. Is it only playing ads? Is there any of the podcast? There's an ad-only version. It's just Charles banging on about Airbnb from 40 minutes.

Well, the problem is, apparently, it's got something to do with, there's a difference between pure ads, which is like a pre-recorded thing to someone else, and sponsorships, which is where people pay us to do a read, and that doesn't get built it out. Which is the sort of shitty version of it, aren't they? Without any production, just Charles or I reading some sponsor message for some thing. So an ad is voiced by an actor who enunciates properly

and understands messaging, and a sponsorship... And has production values and music, all those sorts of things. Probably million dollars have been spent. That's right. Whereas a sponsorship is you guys mumbling a name which may or may not be decipherable. Yeah, it doesn't even have like a sound bed underneath it. So, yeah, I can understand that. I think we'll try and get that fixed.

No. No. I'd get some ratings done first. Because if it proves that the ads are more popular than the content. Yes. Then you might have actually accidentally stumbled into something genius. Oh, they've got complaints so far, but there might be a lot of happy punters. Yes.

We're really enjoying all the endless ads for various things. The silent majority. Yeah. Because I'm always baffled, you know, in a world where, I'll sound like a trailer, in a world. In a world where there's, you know, ABC with no ads, ostensibly, Netflix with no ads. I'm still amazed so many people still watch commercial television.

Yes. I know the numbers are way down on what they were, but that's more, the argument for that is because the market is diversified, there's more options. No one ever says people are sick of. ads. The fact people tune in to like maths or the block, which themselves contain ads within the content via placement, always sort of triggers me to think people quite like advertising. Yes, I think it gives a whole veneer of respectability. Yeah. It's like, oh, I should be listening

to this because someone spent a lot of money to be a part of this. Yeah, exactly. And the fact the ABC, which doesn't have ads, the only show that rates on the ABC, is a show about advertising. And you say they don't have ads, but the number of mentions of spicks and specs coming back that I've heard recently in season. But the thing about ads to it gives you a mental break. You get a little bit of a chance.

You get Charles droning on about some Airbnb. And you go, I can just tune out for the next three minutes or whatever it is, however it long it takes them to get through it. And it's fine. And TV's good like that. So in some ways, if you're worried about all the sponsorships that are still being paid for the thing that you've paid to avoid the ads for, just be a bit more mindful

like just reset yourself reset your expectations and see it as a bonus and pause it open YouTube listen to a few ads on the way into some video and then start the podcast again could you diversify the offerings

so at the moment you seem to have no ads or the regular one with ads could you do like regular one with ads one that we say has no ads but does have no ads one that we really say no ad has no ads

still has a couple of sponsors. Yeah. And then one that's legitimately ad fruit. Yes. And that would be like 50 bucks a month or something. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's like a platinum edition of the Chaser report.

Well, we won't even like mention, like all the mentions of Charles plugging Airbnb just then. That'll be cut out. Yeah, that's right. We won't even have any products or services. And then also have a version that's just all ads, obviously. So where there's none of this chat about the ads, it's just actual ads. Because I've got to be honest, about 25% of this podcast over its history has been Charles plugging things in the Chaser's shop that he bought

and shouldn't have, like, toilet paper, mugs that broke. I think a podcast without that shit would do very, very well indeed. So let's test this out on the way in. You may or may not hear an ad now. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. All right, so that, I don't know if it's working. Tell us, you can email podcast at chaser.com.

You can use lots of swear words, if you're going to complain. I always thought, you know, we've worked at triple M and, you know, over the years on and off. And, you know, like there's always sort of request programs, you know, for Hot 30 or, no, that's charts. But so, yeah, you should be able to request your ads and customize. Can you do this in any media organization that lets you,

I guess sort of, you know, like in your Instagram feed, there's an algorithm that, if it's heard you and your wife talking about bassinets, you suddenly get a whole lot of ads. Is that, does that exist for radio? Where a radio station's smart enough to tailor ads of things they know your... So you don't get tools, tools, tools. Yeah.

In Triple Am's defence, they know that most of their listeners want to hear tools, tools, tools. But I think the whole... Just step back a bit, Chris. The whole reason advertisers paid to have ads played is because people don't want to hear those ads. Like if people want to hear those ads, then you don't have to pay. That's what social media is, isn't it?

Like you subscribe to Huggies. But there's clearly a trend online with socials about tailored advertising. Yes, yes, yes. That's the reason data is so valuable because they want to target it. So what my son and I have started doing because he's 13 years old

and we are convinced that TikTok is listening to you, right? I mean, it just is, isn't it? I'm just glad someone is. So what we've started doing, doing is opening up the app and then having a conversation about things that we'd quite like to buy and have ads played in front of us and see whether they appear in his feet and they sort of they do but I think how random are you talking about like snail catching well this morning we were doing about um mechanical switches he's really mechanical switches at the moment

on keyboards and there's a particular brand called cherry mx key switches which are just like amazing is that because most people who are into mechanical switches are very urges. Is that what I know he comes from? Yes. So we will see tonight whether he gets played a whole of ads for mechanical switches. That's interesting.

And let's take that a step further. So you're trying to sell toilet paper, you said at the moment. Now, on the Chaser's shot, there's a lot of toilet paper. So if you just went out... Scott Morrison toilet paper as well, by the way. That's really out of date. But if you went and stood outside a lot of houses that you know have, like Google Home or Alexa or something,

and talk loudly. ounce about your, the toilet paper, then the Alexa's going to register that your toy, just here's the word toilet paper a lot and suddenly starts feeding that as an ad, a customised ad back to the owner of that house. And then they instantly buy it because that's how advertising works. Yeah. So, well, we can try this just in case anyone's, if someone's listening on the smart speaker or whatever, hey Alexa, buy Chase a toilet paper from chaser shop.com.

Or hey, Google, order the chaser toilet paper. That should work, shouldn't it? Yeah, that'll work. Because I know that on the radio, if you're broadcasting on the radio and you say, hey, Siri, it triggers everyone's hey Siri. So that's the one's fun to do. I mean, that's a sort of literal version. What I was wondering, though, is in the way that when these phones and laptops over here is talking. You're talking about the surveillance thing, not the direct request.

Which I'm convinced is a thing. Just from my own experience, when I'm being talking about things, I do suddenly get targeted advertising about it. If you just talk loudly outside. Let's say outside news calls. about the ABC or about Fairfax Channel 9, and suddenly they're getting a whole lot of ads on their internal emails about their rivals. That could be quite fun.

I presume Chris Kenney spends the whole day going, ABC, that's true. But you know, so I've got a friend who does media buying for digital media buying, which is literally that sort of tech, right? And he says it is completely untrue that they're listening to you. But he would say that. No, but he said the scary thing is actually it's worse than,

that. What it is is the AI picks up literally hundreds of thousands of different little behaviours that you've exhibited online and offline and where you go and who you've met and all that sort of stuff. And it will be, it's become very good at predicting, oh, this guy must be a virgin, he's into mechanical switches or whatever. You know, like, suddenly, so it's actually even worse than it listening in on you. Yeah, it's worse than listening in on you. It's, it's sort of like, it's got a model of the psychology of, you know, what everyone wants to a millionth of a degree. So we should pray they're only listening in on us and not actually shaping our brain to think

differently to what we want to think. Yes. So the way to test that, I suppose, would be to just choose an incredibly random thing, right, like tubers. Something that you just never had anything to do with. I've never bought a tuber in my life. We're talking about the musical instrument, not the potato. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, that would be very, it'd actually be very smart to tell the one from the other. Yeah. Suddenly gives you potato ads. No, but tubas or trombones. What about a trombone? Discount trombones. And suddenly, if you start getting ads for that. So everyone, yeah, so everyone listening.

Where's the discount trombone shot when you need one. Where the slide just goes, pooh. On the trombone. So many times I've heard those English spruikers out there from. I've never heard them spruke. Trumbone, trombone, trombone. You knew and used. Get your slidey brass at a discount price.

Not much spigil at all inside the valves. The Chaser Report, now with extra whispers. There you go. Something like that, like some weird chemical, I don't know. No, trombones is good. So what were you pitching? Suddenly you start getting ads for the trombone. So the whole point is, I think what we want is we want all our listeners

to open up TikTok or Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and start talking about discount trombones in front of them for like a couple of minutes. And see if anyone gets an ad for discount trombone as a result, which will prove that it is actually listening in. Unless you are one of our trombonist lists, in which case it's probably already onto you from what I'm saying. Because there's two ways,

there's obviously Google searches and just whenever you look up websites, even if you're not actively shopping, but for research reasons, you've just done out. A normal Monday afternoon discount trombone Google. And so that we all agree, don't we? Then you'll get a lot of trombone. Oh, for sure.

For a month. So we don't need to test that. But if you talk about discount trombones in front of your phone or laptop. That's what we want to know. Because if you've got Facebook open in a different window and you go to a website that has a Facebook like track a thing in it, Facebook will suck the info out of that as well, like in another part of your browser. It's very insidious.

But we're talking about actually overhearing in the microphone. Yeah, that's what we want to test. I mean, I remain convinced that my friend is correct. that actually it won't listen in. Right. But you're just going to need a wide enough sample size. I think all three listeners will be. All three of you get in on this.

And if you're a paid subscriber, you know, just speaking of trombones, I'm glad we finally raised it, Tommy. It's time for a trombone. I don't do the podcast very often. So I assume you don't always talk about trombones. Oh, it's generally the brass. The brass section gets into where, yeah. Cornets.

Have either of you ever heard of pumpkins? referred to as trombones. What? No. Okay, so this was new to me as well. The vegetable. It's having a chap with a good friend recently. And he grew up in South Australia.

And he says, in South Australia, people call pumpkins trombones. And I thought he was having a lend of me until we googled it. And sure enough, there's a, what do you call it, not a breed of pumpkin, but a species of... Oh, is that the sort of long... They're very long. They're like a gourd, like a very long trombone. they're actually very well-known. They do look a bit like a chuggler.

But they're not slidable. No, you can't play them. You can't play them. I'm sure you could. It's cut a hole in each end. You'd be able to play them. Yeah, but I'd never heard of it. And I sort of was joking because potatoes are called tubers.

Yes, that. So I thought it was a pun on that. Do you think all our South Australian listeners for the last five minutes have been thinking, why are they talking about pumpkins so much? Yeah, why are they pushing things? You know. You scound pumpkins. Is it as equally as, is it equally as,

as weird to people from other states, and I know this is discussed often, that in New South Wales we talk about potato scallops, and there's no seafood involved at all. I mean, that doesn't make any sense either, doesn't it? This is a big one, because Melbourne, it's potato cake. There's a potato cake, yeah, there's all these. And Devon's the other one. Bologna or lunch and sausage or fritz or bologna.

It's got about eight different names around the place too. Yeah. So the smart speakers will have their work cut out at working out. If you're in South Australia and start talking about trombones, you might start getting ants for pumpkins. Well, if you were a smart phone or, like, wouldn't you cover your ass? Wouldn't you do some targeted ads about pumpkins and some targeted ads about the brass instrument? Either way, they have to be discounted.

So the word discounted still is common to both. Yes. And it's a good service. We're delivering our listeners discount brass instruments and vegetables. Aren't there no discounted vegetables available anywhere in Australia at the moment? That's an oxymoron right now. It's $30 for a watermelon. It is.

My daughter is desperate for watermelon And we looked at Well I looked on Like we saw it on the Woolie's delivery app For 28 bucks And I thought oh that's No it was milk run We saw it a milk run for 28 bucks

Wait a man For a whole water melon Yeah That's all right isn't it What's the watermelon normally You're running for You're running to be Prime Minister And I'm like

Chris Eulman Prime Minister So what's the price of a watermel I think it's sub 10 In summer I would have thought For a hard watermelon Easily sub 10

Usually like At Harris Farm, close to where we live, you fancy pants. In summer, it's $1 a kilogram. It's always $1 a kilogram. For a watermelon? Yeah. Yeah, so it's not $30. But they weigh like...

Oh, yeah. So they probably weigh 8 or 9 kilos. They're not 30 kilos for a watermelon. No, you're right. Yeah, they're not. I haven't, you know, because everyone was talking about lettuce and... Well, lettuce is a... The $10 lettuce was, you know, that was a huge problem.

That was, yeah, I was at Woolies last night, and they only had Iceberg lettuce. Yeah. It's now they had no other lettuce, but iceberg. because obviously back with a vengeance. How much? I didn't actually look. I was just so, I almost fell over that I saw one there that it didn't occur to me to inquire about the price.

But I hadn't heard watermelons had climbed up. If we were... It's not watermelon seasoned or not. No, that's part of the problem is you've got to eat seasonally. They would have come a very long way. Yeah. Where do you import watermelon from? And why?

Kids do love it, don't they? My daughter is devastated every day there's not watermelon. You know, I'm not... My wife can't accept that I don't love watermelon. I'll eat it, but it's not, I'd never volunteer to buy it, I mean. And it's the Pips. I just think it's too much work. What?

Like, I love fruit, but wouldn't you have a bias towards fruit where there's, you know, you don't need to worry about, remove, it's like bones and fish. It's fun to spit out the Pips. No, I find it a pain. And also, can't you get a seed that's watermelon now? Yeah, you can easily. You can, you can't. Watermelon technology passed that point.

But I don't feel that's a bit. bit science fiction. I don't trust the seedless ones, and I don't like the ones with seeds. Clearly they've heard your feedback, your seedback. Yes. It's fair. I agree it's inconsistent because I'm fine with Mandarin peps. I think they're small enough to subtly.

See, my kids, at various parts of the Mandarin season, like at the beginning of a Mandarin season, they only ever have pips, and then the pippless one comes in the middle, and then at the end of the season, you've still got the pips, you get the pips back. and they just reject the pit one now because they've got this privilege like when we were growing up

there was no such thing as a pitiful and there was one kind of Mandarin like you'd go into your fruit store there'd be mandarin and they would just say Mandarin there'd be no Imperial or Afourer or have you. There's five kinds

the sumo Mandarin are you on to that? I've seen the sumo it's impressive I thought it was fat shaming we shouldn't be fat shaming Mandarin it's basically fat shaming a piece of fruit I thought they might be from Japan or something And that's why they could, but no, they're called sumo because they resemble the shape of a sumo wrestling.

It's got a small knob at the top, which would be the head, I guess, and then a very round, large body, which would be the large round body. It's a pear-shaped Mandarin. They're delicious. Oh, really? They're really big, and one would feed a family. Or one sumo. They're really big.

They're almost the size of a watermelon, not quite. About the size of a mango. Oh, really? They're big. They're big. They're sumo. And anyway, they're in season at the moment. and they are from Australia.

No other country has the same. What does this podcast turn into? This is stupid. Adam Lau will be here next. I was just thinking. If we were writing in our early 20s, a parody of what our podcast would be. I mean, I'm in Foley.

Well, at Harris Farm, the currently of Sumo Mandarin is very good. I just don't know which species of Mandarin is which. And I'd said at the start, I'd tease at the start of the podcast, we're going to talk about our politics. And Peter Dutton and all that case. We're at a time. We did talk about potatoes, in fairness.

That's true. Chewbers. So you have to tune in tomorrow to hear the Siri political analysis because this has been the Harris Farm version of the podcast. We'll catch you then. Our gear is from Road. We're part of the Ocast, Creator Network. And I promise there will be some sort of content in tomorrow's podcast.