In New Media Show #689, I’m joined by Jim Louderback, publisher of Inside the Creator Economy and former CEO of VidCon and Revision3, to explore what the next phase of the creator economy means for people building media businesses. Jim and I have lived through several shifts at the intersection of media and technology. This conversation connects the early days of video podcasting with today’s AI tools, changing audience habits, and the search for a lasting creator business. More ways to create and distribute content bring opportunity, but they also raise questions about attention, ownership, and trust. Digital Jim and the Human Premium We start with Digital Jim, the AI version of Jim that turns his human-written newsletter into short videos. Jim explains how the team at Popcorn uses his words, an AI voice, and a visual avatar to help him reach audiences on LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts. He still writes the newsletter and reviews the videos before sharing them. That experiment leads to one of the episode’s central ideas: the human premium. Jim’s hypothesis is that, as audiences encounter more AI-generated media, they may place greater value on recognizable human voices, imperfect conversations, and experiences with real people. We discuss what that could mean for audience relationships, advertising, and in-person events. Podcasting in a Bigger Cr

Your podcast can be available everywhere and still be hard to find. So who controls its future: the creator, the audience, or the platform? In New Media Show #688, Rob Greenlee welcomes back James Cridland, Editor of Podnews, co-host of the Podnews Weekly Review, and a 2026 Podcast Hall of Fame inductee, for a conversation about what Podcast Week in New York City revealed about our industry. We compare notes on the IAB Podcast Upfronts, CreatorFronts, and a very different NYC Podcast Movement. James also shares his experience at the Sounds Profitable Business Summit. The week had plenty of energy, but it also exposed real differences in how creators, platforms, and advertisers see podcasting’s future. Podcast Movement’s Terminal 5 venue brought challenges around meetings, exhibitor space, and crowding. James argues that the headphone-based sessions worked better than expected. We also reflect on Tom Webster’s tribute to Todd Cochrane and why the industry still needs people willing to speak up when something is wrong. Podcasting has expanded its distribution. That doesn’t mean it controls where people discover shows. Sounds Profitable: Tom Webster’s presentation leads us into YouTube, Spotify, and Netflix, where podcasts compete with much more than other podcasts. James Cridland also cautions against confusing whether someone has ever used a platform with where they regularly listen.

Getting views, streams, and downloads is not the same as building a business. Subscribers aren’t automatically customers, and a successful YouTube channel doesn’t necessarily mean you have built something sustainable. In New Media Show #687, Podcast Hall of Famer Rob Greenlee talks with Creator, Educator, Author, and Entrepreneur Roberto Blake, founder of Awesome Creator Academy, about what comes after becoming a content creator and why more creators need to think of themselves as independent media companies rather than defining themselves by one format or platform. Roberto argues that being a podcaster, YouTuber, streamer, or blogger is increasingly just a distribution choice. The bigger issue is the value you create, the audience relationship you build, and what you actually own. We get into the shift from audio-first thinking to broader creator media, why professionalism is more about preparation and performance than polished production, and how AI is changing the economics of being a creator. Roberto sees some of the strongest uses of AI in the operational work around content, including research, data analysis, transcription, organization, editing workflows, and other tasks that can free creators to spend more time on judgment, ideas, and relationships. A major part of the conversation is about turning attention into a real business. Roberto describes his framework as “reach, reputation, revenue,” or i

Podcast media creator publishers may already have more revenue opportunity than they realize. The challenge is not always finding more listeners. It can be understanding what inventory is actually available to sell, what to sell, whether campaigns will deliver, and where revenue is being lost. In this episode #686 of the New Media Show, Rob Greenlee talks with Sean Howard, CEO and co-founder of Flightpath.fm, about the growing complexity behind new media podcast advertising and why better forecasting, campaign management, publisher data, and revenue optimization are becoming more important. Sean explains how Flightpath grew out of a problem he experienced from both sides of the business. As an ad buyer, he found that publishers often did not know how much inventory they really had available. As a publisher, he saw the same problem from the other side: uncertainty about whether sold campaigns would actually deliver. Flightpath was built to bring those pieces together through traffic management, prediction, pacing, and cross-platform revenue visibility. The conversation also gets into dynamic ad insertion and the value of the podcast back catalog. Sean argues that publishers relying too heavily on baked-in ads may be leaving significant revenue on the table because listeners keep consuming older episodes long after release. Rob and Sean also discuss a larger issue facing content creator publishers today: platform dependence. As podcast companies expand across multiple hosting platforms, YouTube, Spotify, video,

One year ago today, on September 8, 2025, we lost Todd Cochrane. Todd was my longtime co-host on the New Media Show, a podcast builder from the medium’s earliest days, and one of its strongest advocates for independent creators, open RSS, ownership, and direct connection with audiences. Looking back on these conversations, what stands out most is how consistently Todd fought for what he believed mattered. He never forgot why podcasting was different in the first place: it removed barriers, gave creators more control, and made it possible to build real communities without asking gatekeepers for permission. He also understood that none of it came easy. Todd often talked about “sweat equity,” doing the work, building something from the ground up, and earning an audience’s trust over time. That was who he was. What makes this video especially difficult to watch is the ending. In what became his final New Media Show appearance, Todd signed off the way he always did, expecting there would be another episode: “We’ll see you next time.” I wish there had been a next time. Todd’s voice, his ideas, and the impact he had on podcasting are still very much part of the conversation. Remembering my friend and New Media Show co-host Todd Cochrane today. June 4, 1964 – September 8, 2025 More remembrances of Todd Cochrane: New Media Show: Remembering Todd Cochrane, Podcast Hall of Famer and Blubrry CEO A special New Media Show episode with Adam Curry, Mike Dell, Rob Walch, and me remembering Todd’s life, personality, career, advocacy for independent podcasting, and his imp

As AI makes it easier to create more content, human relationships may become more valuable, not less.  In Episode #685 of the New Media Show, host and Podcast Hall of Famer Rob Greenlee talks with Alex Sanfilippo, founder of PodMatch and host of Podcasting Made Simple, about why relationships between hosts, guests, audiences, collaborators, and communities are becoming an increasingly important part of podcast growth. The conversation explores podcast guesting, better host-guest matching, AI-assisted workflows, audio and video podcasting, RSS and HLS, creator-owned communities, and why direct audience relationships matter as large platforms gain more control over discovery and monetization. Human Connection Wins Alex built PodMatch around a simple problem: podcast hosts could find guests, but finding the “right guest” and managing all the administrative work surrounding an interview took an enormous amount of time. The goal is to automate the work around the conversation without automating the human connection itself. Rob and Alex discuss why great podcast conversations create relationships that can continue long after an episode is published. Better Guests, Better Conversations A strong podcast guest should arrive ready to lead with value, not sim

AI can now reproduce a person’s face, voice, movement, and likeness with increasing realism. The bigger question is becoming: Who gets to control that identity, authorize its use, and potentially get paid when it has commercial value? In Episode #684 of the New Media Show, Host Rob Greenlee talks with Anne Kavanagh, co-founder of Royall.ai, about building a new permission and licensing layer around human identity. The conversation is not about stopping or being anti-AI. It is about establishing something that has largely been missing: proof and authorization before use. Your Identity Becomes an Asset You Control Royall.ai is developing what Anne describes as a biometric vault where people can register elements of their identity, including voice, face, likeness, and body motion. Those assets can be fingerprinted and watermarked, creating the foundation for detecting use, approving or rejecting it, and potentially licensing it commercially. That changes the discussion from simply asking whether AI can clone someone to asking whether the person actually gave permission. A creator could potentially say: Use my voice for this campaign, but only for six months. Allow my likeness to be used to train this model, but pay me.

Podcasting has one advantage that much of digital media struggles to maintain: trust. In Episode #683 of the New Media Show, Rob Greenlee talks with Mike Kadin, CEO and co-founder of RedCircle. What does that trust mean for podcast advertising as AI, video, HLS, YouTube, Spotify, and changing audience behavior reshape the business? Long-form shows create a different relationship between creators and audiences than short-form social content. That relationship has always been one of the reasons host-read podcast advertising can work so well. But what happens when AI can recreate the host’s voice? Mike makes an important distinction. The value of a host-read ad is not simply hearing a familiar voice. It comes from the host’s language, personality, experience, humor, and actual judgment about the product. RedCircle does not use AI-generated versions of creators to perform host-read advertising. Mike believes cloning the host’s voice without the actual human endorsement could undermine the very trust that makes the advertising valuable. Authentic Host Reads Still Matter Rob and Mike talk about the difference between reading advertising copy and genuinely recommending something a creator has used. RedCircle has seen similar shows, with similar audience sizes, run by the same advertiser and using the same talking points, produce very different results. One of the biggest differences can be the q

When AI content becomes abundant, what becomes scarce? In Episode #682 of the New Media Show, Host, Rob Greenlee talks with growth and brand strategist Jaymi Bauer. Jaymi is CEO and co-founder of Vaquera Group, creator of Resonance Design, and founder of a new women’s vitality venture called Reign.Care. She and Rob previously worked together at Microsoft during the Zune and Xbox eras, giving both a long view of how technology continually reshapes media and human behavior. The conversation is not anti-AI. It is about understanding where AI is powerful and where human creators may still have the advantage. The Human Signal Jaymi states that humans feel trust before they intellectually recognize it. We respond to tone, presence, energy, emotion, authenticity, and whether something feels genuine. AI can increasingly reproduce human language, imagery, voices, and creative patterns, but Jaymi believes audiences will continue seeking something deeper: content rooted in real human experience. Her advice to creators is simple: Become better at AI while becoming even more human. AI as Amplifier, Not the Source Rob and Jaymi explore AI as a creative and production layer rather than the original source of meaning. AI can: Research faster Organize ideas Improve production Expand vis

In Episode 681 of the New Media Show, host Podcast Hall of Famer Rob Greenlee welcomes Alban Brooke, Head of Marketing at Buzzsprout, for a deep conversation about one of the biggest structural changes in podcasting: the evolution of podcast hosting from audio-file distribution to a broader audio-and-video creator infrastructure. For most of podcasting’s history, the hosting model was relatively straightforward. A creator uploaded an audio file, the host generated an RSS feed, and that feed distributed the episode to listening apps worldwide. That podcast hosting model is changing. Video is once again becoming a significant part of podcasting, and podcast hosting platforms are being asked to do much more than store an MP3 and maintain an RSS feed. They increasingly need to manage video encoding, HLS streaming, direct platform connections, YouTube publishing, Spotify video, Apple Podcasts video, transcripts, analytics, AI-assisted publishing tools, and the traditional audio experience simultaneously. Buzzsprout, which launched in 2009 as an audio-only podcast host, has now made a major move into video. Alban explains that the turning point was Apple’s decision to support HLS video streaming into Apple Podcasts. Once Apple committed to HLS, Buzzsprout saw an opportunity to preserve one of podcast hosting’s original promises: “Upload once and let the hosting platform handle the complexity of getting the show everywhere.” Buzzsprout’s current vide

In Episode 680 of the New Media Show, host Rob Greenlee welcomes Steven Goldstein, founder and CEO of Amplifi Media, for a timely, future-leaning discussion. We have entered the Liquid Content Era. A podcast conversation can now become an audio episode, full-length YouTube video, Spotify video, Apple Podcasts video, vertical clips, social posts, articles, newsletters, searchable transcripts, and potentially AI-discovered answers. The underlying content may be the same, but the way people encounter and consume it varies by platform. That creates an enormous opportunity for creators. It also creates a measurement problem. Podcasting built much of its advertising business around the download. That metric helped turn an emerging medium into a legitimate advertising marketplace, but Steven argues that it no longer adequately represents how audiences consume modern shows. Downloads were created in an era when bandwidth was limited and podcast applications often downloaded episodes to devices before the listener played them. Today, streaming is increasingly immediate, video consumption is growing, audiences move between devices, and clips can sometimes reach more people than the original episode. The question is no longer simply: How many times was the podcast downloaded? The better question may be: How many people actually listened to, watched, encountered the advertising, and engaged with the creator’s content across the entire media ecosystem? Why advertisers need this change. Large brands already buy television, web, streaming video, social, and other digita

In Episode 679 of the New Media Show, host and Podcast Hall of Famer Rob Greenlee welcomes Samara Beth Hurley, founder and CEO of Samara Beth & Co., for a wide-ranging conversation about experiential branding, audience trust, personal authority, storytelling, live events, artificial intelligence, and the growing value of real human relationships. Creators have more ways than ever to attract attention through podcasts, video, social media, newsletters, events, books, speaking, search, and AI-powered discovery. But attention is only the beginning. The deeper challenge is turning attention into trust, trust into authority, and authority into relationships that can support a lasting creator brand or business. Samara brings more than 30 years of experience across events, experiential branding, public relations, marketing, publishing, coaching, speaking, and business strategy. She explains why memorable experiences engage more than the mind. They involve emotion, physical presence, environment, story, and multiple senses, making them more likely to remain with an audience. The central idea of the episode is that content may introduce people to a creator, but experiences can make that creator memorable. From Attention to Experience: Why creators need more than visibility, impressions, downloads, views, or followers. Samara expl

In Episode 678 of the New Media Show, host and Podcast Hall of Famer Rob Greenlee welcomes Barry Kantz, CEO and CFO of Blubrry Podcasting, for a candid conversation about Blubrry’s leadership transition, the legacy of (RIP) former CEO Todd Cochrane, independent podcasting, video, artificial intelligence, monetization, measurement, human support, and the changing podcast-hosting market. For more than 20 years, Blubrry and its parent company, RawVoice, have helped build and support the open podcast ecosystem. The sudden passing of Blubrry founder and longtime New Media Show co-host Todd Cochrane forced the company, its team, and Todd’s family to navigate an unexpected personal and business transition. Barry explains how Blubrry responded, how leadership responsibilities shifted, and how his management approach differs from Todd’s hard-charging entrepreneurial style. Barry is bringing a more data-driven and systems-focused approach while trusting Blubrry’s experienced remote team to carry the company forward. The conversation also examines how podcasting itself is changing. Audio remains central to the medium, but video has become part of how audiences define and experience podcasts. Rob and Barry discuss YouTube discovery, the overlap between watching and listening, short-form clips, RSS distribution, Apple’s HLS video support, alternative enclosures, Podcasting 2.0, and Blubrry’s Vid2Pod tool for turning YouTube videos into audio podcast episodes. Barry also shares an update on Blubrry’s H

In Episode 677 of the New Media Show, host Rob Greenlee welcomes Dan Granger, founder and CEO of Oxford Road, for a detailed conversation about how personality-led media is changing what brands buy, how audiences are measured, and what the podcast industry must do to support its next stage of growth. Audiences increasingly follow people rather than traditional media channels. A trusted personality can carry an audience across podcasts, YouTube, livestreams, newsletters, social platforms, communities, events, and direct business relationships. Advertisers, however, still tend to purchase and measure those formats as separate media channels. That disconnect is becoming one of the largest challenges facing creator media. A creator may record a single conversation and distribute it across multiple platforms, yet each platform reports exposure differently. Advertisers are then left trying to compare downloads, streams, video views, watch time, impressions, attribution data, and host-read performance without a consistent standard. Dan has spent his career connecting advertisers with personality-driven media. Oxford Road now describes its work as building performance systems across audio, video, creator, and programmatic media, with Dan serving as the company’s CEO. The conversation begins with Oxford Road’s growing investment in bringing brands, creators, platforms, and media leaders together in person. Dan explains how the company’s CAO Summit developed from the idea of a “Chief Audio Officer,” the person inside a brand responsible for making audio advertising work. That responsibility may belong to a founder, marketi

In Episode #676 of the New Media Show, host and Podcast Hall of Famer Rob Greenlee welcomes Steve Wilson, Chief Strategy Officer at Daylight Media and QCODE, for a wide-ranging conversation about the shift from producing a successful podcast to building a sustainable creator-led media company. Creators no longer operate in a simple world of publishing one show to ONE place and relying mainly on advertising. The strongest creators are building direct relationships with audiences across podcasts, video, short-form clips, newsletters, communities, subscriptions, live events, products, and services. Podcasting remains one of the most effective long-form formats for building trust and repeated audience connection. It is now one part of a larger media strategy shaped by video distribution, platform algorithms, artificial intelligence, audience ownership, and the growing power of individual personalities. Steve brings a valuable perspective to this discussion. Before joining QCODE, he spent years working with Apple Podcasts and iTunes. At QCODE, he helped develop and distribute premium scripted audio series featuring talent including Matthew McConaughey, Demi Moore, and Rami Malek. QCODE has since expanded through Daylight Media, which provides distribution, monetization, technology, marketing, and business support for a broader network of creators. Daylight currently works with roughly 70 creators and shows representing approximately 300

In Episode 675 of the New Media Show, host Rob Greenlee welcomes Cameron Stack, founder and curator of Recognized.fm, for a conversation about podcast awards, creator credibility, industry recognition, and the growing business behind awards, nominations, platform distinctions, editorial selections, and career honors. Podcast awards can be easy to dismiss as another trophy or promotional exercise. Credible recognition can have a much larger impact on a creator, a show, a network, or a media company. An award nomination or win can strengthen a media kit, support sponsor conversations, attract better guests, generate press coverage, and give prospective listeners another reason to take a show seriously. The difficult part is deciding which awards deserve the investment. Podcasting now has a wide recognition ecosystem that includes juried competitions, audience-voted awards, editorial selections, regional programs, platform honors, niche-category awards, professional distinctions, and lifetime-achievement recognition such as the Podcast Hall of Fame. Cameron created Recognized.fm to organize this expanding market and help creators understand their options. Recognized currently tracks more than 100 audio and podcast awards, with information that can be filtered by factors such as geographic scope, entry fees, voting format, and prestige.  They discuss why c

In Episode 674 of the New Media Show, Podcast Hall of Fame Host Rob Greenlee welcomes Rox Codes, CEO and co-founder of Flightcast.com.  For a deep conversation about video-first podcasting, YouTube growth, AI-powered analytics, creator tools, and where podcast publishing is heading next. Rox Codes has spent years building tools for creators, including YouTube optimization, thumbnail and title creation, A/B testing, and creator growth systems. Flightcast was co-founded with Steven Bartlett of The Diary of a CEO. Rox is building a platform centered on a core shift in the market: serious shows are no longer just audio-first with a bonus video version. Many of the fastest-moving creators now think about YouTube first, then audio, clips, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, newsletters, social platforms, and every other surface where the audience may discover the show. Has video-first podcasting fully arrived, and is it now equal to audio, or is it becoming even more important for growth? Rox explains that Flightcast came from a very different starting point than traditional podcast hosting. Instead of beginning with RSS, downloads, and audio workflow, the platform was built from a YouTube creator mindset.  YouTube has long been the clearest growth platform for creators because it combines publishing, discovery, audience development, monetization, and measurable performance into a single system. Podcasting, by contrast, has often separated those pieces across hosting platforms, apps, ad systems, analytics dashboards, an

In Episode 673 of the New Media Show, host 2017 Podcast Hall of Famer Rob Greenlee welcomes Casey Adams, founder and CEO of Listener.com and host of The Casey Adams Show, for a timely conversation about how podcasting, video, social content, advertising, and new media measurement are rapidly converging. For more than 20 years, podcasting has relied heavily on RSS feeds, downloads, and audio-first measurement as the foundation of distribution and advertising value. That still matters, but the media environment around it has changed dramatically. Shows now are distributed across Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, social video, newsletters, clips, livestreams, and direct audience communities. Audiences may call it all a podcast, even as the industry continues to debate its technical definition. Casey brings a founder, creator, and investor perspective to the discussion. He started podcasting as a teenager, interviewing founders and entrepreneurs, and later built MediaKits.com before moving into podcast analytics with Listener.com. His current work focuses on helping modern publishers understand how a single episode performs across audio, long-form video, short-form clips, newsletters, and social platforms. Rob and Casey explore why the term “podcast” now means different things to different groups. To many longtime industry professionals, podcasting still points back to RSS-based audio distribution. To many younger listeners and viewers, it

In Episode 672 of the New Media Show, host 2017 Podcast Hall of Famer Rob Greenlee welcomes Leo Laporte, founder and owner of the TWiT Podcast Network, longtime technology broadcaster, and 2015 Podcast Hall of Famer.  He launched TWiT in 2005 and built one of the earliest independent technology media networks around a simple idea: make strong shows, distribute them everywhere the audience wants to watch or listen, and build a real relationship with the people who return every week. Leo has spent decades at the center of the shift from broadcast radio and cable television into online shows, podcasts, livestreams, video, and creator-led media.  This conversation looks at where that model is heading now. The word “podcast” helped define an era of downloadable audio, RSS feeds, and iPods. Today, audiences find shows through YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Netflix, social platforms, livestreams, clips, newsletters, and communities. Most viewers or listeners do not care how a show is technically delivered. They care whether it is easy to find, worth their attention, and made by people they trust. Rob and Leo discuss why the technical barrier to starting a show has fallen so far, while the challenge of creating meaningful content has never gone away. Anyone can publish. Building a show that earns repeat attention takes perspective, consistency, subject knowledge, and a genuine relationship with an audience. Leo reflects on TWiT’s early video strategy, its experiments with live 24/7

In this episode of The New Media Show, host 2017 Podcast Hall of Famer Rob Greenlee welcomes Sam Sethi, founder of TrueFans and co-host of the Podnews Weekly Review. They had a wide-ranging conversation about the future of podcasting inside the larger creator economy. Podcasting helped create the independent creator movement through RSS, niche audiences, direct publishing, and long-form content that builds audience trust. Today’s creators are building broader businesses around video, memberships, newsletters, live events, merchandise, premium content, clips, community, and direct fan relationships. So, can the creator economy help build a better, more sustainable podcasting industry? Rob and Sam explore why podcasting can no longer think only in terms of feeds, files, downloads, and ad impressions. They discuss the rise of creator portals, the importance of owning the relationship with audiences, and how platforms such as Patreon, Substack, Beehiiv, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple are changing creator expectations. The conversation also examines whether advertising is becoming less central to the creator business model, and how subscriptions, premium content, micropayments, stablecoins, and value-for-value models could create new ways to share revenue among creators, listening apps, platforms, and even audiences. Sam shares his perspective on HLS streaming, watch time and listen time analytics, activity streams, super fans, publisher feeds, and “super feeds” that can connect audio, video, events, merchandise, blogs, and community into a more portable, creator-owned media presence.