The Chaser Report - Inside The Chaser Report Ideation Process

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

For something different, in this episode Dom and Charles provide you with an insight into how their many ideation sessions work, as they sculpt the fine content you hear for yourself everyday. On a completely unrelated note, the producer will be installing breathalysers on all the studio's recording gear. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Oh, and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Hello, Charles. I must say, I forgot after our episode yesterday, where he warned about Hurricane hyperbole. Yes. I forgot to check what actually happened when the Hurricane made landfall. I did see a headline pop up on my phone that it was a category three by that point.

Remind me, that's less powerful? Less than category five. I was talking about maybe having a category six. Yes. There have been fatalities, Charles, but your point was that it wasn't quite as bad. It was a nothing burger. It was nowhere near as bad.

Yeah, it was Hurricane Nothing Burger. Whereas Helene was, there was hundreds of deaths from that one. Yeah. So great start to the episode where we're off to a very non-offensive beginning to this episode of the Chase Report, Charles. Anyway, so that's not the point of today's episode. The point of today's episode is we have found the listener who has subscribed to, what's it called, Chaser Plus or A-Cast Premium? What's it called?

There's A-Cast Plus, and then there's the ridiculously overpriced tier. No, no, no, there's the $4 a month. There's the $4 a month one, and then there's the far more expensive one. So this guy, Toby, who's long-term listening. Long-term listening, yeah. Yeah, listening for years, often. Off an email, podcast at chaser.com. Yeah, exactly.

And he was saying, I've been paying $2 a month or whatever. So, you know. Cash rich. Well, he's as accurate as me in his rendition. He's $4 a month. Anyway, the point is, am I literally the only one that gets the podcast ad-free? And I think maybe that's true because, you know how the tech doesn't work? Like, if you subscribe to the ad-free version, you're almost certainly going to be served ads.

Okay, let's just get some ads and then I'll talk more about this. Okay, so the ad meeting process. So there's a few tiers. I'm looking at this. So this is the A-Cast plus version. We've found the listener who actually, it's working. I don't even know there was a $3 version. So there's $3 for ad-free.

There's $4 for ad-free bonus episodes and sponsorship-free. So there's fewer ads. Oh, okay. Bonus episodes are something we might want to get onto at some point. We haven't really delivered on that one. And then there's the absurdly over-priced subscription, which I made as a joke one day Oh yeah

That's one that's $20 per month Does anyone subscribe to that And that gives you access To the full archive And early access So the moment that the episode gets published I should subscribe to that That'd be good

Two people subscribe to that Oh wow $20 a month I bet you their lawyers Quite possibly So thank you to those people Yeah Oh yeah but no Toby's one of the few

There are some subscribers It's in double figures Anyway point is He wants to talk us to talk about Crumble cookies Well, we should because he's paid the money. He's paid $2 a month. Yeah, he's paid the money to choose his topic.

But Charles, there was a whole episode about this. You probably didn't hear it. This was Andrew and I are talking about crumble cookies. Oh, okay. Well, and is your point that they're not very good? Well, there's sort of 15 minutes on the topic. Okay. But can I say there is a cookie store in Sydney that is quite spectacular.

Is that? It's much better than Crumbull cookies. It's called Kuku. They've got one down in Darling Harbour. been to Kuku. Yeah, it's right next to our office. And they serve cookies and soft serve. This is a weird episode.

Yeah. Yeah, no, no. With soft serve on the side. He's in no way sponsored by them. But I think it's going to be the reason why I acquired type 2 diabetes and eventually die of an early death. But that's probably worthwhile. Yeah, I think it's totally worth while because it, like, it's proper cookie. We got an, I got an apple pie cookie from the other day and brought it home.

Yeah. Oh, right. And it went very down very well. with the children and with the, you know, so I brought one home the other day and I didn't tell the children and I ate it to my show. Oh, well, they're like $7 each or something, aren't they?

See, here's the thing. Compared to the crumble cookies, this is the whole point. Just to briefly recap if you didn't hear that episode. What happened was, so crumbles this viral cookie brand in America. It's a thousand branches, I think, they have around the country. And someone went, okay, there's a pop-up

that put on TikTok, pop up in Bondi, crumbles coming out. And they're now saying that, they didn't say it was the official crumbled brand. So what happened was people keyed up for hours and got cookies and they were $17.50 for one cookie. And they're a bit stale. Yes. And there was a bit of disappointment.

And what had happened was that someone had flown, or a few people had flown over to Hawaii and bought thousands of dollars worth of cookies, brought them back, rented a shop and set it all up. Okay, but another podcast listener actually emailed in with a conspiracy theory about that. Oh, good. After you did that first episode, right? which is she was saying she reckons that that is not what happened. Does she reckon it was a plan? Because the CEO was on a plane very soon after the end of this to say,

hey, we are, if you love crumble cookies, we're going to do the real thing. Oh, really? Well, I don't know about that. No, no. Her theory was there is no way that you could fit that many cookies in a suitcase because it actually, it was like a thousand cookies or something. It was a lot of cookies. And it was literally a, what's it called, what's the, you know, they shipped them.

It was a shipping container. Yes. And so they were actually probably a lot older. Like they were probably weak. So they were very crumbly. Yeah. It's quite funny because they actually had a whole, there was a whole post that they did explaining how much money they'd spent and they flew over and spent like thousands of dollars on luggage and stuff. Oh, okay.

So I don't know what it is. Anyway, the point is, if you can get TikTok, involved you can market anything it's brilliant anyway point is uh what merch are we doing for christmas is my question are we doing cookies well we get the cookies maybe we should maybe we sell weeks old cookies to pun this maybe you just call that's where the money is crimble illegal cookies yeah cuntle less elegant pun but but but but but more enjoyably the same toby's point about crumble cookies is because he lives in the years is that actually they're incredibly overrated

and like even if they were fresh they would have been shit that's his point that's his point so the point was we got an independent review of the cookies and we're saying we're doing this to show how responsive we are to listener feedback if the listener pays

yes oh yes you can also pay via Apple because what has to happen is we upload the episode and then he's got to go back and upload it again into Apple for it to be ad free whereas if you subscribe via Acast Plus it is all But that is surely a huge opportunity to give a totally different episode to the ad free group. We could just actually, we could segment our audience and send all our paid listeners in one direction politically.

Oh, interesting. Start talking about how great nuclear is, just as an example. So if you got a, if you paid for a bonus episode, this episode would have a point at this stage. Into the podcast. Yeah. Who knows? Who knows what the people are? who paid for an episode

they're getting. Rather a random ramble. It's probably not this. Unusually, Charles, we're consuming wine while recording this one. And it's been a big week. You've been really busy editing. Oh, man. TV program.

I've been busy with too many jobs. And look, it's Thursday evening. Well, maybe we should talk about some of my creative. Maybe you can help me brainstorm some things. I've got an important creative meeting tomorrow. All right. Let's just have an ad while we think. about that the chaser report news you can't trust and i know that when i say that and then there

isn't an ad it's sort of a bit awkward but i feel like it's a reward for the listener because listeners like oh shit and then there isn't an ad they're like yay and then it's like that's great because actually um they're not selling any ads anymore i think we actually oh last time i listened we had ads we've sold out there and no i listened this morning to yesterday's episode there's no ads oh good no no there's bad for us bad oh you we need ads That's right. All you're going to pay us $4 a month to do this stupid thing that we can't do. Why are we still doing this podcast?

So, Don. Yes, right. Focus. Yep, let's... Tomorrow, creative decisions. Tomorrow I fly down to Melbourne. Strategy, yep. And got to come up with a new show for Wayneconomics, right?

So we've done two shows so far under the Wayneconomics brand. And James has done, I don't know, at least 50,000 hours of work. Well, because James is the one with the corporate kind of experience. But also, he's fastidious. he's incredibly The chaser annual versus the shovel annual You're on year Which is out now on sale

It's on pre-sale Oh there you go Yeah chaser shop.com Get your chaser annual Like before it goes on sale Because actually you will get it early Like if you If you buy it this week

It will be sent to you As soon as it comes into the warehouse I've got to order my book for you too Well anyway We're going to do We're going to do an event We're going to do an event And two at some point, anyway.

Point is. So you've got a company of a Wankanomic show. And he, and we had a, we've had a few brainstorms about it, but, you know, tomorrow's crunch time. Like, how do we put together? Because the thing is, we went over to Edinburgh and we got all ambitious, creatively ambitious. Yeah. And we mean, you know what?

This shouldn't just be like a standard hour of comedy where we tell you jokes all the time. This needs to have shape. We need drama. We need, we need this to be. Did one of you read Robert McKee's story? or something you want to have an inciting incident exactly and then and you know like this we could you know if we take a more ambitious show to edinburgh we could be the next people wallet bridge we could we could actually we could flee bag or at least baby reindeer and i feel

you probably have the lice infestation that's um but so i could be the cute priest i guess you know what i mean james could be the cute priest um hot priest my original pitch which i don't think we're going with was that we call it wankanomics in space right wow and it's set it's it's a bit high concept set on a spaceship you always do high concept I know it's terrible on a spaceship yeah yeah and and the whole thing is something goes terribly wrong and you know it's basically going to die is Apollo 13 but we have to use only our management skills to get ourselves out of it that's actually not bad you think that would be funny it would be funny well It would be funnier still if it was a submarine called the Titan.

Oh, yes. The wankan. The wanker. That could be interesting. And then we had this idea, this is like, you know, a few brainstorms ago, of having a bomb on start. Because James went, yeah, maybe that's a bit of too high concept. What if we had a bomb on stage? It's not high concept if you go, ooh, we're in space.

That's just a picture. You know, like ground it a bit more And you've got an hour To use only your management consulting skills To decode the bomb The problem is I feel like there's enough bombs in the world That we don't need to end

That's true, you probably don't need a fictional bomb And it would probably You'd remind people about The far more important And serious things happening in the world And also easy out for reviews to say Well, if you're talking about bombs What about this one?

So I don't think we're going to go with that. But we do need, we need a shape for the show. We need some sort of, like, we need to be dramatic. Don't you need to start with one idea and then iterate, iterate, iterate, iterate. It's the literal opposite of where you started. I like that. So you go, so you're beginning with a particular concept. Oh, I'm going to write this down.

Where you start talking about design thinking and human-centered design. Can I just say, I open my Wankanomics three nodes and the document is blank. Oh, right. So, yeah. No, you need something, and you need an idea before you can iterate. Iterate, iterate. To the exact opposite of the thing.

Yep, iterate. And isn't this the Google Maxim? Fail fast and iterate. Fail fast. Oh, I like that, yes. So, like, in the first five minutes, we fail. Yeah. Yeah.

And then we iterate. And you just show the development of an idea. And you brainstorm and you use a test and you do all the speaker loud, all the stuff that they do in tech companies. Yes. To develop one, you have, start off with one complete terrible. idea and then eventually through your management speak and your expertise it becomes a completely opposite but equally terrible idea that could be okay and and where does the love

interest fit in the love interest because i'm thinking you know like flea bag like we've got to get ambitious here doc like you're thinking one-dimensional australian comedy right i'm thinking global hit like i mean well you should be making fun of people who think that they're playing four-dimensional chess, which clearly you are at this point. Well, do an apple. Have one of you die halfway through, and then you've got to... One of you could try to, I don't know, cure your pancreatic cancer with natural remedies and then die.

Well, I do find learning all the lines quite tiresome. I think that would be a good... If you died, if you died halfway through... But no, that could be the inciting incident. That could be. That would actually... That'd be wonderful. Yeah.

Yeah, you could just be there briefly at the start. Yeah. And then that would be there. And then James just does... Wanganami. Yeah. And then we both, we split it 50-50. And then you come up at the end and take a bow.

Yeah. Yeah. Just sort of play. Spit 50-50 on the door. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for.

Except that I'm getting a percentage on. It's not 50-50 because I've just come up with the idea. Well, as I said, I think, you know, like in the spirit of Wanganomics, that would not be, you know, appropriate. Like, you know, it's all about exploitation. Welcome to business with Charles Perth. Where have we, we've been to many places during. These episodes, I think as we approached the end of the year,

our episodes have become more and more erratic. We've started to talk about how to do the show next year. And it'd be interesting to get the readers, the listeners feedback about this. Because one thought is, should we just do a few episodes a week? Like we could do two episodes a week. Oh, this show? Yeah, this show. Yeah, there's a few models.

There's keeping doing it daily. Which I like. Without, and let's be honest, not the most prep in the world, but basically turning the mics on and seeing what happens. But I enjoy it. Oh, it's fun. I like this four man. But then the other options are, I'm doing three.

So a bit random like it is now. Having like Monday is tech, Tuesday is Australian, whatever, having a bit more structured thing. That's another option. Another option is like having three a week. So like Monday, Wednesday, Friday and a little bit longer, a bit more structured. And then the other option is one big one once a week. which is what most podcasts do. And we bring a longer one, more people.

Yeah, a few more people involved. We sort of, you know, calling and... 30, 40 minutes, check in with some of the members of the broader family kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, let us know what you think. Podcast atchaser.com.com. If you got to this point in the podcast, it would be fair to say you were,

A, too much of a fan and B, your opinion probably isn't valid. But let's find out what it is anyway. Yeah. Our gear is from Roeb. We are part of the iconic class network. Thank you.