Entry 1: Set-Up, and Assumptions

Hello, hello. Welcome to the very first edition of Hot Pod: DVD Commentary, where I basically think out loud about how to build this small, sustainable media business that I want to build.

Okay, so. I have the following things:

• A working newsletter hosted on Mailchimp
• An okay newsletter audience size and 55–65% open rate
• A syndication arrangement with the lovely folks at Nieman Lab
• A clear beat and a network of sources that’s still willing to talk to me (though a far cry from when I wasn’t actually working in pods)
• A shit ton of opinions
• Two super cheap domains (hotpod.xyz and hotpodmedia.com)
• A few thousand bucks set aside to do this
• Semi-crippling anxiety attacks

Right. So. Here’s what I’m thinking — my assumptions and hypotheses, one could say — about my lovely, lovely readers:

• There is a decent audience out there that wants to keep up and understand the pod industry.
• This audience is made up of different types of people: folks who work in public radio and podcasting, folks who manage and operate public radio stations and podcasting companies, folks who make podcasts by themselves, folks are in the digital advertising business, folks who really like sitting around thinking about media theories and infrastructure, folks who think a lot about technology and the media, folks are studying to become journalists or radio people or media people, and of course, folks who just really love podcasts and everything that has to do with podcasts or radio. (Note to self: work on this.)
• These different kinds of people don’t all want the same kinds of information necessarily; but they won’t necessarily be turned off by adjacent pieces of information or analysis so long as it’s interesting and is able to round out their thinking indirectly.
• These folks are not just in it for the simple transaction of information and news — that’s a whole other business, one that would probably look a lot more like Jason Hirschhorn’s Media ReDEF newsletter operation. Rather, these folks are in it for the information transfer plus extended bouts of over-pontification, theoretical spinning, and geeking out. These folks have spiritual similarities to folks who go deep on fantasy football, electoral colleges, Lost and Game of Thrones mythologies, insider Hollywood baseball, conspiracy theories, etc.
• Of this audience, there’s a decent proportion of people who would pay a little bit of money a month to geek out a whole lot more with me, and to possible geek out a whole lot more with each other.

So now that I’ve laid that down, let’s lay down a couple of assumptions I have about the actual operations of Hot Pod:

• I can run this as a one-person operation. Maybe with a string of contributors. Or a partner in crime.(No, dude, don’t think too far ahead. Rein it back, rein it back.)
• Because it’s a one-person operation, this thing can’t go broad, and this thing can’t be comprehensive. It can’t possibly be everything for everybody. It has to be a very specific thing for a very specific kind of person. Therefore, the move is not to curate the whole span of podcast, public radio, and digital audio news every week, but to keep the spotlight tight on a few things that I personally perceive as representations larger developments in the space — microcosms, prisms. And on a few things that I love and wanna rep.
• Also, I’m counting that the audio/radio/pod world has a decently paced news cycle. Which is to say, that there is always something to observe, contextualize, and write about. This has been something that I’ve been worried about ever since I started the newsletter, but honestly, it’s never been an issue. The rate of developments seem to grow the more I meet people in the space and the more things I pay attention to; it convinces me that every industry, every community, and every thing is an infinitely rich world unto itself, and as long as I can connect the dots between the things I dig out and attach it to some bigger picture I should be okay.
• Which is perhaps the most appropriate time to say that I assume I’m able to always connect the dots, to consistently find what resonates, and to reliably paint pictures that the HP readership would find is worth their time.

Phew. Okay. So, I think it’s possible to make the thing I want to make. The question is how many people want this thing that I’m going to make, which is another way of asking what’s the natural growth limit of this thing.

I guess I’ll find out.

Anyway, I’m taking the rest of this week to sketch out plans and roadmap for the actual product that’s going to emerge from this. If anybody finds any of this interesting and you wanna talk, hit me up: hotpodnewsletter@gmail.com.

Next Week: I’ll talk about what Hot Pod 2.0 will actually consist of in terms of product. And some ideas and rationale behind things like pricing. Also, models.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a reader of Hot Pod. And if you’re not a Hot Pod reader, well how did you find this in the first place? Anyway, check out Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. You can find it here.