Greetings Inside Podcasting Family,

I hope you are safe and healthy. Big thanks to those of you who wrote to me with the names of POC-created-podcasts about race / Blackness / POC / social justice that we should be listening to right now (I'm still accepting contributions). Finally, to the one dude who wrote back and told me that last week's issue was spam and he was unsubscribing: best of luck out there, man.

This month I had the opportunity to interview someone who has worked closely with podcast startup Luminary and has unique insights into the company. As you may know, Luminary, which botched its launch last March, has since then lowered its subscription price, lost creative and executive talent, and raised another round, despite an initial $100m investment. It's also been reported that the company is sustaining a $4m/month burn rate, despite less than $500,000 in monthly revenue. The interviewee has chosen to remain anonymous. 

Finally, I've also included excerpts from today's episode of Inside Podcasting, in which I am interviewed by Podcast Gumbo writer Paul Kondo. We discuss my interview with the co-creators of Pulitzer Prize-nominated Ear Hustle, what it was like — for both Paul and me — to meet members of the PRX/Radiotopia team last summer, my process for interviewing, how I tormented my producer during post-production, and a whole lot more. I've included three excerpts from our discussion at the end of this edition. I hope they give you a sense of how we try to pull back the curtain in these post-show episodes (and whet your appetite for more!).

See you next week.

Skye

Interview with Anonymous Luminary Insider (edited for length and clarity)

What do you think Luminary's biggest challenges are right now?

They need a hit show in order to legitimize their business and make it viable longterm. And by hit show, I mean a juggernaut....a Serial, a Slow Burn, a Joe Rogan. Nothing medium-sized will do. Anything else makes me feel like I can skip it and be fine. Podcasts are free, so they need to find a reason to make people pay for them and so far they're not making a strong enough argument. They're also not helped by the fact that we have 100 streaming services and so people have been trained to care less about all content that they can't consume. People just watch something on a network they already subscribe to and don't feel like they're missing out...this type of thinking transfers over to podcasts too. People just listen to something that's free and don't think twice about Luminary shows. 

Do you think these challenges can be overcome?

Luminary is not the cool kid on the block, which sucks. I think that perception is unfair. Everyone in the industry publicly drags Luminary, but privately, they all want to work with them and sell them shows. So, perhaps they will make it work. I think someone will be able to make this business model work. 

Are Luminary podcasts getting the kind of support and resources they expected when they signed on?

I don't think they yet know how to make a show a "hit" or properly promote shows to current subscribers. They have a few barriers: they need to convince you to sign up and then once that happens, they need to convince you to listen to other shows. 

Can you describe Luminary’s company culture?

Startup, techy, seems like a rather great place to work. 

What advice would you give a podcast team that’s considering working with Luminary?

I would ask if and how they're planning on growing the podcast. It is very challenging to grow an audience for a podcast anywhere. I believe it is nearly impossible to grow an audience for a show that is behind a paywall...unless you already have a built-in audience, but even then it's a challenge. 

Obviously everyone is having to rethink budgets right now. Do you think Luminary will continue to cut corners?  

I can't imagine Lena Dunham getting a million dollars for her show (I think that was the reported price) and then doing another season for half that. They know what their budget and money situation is, obviously, but I have to imagine the recent reports of company spending (four million/a month) vs what its bringing in ($500,000) have to be accelerating certain conversations. 

Do you think Luminary will ultimately be successful? (And do Luminary employees believe the company will be successful?) 

That is such a good question about what Luminary employees believe. I think the pandemic has done good and bad for them. The bad: investors will likely be looking to take fewer risks. The company will want to take fewer risks. The good: It has made the compnay's employees value their jobs like never before. I think that kind of fire could potentially be great fuel to have employees amp up their game to ensure that this company is a success purely so they'll be able to keep their jobs. 

Is there anything else you think our readers should know about Luminary?

The industry is really hard on Luminary. The conversations can be snarky. I don't think that's fair. I think Luminary's potential success would be a big win for the industry. I can't help but think about Netflix here: they started as a DVD mailing company and stumbled into streaming. Luminary started as a premium podcast company...but what other kinds of business are they potentially going to stumble into?

One final thought?

Something that is harder for Luminary to have control of is the quality of the individual shows. This is a big problem longterm. I only listened to a few of the early episodes of Guy Raz's show (Wisdom from the Top), but I think it's the worst thing he's ever done. This is coming from a fan of his. It's boring. It sounded like he put zero effort into it and they recorded all of the episodes on the same day. It made me feel like Luminary got ripped off. 

Excerpts from the Ear Hustle Post-Show Episode, in which Paul Kondo speaks with me about what it was like to interview Nigel Poor and Earlonne Woods (edited for clarity and length)

On Arranging to Have Nigel and Earlonne on the Show

When I first approached Ear Hustle, we didn't know — the public did not know — that then-Governor Jerry Brown was commuting [Earlonne's] sentence. [My contact at Radiotopia] said I'll really try, but they're super busy right now. We went back and forth a few times. I finally said, let's try for next season. And I remember then listening to [Nigel and Earlonne] on Fresh Air. The focus of the interview was the commutation of Earlonne's sentence. In retrospect, I'm really grateful that it didn't work out that first season because everyone wanted to interview them right around that time. [Fresh Air host] Terry Gross was one of many people who talked to them. And so I got to have a brand new type of conversation: like, now you've been out, you've recorded a new season, what was that like. It was a new angle.

On Producing This Episode

I like to go through and do multiple edits. So I'm doing a paper edit. I'm just listening and writing stuff down. And then [co-producer Evo Terra] is implementing those edits. And then I'm doing it one more time. Usually, by that point, we've got it pretty much baked. This time I did something that Evo really loved, which was that I cut some stuff out during the second round of edits, and then after listening to it, I was like, oh, I don't think I should have cut that out. You always hear, "err on the side of editing," right? Cut it down to its basic level. But I had taken out these parts that showed the connection between [Earlonne and Nigel] and between me and the two of them. And so I said to Evo, I'm super sorry, but all those edits I just made you do? Could you just like, go back, and not edit that stuff out? Yeah, he was really pleased. And yes, I am being sarcastic. But as I say in my closing credits, he is my heroic producer and this is one of the reasons why.

On Interviewing 

My process starts the minute someone says yes. I am researching like crazy. Luckily, most of the time, when I've asked someone to be on the show, I've listened to most, if not all of their episodes. That was the case with Ear Hustle. But I did read everything I could about their previous work. Trying to immerse myself in someone's work is critical. And then I write questions. I write them all out, and then I try, as my previous guest Jessi Hempel said, I try not to look at them during the interview. And in fact, I've gotten to the point now where, when I get confused about where I am on those questions, I see that as a positive. There's actually a moment — I don't know if you'll hear it or not — in a future interview with two of the producers from 1619 where we were having such a good time talking, and I had to say, I completely lost track of what I was going to ask you next. And we all sort of said, that's cause we're having fun! I see that as a point of pride now. Whereas before it was like, oh if that happens, I'm going to feel terrible. And now it's kind of the opposite. So, yeah. We get it scheduled. I go into the studio. I'm nervous as hell — no matter who I'm interviewing — and then we hit record and go!