Daily Mail podcast chief Jamie East on writer’s quickly increasing audio empire

Daily Mail podcast chief Jamie East on writer’s quickly increasing audio empire

Mail and Metro writer DMG Media is quickly increasing its audio portfolio after the arrival of head of podcasts Jamie East final summer time.

In lower than a yr DMG Media has gone from only one podcast, its journalist-led hit The Trial of Lucy Letby, to having a number of audio merchandise being produced and 19 in pre-production – principally for the Mail but additionally for Metro.

East informed Press Gazette: “I don’t know what everybody else is as much as however… I doubt very a lot there’s some other firm within the UK making that many podcasts.”

East joined the Mail, Metro, i and New Scientist writer in August final yr as head of podcasts and informed Press Gazette he has been given “full artistic freedom, which is terrifying and great”.

He created a technique deck inside his first month on the writer “and every thing is now being made,” he mentioned.

Already reside are a number of latest launches:

• Weekly soccer podcast It’s All Kicking Off, hosted by Mail Sport soccer editor Ian Ladyman and columnist Chris Sutton
• Straight to the Comments (no connection to an unbiased podcast of the identical title), hosted by Youtubers Archie Manners and Joshua Pieters, alongside celeb friends, who react to Mail Online feedback
• The Sidebar, a showbiz podcast hosted by Good Morning Britain leisure editor Richard Arnold with the title riffing on Mail Online’s well-known “sidebar of disgrace”
• New sequence Lost Voices with the primary season in regards to the final two males to be hanged in Britain for being homosexual and hosted by Labout MP Chris Bryant who wrote a ebook about them.

The Trial of Lucy Letby confirmed ‘what success can appear to be’

But The Daily Mail’s first podcast hit was The Trial of Lucy Letby, which launched earlier than East arrived, operating for greater than 60 episodes till September and getting shortlisted within the podcast class at Press Gazette’s Future of Media Awards.

Unusually it produced each day updates about Letby’s trial because it was ongoing and grappled with the authorized challenges that got here with that, fairly than reporting on a case retrospectively as true crime podcasts are inclined to do.

Under East it has since rebranded as The Trial and respawns for main circumstances that may be equally adopted reside by the Mail’s journalists. So far it has coated the trial of the killer of Irish main faculty trainer Ashling Murphy, the murders of teenager Brianna Ghey, and the most recent is the continuing case of Constance Marten and Mark Gordon in relation to the demise of their child.

East informed Press Gazette The Trial has had about 23 million downloads thus far and there’s one other arising in round 5 weeks “that nobody will count on and it’s simply unimaginable – it should blow folks’s minds”.

He mentioned he’s “actually proud” of how The Trial has been solid right into a model and created a “fully new sub-genre of true crime”.

Referring to the authorized challenges, East mentioned the very fact DMG Media head of editorial authorized Liz Hartley and her workforce “even entertained the considered letting us do it’s a miracle in itself”.

“No-one else may do this, aside from possibly The Times in the event that they actually needed to… as a result of there’s a lot at stake with a trial like that when it comes to being in contempt of courtroom and whatnot, there’s nobody else that would do it the way in which that we’ve finished it in any respect.

“And it reveals – we’ve saved nearly the entire viewers that we had from Lucy Letby over the next three seasons. We’ve acquired an extremely loyal and engaged viewers.”

The Trial confirmed the enterprise “what success can appear to be,” East mentioned, though he admitted: “It’s a slight anomaly, I did say not each single podcast goes to be the dimensions of The Trial. I’d love them to be. The Trial is a juggernaut, it’s an absolute behemoth of a podcast.”

Lord Rothermere ‘walks the stroll’ on constructing a 360-degree firm

East mentioned a part of the attraction of becoming a member of DMG was beginning its audio operation nearly from scratch, together with constructing a brand new studio, which opened in November, and hiring a workforce, which is now a core workers of 5 plus govt producers coming in for particular sequence.

East mentioned he took the job “just because they weren’t doing something, or nothing with any deep roots.

“I’ve labored at totally different publishers earlier than, and I’ve finished work for Netflix and work for Sky and labored for giant locations earlier than, and while you’re given a job like this you’re usually inheriting lots of stuff, which is usually nice however most of the time, not nice.”

East beforehand ran his personal manufacturing firm, at which he launched and hosted each day information podcast The Smart 7. (He has stepped away however the podcast continues to sound like it’s hosted by him due to AI skilled on his archive of episodes.)

In that form of job, East mentioned, “your dream is to have the ability to realise your entire concepts creatively and from an organisational and from a tech perspective. What they did right here was simply permit me to return and do it.”

East particularly cited the imaginative and prescient of DMGT chairman Lord Rothermere, saying he’s a uncommon media chief who “walks the stroll” on evolving right into a 360-degree firm.

“What we’re allowed to do on this constructing is you actually can simply stroll over there and begin making it occur… it’s about how we evolve the enterprise, which is traditionally a print enterprise and is already quick turning into a correct 360 enterprise, whether or not it’s Tiktok, whether or not it’s long-form video, whether or not it’s short-form video, whether or not it’s audio, whether or not it’s digital, every thing’s within the constructing, and having the ability to be the audio a part of that puzzle is sensible.

“I may instantly see the place audio slotted in to the long-term plan of the enterprise.”

[Read more: How Daily Mail went from voice of Middle England to Tiktok sensation]

The different good thing about being at DMG Media, East added, is that “there’s not an concept I may provide you with on this constructing that I couldn’t discover a dwelling for.

“If I got here up with a podcast concept that possibly didn’t align with the Mail a lot, I’ve acquired Metro, I’ve acquired New Scientist, I’ve acquired i.”

Of his “full artistic freedom”, East mentioned: “You wouldn’t get it anyplace [else]… I’ve labored for a lot of totally different types of publishers and media organisations, all of them like to think about themselves as ‘we nurture creativity’ and really, this is without doubt one of the few locations that really has finished that.”

Daily Mail 50+ readers ‘some of the underserved’ in podcasts

One of East’s beginning factors was to make use of the Mail’s in depth information to take a look at what its readers like, with royals, showbiz and crime showing to be apparent alternatives.

The key query was “what are they at present underserved in, in an audio world? The Daily Mail’s print readers are some of the underserved sectors in podcasts and audio internationally. The 50-plus is the final nice untapped market actually with audio, aside from most likely children. So that’s a possibility there.”

This is why The Sidebar and Straight to the Comments had been first out of the gate: “Those two had been fairly straightforward to tug collectively as a result of it was like, what’s the low hanging fruit there? What can we make out of the content material that we already create and already personal and are already synonymous with that additionally permits us to be barely meta, and in addition barely sudden?”

East agreed that the podcast market is “fairly saturated” proper now however mentioned it’s “saturated with lots of crap”.

“99% of all podcasts have lower than 30 performs,” he mentioned. “We are spoilt for alternative while you go onto your Spotify or your Apple, there’s simply hundreds and hundreds of them. But it doesn’t imply any of them are any good.

“And as I mentioned earlier than, it all the time begins off with a narrative. So if you happen to’re telling a narrative another way, or in a brand new method, otherwise you’re utilizing your personal platform to inform that story, corresponding to Straight to the Comments or Sidebar. Then you’ve acquired a degree of distinction already.”

East was notably essential of “podcasts that simply have well-known folks on them for the sake of it, as a result of I believe that fad will die out fairly quickly… I might say that that’s most likely a saturated market, that there’s no room on the inn anymore for these sorts of issues. So I’m looking forward to what are folks going to be eager to take heed to as soon as they’re bored of these ones.”

As a writer, DMG Media is “interested by concepts and tales, and IP in the end”. This contrasts to “simply getting somebody well-known and placing a microphone in entrance of them” which East mentioned “doesn’t really feel to me like a fully-formed concept”.

Showbiz does current a spot out there, East mentioned. He cited Goalhanger’s The Rest is Entertainment, hosted by TV presenter and writer Richard Osman and British Journalism Award-winning Guardian columnist Marina Hyde, which might see them “speaking about Ofcom. It’s fully totally different to Richard Arnold and [TOWIE star] Bobby Norris speaking about Adele ingesting champagne out of a shoe. There’s room for the 2 to coexist.”

East additionally cited true crime, which “hasn’t ebbed away in any respect, if something it’s continued to develop, so it reveals that there’s room for increasingly and extra podcasts to coexist. Just since you like one podcast doesn’t preclude you from” listening to others, he mentioned.

The Mail’s in depth archive of revealed and analysis materials presents a possibility each in true crime and different genres, he added.

“People like Stephen Wright, George Odling, Guy Adams, there’s some unimaginable journalism on this constructing. They have the most important pool of archive that I’ve ever seen. So you wager your backside greenback we’re taking a look at how we utilise that as a result of the archive that DMG has is phenomenal.”

News podcasts ‘costly and time consuming’

The different purpose podcasts current a possibility inside the enterprise is they’re “fully passive” in contrast to newspapers, web sites or movies for which “it’s a must to actually cease what you’re doing and focus solely on that job”, East mentioned.

“It permits us to entry our readers and listeners and viewers… in ways in which we haven’t been capable of entry them earlier than,” he mentioned, citing as examples when individuals are within the automobile, within the health club or on the canine stroll.

Despite the alternatives total East mentioned he’s “not on the stage the place we’re taking a look at information podcasts, as a result of they’re very costly, they’re very time consuming, and it’s actually saturated”.

East is working with Mail Metro Media chief income officer Dominic Williams on monetising the brand new podcasts however mentioned there may be “no darkish arts to commercialising podcasts. It’s host reads, it’s sponsorships, it’s programmatic, it’s the entire above on the identical time, and as lots of them as potential”.

But he added: “You can’t commercialise podcasts till you’ve acquired progress, so we’re concentrating extra on progress than commercials for the time being. But it’s wholesome. We’re earning profits, as a result of we’re doing 22 million downloads. So simply as a by-product of getting that measurement viewers, you earn cash.”

East additionally has no rapid plans to place out full-length visualisations of DMG’s podcasts on Youtube, though the workforce does produce many social clips. “From a business perspective it’s fairly easy. You make far much less cash on Youtube than you do on Spotify,” he mentioned.

“It’s so simple as that. The brass tacks of it’s from a CPM perspective, it’s extremely costly to make video, and also you don’t actually make some huge cash from it. You have to realize big scale to be able to do this. Whereas truly comparatively you may make much more with so much much less in audio. It’s so much cheaper to make, and it’s so much faster to make.

“And if you happen to’re nice at making audio, it doesn’t imply that you just’re nice at making a video and vice versa. There are circumstances to be made for sure titles to be cross platform. But I haven’t acquired there but. We’re nonetheless fairly younger.”

Aim for podcasts to be ‘absolutely built-in’ into Mail writer

Asked the place he’d like audio at DMG to be in a yr’s time, East mentioned for it to be “absolutely built-in” into the enterprise.

“I imply genuinely plugged in,” he mentioned. “One of the massive issues that I’ve been engaged on since I began was how can we plug into Mail Online? That’s the place our viewers is. Global have their out of doors enterprise, they’ve their radio enterprise, we’ve got Mail Online.”

As nicely as a podcast participant on the web site, East mentioned they’d need to have the ability to join podcast episodes to related content material within the Mail Online archive. “It’s about work smarter, not tougher.”

There can also be Mail+, the recently-launched partial paywall on Mail Online which sees readers charged £4.99 per thirty days for as much as 15 premium articles a day and a curated publication.

East cited Wondery, which provides paying customers ad-free listening, unique episodes and early entry to podcasts that can later be free to all, as a possible mannequin to include in future.

“Both podcasts and Mail+ are actually of their infancy and I believe each have to mature earlier than we are able to use one another to the perfect of our skills,” East mentioned.

“So if I’ve 5 podcasts they usually’re all primary hits, then there could be a very robust enterprise case for placing ad-free variations on Mail+ or bonus variations on Mail+. Until I get there, there’s no level in creating that however that’s definitely behind our thoughts.”

In the meantime East is conscious that not the entire upcoming releases will work – however mentioned: “As lengthy as my strike price is sweet, that can make me completely happy.”

And he informed publishers: “There’s no disgrace in cancelling podcasts and I want extra folks did that. There’s completely nothing incorrect with attempting a podcast for 3 months and realising it’s not going to work, let’s simply swap it off and check out one thing else.”

Non-DMG podcasts admired by Jamie East:

• Reply All – East mentioned “they made what I think about to be the perfect podcast episode of any style ever”, The Case of the Missing Hit, “that for me crystallised every thing that’s superb about podcasts”
• Dissect– A “tremendous nerdy” music podcast
• The Adam Buxton Podcast
• The Louis Theroux Podcast
• Some of the Goalhanger The Rest Is… titles
• Smartless – hosted by actors Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett, East mentioned it’s a “nice instance of that eavesdropping style… when you possibly can genuinely inform that individuals are mates it makes the world of distinction”
• How To Fail With Elizabeth Day
• Unreal: A Critical History of Reality TV on BBC Sounds

See extra podcast listening ideas given to Press Gazette this month by Sky News political editor Beth Rigby right here.

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March 13, 2024 at 07:17PM