Misplaced Midrolls and the Fall of Podcast Civilization

I used AI for that title and it's pretty good lol.

Before we begin, happy Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Day. Every year on this date I rewatch the film which hit theaters on June 4, 1982 and is the pinnacle of Star Trek (even though I like TMP even more better.)

The entire premise of the movie is that Chekov is an idiot who didn’t realize he brought the USS Reliant to the wrong planet. He actually thought that was Ceti Alpha 6. What an idiot. Good flick if you’ve never seen it. I will probably wind up writing about it (again) after the rewatch.

Meanwhile, here’s some thoughts on Mission Impossible.

As for podcasts..I really enjoyed Jimmy Fallon on Diary of a CEO. But guys - industry - ALL OF YOU - for the love of God, PLEASE PLACE YOUR COMMERCIALS.

Near the end, Fallon is talking about WHAT IT WILL BE LIKE WHEN HE DIES and the pod went straight train-wreck into the host doing a “live read” for iced coffee. OMG what are you doing???!!!!!

Take a breath. End on a down inflection. Place a marker. It’s easy.

These misplaced breaks are inexcusable, and I suspect a big part of it is this Video First mentality.

Joe Rogan/Spotify - your interruptions are awful. Come on bros, please at least try! (And don’t make the commercials 2x as loud as the show, let me know if you need me to buy you an Auphonic Leveler subscription.) Actually while I’m on this soapbox - how about we master the Ringer stuff to the same apparent loudness veryone else is using? Why are you off at your own volume levels (are we mastering for video and not making an audio version?) Why does Bill Simmons have to be at a different volume than the rest of the universe?

Anyway, Fallon was a good listen.

Let’s stay with The Ringer. Someone needs to get in Matt Belloni’s ear. You’re making the Scott Galloway mistake. Complaining about wearing a tux at Cannes isn’t really that relatable. Study Prince William and Kate Middleton. Every week they do a phony “We’re just like you!” photo-op. Oh look Kate is mini-golfing, how cute! Then they go back to their castle. It works. I don’t wanna hear about your tux at Cannes or Professor G’s private plane and dinners with Kara Swisher and the 1%ers.

And as for Scott - hey he just signed a mega-deal so he’s smarter than me, but the Pivot Galloway has crept into the Prof G persona and that show for me has gone from an auto-download to a “maybe.” Well, they also cluttered the Prof G feed with things I don’t want - but again he’s reportedly turning down $40M and I’m writing a substack.

Palace Intrigue if you wanna keep up on Kate’s mini-golf game.

We haven’t quite announced this one so don’t tell anyone…Season 1 now available for paid subscribers.

The Spotify Algorithm seems to like Eastwood Reloaded. Thanks Spotify Algorithm! Season 1 also fully available on Caloroga Plus, otherwise new episodes every Sunday.

Speaking of Rogan, not that Joe needs promotion but he’s had a run of good guests (I didn’t get to Bono yet) and one of my favorites is Jimmy Carr.

Jimmy has a podcast of his own which was….ummmm…..disappointing. I think some people from TV (note the big giant N in the cover art) may have made a podcast and really overproduced it. Shame this isn’t better, but very fixable. I’ll consult for free. Call me.

Spotify has made some promising changes to their interface that might actually help discovery. The bots take a look…

I’m actually guesting on a Human Hosted show later in the week that will discuss this…not sure if I’m supposed to say which one, but I will be sure to share it here next week.

As much as I eyeroll video podcasts, this was a good listen….if you don’t mind commercial interruptions every 10 minutes (not sure if its every 10 minutes but man there were a LOT of them.) Hey guys, maybe combine some of those breaks. 4 two minute breaks is less annoying than 8 one minute ones.

And today’s Daily Comedy News is pretty good! I talk about Maron, and Jimmy Carr, and Jimmy Fallon, and Ricky Gervais.

As for Maron ending - wow that was a bit of a shocker. Is it possible you Video People chased him? He never did video and went out of his way to say he had no interest.

Maron was one of those shows I have been listening to since Podcasting Wave One - back when you’d have to….I barely remember….did we manually download shows to iTunes and then connect to our ipod/iphone via cord and then play the things out of an app called iTunes? Is that what we did?

Anyway back in the day there was that and Nerdist and the great old Firewall and Iceberg TV review podcast.

You know…back when this was a thing….IYKYK

Oh yeah, Daily Comedy News….good one today…..

And that’s it for now, I probably upset enough people but remember, we are all one big happy fleet!