Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Podcasts: Toronto Mike'd #542

Episode Date: November 13, 2019

Mike chats with Marc Weisblott from 12:36 about the current state of podcasting in Canada and how we got here.

Welcome to episode 542 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, StickerU.com, Bryan Master from KW Realty, Capadia LLP CPAs, and Ridley Funeral Home. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me to discuss everything podcast is Mark Weisblot from 1236. Okay, going back to the end of year episode when I was here in December, just before New Year's 2019.

We've done 10 monthly recap episodes in a row. We missed a month somewhere in there. This is our way of catching up so that we can say we've done one for every month of 2019. That said, we prepared more for this episode in the seven minutes that we talked about it beforehand than we did for the last 10 Toronto Mic'd episodes, 1236 episodes, which were two and a half hours each. So think about what you're about to listen to are seven minutes of prep time, which led up to this moment. It's true. I know when you visit, I'm sort of on autopilot now.

I know it's going to be two and a half hours, and it's going to be jam-packed, and it's going to be frenetic. But this visit, I felt, and I think you agree with me, that this needs to be 100 minutes. And I don't know. We arbitrarily picked a number. And I don't know, we arbitrarily picked the number. Well, if you are new here, we do a two and a half hour, 1236 episode, which only came together while we were recording. There was never a meeting. There was never a get together.

This is it. The show prep is the show. Because it was basically the amount of time between when I could get here by the TTC after doing the 1236 newsletter and hitting send, affording for some hijinks on the Toronto Transit Commission, which I stubbornly stick to as a way of getting here. I think out of the last 10 times that I've been here, three of them ended up being debacles with being rooted in the wrong direction or an emergency exit in the subway. Now they make you wait outside for the bus on Islington. Two and a half hours became the sweet spot because you got to pick up your kids from daycare, from nursery school right after we're done. That is a level on which we've been working all this time. And I love every second of it.

It's why I keep coming back for more. I hope some people have enjoyed it too. But here in your basement of your home in New Toronto, that's where it's at. This is the Toronto Mike to experience. And also, this is how you get your supply of fresh craft beer, right? Like, you literally get a six-pack of Great Lakes beer every time you visit, and you drink approximately six cans of beer every calendar month.

That was my goal when I first started, to drink them all while I was sitting here. Lately, you've been dipping into the six-pack. I end up drinking two during the show, going home with three, and then one goes to Toronto Mike. Notice I never ask you to replenish the can of beer that you took from me. Like, I realize it's a gift, and that would be inappropriate. Well, it's hard to sit here and watch you crack open these fresh cans of beer. Are you going to crack that on the mic?

I get progressively more inebriated as the show goes on, leading up to the end of the podcast. We're not going to do that today the obituary segment right uh and by virtue of the fact that by that point i've already had two tall boys of glb uh there's a lot of room for error in that segment because i'm getting a little wobbly on the way out but i'm i'm not a drinker it just became something that went along with the podcast, just like all the other giveaways

every time I'm here. Now, you just cracked open my favorite Great Lakes Brewery beer. It is the Octopus Wants to Fight. So if I was going to, like, dip into your six-pack here, that's probably the one I was going to grab.

So I think that you strategically chose that one. But I'm here to talk business. Right. And, you know, we don't want this to be an episode like um vision 2020 as toronto mike and 1236 look into the podcast industry and what their perspective predictions are for where it's all headed but face it that's what i'm here for and

i went over the course of this episode to see if there's anybody out there. After, what, 542 episodes? If you've got an audience that's wondering where we stand when it comes to the media business. When I did my first show here, we did the career retrospective. I found it so uncomfortable. As soon as we were done, I immediately demanded that I come back for more. Because I didn't really think that's what I was here for. But even though it's embedded into every two and a half hours, we've never laser focused on the idea that, hey, let's talk about our experience of having done these 1236 episodes, you with TMDS and Toronto Mike. And I

think that extends to what I'm doing with the newsletter at St. Joseph Media and the media business in general, because we're part of that whole ecosystem. And what we're doing here, you always brand the episodes. I'm here to talk about the state of Canadian media and what you ought to know. And it really doesn't matter what the topic is, because we get into all sorts of distractions and diversions. Cheer girl. Ultimately, we're talking about the media because it's information that's filtered through another source

for the most part. That's what I'm doing with the email every day. That's what you're doing with the podcast here. That's what you've managed to build up. When we talk about FOTMs, Friends of Toronto Mike, we're talking about a whole universe that you've built up over the fact that you do this quote unquote weekly podcast down here in your basement and a whole culture that has come out of it. So I'm here right on the heels of Gallagher and Gross. And I got to say, you held your own with those two guys.

I don't know if this is a childhood fantasy come true where you and John Gallagher and Peter Gross, guys that you grew up with doing the sports on City TV, now you're one of them. I don't know what it says about them, what it says about you, but here you are. You're on the level and hey, what it says about you. But here you are. You're on the level. And hey, they're in your house.

They're deferring to you to some degree. But they've been through the ringer of the media business as part of their experience. Kudos to them, along with Mark Hebzer, Hebsey on sports. Other guests that you've had down here recently, Andy Kim. And you know when they're getting it, right? You've had a number of guests down here who were uncomfortable

about the whole experience. Maybe it was because a publicist sent them, or they didn't expect, they didn't know what they were going into. I mean, by now, I think generally if it's radio people, sports media people, they do know the culture of Toronto Mike because they've heard a few episodes along the way. But as we go, 542

episodes in, yeah, I'm down here. I am part of a scene. I am an FOTM. You're an FOTM and I believe you to be an expert in this topic. I mean, if I'm going to talk with somebody for 100 minutes about

podcasts, you're the guy. Remind us what makes you such a podcast expert. You really reinforced that 100 minutes there, huh? I'm not going to get any latitude on the other end. Okay. I am currently subscribed to, let's give a round number here. 1,236 podcasts. Wow. To me, that number's mine. I know how many I'm subscribed to. That number is mind-boggling. How many?

How many are you subscribed to? Less than 20. Really? Yeah. That might be the most shocking revelation I've ever heard here on the show. Wow. The whole idea of being able to count that number, it's a new thing, only as of September. And it was because I downloaded an app called Pocket Casts,

which has gone through a few stages of development. It's owned by a group of public radio stations. So they see it as a channel to promote the whole idea of listening to these generally less commercial American podcasts from National Public Radio and Public Radio International, WNYC. They're the ones with money in this thing. I was told about this app for a little while, but you had to pay for it. It was a paid download podcast, and I'd already paid for this other alternative service called Overcast. But what ended up happening was,

after my number of podcast subscriptions started getting into the high hundreds, I realized I couldn't refresh the app anymore. That there was actually a stage at which loading a certain number of podcasts into an app will no longer work for you. Whoever heard of this? Whoever imagined this was a problem? And that's what happened with me and Overcast. Like when they found out that at some point

in Pac-Man, you reach the end of the line and Pac-Man just dies. Is it Pac-Man? I think that's the game. And they just nobody ever in the beta testing got to that point to test it all. Even though the guy that founded Overcast, that created it, a guy named Marco Arment, initially I heard an interview with him,

and he was talking about the fact that he was surprised that people wanted to subscribe to a few hundred podcasts, that this was not what he was thinking he was making it for, and I don't know what he had to do on the back end to optimize it to allow yourself to subscribe to that many hundred. What he never imagined was somebody getting into the four figures, and wherever I came close, and I was overloading the whole thing. I had to go back to the Apple podcast app, the one that came with my iPhone.

And the interface on that is horrible. That is what has created a demand for alternatives. Again, it might work for you, a guy that listens to 20 podcasts. That might be who the Apple app is for. Excluding podcasts I actually produce, I should point out. But for me, forget it. It was useless. It wasn't going to work.

And you keep hearing, well, all the time. It's not hard to find different people speculating about what's going on at Apple, and maybe they'll get the podcast app a little bit better. So I was told about Pocket Cast, and I don't know. It was a paid download. I was just being stubborn about it. Figured, oh, I already paid this overcast. I want this thing to work.

It turns out Pockets is the one that can handle, as of this moment, 1,236 podcast subscriptions. Let's me listen on double, triple speed, whatever I'm in the mood for. It's all happening on there. So thank you, Pocket Casts, for making it possible for me to brag about that statistic the amount of listening i do we'll get into how i managed to keep up on that many podcasts in a in a little bit so you've shared with us how you listen to podcasts that uh enormous amount which makes you an authority in my opinion in this space. Maybe we start by talking about how are people listening to podcasts in 2019? Based on anecdotal evidence,

a lot of them are just opening up a web browser and pushing play when they see something on a website. That the whole concept of the podcast app is still science fiction to a lot of them out there. You are in podcasting. What would you say? What's the adoption rate of the idea of a podcasting app i think you're you're hitting it on the head and and joe rogan right joe rogan

extremely popular podcast i'm sure he'll come up later in this episode but i believe he has as many people listening to his podcast on youtube you know like literally joe rogan puts his podcast on youtube and he has an enormous, enormous number of people who just press play on YouTube to listen to the Joe Rogan podcast. And you and I both know, if we get these semantics right here, that's actually not a podcast. Like, a podcast is an open-source subscription mechanism. It's being recorded for a podcast.

Part of the reason that they're doing that for Joe Rogan, also because he has such an enormous amount of content. And if you see on YouTube, they break up his show into segments. Even while they are recording it, they'll do live segments that have their own separate title so that you can keep up on what Joe Rogan is doing without listening to the whole two, three-hour Joe Rogan experience, even if it's on triple speed. And we get into personal preferences there too that people don't really understand.

Where do you find the time? You can do double speed on YouTube as well. And this speaks to your point though, that we're speaking of podcasts specifically as a piece of audio that you subscribe to via be it Apple Podcasts or OutKast or Stitcher or Spotify or Google and i'll run down there's 100 of these things but uh i as you said some people in fact i know for a fact a number of

people just go to toronto mic.com and i have a html5 audio player and they see the play button and they take their mouse and they press the play button and then they listen and that's them listening to my podcast no subscription at all so you can be evangelical about it or you can just let people do whatever the hell they like. But the ability to keep up on so many different podcasts into the four figures is partly because when you hear about a podcast, when you want to subscribe to it, even if you don't have the time to listen, even if you're really not inclined, just imagine maybe I'll check it out someday. Once you get into that number, into the high hundreds, the only option you have is to subscribe because you'll never remember to go back and listen to it again. Do you follow me on this one?

I'm subscribing to them like I'm bookmarking the ones that I might want to hear someday. I'm scanning. I'm skimming what they've covered. Sometimes I'm picking up little morsels of information just by looking at the descriptions on the different shows. It keeps me aware of what's going on in podcasting, even if it's not humanly possible to listen to anywhere near the number that I have actually subscribed to.

Well, how many hours a day approximately do you spend listening to podcast audio? Okay, well, I do get through Pocket Cast a statistic. I downloaded this thing on September 22nd, so it tells me I've done, right now, it breaks it up a lot further, something like seven days and 21 hours of listening in what, six weeks? Seven weeks? So what's that on average per day? That sounds like a lot to me. And it's telling me I've saved 10 days and 20 hours by either listening on variable speeds or cutting out the silences.

So look at this, Mike. I've gotten, try to do the math here, something like close to 19, 20 hours of podcast listening experience this fall, since the first day of fall, and I've managed to do it in seven days and 21 hours. How's that for economics? And there are people that are like, okay, you know what? I was on Canada Land back last February. We did an episode about the podcast business. Right.

Me and Jesse Brown, a guy named Ben Cannon, who does a thing called The Constant Listener. And he saw me as a Philistine for the fact that I listen on so much double or triple speak that I'm missing the nuances of all the different shows out there. But from what I could tell, this guy was more of a crime podcast guy. He was into documentaries, into appreciating production.

And I'm not saying that I'm incapable of that. And that once in a while, listening to a certain kind of podcast, maybe something that's more music-based, lends itself to slowing down. Right. But I'm listening for talk. I'm listening for information.

I want to hear banter, whatever the format, whatever the topic, whatever the show. And in that sense, a double, even triple speed sometimes. Some shows don't hold themselves up to getting past the 2.0. But going faster, it works. When it's Toronto Mike, it works for me. You know how fast I listen to an episode. So when you listen to Gallagher and Gross. I can burn through a thing here and give you a review on it

before you're even back from the bike ride. So basically it's like listening to the Chipmunks, I would guess. I have to try it on triple speed. I don't know if it is, but it's a matter of personal taste. But you hear from secret double speed listeners. There's been an article about this. I don't judge. Because people that are in the podcast scene,

they don't want to insult their peers, right? I've slaved away all night on the nuanced production of this podcast. I think it's smart. I don't want to hear that you rip through this thing. I can mainline a 30, 60-minute conversation in one-third of the time. Why not go for it? And it also makes the idea of listening to a show that's two or three hours long a lot less intimidating, a lot more satisfying.

Okay, I want to get into this. But again, thank you, Great Lakes great lakes brewery for fueling the real talk and fueling uh mark wiseblood here they are the very first sponsor this podcast ever had and i truly appreciate it so thank you great lakes beer mark are you going to be attending tmlx5 on uh december 7th the answer is uh absolutely not but i know i'll be here with one of the 1236 episodes in the days leading up to it. We'll plug it again. But tell the people, this is another thing. If you're tuning in this episode because you think we know something about the podcast business, and we do,

maybe they don't know that you're already into your fifth listener experience event. Maybe I should, a little 101. TMLX5, I say it like everybody knows what that means but it's toronto mic listener experience it's our fifth edition we'll be recording live from palma's kitchen palma's kitchen that's near mavis and burnham thorpe it's a one of the palma pasta locations it's a 10 000 square feet of retail space and hot table and if you come to tmlx5 not only can you be a part of the episode which would be fantastic but you get a free fresh pasta, courtesy of Palma Pasta.

There's going to be fresh craft beer, courtesy of Great Lakes Brewery. There'll be gifts from Sticker U, for example. They're giving out badges. So it'll be fantastic. So I'm urging everyone who can hear my voice now, if you're listening before December 7th, 2019, please come to Palma's Kitchen.

Say hi. Be a part of the festive fun. It's family-friendly. It's going to be fantastic. So thank you, Palma Pasta, for hosting that event. It's going to be great. And I mentioned Sticker U has badges for people who come. So once again, Mark, I know you come here every month,

and I give you a Toronto Mike sticker from Sticker U. And your laptop's going to be covered in Toronto Mike stickers? StickerU. And you've been, what are you, your laptop's going to be covered in Toronto Mike stickers? Is that right? I'm not sure. I might have enough by now. How many months has StickerU been a sponsor on the show? I'm also interested in the fact that there's now a StickerU storefront.

I have not been around there since I found out about the opening. But you were there. You saw it for yourself. Store all about stickers. Yeah, and it's on Queen Street. I would say that's a little bit... It's near Bathurst. I guess if you're near Queen of Bathurst, it's on

Queen Street. And it's just, yeah, bricks and mortar. And they're going to build a sticker museum and there's going to be new additions to the store, but fantastic. And a new addition down here over my head. Oh, yeah. A sticker you sticker that you commissioned after hundreds of people on the podcast had to be told to watch their head when they got out of the chair. So much blood was shed.

This is the thing when you're recording in the basement. But it makes you realize, now, once you put yourself in this sticker frame of mind, you start to see all these great applications of sticker. And Andrew Witkin came in to kick out the jams. And Andrew founded StickerU. And I told him what I tell every guest. Watch your head. And he said, you need a sticker here. And I'm like, oh, my God.

Hebsey would be so grateful. Let's get it. And then I said I like the Beastie Boys. And I like Check Your Head, one of my favorite Beastie Boys albums. So we did this caution tape and I like Check Your Head, one of my favorite Beastie Boys albums. So we did this caution tape kind of around Check Your Head. And it's so far so good. No one's hit their head since I put that up. So, so far so good.

Talk to me, Mark, about the early editions, the early podcasts. Okay. Well, when I first found out about podcasting, it was probably from articles in the tech press. Summer of 2004, when maybe the iPod was in its infancy, but the whole thing was that people were now doing podcasts led by the former MTV VJ Adam Carolla. Sorry, Adam Curry,. Sorry, Adam Curry. I misspoke. Adam Curry, former MTV VJ. And he did a show called The Daily Source Code,

which came out every single day. And it was, how do you best explain it? It was kind of like in Toronto, the after-school music video show, Toronto Rocks. Imagine a show like that, where it's just, you know, the cool radio guy, he's hosting the show, he's playing a bunch of songs, and he's just updating you on what's on his mind and what's happening in the world. And given the fact that he came from MTV, I'm sure that was a factor in what inspired Adam Curry, that here he was going to bring that sensibility of MTV in the 1980s

and do it in the form of a podcast, even if he didn't necessarily have anything to say. You know, there was always the idea in the wake of the first era of web logging that if you got enough people to tune in, eventually you could create a community and culture around the show. I don't know if you downloaded the clip that I had of Adam Curry, the Daily Source Code, because I sent it to you. He just had his 15th anniversary show and that was this summer but he ended up yielding the idea of doing this daily source code because it really really wasn't a show about anything and now he does now he does a three hour twice a week podcast called no agenda with an old tech journalist named john c devorek and they do this three-hour show. It's based on American cable news clips for the most part. I would say the leaning is anarchist, libertarian. At the same time, these are

establishment characters with experience in the media. And a lot of weeks, even if I'm listening on double or triple speed, I'm still tuned into these people. So this original character, the podfather, Adam Curry, not Corolla, Adam Curry is still there in my life and still listening to him on the podcast. Now, from the original Daily Source Code podcast, he started taking on other podcast players, other people who had the motivation to do it on their own, and he took them under his wing. And this is where it became somewhat controversial, because here in podcasting, you had a situation where here was this establishment douchebag guy who was trying to exploit the free labor that he was finding on the internet.

And those first wave of podcasts that he was signal boosting, I'm not sure too many of them were very good. There was one that was a couple of some gutter punks, their names were Dawn and Drew. Do you remember this thing, the Dawn and Drew show? I do not. A mini phenomenon for a time. I don't think they had anything to say about anything at all. But it was a novelty of the fact

that there they were in their home, maybe a trailer park, I don't know, and that they were doing what we're doing right now. They're both sitting at microphones just rambling on about the state of the world and what was happening in their lives. And I think just like the early days of any genre, it was really rough, but you could still hear that there was something going on there. And from Dawn and Drew, you had the inspiration for Keith and the Girl because there were a couple of comedian types in New York.

It was really a stand-up comic, a struggling guy named Keith Malley, his girlfriend at the time named Chemda Khalili. And they were working as party clowns around New York, doing parties for rich people. And as the story goes, they heard Don and Drew. They thought, this is terrible. We can do a better job than that.

And from there, you got the show. That was Keith and the Girl that started in the spring of 2005. And I latched onto that and what was happening there. I think I could connect best to their sensibility. And I was far from the only one. And of all places, two years later, they took their show on the road to Toronto sensibility. And I was far from the only one. And of all places, two years later, they took their show on the road to Toronto. Wow. At the Horseshoe Tavern. They had some sort of fan gathering. Now, I wasn't dialed in enough that I would have cared for this, but to go to

the Horseshoe Tavern and stand in the back of the room and watch what was going on, of course, I had to be there. I had been, by that point, listening to this podcast every day. And I thought, not for the first time, not for the last time, what I'm watching here, this is the future. Yet, you would think more people would be plugged in. This room would be swarmed with Toronto media elites who would want to see how the podcasting game works. And I don't think any of them were there.

I found out later, one listener, Tom, who was there at the time, I discovered this more recently, he, I guess, can claim to be as plugged in as I was, fascinated by this Keith and the Girl show. It's almost 15 years later, they've been doing this thing partly with a VIP patron model, giving people extra shows that they produce on their own. Along the way, they've had these guest comedians.

It's mostly Keith and the Girl, and then other people in their orbit, in their universe. So when I talk about a culture that's built around Toronto Mike, I've seen it happen before, and Keith and the Girl is one example of that show. Now, somewhere in the interim, again, around the mid-2000s, I got to play a little role in the launch of a podcast. And of all places, it was coming at a CBS News in New York. Wow.

What are the odds? I have to pretend I don't know this story, but I do know this story. Tell me. A guy named Chris Mavridis, a name that people would know from Toronto Radio, who had been with 680 News and AM640, Mojo Radio, later doing the news in the morning alongside Bill Carroll on CFRB. He had experience in television before, and he got a job at CBS in New York. It was a real job. I heard him on the air.

He must have been there at CBS in the Black Rock building. He wasn't making this up. He really got there, and he's really that good. And somewhere in the midst of our conversations, it came up that they were looking to him to do a daily news podcast, or he might have pitched it to them or something like that. I spent some time talking to him about what this podcast would be, knowing the fact that he could basically get it on his own,

but I provided the perspective of somebody who was listening to these things, that was actually a podcast consumer. What would a custom-made radio newscast for the podcast generation sound like? It was done by Chris Mavridis at CBS News in 2006. And all I can remember is I was on the phone to him a lot, kind of giving him my input along the way. Are you impressed by this? Now, what might have happened was,

and I would have been flown in New York to work on the Chris Mavridis CBS I cast, but he ended up, I don't know what happened. It's early days, right?

Well, he was no longer doing the job, but I think a lot of these early, I think even still when you talk about how the podcasts

come together, that in a big media organization that people would be looking around wondering, who here wants to do a podcast? Who's qualified to do that? podcasts come together, that in a big media organization, that people would be looking around wondering, who here wants to do a podcast? Who's qualified to do that? Who in the room sounds the most like Ira Glass of This American Life?

Yeah, that guy. He should be the host of our podcast. And I think we've had a lot of that happen along the way over the years. But once we got to 2006, 7, 8, the bloom was off the rose, and it seemed like podcasting wasn't going to be a big thing anymore. And that maybe some public radio shows would be broadcast in podcasting. Jesse Brown was doing a show that ran on CBC Radio called Search Engine, and a part of that was the idea that he would be doing it with a podcasting audience in mind, even if it was also a CBC Radio show.

And CBC ended up dumping him. I mean, this is the whole raison d'etre of Canada land. They still bitter over the fact he was dumped by the CBC. Although by now I think he's starting to get over it. And TVO picked up the show. He did it for a while there through them as a TVO podcast. But again, still, there was no sense that people really wanted to have these things. There was going to be anything there when it came to the evolution of podcasting.

And if there was a tipping point at all, it came with the idea that if you got fired from your job at a radio station, that then you could turn around and start a podcast of your own. Before we dive into radio people who got fired, I needed love most of all. Before we dive into radio people who got fired, let's give a little shout out and say hi to FOTM Chris Mavridis. That's amazing you played that role in the Bleeding Edge days of podcasts. Okay, but there was no money in it for me. There was no deal.

There was no contract. Still, you can tell this me. There was no deal. There was no contract. Still, you can tell this story. He was my friend. I was helping him out on the phone. Yeah, I've been sitting on this story here for over 13 years. I was going to say, this is the moment it pays off. You get to tell this story in this episode. I can say I was there, but I was never in on a meeting. There was no strategy session. It was just...

By the way, I thought he was a great radio news guy and I thought he was a great radio news guy and I thought he could lead us into the future. He got a write-up in the New York Times, a blurb at the time. When Humble and Fred were on this show a few weeks ago, that same day I had brunch with Chris Mavridis

and I can confirm he's going to make his Toronto Mike debut in 2020. If it helps him, if it helps us, let me just say that I was there for the months that he did this. CBS News iCast, no evidence of it online. You didn't ask him to get a clip of it. But look, there he was, revolutionizing the whole idea that you could get a podcast.

And we'll talk in a bit about the current phenomenon of the daily news podcast but yeah, there it was. A Toronto guy working at CBS News back in 2006. He was so far ahead of the curve. I don't know there would

really be any equivalent now to what he was doing back then. Speaking of 2006 early days of podcasting, that's when I produced my first podcast. Do you know who I did it with? Well, we're hearing in the background the Black Keys song that's synonymous for those listening

to Humble and Fred. Humble and Fred, who I have a history with and who don't listen to Toronto Mic'd, even though they've been on here multiple times. They say they don't listen. They know you and you work with them, and the best is yet to come when it comes to that relationship. But in the meantime, in the interim, here we are once again talking about Humble and Fred behind their backs.

But it was not that much of a surprise that it was you, Toronto Mike, who was the one at the forefront of producing what? The 2006 Humble and Fred Christmas podcast with two guys who were both fired from the radio. They separated them right at CKFM, Mix 99.9. They got rid of Fred, but they kept Humble. And I guess the idea was that they wanted Humble to quit,

but he was hanging in there because he wanted the severance. Then they got rid of him anyhow. And that was the beginning of the Humble and Fred podcast. Yeah. Right? December 2006. You got that exactly right. And I guess you'd call me digital producer

because Humble and Fred, they were responsible for the content. I guess, if you want to put it that way. Where did you do that first one in 2006? Dan Duran's house. He had equipment there? You were able to rig up your laptop? Well, he's a voiceover guy.

So he had great microphones and yeah, we recorded it on uh on his desktop computer actually and the equipment was a lot heavier back then than it is now right you would have had to go through a lot more trouble to convert what you were saying into the microphones into a file online sounded good though like because again he uh he that was his job was to do voiceovers he has a great voice, as you know, Dan Duran, who, by the way, is also coming on Toronto Mike soon, so that's exciting.

Oh, a former TV weatherman, Dan Duran! That's right. That was his last job at Chex in Peterborough. They had Dan Duran along for the ride with Humble and Fred. The podcast that, again, if people were listening to it at the time,

odds are they were hearing it in a web browser, right? You wouldn't have had people 13 years ago plugged into podcast apps. This was always important to me from the get-go, especially back in 2006, which is that at the time, I knew what a podcast was, but I knew it was intimidating to the average Joe and Jane. Well, by then, Apple had launched their podcasting app.

They integrated podcasting into iTunes. It became more accessible as a result. And the people like me before, who were using these clunky applications, these independent developers who were doing podcatchers, it was modified through Apple where you could get a much easier experience, the whole idea that you just hit refresh on your iPod

and you managed to hear podcasting. Game changer, as far as I'm concerned, was adding podcasts to iTunes. I think that was huge. And yet an industry didn't necessarily spawn from that, but we have to consider the fact that a lot of this podcasting action came out of the fact that you had an era of of of old djs being fired from radio stations like humble and fred turning to podcast as a way that

they could stay in the game and a lot of the time it was because they had some kind of non-compete clause as part of their severance package written into their contract that they couldn't join a rival radio station right away. Or they couldn't get hired, which is, of course... Yeah, that came... Well, that was, I think, the Marc Maron story, where he had this job at Air America.

Air America, which was originally a Democrat left-leaning talk radio network, which was highly capitalized by investors who wanted to beat down George W. Bush. Rachel Maddow was the biggest star to come out of Air America, but they had a whole schedule of shows. It was Al Franken was the midday guy. You remember this? Remember when Air America?

I do remember this. Because of the amount of cash that was poured into this thing, eventually it was on the wane. And Obama was on the rise and getting elected. It never made any money to begin with. The idea was that struggling AM radio stations would pick it up. But really, it was becoming obsolete. But there was Mark Maron, and he had a job at Air America.

They shoveled him around to different shows. At one point, he was doing a web-only thing, whatever. He snuck into the Air America studios in the middle of the night with his producer there, and they came up with the concept of WTF. Did you know this? This is how WTF happened. No, I didn you know this this is how wtf happened no i didn't know this there was a retrospective uh uh 10th anniversary thousandth episode of of wtf and uh yeah this is this is how it happened this is this is what it was all about this is this is how the mark maron podcast took

shape before it ended up in his garage. He was sneaking into the studio of Air America. Another show was Mike O'Mara, a guy out of the Washington, D.C. area. It was a DJ. It was a duo called Dawn and Mike. Did you ever hear of Dawn and Mike? Dawn Geronimo and Mike O'Mara. These are guys that rode on the coattails of the whole Howard Stern thing. Oh, they were on WBUF, were they?

At one point, yeah. I do remember hearing them, yes. They were on in Buffalo in tandem with Howard Stern in the morning, and then there was Opie and Anthony in the mix somewhere, and Don and Mike were along for the ride. I guess you would say a somewhat more mainstream, middle-of-the-road version

of the shock, jock, hot talk format when howard stern moved to satellite radio cbs started something called free fm 2000 2006 david lee roth was the big morning show host that made a lot of news but they they staffed up. They hired a bunch of people, paid them a ton of money, and Don and Mike, I think, made enough to retire on just riding along with this whole free FM thing as the flagship show

out of Washington, Washington, D.C. Don ended up leaving Mike, and it was Mike on his own with the cast of characters. They got fired, and they started a podcast. Now, I don't know if the quality of the show is something that people in Toronto would even want to listen to, but when it first started going, when they were doing every day,

the ritual of doing the daily podcast, this is before Humble and Fred, the fired radio guys, Mike O'Mara and his sidekick, getting together to do the podcast in his living room, that there was a spirit and an energy there that you could tell there was something else going on, that this was going to be a different form of post-talk radio that was capable of getting the momentum that the whole hot-talk FM radio format never could,

because that ended up fizzling out. Opie and Anthony got into trouble, and they got hired back, and they had a run in New York, but ultimately, maybe through Howard Stern, it was assumed that there was an audience for this on satellite radio. I guess that audience still exists today. That podcasting would become a different kind of forum for these types of characters. So I have to give Mike O'Mara credit as being one of those people, even before Humble and Fred came along. But it was in Toronto, Humble and Fred. Let's give them credit. Let's give H&F some love. And still going today. But not without a pretty close connection to the mainstream radio industry still.

Even while presenting themselves as outsiders, they went through a series of deals that tethered them to establishment radio stations. First with Rogers, right? They ended up the morning show in Kingston. It was supposed to be a pilot for a national talk-oriented FM radio show in Canada. Kind of like a trend, like so many other trends. 10 years behind the curve of the United States of America.

That Humble and Fred, was this what was going to happen? They would be on Rogers. Yeah, this was their test bed, if you will, with Kingston. A talk-based rock radio station morning show, maybe some music, but for the most part, the whole attraction would be

that they would have more latitude to talk than they ever did when they were on 102.1 The Edge. Yes, and they would do it from Toronto, and yes, they were in Kingston, and the plan was to move them to other markets like London. But it didn't work out, and they're still bitter about it. They were down Kingston, and the plan was to move them to other markets like London. But it didn't work out, and they're still bitter about it. They were down here discussing it.

I wouldn't then put what they've done into the culture of podcasting, right? I mean, podcasting, as we're talking about it as an entity, they're using podcasts as a medium, but I think ultimately the drive, the goal, was to be on the radio doing a morning show. And they've had the chance. They did it on Sirius XM for all those years. Five years, yeah.

Now on Funny 820. And it's just natural that if they're doing a live radio show, you put it out as a podcast. Roger, Rick, and Marilyn on Chum FM was available on a podcast years ago. 2006, 2007, whenever. When they announced it, I originally imagined, okay, they're pretty good storytellers. Maybe they're going into a studio afterwards and doing like an unhinged version of the radio show.

Right. The gloves are off. Here we've got Roger, Rick, and Marilyn uncensored. And later, Roger, Darren, and Marilyn, and Jamar, Marilyn, Dennis, and Jamar. Rick now retired, and Roger now retired. This is

how long podcasting has been trying to figure itself out. There are people who are now retired who were at the forefront of podcasting. But someone at Chum FM at the time, maybe their producer, Tom Jokic, decided, yeah, put the bits from the morning radio show on podcast. And I don't know, that would not cut into the radio audience. You could not imagine a Chum FM would have an audience

that would say, I'm not going to listen to it on the radio. I'm going to save it for the podcast. But if you're a radio geek like me, you want to tune in and check what's going on. Because of that, I got to hear the whole transition with Roger retiring and Jamar coming in. Lots of great moments. And a lot of that fed the fact that

Jamar is now an FOTM. And they've been there all along. In Toronto, before any of those other shows did a podcast, not all of them do. There are still some that you can't hear in that format. But every day, downloaded a Chum FM, 104.5 Chum Morning Show podcast. And it's kept me up to date on what they're doing.

I'm not saying I've been keeping up as much lately. Maybe it's got lost somewhere in the pile of 1,200 other shows. I was going to say. But yeah, look, it's great. I want to know what's going on on my old school terrestrial radio stations, and they've been doing that in Toronto without being fired.

And John Derringer at Q107 also has daily Derringer podcasts, and I think they record some stuff just for the podcast, but then some of it is also on the air. Yeah, there have been podcast exclusive shows because Cam Gordon of Twitter Canada, another FOTM, has been on there a couple times. So you do get something from Derringer on Q107 that's different from what would usually fit on the radio on Q107.

But look back to the people that got fired from radio stations. Someone who was not an FOTM, Dean Blundell, who had a Globe and Mail article after he was fired from 102.1 The Edge, sorry, canceled on his show after running into one too many controversies not being the kind of thing they wanted to do anymore at Chorus Entertainment. And he got a feature by Simon Haupt in the Globe and Mail about how he was going to

revolutionize broadcasting by doing it all on his own. Remember this article? I do. And yet at the time his plans never came to fruition. Because you knew the guy just wanted to get back into the game and get an old-fashioned terrestrial radio show again. And he did.

The Fan 590 came calling in one of the more unlikely moves in Toronto radio history. And we did not get the big Dean Blundell podcast takeover at the time. He was diverted by the fan, but then out of that job, he picked up the pieces and returned to his plane. I don't know where that whole thing is going. The only episode of the Dean Blundell podcast that sticks in my memory

is the one where he went off on Toronto Mike. That might be the only one I listened to. And when Dean Blundell attacks, is that still on the internet? Google it. It's disappeared. It's gone forever. Still there.

That was some real podcast on podcast violence. All premised on the idea that you were trying to reach Dean Blundell hundreds of times. Apparently, yes. And you constantly talk about him on this show. Well, I'm here to talk about Dean Blundell just to have it on the record

that every once in a while, his name does come up on Toronto Mic'd. But there he is. He's doing his thing. You can listen. You can ignore it. There is a Dean Blundell podcast produced every weekday. And he had Darren Millard in for a while

when he was in between jobs, and that's one thing in the current media culture right now is that you can always find an unemployed buddy who just wants to broadcast, to stay in the game, come in and do it, but then Darren Millard got a job, right? Las Vegas? Las Vegas.

And he's no longer around to hang out with Dean Blundell anymore, so his stock is rising. I can't tell you where it's going to go for Dean Blundell. Tucker and Mora. We've talked about them a lot

during the 1236 episodes, which is really strange because that wasn't my kind of thing to tune into when they were on Virgin Radio in Toronto. But I have never heard

a better podcast from people who are bitter about being fired from a radio station than the original podcast by Tucker and Mora. They were on fire spewing venom about the fact they had

this run with Virgin Radio 99.9 with Bell Media in Toronto. Kicked to the curb so that maryland dennis's son could get a job and replace them it was great it was real it was honest and it got them another gig and then they deleted all those other episodes from from the podcast no you can't find them anywhere in cyberspace the original run of Tucker and Maura. Back on the radio, still doing some sort of podcast. Guess what? I don't listen anymore.

I don't care. Because the format that they're doing, Energy 95.3, doing that in podcast form, not going to work. I'm sticking with my favorites, Marilyn Dennis and Jamar. Didn't crack your top 1,200. It's in there. I'm looking with my favorites, Marilyn Dennis and Jamar. Didn't crack your top 1,200. It's in there. I'm looking at the descriptions. I just haven't hit play in a while because I want to hear the honest people.

I want to hear it with a real deal. You're looking for the lost tapes. But they also want to be employed, and that means playing along with the game at Chorus Entertainment. JJ and Melanie, another duo from Toronto Radio, Flow 93.5, who struck out on their own, even though I think once they started getting it together, they both had jobs in other places. And they were down here.

They were guests on Toronto Live. They are now FOTMs. We were tweeting back and forth. They were going to have me on their show. And yet the JJ and Melanie reunion podcast, which they've now solidified, I put forward on here that that should be the morning show on the CBC music radio stations where JJ already works.

Right. This is where Reina was the producer. Yeah, this is what I believe. So here you've got the chasm between what you hear on a CBC music radio station that's trying to go for a younger audience and the very people who are qualified to work on that station and what they're capable of doing, that the old-fashioned strictures that they stick to there

for these CBC Music radio stations cannot accommodate. And I think that's a drag, but I hope that my campaign will catch on. They'll get somewhere. Mike Richards was another name that I've gotten to know more about because of all the times he's been on Toronto Mic'd. One year ago, was it, he announced that he was coming back? Yeah, CKT, a little

radio station from Mississauga, doing a podcast that he'd previously done out of a bar in downtown Toronto on King Street East. Claims of world domination, which I think a lot of Toronto Mike commenters were questioning.

Where did this bluster come from? There was an awful lot of bluster, and he learned very quickly that it wasn't quite as easy as he drew it on the board. And the other one was Todd Shapiro. You had him down here talking about, again, his podcasting plans. I helped him launch

that podcast. He wanted the Humble and Fred backend blueprint, and I actually worked with him when he launched his podcast for the show he still does from the SiriusXM building there in Liberty Village. A lot of sponsor-friendly content, do we call it? Custom content?

The guests are people that are paying him to be on there? He's got a kid to feed and a rent to pay. That's alright. But people, is anybody waiting for the Dean Blundell and Todd Shapiro reunion from all the years that they were on 1 to 2.1 The Edge? I think the ranks have thinned out the number of people that are hanging in for that to happen. But, yeah, good for Todd.

I found a way to keep doing it from being a goofy sidekick on a rock radio station morning show that he's turned that in something on his own another example being biggs and bar two guys who got together to do a sort of demo they did their own podcast it's really a fantastic case study because you have a couple of guys who really didn't really know each other they didn't ever work together but they both found themselves fired from their respective radio gigs. And they got together and just started a podcast. So they invent a brand, Biggs and Barr.

They get a logo. They start podcasting. And next thing you know it, they got a real job at Hits 97.7. And now in Ottawa, SheaFab. And that is in the roster of shows through the Frequency Podcast Network. And we get into talking about all these different corporate ventures in Canada in the roster of shows through the Frequency Podcast Network.

And we get into talking about all these different corporate ventures in Canada, of which Frequency is just one, and that's the one that's backed by Rogers, repurposing radio shows, Biggs and Barr and Ross and Mocha. That's somewhere in the list. It makes the thing look impressive. They've got a few different podcasts out there, even though these are just the usual morning oh but we're gonna cover all because i'm very interested in like i know chorus because uh fotm robbie j works for the podcasting division of chorus and i know there's a there's a bell and there's a rogers and a cbc but this is all going to come up in the uh

canadian corporate ventures section correct if you want you want, Mike. What's next? Did you download any music at all so that I could take a swing of the GLB? No, I will give you a moment. We've only done, what, 22, 23 episodes. You'd think by now we could have mastered the idea that once in a while I need to stop talking. All right, let me do a little talking and give you a break.

And let me let everybody know, maybe I'll start with the fact that Holidays and Hope Candlelight Service. So the Holidays and Hope Candlelight Service, join Brad and the good people at Ridley Funeral Home at the Assembly Hall. That's in New Toronto, not too far from here, Mark. Wednesday, December 4th at 7 p.m.

for their annual free memorial service in honor of those loved ones who have passed away and cannot be with us this holiday season. For more information, please visit RidleyFuneralHome.com or call 416-259-3705. And while you're enjoying your Great Lakes... Oh yeah, no obituaries in this episode, right? When we usually do 1236, the last segment is dedicated to reviewing

the people that died in the period between when I was last here. We're not going to do that today. And we usually devote an entire hour to the obituaries. Is it that long? I'm usually a little drunk by then. I don't know how long it's going on for.

Okay, let's think. Well, hold on. What? Because last time you were here for the, I guess that was the October recap. I think we did it on Halloween, actually, appropriately enough. We talked about Brian Master, right?

Because we talked about Brian Master, Frank Zappa, Radio Star, and you were wanting me to play the Brian Master clip I have, and I didn't play it, so I'm going to play it for you now. You ready? Okay, good.

I'll get a little more of a break. Hi, it's Brian Master, sales representative with Keller Williams to Realty Solutions Brokerage. I like working by referral. I love working with people, finding out what they need and where they want to go.

So every month I put out an item of value called the Client Appreciation Program. And this is really great material. It's all about, well, for one thing, the way the real estate market is, but other things like, well, this month is how to turn your home into a smart home. We've also had things about how to throw a party on a budget, some travel tips. It's really great stuff. And it comes out once a month called

the Client Appreciation Program. I'd love to get you on it. It's easy to do. Send me an email to letsgetyouhomeatkw.com. And I'll send that out once a month via snail mail and followed up with an email. That's something related to the item of value. You can't miss it's great information. It's something you can share with your friends. I'm Brian master sales representative with Keller Williams, realty solutions,

brokerage thrilled to be on Toronto. Mike. Now that's Brian masters, a newsletter and not to be outdone in the battle of newsletters, Rupesh Kapadia, the rock star accountant who sees beyond the numbers from Kapadia LLP CPAs, also has a newsletter. Here's Rupesh.

Rupesh, I noticed there's a very informative weekly email newsletter that you at Kapadia LLP CPAs send out. How does somebody subscribe to this newsletter? To subscribe, it's very easy and it's free. Please go to our website www.capadiallp.com. There is a box on the top left-hand corner. Type in your email, press subscribe. You will get a subscription confirmation email. Please confirm. And there you go.

And you can cancel it at any point in time you want. So thank you, Rupesh. Okay, Mark, was that enough time for you to get some... Let me talk here about newsletters because I'm now four and a half years into working with St. Joseph Communications Media Division on the 1236 newsletter. And as far as I'm concerned, that is in the same arena as podcasting, except I'm doing it at home, mostly just lying down on the couch, putting together all the items that I'm looking for, the right kind of presentation to do what I think is the ultimate

Toronto-based lunchtime tabloid newsletter. And I don't know how you see it, that it hasn't been that far away from what we talk about with podcasting, as far as having this opportunity to do pretty much whatever I want, I've got my own conventions, my own format, my own style of doing it that keeps me disciplined. But as far as I'm concerned, you know, the 1236 newsletter is just a different form of podcast. And here I can do it on my own laptop. I can work in a Starbucks or just stay at home if that's the mood that I'm in. And it doesn't require the ritual of going behind a microphone,

but that's what works. That's what I can realistically do on my own in the morning. In my humble opinion, the podcast and the newsletter, like the 1236 newsletter, they're cut from the same blogging cloth. I hear you're talking. Now we're coming up with a business proposition. This is an elevator pitch right there. Well, basically this podcast you're listening to now, Toronto Mic, is just an audio extension, if you will, maybe almost in hindsight, almost a natural extension of the blog I've been running for the last 17 years. When it comes to newsletter, it went through a series of episodes where I was teasing the fact that a 1236 podcast was in the works, but I was so non-committal to

the idea this would never happen. And it was partly because I was waiting on a setup that did not materialize at the time, not saying it couldn't happen in the future. And it was the whole idea that I wanted to spin off the newsletter in a form of a podcast, but it wouldn't just be me ranting into a microphone at home,

that we would do something a little more nuanced, like at the St. Joseph office, but that it would require a setup that was already there, right? Something that was in place because, like a lot of other publishers, they would get into the game of audio production, and I could roll in and do my 1236 thing for a few minutes in the afternoon. Yeah, they'd have a me on staff, essentially. There'd be a me there.

Okay, so why hasn't that happened yet? I don't know. But there was talk about it, and it didn't come together, which is fine, because I've got to keep doing the newsletter and working in other ways and other formats, and hopefully a lot more fun to come, because it's really month to month figuring out where this thing goes.

But the newsletter thing has been okay as far as boosting my fortunes in journalism. It's kept me active all this time. I've got a bit of money to show for what I've done. We'll see where it goes next, and we'll see if podcasting becomes a part of it. But in the meantime, while we were dragging our heels about whether a 1236 podcast

was something worth the effort, if there's any viability in it at all, I'm not saying there was. A whole other generation of daily news podcasts started to bloom. And you can blame it all on this New York Times podcast,

The Daily, which comes out every morning. You get downloaded from Michael Barbaro at the New York Times. And, you know, by the standards of the New York City media, this thing became a phenomenon. It became synonymous with a certain kind of daily show, that they found an audience for something that did not exist before. Tell the good people at St. Joseph Media that they should hire TMDS as their podcast production partner.

I would love it. But we also get into the fact that what's worth the while for a publishing company to do? And this year they acquired a whole bunch of other magazines. And guess what? The magazines are proven moneymakers. Like Chatelaine. Yeah, and Maclean's Magazine. Hello Canada Magazine. magazines and guess what the magazines are proven money makers like shot lane and yeah mclean's magazine hello canada magazine they got toronto life a bunch of others in there and podcasting it's still speculative and so we're in this world where

we wonder what's gonna happen and if anything is happening at all, a lot of it lends itself to the fact there are venture capitalists out there pouring money into media companies that started doing clickbait but have pivoted to podcasting as a way of trying to get something else done. The music here is from Vox.

This is Vox music, right, from the Explained show. The one they run on Netflix. And they have a podcast version called Today Explained. Hosted by a guy originally from Toronto. Do you know this? No.

Today Explained, Sean... Sean... Warm as Ram. That's it. Speaking of Toronto, are there any Canadian examples of daily podcasts we can highlight here before we go back? I want to pick up the broadcasters doing an extra podcast.

I was going to say, CBC started their own version of the New York Times Daily called Front Burner, hosted by a journalist who came from the Toronto Star, Jamie Poisson. You thought, what does the CBC need to do another radio show for? But I give them credit because they managed to find a different sound, a different texture, a different style. It distinguishes itself from something that you would hear on CBC,

on a show like The Current or As it happens that's been on front burner. Rogers, Big Story, the Big Story podcast, part of this frequency podcast network. It's a guy named Jordan Heath Rawlings who might in fact be one of those examples I was talking about. A guy that sounds a little bit like Ira

Glass, but they got to do this inquiry podcast where he usually talks to another journalist about what's going on. I think he's doing a good job. And he spun it off into a podcast about the history of Rob Ford called The Gravy Train. I've been listening. And they've specialized in a style.

Now they've applied it to something that maybe can get more attention than the Daily News podcast did. What do you think of this Rob Ford podcast? I think it's good. Now, that subject matter hits close to home here. Like, it was all happening here, and we kind of lived it kind of recently. I think fairly recently we lived it in real time.

But it is interesting. I keep waiting to hear if they mention Rinse. Oh, you mean, yeah, get into the weeds of the comment section. I mean, I think I've heard three episodes, and it's holding my attention. I think it's well produced. We've got one produced at Yahoo

Canada. Yahoo Canada are doing a daily sports podcast. You didn't know about this. It's called But First, Sports, hosted by a guy named Andrew Zuber. And I think he's influenced from the world that Peter Gross, John Gallagher,

and Mark Hebbshire all had experience in. All my friends. Which was the idea of being the morning radio sports guy. We don't have much of that going on anymore. Maybe on an all sports radio station. It's funny because Freddie P was doing that for a while and Rick Hodge.

This was kind of the big thing particularly in the 80s and 90s. And that one's coming out of Yahoo Canada specifically. Yahoo is still in business. They do sports. They do finance. The Athletic website started a whole bunch of podcasts. What, dozens, hundreds of them

for every market that they're in? Right. The podcasting is another way to get their content out, their subscription content. Talk about things that have a lot of backing from venture capitalists.

Here we are in this world where it's speculative. They're imagining a big payoff someday. In the meantime, you might as well enjoy the fruits of it all. Now, my guest next week is a guy named Jeff Domet. Some might know him from different circles

as DJ Schwarma. And he is the podcast, he's a podcast producer for The Athletic. He just started this new role there fairly recently. He used to work at SiriusXM and Hockey Night in Canada Radio, and we'll be talking quite a bit about what they're up to at The Athletic. And there's also now an ESPN Daily one that started up.

So explain what the difference is with Hebsey on sports. You produced this thing out of TMDS, now 150 episodes of Mark Hebseyer, who a lot of people know from Sportsline, Global TV, and later he worked at Sportsnet, CHCH Television, a name that people know. What has your experience been doing Hebbsy on Spread? So what have you learned at TMDS after 150 rounds with Mark Hebbshire?

Like anything else, it takes a little while to find your rhythm. Hebbsy is a veteran broadcaster and I think very, very strong. He writes a good story. He tells it even better. And you're kind of finding out like, where do I fit in there? How do I act as maybe a little bit of a foil and a straight man, a little Ron to his Don, if you will. And I think it really kind

of found its stride and now we're just clicking on all cylinders i gotta say it's a lot of fun to broadcast with hebsey and the feedback i get and when i do listen back to episodes for like quality control purposes i'm really proud of this effort hebsey on sports and that is monday morning and friday morning yeah 9 20 a.m we we live stream on periscope so if you follow hebsey man you can And that is Monday morning and Friday morning. centric of course but also it's interesting to get perspective from mark hebbs here a former msm-er if you will on things like this don cherry situation and other uh you know fan 590 cuts and bob mccowan being let go and all these things it's very interesting to get hebsey's uh take on that oh we should mention fotm danny stover who's been doing a podcast for a little while now through blog to the only in Toronto podcast. Absolutely.

And maybe that's closer to what I had in mind for a 1236 podcast. Although maybe my idea was to have guests come in, talk about stuff, do a flash conversation. In the meantime, you've got BlogTO, only in Toronto. Dani, who's been through the mill of commercial radio stations, as far as I can tell, she does this thing all on her own. She delivers.

She's able to bring it, and that has a lot to do in this world of micromedia. You're leaning on somebody, just like here at TMDS, who can deliver the product. And a lot of this media game is just about being able to follow through.

There's no magic solution to making it. The first thing you have to be able to pull off is hit the deadline every single day. As far as I can tell, she's doing it there. I don't know about BlogTO's business. They just started a spinoff website fresh daily, shut it down two weeks later. Oh, yeah?

I'm not going to guess what's going to be a national news website. We'll save that for the next... Oh, for sure. 1236 Recap. The November recap. We'll talk about that one. But all that aside, always a good listen that you tune in. You get like a flash update with Danny Stover.

Yeah, I think... LogTO, only in Toronto? Yeah, and good job, Danny. I think she does a heck of a job on Only in Toronto. There was one from Global. Wait, there's more. And that's trying to be the afternoon

news podcast. There's got to be some sort of shakeout here. Can you have Global and CBC and Rogers all doing the daily News Explainer podcast. How many are going to leave that ring when the fad dies and things move on? But for now, they're all there. It's abundant.

And if you're looking to subscribe to 1,236 podcasts, you You got to get in on those. I'm extremely interested in this next segment, which is the Canadian corporate ventures. I need, you know, at TMDS, it's, you know, we are fiercely independent to borrow a line that, from Great Lakes Brewery, fiercely independent here. And I got to know, and you're the man to tell me if you're 1,200 podcasts you listen to, I need to know what's going on with Chorus, Bell, CBC, Rogers.

Hit me, Mark. This music is from Malcolm Gladwell, right? This is his revisionist history podcast. Canadian by association, Malcolm Gladwell likes going around telling people, unlike Neil Young, who's trying to become a dual citizen, Canada and the U.S., so that he can vote.

Malcolm Gladwell is still resolutely Canadian, even though he's been working in New York for like 30 years. And he's got his own Pushkin Industries, where he works with a guy who he grew up with in Elmira, Ontario, Bruce Hedlum. And they do this show. Have you heard it? Revisionist History with Gladwell. No, it's one of the many shows I'm told I would love, and I have not yet taken the time to... I think his latest book was a bit of a flop. And so we have Gladwell

maybe going deeper into podcasting, because that's where he's getting attention, working with Rick Rubin on one of the podcasts. Well, it works for Johnny Cash. It's gonna work for Malcolm. Where they do the Broken Record podcast. Okay, so, for Johnny Cash. It's going to work for Malcolm. Where they do the Broken Record podcast. Okay, so

we've got Malcolm Gladwell there working in the United States. On Pushkin Industries. Lots of people in Toronto who are also dreaming of this idea that just like an old-fashioned record label or publishing house, that you can build a podcasting brand

and that if your stamp, your mark, your association is on a podcast, that you can get people to listen to pretty much anything if they know that it's coming out of your house. It's a very powerful way of building a media business, right? If you like this, you'll love that. I always think of it as like there was a time it's we're kind of still there actually where if i know this television show is from hbo it's probably pretty good and i should probably give it a shot it's like a good housekeeping seal of approval if you will so you mentioned rogers has the frequency podcast network

and they're the ones they launched a whole bunch of shows at once, which I think was an impressive strategy because it was a way of planting their flag down on the moon, saying that we're in the podcasting business. This was at a time when Rogers was getting out of magazines. They laid off a whole bunch of people right before that, unloaded all the magazines at St. Joseph Media, but said, we see a future in podcasting,

and it's worth developing this arm of the organization, that podcasting had maybe more of a relationship to radio, and that they could use the radio stations, especially the news radio stations. 680 News in Toronto is a way of steering people to podcasts and that's where this big story podcast comes from the gravy train podcast now rob ford i'm sure that gets a lot of play on 680 news you're constantly being told to listen to this thing i guess i haven't heard 680 news in a while but just a man that's how rogers works right we can snark all we want about the way this whole telecom owned media thing is gonna go but we gotta work with what's out there and that's rogers if i may when when is the goal to uh basically this is another uh asset that sales can sell you can sell

sponsorship of successful uh frequency podcast network podcasts? Is that essentially why? I've noticed they certainly have sponsors. Like they just introduced one associated with McLean's magazine. And the sponsor for that is Jack Ryan, the Jack Ryan show on Amazon Prime. Huh.

And not only is that impressive that they managed to line that up as a sponsor, I think these American giants, like Amazon and Google and Facebook and Twitter, they've come into Canada, generally not paying their fair share of taxes. Wouldn't it be great if they could sponsor micro-media projects in Canada?

Doesn't that make sense? Yeah. Like, logically, that it's a goodwill exercise. And I don't know if anyone listening to this new McLean's podcast is going to subscribe to Amazon Prime and watch... What is it, Jack Ryan? Is that right? Is that what it's called? Well, they're not going to... to Amazon Prime and watch, what is it, Jack Ryan?

Is that right? Is that what it's called? Well, they're not going to. It doesn't matter. I think it's a gesture. It's a way of showing some support for something different in the Canadian media, which is a lot cheaper to produce. That's an undercurrent in all this,

that you can launch so many shows because it's not expensive to do that compared to a whole seasonal schedule on a TV network. Like, podcasting is better than City TV is for Rogers. You could launch a whole lineup of shows on City TV that cost millions of dollars even if it's being paid back in tax credits and subsidies it's still not going to make the same splash right now as launching a bunch of podcasts now sportsnet is owned by rogers when there's a sportsnet podcast and there's been several that had kind of high

profile launches and then seemed to disappear and fizzle out. Like, kind of an aside here, but like swinging a belt from Dan Schulman, for example, or the lead. Who was the lead? Is that Jeff Blair and Stephen Brunt, maybe? But I will say that I don't believe they're still active, but that's an aside, if you will, although you can comment on that. But would the Sportsnet podcast be part now

of the Frequency Podcast Network? I'm not sure. I'm not sure where the branding goes. They were using the people that they already had there to do different types of shows, trying things out. Yeah. Some of them sank and some of them swam. And I think for anyone who's a content creator,

I think it's a dream to be able to say we're launching five or six new shows at once. You know, technically speaking, that would be a lot trickier in any other medium. You can do it in newsletters. You could do it maybe in columnists. And you could do it in podcasting. You just throw a bunch of things out there and see what sticks. And we're fortunate that we're seeing at least Rogers experiment in that direction.

They've got to do something over there. So how are they doing so far? Why not a whole bunch of podcasts? How's the frequency network doing? On a qualitative level, I think it's doing okay. As far as people's reception to it, this is all a mystery. I don't know. It's early days.

We're only like a year into this experiment, a year and a half. And we're just going to see where it goes. And so much as Rogers has launched their own, we've got Chorus with an FOTM at the helm, a guy, Rob Johnston, who at one point thought he was out of the media game. He was going to have to work for Canada Post. He was delivering mail for Canada Post. And he loved it.

He talked on here about how healthy he was. He finally had calf muscles. Well, there he is, called back to a sedentary job of sitting in the chorus studios and helping to come up with a podcast strategy under the brand Curious Cast. That one I don't know too much about as far as where its fortunes are headed. They are really reliant on repurposing the radio shows. Alan Cross, Ongoing History of New Music, is now available as a show via Curious Cast. Are the people who no longer tune into FM radio for Alan Cross downloading the podcast? now available as a show via CuriousCast.

Are the people who no longer tune into FM Radio for Alan Cross downloading the podcast? You tell me. Okay, well, if you listen on the radio, you get the full song, right? Let's say they're doing an Oasis episode, and they're going to Wonderwall, and then you get the whole Wonderwall. When you listen on the podcast, you get like, I don't know, 10 seconds of Wonderwall.

So there's the one key difference there. Otherwise, to me, it's a no-brainer. I'll take the on-demand podcast every day of the week. For a company like that, you can show, just like Rogers, Chorus has it to the power of 10 because they've got all these repurposed global news radio shows and they seem like they're in the podcasting business like nobody else. And again, not to nitpick about what shows they're picking and what they're doing right,

what they're doing wrong. A successful show in a network would theoretically be able to have its tide rise and lift other boats along the way if they get a big hit. I used that expression with somebody and he didn't quite get it. But I'm not sure that I get it either. A rising tide floats all boats. Where else in Canada is a company like that able to show, okay, we've got like 50 offerings in this network.

It looks impressive. And again, it's something that I don't think you could achieve right now in most other forms of media. Look how much of terrestrial radio is just voice tracking. Chorus has, I think right now, more podcasts than they employ radio music DJs in the whole chain, in the whole country. He's not an FOTM, unfortunately, although maybe in the future he will be one country he's not an fotm unfortunately although maybe the future he will be one but isn't there a fearless fred podcast that was just what is he talks about

comic books you can talk about whatever you want look it's a new power move i've got a podcast and in speculating upon where this thing is gone there was a sense at the time when podcasting originally caught on, even going back a decade, it was imagined that the people who were restricted to a certain format on the radio would get to do a looser format podcast. But they probably wouldn't be paid extra for their effort. Right, right. Not a lot of motivation to really pull it off and I don't know how many people are so popular that you need to hear extra material

left on the cutting room floor from their radio show. Well, remember the olden days of Humble and Fred Raw? Do you remember this when they would record the breaks? Okay, so you really have to be into what they're doing. So CuriousCast is another. I was going to say also a bit of a trend, I think,

emerging of independent podcasts being picked up. FOTM, Norm Willner has a movie podcast, someone else's movie. He was making it anyway. And now it's part of that Rogers Frequency Podcast Network. Well, his brother works for Rogers, you know, Mike Willner. Well, they're family connections. I don't know what's involved with the deal. I don't know if it means that they give him plugs. It's always who you know. Mike Wilner. Well, they're family connections. I don't know what's involved with the deal. I don't know if it means that they give him plugs

all over Rogers. It's always who you know, Mark. Whatever it is, it's an example of somebody that did something on their own, just wanted to do it, hang out with the thing, talking about movies. He's doing it anyways, and now he's got a distribution platform to get more people to discover it. How do we get in on this? Or do we

want to get in on this? Do you think they knocked on Norm's door? Or do you think Norm, because his brother worked there, got a meeting? I'm going to. You're absolutely right. Bell Media. Bell Media is doing some stuff in podcasts, but they seem to be lagging the furthest behind as far as rolling stuff out.

Maybe they're doing the wait and see. Like, let Chorus and Rogers... Maybe it's not worth their time at all. In a world where they're doing this over-the-top, crave TV streaming service, the whole idea that you get people to send you money in the mail every month to get your premium cable shows from HBO.

Podcasting is a very poor cousin to all of that. The business model. Again, a bit of a caveat, a disclaimer. We're talking about telecom companies where typically you don't find the most original

creativity all of the time. Once in a while, something can squeak through, and if somebody's working on something at a Bell or a Rogers, they want to take pride in what they do. And I think podcasting provides the opportunity for experimentation, and we've seen

the least of it so far through Bell, to the point where they won't even put their terrestrial radio shows on podcasts as we know them. They'll refer to podcasts on the air, but they're not like downloadable podcast feeds. But they'll say, go to our website and listen to the podcast, and that is not a podcast.

This is my pet peeve. If I can't subscribe to it in my podcatcher of choice, it is not a podcast. It is merely audio, which is fine, but don't force me to your website to stream it there. I want it with the rest of my audio listening. I know there was a corporate order not to do downloadable podcasts in more Bell radio shows.

I don't know what's happening there. Well, speaking of Bell, and this ties in with the podcast that sort of show up, make a lot of noise, and then sort of disappear into the abyss. Bob McKenzie, their top hockey guy at bell media had a bobcast that i think i think bob must have realized it was too much work for no additional compensation it's gone compensation no return no interest you gotta nurture it how did toronto

mike to become popular with anyone i mean you didn't plan you tell me i have no idea that's another episode another company in in Toronto, E1 Entertainment, which was sold for, what, $4 billion or something to Hasbro? Oh, is the Peppa Pig? Yeah, because they own Peppa Pig. Eric Alper, FOTM, worked there for a long time. So they were doing podcasts, and Jesse Brown told me it was like an IP play.

They used podcasting. This is another thing going on in Hollywood. You use podcasting as a way to pilot a show idea, and if the podcast becomes popular, you can turn it into some kind of TV series or something. The concern is not making money off the podcast so much as it is laying the groundwork for something else. Whoever it was, from there,

they spun it off into a company called Antica Productions, launched a show with Kevin Newman, formerly of CTV News, called Attention Control, which was this Marshall McLuhan style future schlock

whole idea, we're going to pull back the layers on what's really happening in the media. And trust me, there could have been a media podcast that didn't involve Jesse Brown. Maybe this attention control with Kevin Newman could have been it, like documentary style. A lot of panic about fake news because that's where the winds were blowing. Before the run was over, Kevin Newman left the show. And you had his producer saying, I'm filling in for the rest of the run.

I don't know what happened there. I have to wait for the Frank Magazine article to explain to me what's going on there. CBC, of course. I want to talk about Jesse Brown. He was in there at the beginning and saw the beginning of podcasting at CBC and how they had a false start they had a strategy going on somewhere in the mid-2000s and they just called the whole thing off they figured well we should just put cbc radio shows on a podcast that's good enough we're talking about the audience it was

always there for public radio shows something like on the the Media from WNYC, Radio Lab, Studio 360. These were public radio shows that had a following through podcasts. CBC figured we don't have to put any effort into it. All of a sudden, in recent years, we've got a CBC podcast division that is going hard on the idea that podcasting is the new radio. idea that podcasting is the new radio. And not only that, unlike CBC Radio, they can sell commercial time on the podcast. And this is key because unlike, you know,

Rogers Bell Chorus, who could always sell ads for their radio programs, CBC cannot sell ads for CBC Radio 1. A milestone was Anna Maria Tremonti saying she was stepping down from The Current to do a podcast. That show now has a name. It's called More. As far as I can tell from the advance publicity, these are, let's say, sensitive interviews in the Oprah Winfrey vein, where she will be sitting down with changemakers to discuss their evolution in a heavily produced environment hey if that's your game you can listen i'll be adding it to my podcast player with 1200 other

shows report back if i push plays and let me know if they use 13 engines more as their theme song a connie walker at the cbc who definitely caught on to the whole serial trend, establishing that there was an audience out there for that kind of show. We can talk about crime podcasts as a whole phenomenon, but focusing on her with these missing and murdered shows and the CBC Uncover series, she was snapped away by Gimlet Media, owned by Spotify,

that they saw enough of a sensation in what she was doing with the CBC to be an example, I think the first real example of a podcast star being recruited to the USA with what she has to offer, whether that's produced out of the US or it's something that they do here. An example, again, of the evolution that's occurring and that for some people this is big business, I should also mention Pacific Content, which is an infomercial company. Now, they don't call it that.

They say that these are branded podcasts that are original productions, you know, documentary-based things that happen to be branded by somebody that's looking for exposure, looking to attach themselves to an identity. That through podcasts, you can spend a certain amount of time,

people will remember your company. If you're a big tech company or a bank or whatever, being in somebody's podcast listening ritual is a big deal, and maybe your message even sticks with them. So Pacific Content, a company that was started by some ex-CBC people, ended up being bought by Rogers. As far as I can tell, though, it continues to exist independently. I think going full circle back to Rogers, that's part now of the Rogers podcasting machine, and I think a better DNA attached to the podcast world

by the fact they had this success. Not necessarily through the number of listeners. I guess they've been successful enough shows. But the fact there are big American brands attached to what this company Pacific Content does. Where are we in our big list of topics, Toronto Mike, which I created to make sure that we would end this thing at about 100 minutes. We might have to go a little over time, but here's what I would like to do.

What everybody was waiting for. I'm glad we went deep on the Canadian corporate ventures. We could easily do two hours now on the American corporate ventures. Okay, well, we mentioned Gimlet Media, right? And that was one of them. And a bunch of others out there, like iHeartRadio. I listened to this podcast by Bob Lefsetz. You know Lefsetz.

The letter. Yeah, music industry guy. Yes, of course. Big crank, sends you emails. Now he does a podcast on iHeartRadio. He ended up being snatched up by them to do this podcast for people interested in the music industry. And they're obviously using him

as a way to expose their broader podcast business because he does this talk show, these deep dive interviews. Every 10 or 15 minutes, there's a promo for another iHeartRadio podcast. Here's a pyramid scheme at work. You know, one of many examples that if you're into left sets, you better know that iHeartRadio, the big terrestrial radio company, is in the podcasting business, and that's a tradeoff. You want to hear left sets, interview a fellow crank from the music industry,

you've got to put up with all these promos. And Podcast One, that's the one that Adam Carolla ended up anchoring so that this independent podcast he did on his own after being fired from the radio station, it's now the flagship show of this big company. We've got Bill Simmons, Ringer Network, as he built up the Ringer podcasting, was a big part from the start.

We mentioned Vox, and they've got Kara Swisher, the tech columnist, who said that even though she was writing article after article, she was getting more attention for the podcast. When you're talking about a technology culture, that podcasting is a better medium than writing articles. And I could go on about Luminary, this new app with these premium paid podcasts,

like Spotify, you pay, what is it, $8, $9 Canadian a month, and you get these podcasts, and they've got venture capital behind it. I don't know where that whole thing is going. And one called Parcast, which was an entirely bootstrapped company from this guy that realized that true crime was a thing, and I can produce these shows cheaply, just look up some Wikipedia pages, and all of a sudden I've got got like true crime podcast after podcast after podcast.

A deluge of this thing. And also sold out to Spotify. And I'm sure based on the fact this was bootstrapped, got a big chunk of change. And you're probably sitting there thinking, why didn't I think of that? Why didn't I launch 20 or 30 different true crime podcasts out of my basement? I can read Wikipedia pages. The money I could have made.

And then we have a whole bunch of, I don't know, B, C, D-list celebrities doing podcasts. Dax Shepard and Alyssa Milano, Anna Faris, Kate Hudson and her brother Oliver. The best one I ever heard there. I think it was actually deleted from the internet. It was Tatum O'Neill, the teenage actress, right? From Paper Moon.

Yes, of course. And married to... John McEnroe. John McEnroe. And she did a podcast like she was telling the stories of her life. And it's gone. It got pressed in the New York Times. I think something must have happened.

Maybe John McEnroe's lawyer got on the phone. I don't know. The music here, okay, this is a song by Tattoo. You know the song when it was a hit? These were what? Fake Russian lesbians. Yes, I do. I do. From the early 2000s. I mostly know this song now as a theme to a podcast called Red Scare. Going deep in the weeds with the time we got left.

Here we have a genre of podcast that is leaning on Patreon supporters. We're talking about tens of thousands of dollars a month for a show like Chapo Trap House, which came out from the dirtbag left. These were bros, Bernie bros, talking about socialism. Do you know Chapo? It has a whole culture of its own, and from that spawned other podcasts,

including one with the name Come Town. C-U-M-T-O-W-N. I was waiting to be spelled that. I'm not sure what that spelling refers to. I've never seen it spelled in that unusual way. But that's a guy named Nick Mullen and his buddies. And again, they did a live show in Toronto at the Elgin Winter Garden Theater.

That's a following they have. Certain kind of style, which is different from what you would hear on college radio, but at the same time, not much different in its spirit and its energy. It's sort of like the audio version of the zines that proliferated in the 1990s. So at this point, this is like a generation below us. It's sort of like the audio version of the zines that proliferated in the 1990s.

So at this point, this is like a generation below us. And Red Scare has distinguished itself. These two women of Eastern European extract who are ostensibly socialists, but the whole thing really is that they're anti-woke. And they are so hated, right, that they're able to make a living off this thing just because of the outrageousness and the way that they talk. A lot of vocal fry on Red Scare,

which I definitely recommend. And now you have Canadian shows inspired by Chapo and Comptown and Red Scare. I recommend one called Dumb Bitch Media, which is out of Ottawa. And I'm addicted to this show, Dumb Bitch Media.

And one in Toronto, which the name must draw its inspiration from the C-U-M thing, called Drum Circle Jerk. I would best describe these as hangout shows, just people sitting behind a microphone. But I don't think the culture of campus radio

reflected the kind of voice that we're now hearing on this podcast. This is a subject for further research. We'll talk about it more on 1236 episodes of Toronto Mic'd. Even one from Vancouver called Blocked Party. Again, it's blowing up on Patreon. And some Toronto comedians who moved to New York, and their show is called FCKonomics. And I'm enjoying their journey

because they're saying they were struggling comics in Toronto, and they brought their show to New York on the premise that they could make it in the podcast scene. One of the subplots there is, for a time, they were sneaking in to the Bell Media studios at News Talk 1010. They were doing their show out of there late at night with a producer, and they got in trouble for one episode. Pirate radio.

One episode where this producer who works at Bell Media, 1010, was going off on some personal history that might have gotten the company a bit of trouble. That episode was deleted from the internet. There's, I mean, with true crime, you get into explainer shows where people sit around, they deconstruct stuff in history.

I recommend there one show called You're Wrong About. It's hosted by a duo, two journalists, Michael Hobbs, Sarah Marshall, and they're going through a lot of scandals from the original history of tabloid media, a focus on the 1990s, so the whole era of the O.J. Simpson trial and Tonya Harding and John Wayne Bobbitt

and all these stories. Great show. And we can get into politics, but I'll just throw in a plug for The Fifth Column, which is a libertarian-leaning show. And the characters on there are Kamel Foster and Michael Moynihan, Matt Welch,

a guy who works at Reason Magazine. I knew him way back from the blogging days. As far as the American political shows go, the fifth column has risen to the top of ones that I'm listening to. That's a bit slicker. Not a lot of vocal fry on that show. And that's where we're at. I think this is everything you need to know about how I subscribe to 1,236 podcasts.

Unbelievable. You were the man for this podcast. I always knew it. You hit a home run. 236 podcasts. Unbelievable. You were the man for this podcast. I always knew it. You hit a home run. Now that we've said all that, how can people get in touch to work with TMDS? On Twitter, I'm at Toronto Mike.

You should send me a DM. They're always open. I'd love to hear from you. Maybe we can get together for a coffee or beer and chat about what you're thinking of doing. You can always write me at mike at

torontomike.com I just want to help people broadcast and podcasting is the name of the game. You think I could come along for the ride? By the way, you know this better than anyone. I don't even want to be the guy who's sitting here saying all this stuff. It's a job that I've taken on because

I got sick and tired of waiting for somebody else to do it. So here I am, the person in Toronto who listens to more podcasts than anybody else. I just thought I'd come down here and get a little bit of credit, okay? But look,

I'm also glad to hear what anybody has in mind or wants to do. Should I sit and wait by the phone? Do you think this episode worked? Did it serve that purpose? It was really just another hangout to make up for the 1236 episode that we lost that day that you had to have Ann Romer come down here. I hope we'll get back on track with a...

She's back on the radio, The Region. Oh, all right. Well, no one's listening to that. Maybe you can come back then for the November recap episode. What's our day? Early December, right? Toronto Mike 1236 November recap. I'll be back here in...

Not next week. Soon. Not the week after. Soon. The week after that? The end of the month are as close as we can get as we ride to the end of 2019.

And that brings us to the end of our 540-second show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike. Mark is at 1236. That's 1236. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. Palma Pasta is at Palma

Pasta. StickerU is at StickerU. Brian Master is letsgetyouhome at kw.com. Write him an email and get on his mailing list. Capadia LLP is at Capadia LLP. And Ridley Fun LLP is at Capadilla LLP and Ridley Funeral Home is at Ridley FH.

See you all next week. Thank you.