In the afternoon. Afternoon delight. With Todd and Rob. Oh, yeah. Well, I have no idea there. We kinda pulled the trigger and then things went went boom. Yeah. Doing doing live streams with these live stream platforms, there's a lot of timing involved. Sometimes they go sideways on you. Yeah. And, I did auto start on YouTube today, and that may not have been the right choice.
Yeah. Well Because, it it it, it's kind of weird when you do auto start because even though it's delayed, as soon as I saw it go live, it was during the 32nd countdown. So I I had to figure something else out for that. But anyway, hey, everybody. Welcome to the new media show. We are back here. At least I'm back here. Yeah. You're yeah. You're the one that traveled, not me. I'm in the same spot. Yeah.
It was kind of funny because I I went on a 3 day tour, kind of a little Gilligan's Island pub there, a 3 hour to a 3 day tour. And, the morning that I was getting ready to depart, my resort host texted me while I was eating breakfast. He said, hey. You know, they they went to typhoon condition flag 4. Some whatever they use a flag system over here. I'm like, oh, okay. How long before the storm? Oh, it seems like 24 hours away. And I'm like, great. I said, I'm still leaving on time for the
airport. And he says, oh, no. He says they cancel everything immediately. No ferries, no flights. I'm like, so how do I leave? He said, you don't. Right? Yeah. You you're there for the duration. Whatever that is. That's right. You you don't. And, about the time my flight was gonna leave,
the weather actually started to deteriorate. So it wasn't really even 24 hours and then I just got stuck and, so I was supposed to leave on a Tuesday and I end up leaving on a Saturday and what they did was Friday night, they lifted the flag. So there's the option of riding a ferry for 11 hours then taking 5 hours on a bus, but there was floods and mudslides and everything along the route. We were going home or I was going home from the ferry.
And the other right was to take this banka boat, held about 20 people, about an hour and 40 minute ride on the open ocean right after a typhoon and go to an airport called or an area called Kataklion, which is close to Boracay. They have a dozen flights out of there a day. So I got up at 3 o'clock in the morning. Did a 2 hour bus van ride from hell on this most
bumpy road you can imagine. And, got in the bunk boat and landed and booked my airline ticket in what's called the tricycle on the way to the airport, checked in and literally boarded. I think I was it was that quick, and, was out of there. But anyways, back here Saturday. So here we are. Welcome to the new media show everyone in Todd's adventures from escaping from Alcatraz. At least it is. Yeah. So That's how I'm terminally.
Yeah. So some of the big topics, you can probably tell from the artwork we we put up there is, trying to kind of pull apart and expose kind of the the download fraud that's been in podcasting for many, many years. And then also, let's, you know, let's talk about the Joe Rogan and Donald Trump event that happened on the Internet with podcasting, which is, you know, it's always a kind of a milestone moment, oftentimes, because we've seen this happen, even back with George w Bush and and Obama,
getting on podcast many years ago. And I think we can draw some correlation to that. And then also the rapid decline of mainstream media. So let's let's let's dive into it. Yeah. So so I guess the question is who of course, what the story what we're talking about is a I guess it's a newspaper in Italy. In Spain. Spain that has made the top podcast list, by Triton and, I think, PodTrak as well.
And having these, you know, 18,000,000, downloads, which is a pretty, you know, remarkable number for a news podcast. 118. No. 118 as missing a digit. Yeah. So you know, it turns out that it was just auto loading. They were pre loading the media every time their website and that's you know, here's a I basically has a couple of questions on this. Number 1, who's their host? I don't know. Odds are it's probably a
host out of Spain. But yeah. And number 2, this is a direct violation of IAB podcast measurement guidelines. You know, we had an issue Blueberry did, back, I believe, in January or February where we, introduced some code into our web player that was causing auto loading and we caught it. But we had to go back and basically make sure that there was number 1, no advertisers was impacted
so that we didn't overbill an advertiser. Number 2, had to inform our, the folks that were affected and it wasn't what was weird, it wasn't all users. It was just a certain subset of users that were using a certain feature. And, and basically number 3, we had to pull that data out of the stats.
So it's, you know, it's something now that, we have specifically, if we go in there and touch any code with the player, we we basically done or run a QA analysis on the embed to make sure none of this activity is happening. And so it can happen to anyone. It happened to us, but you know, we were we were monitoring for it and, the I don't. It appears after James sent them this email that this behavior stopped. I don't think we've we've totally painted the
picture of what's going on here yet. I think we're we're getting to the end of the conversation before we've actually talked about what's actually happened here. So the the, the episode that is in question here, so I guess it was being tracked by Triton out of Latin America, is based on their their podcast ranker. So it does have a connection to Triton Digital, and it does look like it's hosted by Triton. Oh. So
that's the platform that's going on here. And it it does contain, I I I guess, programmatic advertising in the content. So, you know, I mean, just think about the implications of that around automatic revenue and advertisers going into this and being being counted. It's a fairly small download. It's only 14 megabytes. So I I'm assuming that the content isn't very long. Right. But it's it's basically, downloading numbers have predominantly happened over mobile phones in the browser.
Oh, so So this is where most of this has been happening. So and if we look kinda historically to this, that's usually where the abuse is, is around players that are on web pages that are able to automatically trigger a download. And we've seen this in the past. This is not not a new thing that people have been doing. So so each time you go to a website, it triggers the download in the background. The user doesn't even know what's happening. Right.
It's usually how it works. So anyway, go go ahead and tell your story about how you as a platform are attacking this. Well, you know, we have to it's it's part of our IB podcast measurement guideline standards. Right. So we, you know, we had to e we mail emailed the IB, said, hey, we had an issue. Here was the period of time that was affected. Here's the remedy that we did to make sure that Yeah. This wasn't gonna happen. Here's
what we did with our customers. Here's what we did with any impacted advertisers. But for us, it was fortunate. We had no impacted advertisers because we have people on programmatic as well. So and it was completely our fault. We just missed a flag
in in one of the settings. And, so it was on us for this mistake, but we self reported, announced it publicly on our website, and really did everything we could from a mitigation standpoint to make sure that all affected parties knew how their stats were affected for this period of time where this issue was in place. And then I had to go and set new processes in place. But so the question is on their website, was it the player that was triggering the download?
Well, it's probably either the player or or the website code. 1 of the 2. Usually, how this works in it, it's a fairly simple, adjustment to the player code Yeah. Is to actually have like auto play. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that can be Well not not actually going into a player. That that that can actually just happen in the background. Yeah. There's an actual setting on most HTML players within the code to, turn off preloading. Preloading. Right. Exactly. That's what it was.
So, and and if if you preload, that's against the measurement guidelines. And, you know, I would think, you know, we we caught ourselves, with with the issue and, you know, of course, it's it's ironic because Rob, you know, I've been a pretty I've been pretty staunch on, you know, this this particular issue and I've called other companies out. So I you know, the chickens came home to roost. I had to call myself out in this instance. Right?
Yeah. So but And it's usually done by the by the the platform that's making the content available, on on the web. Yeah. And it it's an easy adjustment to to the players usually is how this works. Usually very Yeah. Very simple fix. But, you know, all the big platforms like Spotify and Apple and so like that don't enable that kind of functionality. So, you know, I think that there is, Now Iheart had the same type of issue.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it was also done over their their web experience as well. That that happened back in 2018 over a 1000 radio show websites. Yeah. That's When you think about all the all the Iheart websites playing their podcast episodes automatically and cashing them. Yeah. That's bad news.
Right. So, you know, and for for us, it was like, you know, stop the presses and you know, it's one of those emails you get from the team member and I you know, I'm like you can swear like a sailor. Because of the you know, what we're gonna have to to deal with. So I I think that, you know, and it's again, it's part of the
regular auditing. You have to know one thing that we is unique in our IB measurement guideline certification is that the folks that are using a redirect, that we do not have control of their website. In other words, they're using a different player or whatever. Before they can use our redirect, there's a certification page that pops up that says, you understand that your web player cannot preload.
You know, you have to make sure this is a setting that is doesn't preload and we have basically a, a self affidavit of the podcaster that basically says, no. Oh. Yes. I understand. I will not preload and we make them go through a series of steps before we allow them to use the redirect. Just because we can't control the player on people that are using our stats and our redirects. So and again, that was part of our sort of Well, that's the players that are
that are embeddable from your host. Right? Which Right. Which if they were using a player that came off of the blueberry platform Right. Then you do have control over it. Right. And and those folks, we don't make them certified because they're customers. So non customers. So, you know, we basically have had that was part of our certification requirements. You know, basically, they said, hey. You have to present this, a notification and get people to sign off.
This is the only way we are going to certify your redirect is if you basically have, and we're supposed to self police that. Now it's very, very hard to in in what you really do is you set a trigger. You set a trigger for web browsers. You because web browsers are usually, you know, right now, depending on some blueberry customers or make can be high as 10 or 12%, but most most folks are very, very low numbers on the web player. They're 3%.
So we basically, in our system, have a threshold that says, once a web stat goes above certain percentage on a show by show basis, it flags us in the system says, go look, that's how we caught ourselves was all of a sudden we started seeing boom boom boom boom boom, you know, 25 shows are above the threshold and we're like, what? What's going on? Yeah. This does raise some questions around Triton Digital's kind of practices as well in my view based on what you just said.
Are are they reviewing clients that are using 3rd party players, as a method of delivery that is part of their their, podcast ranker. Well, that is being gained here. Obviously, it was gained. I don't think they were held to that same level because it was specifically for the redirect because we couldn't control the player.
Well, that's what's going on here. If they're part of the podcast ranker, that they must be part of Triton's redirect or, you know, so Triton can gather that information because they were ranked. The show was ranked 12th the 12th biggest show by downloads in Latin America. Well, being that when we did our first certification with IAB, our hosting did not when we did the hosting pure hosting certification using raw log files,
they didn't have to do this notice. The only time that came into effect was when we got our redirect certified in round 2 and this is where these additional requirements were put upon us, to make sure AKA that something out of our control we couldn't, you know, and be honest with you. Now that I think about it, there's nothing to stop a hosting customer from using a different player. So potentially, that should have been an effect from the beginning. So know, maybe this is something
for IB. Oftentimes, the hosting platform doesn't know their client is doing that. Right? Because there there there's no probably way for Triton to know that this newspaper was using its own player. But this is something simple to to monitor. You know, you just have to like, you know, and we just said, okay. What's the threshold? You know, what threshold should we set for this type of activity? And that's how we we know. You know, just how we knew if there was an issue is that was our self,
you know, our flag that was set. So I don't know. I'm I'm sure this is gonna create some interesting conversations for Triton Digital if this show was on their programmatic platform. Oh, it's it's this is what I was scared about when we had our our flub was okay. Did now do I have to go back to SoundStack and say, hey, these x thousands of downloads are not to be paid. And do we have to refund? Because they the advertiser has paid for those downloads.
Do you know do we or they're obligated to pay them whether or not they have yet? That's the question. Do we have to write a check back to the the because you know, that was my big thing here. We were involved before many, many years ago with an audit that required a media company, a significant one, to write a significant check back to advertisers based on host read over billing. So, you know, I was I was quite concerned. But you know, it was it was quick
enough. The damage was small, but we had nobody on programmatic that was affected with this specific, issue. Todd, do you think that there's any risk to regular podcasters that maybe they need to think about, so they maybe don't fall into this? Or do you think that every time this happens, it happens with willful intent? Oh, I think most podcasters probably don't even know and it's not willful intent. So the question is, was this situation with this newspaper was it just an accident? Was it an
accident? Yeah. Did someone, you know, some developer have a flag set? You know, again, you don't know. And if they don't respond and make a statement, which, you know, you would hope that they would at some point make some sort of public statement. I think we went through a period of time, Todd, when it was it was kind of in vogue, I guess, to to when you load a web page that has a player on it to,
turn on the automatic play. Right? And I think we went through a period of time when it was like, no, that's not a good thing to do. Don't don't automatically start playing an episode when a page loads. I think there's if I think there's 3 settings. And if you're a developer, I might be wrong. There is autoplay, there's cache, and then there's one more I think where you you basically try to download the whole.
But it being that was only 14 megs, then guarantee you that that triggered the the download number because of the you know, the 62nd play in a 14 meg file, that means it's probably a 14 minute show. So just the pre caching alone would be enough to trigger. Now this is, you know, this is not a popular thing but I've said for a long long time that the one minute threshold should be higher.
And, that has gotten much scorn and, you know, me needing to wear a bulletproof vest because the the I I think it should be 3 to 5 minutes of content before you count it as a download. But that's me. That's not the other 30 some companies that are involved in in basically, you know,
fostering measurement guidelines. Yeah. I think and, Todd, I think you could take the position that that may be good for the advertising, side of podcasting as well because I mean, clearly the first three minutes of an episode is highly prized by sponsors and advertisers. I don't think I think what it really is, if you run the numbers, there's probably a financial impact.
So Yeah. I I I think that is, you know, a true, you know, if if you if you because it's very easy then in in our algorithm to flip the integer from 60 seconds to a 180 and and you can see the delta and I know The numbers drop fast. I know I know what the delta is. So yeah. Yeah. So there's lots of layers to this conversation. That's why I wanted to talk about it. Is it it's it it may appear, you know, I mean, this this kind of news broke on pod news
dot net. Thank you, James Cridland. But, you know, this thing has many layers to it that I think podcasters need to understand and have comprehension of because it has implications for a lot of things. And, and, you know, it's very easy to, to do this and it's also very easy to get into trouble with it. And I think from a platform perspective, it's
it's a reoccurring thing. And that's one of the reasons I wanted to talk about it was is because there is a history to this, and there is a history of impact and and problems, that people have. But yet, I I I do know that there's this underlying desire that some, you know, engineers or programmers have or marketing people have that maybe the performance of the playback may benefit from a a cash download type
of a situation. I know that this was the conversation that we had when I was talking to Facebook before they entered. You know, I don't necessarily want to bring them up, but, came into wanting to support podcasting was that they were concerned about playback performance on their platform. And so this this may be, you know, maybe it's maybe it was an accident, but maybe the intent really was to provide a better, more responsive playback experience. When that user hit
the play button Right. The show stopped started playing right away. And there's not that delay. Now Randy says, I've learned to take all my stats with a grain of salt. I've noticed some weird things with my stats. I've noticed that when they're trying to get me to upgrade my plan. So what's interesting about that statement, Randy, is, way we worked our stats at Blueberry is, as long as you're not running advertising, you're good.
You know, you you we've got customers that use a lot of bandwidth, you know. And, and but if you start commercializing your show and you are on a flat rate plan, then I have a threshold that I look at and I say, okay. That shows busted and I don't use stats. I use bandwidth because I get a bandwidth report for each show and you bust that little threshold. I'm gonna go over and look at your show and say, oh, yeah. They're running. They're not running ads. And I, you know,
they could go on with my day. But if they are running ads and they're become commercial, then I'll say, hey. You know, we should have you on the pro plan. You know, the flat rate plans are designed for folks that are not commercial, not running advertising. And there's a fine line there between 2 because what if the person just promoting, shirts in a show? Well, I'm not gonna go and they're not gonna count that as advertising.
But if they're running a, HelloFresh ad, then that's kind of like the threshold that we set. And we give shows the options are going on programmatic too. So you know, I think but you know, I've never asked someone to upgrade because of their stats number. I've asked them to upgrade because of their bandwidth usage. And again, probably in the past 5 years, that's maybe 5 customers.
And I wanted to have one one last little piece to this puzzle too for people to think about in regards to what's going on here. Is it, each time this happens, it's another, I don't know, chip out of the tree of of the rationale for why we need to move beyond downloads, because this type of activity isn't gonna happen in a stream. So this, you know, you typically don't cash a stream. Right? So Well, you you can. You can. The difference between a stream and a progressive download is very narrow.
So this could happen in a stream too, because let's be frank, it's still a physical media file. Yeah. But it's I think it's less likely. I think it's more likely to happen as a as a stream. Well, most most streaming players don't necessarily cash. Don't don't store anything. All they do is just play as it as it gets delivered to the players. But again, the it's it's the same. I I think you have a higher risk because in streaming platforms, they want the experience
to be hit play. It goes. So I bet you I bet you streaming platforms are caching. I just I bet they are. I mean, I've done a lot of work with streaming platforms and they typically only deliver what's what the limitations is. Because they're they're usually encoded in a variable bit rate type of a type of a delivery or a fixed bit rate. So they're only gonna deliver to the player at the bandwidth that it was set for. And and I don't know that there's a lot
of these players out there. I think it's a good good question, but, that that actually cache the stream content. I think when the player closes up, all the content's gone. But as it comes in, it just gets consumed, but it doesn't get stored anywhere. Again, from a technical standpoint, the difference because you're still serving physic and this is the thing is so bullshit. So, though, we wanna go to streaming technology. Well, guess what? It's still a physical file sitting somewhere.
It's it's not if you it's you are not yeah. But it's not sitting locally. It's not sitting locally. It's only sitting in the server. Yeah. Just like now, Your podcast media is sitting in a server. So Yeah. But you can't, download in the background a file that's, streaming on a server. So No. Yes. You can. Absolutely. As soon as that That's unusual. As soon as that page loads, that's got that URL link in there. Absolutely.
So what you're saying is when you stream an episode, a true streaming, I'm not talking about progressive download No. We're talking about the thing is you gotta be careful here because storing that episode because it transferred to the client player faster than the set bit rate on the stream. Saying is that stream that if you go for podcast, not what we're doing right here. Mhmm. There is a physical media file somewhere that cannot be changed.
I know but that's not what's being counted in a player though. Well, again, I think you'll have the same problem. I might be wrong but I'm sure you have because it's it's it's it's all semantics at that point. And I think it's quite different. I don't think so. Because maybe we should bring on a streaming expert to define this, but it can be done in a variety of ways. Most streaming is not from
fixed media. Streaming is live. When you hear when you when you talk to people who have radio shows, you join in progress. You don't join at the beginning of streaming programs. So that's the big difference here. Well, there's live streams and there's on demand streams. Okay. I got most of my audience from my early radio show from on demand stream. Same thing. There's a physical file sitting somewhere for the on the server, not on the client. So what we're talking about here Yeah. Of course.
Is a file that's being transferred as a download to the the player device. It's it's a cache of it's a cache of media is what it is. And it it looks the same. It's interpreted by the by the serving server as a the same thing as a complete file. I don't I don't think so. I think streaming when you hit stream, it's the same for podcast media, fixed podcast media. I might be wrong, but it's it's the same file. But it's not being transferred. It's being played
to to the player. But still, it's it's only delivering as much bandwidth as the server is configured to deliver. Yeah. I I don't know about that. But anyway, let's hope we never go to that. Well, Todd, I used to run 2 streaming streaming servers. 1 for real networks and one for for for Windows Media Server. And I I had to go in and set the delivery bandwidth to the players.
So so if that was set at 32 k or 64 k or whatever it was, that's all that was delivered to the player was exactly what that bandwidth was that was allocated for that media file. So it doesn't matter what it's encoded at necessarily in the server. Well, face then when if we go back to Facebook, all their stuff is streamed. So if they wanted to precash But that's the same thing that, YouTube does too. So when you're streaming on YouTube like we are right now,
that is truly a stream. Right. It's being stored, as it comes in in YouTube, as it's coming in. It's being it's building a a streaming file on their servers that they can be delivered on demand as a stream. Right. And that's that's probably gonna be a variable bit rate stream, because it could be a 4 k stream. It could be an HD stream or it can be a standard definitions. Well, I I think when you click play on YouTube, you don't get a delay. It starts playing
immediately. So that tells me that they're cashing. That's well, that's the behavior of a streaming server, is that it's only gonna deliver it's gonna start playing instantaneously, as those bits come in to the player. Same thing with the audio file. So again Well, it's it's different because the the download, it it can download faster than the playback on a on a podcast download. Right? So it's progressive downloads, so it depends on how
fast your bandwidth connection is. But on YouTube It'll deliver the whole media file but it's only gonna play it at the bit rate that the media file is set at. But YouTube does the same thing. I can have my Internet go off and my YouTube video will play for 3 or 4 minutes before it shuts off. So they're doing something. Try it sometime. They're cashing into the players is probably what they're doing. Cashing, but it's not being Anyway. Well, hopefully, we don't switch.
Well, this is the this is this is really at the core of the bigger conversation that continues to bubble out there around this this conflict between the advertising industry wants increasingly wants podcasting to be a streaming delivery method because they get better metrics out of that. Right? And why do they get better metrics out of it is because they can see when the stream stops and they can see when the stream ends.
Right? And they have an exact measurement on that because as the content's delivered to the player, there's a countdown clock there. And it's now granted this could be done with podcasting too. But as you've said in the past, it's not as precise. Right? So, you know, the client side can track it probably better than the server side. What's different here with the streaming with, like, a YouTube is that the server side sees that same data that you would get out of the player side.
And so with the progressive download, you're not getting that data as as accurate at the server side. Well, anyway, we'll see what happens. Yeah. Well, no. I think this is a conflict. I think, podcasting is gonna have to decide at some point, and I think these big platforms are gonna push the issue. And I think it's already happening that their advertisers are demanding to know much more accurate and detailed metrics about when
their ads are heard. Yeah. Well, I I don't know if they've checked here lately or not, but I think it's all bullshit because they already have plenty of studies that says podcast advertising works better than, you know, any other advertising. So I think they need to just get off on, you know, it's all about chasing the big dollars and not worrying about the average podcaster out there. Yeah. I think that that that is true. And and these advertisers or these brands, whatever, have
gotten used to digital buying. Yeah. And that that that they're used to buying into streaming radio. They're used to buying streams on Youtube. They're used to buying it in this method and then then you throw into the mix downloads and it it complicates their decision. That was all solved and we changed the methodology from downloads to plays. Right. But we both know that that's that's kinda BS as well. So Yeah. You know? So everyone's everyone's got That's part of the Everyone's got
plays. What I'm talking about. Everyone's got plays now. Right. Well, let's let's kinda move on and talk about what we saw this past week with, Joe Rogan and Donald Trump and what that means for a few things. Have you seen all the discussion? Did you see that Rogan put that video up on x Because Twitter and not Twitter, you could not find the full video on YouTube. You could only find clips. So some well, some monkey business was going on there. Let's be more precise about that.
What what was actually happening was, you did a search for Joe Rogan and Donald Trump in the search box. Right. You couldn't find it. That's right. Right? So you had to go to actually Joe Rogan's experience channel on YouTube, and it was in the the list of episodes that he had. So That was really the only way to find it. So, something's got And he still got 40,000,000 views. And he goes makes you go, 40,000,000 views and it couldn't be found by
search. And I Right. Nothing nothing Can you imagine how many views he would have had if it would have come up in search? Think think about the monkey businesses being who's stepping on the scales over there? Well, I think we know who. Right? It's Google. Right? Right. So but but looking at the big picture of this Oh, yeah. Amazing numbers. Trump going on podcasts, just just the ones prior to the Joe Rogan conversation has generated almost 24,000,000 views on on Donald Trump being on a variety
of big podcasters. I mean, like like he's been on the I think it's the 2nd largest and the 3rd largest podcast on, Spotify. The Sean Ryan Show and the Theo Bond podcast. And here here's the thing that I think is is my point I made, on Twitter was Rogan stream that show. Right? It was was it streamed? Does he stream that those interviews? No. It's not a live show. It's not a live show. It's it's totally recorded and then published into Spotify and into YouTube and
into his podcast. So the question is, did he edit? And with a 3 hour program, I don't think he edited it all. Now I think he's got too much integrity to to do that kind of stuff. So was, Call Her Daddy or whatever that show that had, Kamala. Am I pronouncing it right? Because I don't wanna get yelled at here. I believe so. Okay. Did did did they edit that interview? I couldn't answer that one precisely either. But So I think this isn't this is where
there's an opportunity here. You look at the controversy that came out of 60 minutes replacing an answer, with another interview doing a swap aru. Now we're talking about mainstream media. Yeah. We're talking about mainstream media. Right. So if, if a, if podcast really want to throw a continual wrench into old media, we're gonna call them old media today.
What would be real interesting is for a show like Rogan, a show like, caller daddy and, you know, whatever, where if Theo Vaughn or whatever, it would be nice to have a running, a clock. Of course, it could change the clock, but it'd be nice to have a running clock or something in there that would prove that there was no or disclaimer that there was no editing done on the interview.
So that us, as consumers of the content, whatever political side you're on, know if you have gotten the full context of an interview without any monkey business being done in removing words. It's harder to edit video and make it look smooth. Audio very, very simple. Matter of fact, I did on my show the other day. I forgot first two minutes of my podcast. So I had to record the re rerecord the first two minutes.
So I think what we have here is a situation where trust in media, going back to podcasting is going to be the it's gonna be a linchpin here because we can't trust. It doesn't matter if you're Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC. It doesn't matter what alphabet soup you watch on mainstream or old stream media. They can edit and take sound bites and you don't get the full context.
So I think context in this day and age is incredibly important because you can take anything that we say here and take a 15 second sound bite of that and make us sound like the whole most horrible monsters in the whole world if you don't have the full context of something. So it's not that extreme, but you get what I'm saying. They've done this, repeatedly repeatedly to fit their narrative. So if you have a unedited Theoban, call her daddy. Is that the show? Call her
daddy. Oh, yeah. As far as the Yeah. The And the show that Kamala did. Yeah. And then and then in Rogen and now Vance is gonna go on. These unedited will actually show you what you really wanna know about a candidate. Yeah. Let's be I'm gonna pull it back a little bit on saying unedited. I do think that the Joe Rogan podcast, probably maybe has some edits in it, but it's it's important to think about the context of what the edits are. Right? If they're editing for
the beginning and the end Right. And maybe editing for gaps in their content or whatever. So Oh, great. Whatever. Yeah. They'll say Joe had to go to the bathroom or something. It's okay to edit that kind of stuff. Right? Yeah. But it's it's not okay if you're editing
to change the There it is. What Donald Trump said or to change the the question that Joe Rogan said, which sometimes, this is what has gotten, you know, you know, out of control out there in the political realm is when people take snippets from Yep. A conversation and reinterpret it as something unintended. On the part of the person saying it, because they didn't take the full context of it. That's the real danger of this. But
but it yeah. It gets back to this, Todd, that all the research is showing that the trust in podcasts is so much higher than mainstream media right now because of the authentic conversations. You know, the 3 hour chats. A 3 hour. Yeah. Even if they do even if they Joe Rogan is the question. Even if they do edit, it's 3 hours. It's still 3 hours. Right? You know, and but again, if they haven't edited, then you get to see the beginning, the middle and the end.
Yeah. And all the superfluous interactions that happen from a question to an answer, not not the 15 second sound bite. Mhmm. And it makes it doesn't matter which candidate, but they've you know, obviously, we've seen this be weaponized in a big way against Trump in a big way. And maybe to Kamala Kamala too. You know, they've taken sound bites from her that you're like, what what is what is this word soup? You know, but we maybe we didn't hear the beginning and the end.
And maybe the perspective would be different if we heard the beginning and the end and not just the sound bite. The news cycles can't go for 3 hours because, you know, they're on a 30 minute news cycle. So Yeah. It could be taken advantage. I mean, a lot of voters are fairly low information voters. Right? So, you know, this concept of, snapshots and sound bites is is certainly an important, factor in a political campaign. So I was
watching the Facebook and tick TikTok responses. This because I was generally very curious what people's if it would cause people to flip. Now there were some people that said, oh, now I'm voting for him and oh, no, I'm not. You know, so there was definitely people, change their minds and I think that's the key here and having the ability to, again, not just hear a sound bite, but hear the beginning, middle, the end, the full story.
Yeah. And, you know, I listened I listened to the 3 hours and there was a few things and I was like, wow. And, you know, and and you know, the same thing with, and and I listened to the other interview as well and I was like, okay. But again, I don't know on caller daddy if they edited it or not. I'm suspicious that they may have, but they may not have. But I think it would be good for all of those podcasters to come out and say, yeah. We we we didn't edit. Right. In in k e, we didn't edit the
context to the beginning, middle, and end. You got the full It's the editing of the context of the conversation. Right. One other piece of this that we haven't talked about, which maybe draws some interesting, contextual correlation around the distribution of content like this right now is is that the the numbers that I've seen as of October 26th was that the Rogan audio podcast got 3,100,000 downloads. Mhmm. I don't know what the total number is today. It's a few days past that.
But Twitter x got 18,000,000 views of the same media file. Yeah. I was I was gonna load it here and look. So you you and then 40,000,000 views on YouTube. Yeah. And you kinda, you know, you paint the picture and I've, I've, I've said this before on this podcast, you know, was it Steven Bartlett from the CEO of a podcast, the CEO of Diary of a CEO podcast. Mhmm. We commented a podcast movement that he felt that podcasting felt small.
And so I guess if you put it on the context of what I'm seeing here with the Joe Rogan numbers, let's just give give Joe Rogan the benefit of a doubt on his audio podcast that maybe he had 5,000,000 Mhmm. Downloads of his audio podcast, but yet he had 18,000,000 views of the full episode on X and 40,000,000 views on YouTube. What does that say about the the media landscape right now around the same content? Well, let me do a do me Where's the scale? Well, how many people watch CNN primetime?
In the 8 to 11 PM, CNN averaged 893 1,000 among the 25 to 54 and 3.4 3.463000000 among p 2. So, p 2 plus, whatever that is. That was CNN's strongest Monday through Thursday prime time performance since the week of the presidential Biden inauguration. So so 3 point let's say CNN 4,200,000. And that's again people that come in and come out between 8 and 11. Now let's look at Fox. So what you're talking about is the prime time viewership of of of CNN from 4 to 8
PM. Is that what you're saying? Eastern? Yeah. So Fox News averaged, a little bit different time here. Fox in total, Fox News averaged 1.4 3 viewership increasing year to year and a 194,000 plus 48. In prime time, Fox News garnered 2,500,000 viewers and 320. So about the same about the same number. Although I think when they look at the real rankings, Fox is killing CNN hand over foot, in whatever their ratings, you know, when they when they actually do the Nielsen ratings or whatever.
MSNBC. How many people watch MSNBC primetime? Oh, it's probably, radically less. A 1.4 oh, here's it is. Primetime Fox 2.5, MSNBC 1.4. Kind of a breakdown. I wonder if I if they've got more here. Who has more viewers, CNN or MSNBC? CNN and Reek, the head of s MSNBC. Which news station has the most Fox has the most on 24 hour period coverage? So yeah. So looks to me like Rogan kicked their ass. Well,
yeah. I would say that's I mean I mean, Joe Rogan got more audience out of his audio podcast than than probably all those networks combined. Right. And then So and that's not even counting the the action that's happening on Facebook and YouTube and and x. You know, if you total all that stuff up, you're talking, you know, close to a 100,000,000 views, which these networks are not even anywhere near that. So again, Rogan is a is a is an outlier. He is a big name, but he is pulling numbers
bigger than old media. Randy says people out there will chop up that for Trump memes all over the net. It is getting hard with AI and like 11 Labs to know who who is the who is true or fake. That's true. Yeah. It's true. But it wasn't just Joe Rogan that got these kind of numbers. Leo Vaughn. There was Theo Vaughn. There was David. Sean Ryan and Lex Lex Friedman, is pulling in huge numbers too. And that totaled up almost 24,000,000 used. I saw a a clip on YouTube. Now was it Sean Ryan?
No. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe it was. Let me go look at this guy. Yeah. I I really like Sean Ryan. You know, I I follow him. I do too. I think he's terrific. Yeah. He's you know, he does a lot of military seals, CIA type of interviews. I really like his interviews. He made a comment, Facebook short that basically said, hey, we this this is a monumental
event. And I think if you think about where we are in the world today and the trust, you know, I'm sure you're having a heyday with this over on trust factor, but it's it's a situation where, well, you know, no one trusts mainstream media. It doesn't matter which channel. You might be a diehard. They pick sides. Yeah. You might be a diehard Fox or CNN or MSNBC or Rachel Maddow or whoever whatever your whatever your flavor is and I don't again, we don't care here.
But don't you want the whole story? Well, Todd, that's a much bigger existential question. Right? Is is what's the landscape going forward? Is the age or the the era of, a bipartisan, nonpartisan media, gone? Well, first of all, I think it is. There's no partisan media anymore. It's it's it's nonpartisan media. And Well, no. No. It's partisan media. Oh, yeah. Partisan media. That's right. There's no nonpartisan media.
Yeah. So it's and and because frankly, I don't know that you're gonna build audience these days if you're not partisan. So be what would be really interesting here, and let's be let's be just straight up honest. If if Kamala went on Rogen and did 3 hours if she did 3 hours, if she did the equivalent of what former president Trump did, this would be the true because then we could see the questions Rogan was answer asking.
Because you look at the questions he asked former president Trump, some of those were very very hard questions. No no softballs. There is no there is no softball pitches that were going on there. If you listen to it, most people, have listened. They listened to a sound bite. But I challenge people if if if she does go on and I hear I think the chance of that is 0. I don't think she's gonna go on for 3 hours. I just don't. I think it's too big of a risk for her. I
think. Yeah. She might go on the day the day after the election if she wins, but she's not gonna go on before the election. I just don't think so. Yeah. I did see a online poll poll on x that, Joe Rogan put out saying, should I have Kamala Harris on the podcast? Yes or no? And I did see in there that the results were showing over 60%. Yes. But then but still 40% of people said no. No. So why are they saying But that could be very similar with Donald Trump too. Right? Right. It could be
the same thing. But it would be it would be awesome then to have a side by side comparison and look at the interview questions and figure out, okay, did the hard questions get answered? Did softball questions get thrown out? Was there a parity in in treating the candidate the same? I think with Rogan, we would have close to parity. But, you know, the history has already shown that even on some of the when I watched to call her daddy, those are some pretty softball questions that she got.
She weren't as hard I would imagine a lot of the talking points were probably pre agreed to with that with that particular Then they should just it'd be nice to have them disclose that. Well, because I I've heard that Joe Biden does that with with the interviews. Well, they'll talk to the host of whoever's doing the interview, and they'll agree to a list of questions. Yeah. I'm sure. How could that not happen even with former president Trump? Do you think they do that?
I don't think. Well, that this I don't know for sure. Yeah. I don't know. I'm just saying that I don't get a sense that anything was agreed to on topics, but I could be wrong. I don't know. I'm not behind But but, again, I think this is all part of would be important disclosure as we move out of, you know, whatever's gonna happen to elections, whatever's gonna happen in
the election. But as we move out of this into the next season, I think there's there's good there's some things here that could come out of this where, you know, Rogan could say, listen. Hey. He didn't get advanced access to the questions. There was no editing of the question beginning, middle, and end of of the if we did editing, this is what we did. I'm sure people in the space have went through that video with a fine tooth comb looking for a way to put pinholes in
Rogan's commentary. So for his aspect, I'm 95% sure there was no editing done. Just because there's political mileage and being able to say see at 3 minutes and 82 3 minutes 82. 3 minutes and 32 seconds, there was a glitch. You know, it's a cut. What happened? Why was there a cut? So I I don't know. I I think there's an opportunity here for podcasting to truly, truly, truly be the new media and the trustworthy source of of all content when it doesn't matter presidential or whatever.
Yeah. I thought it was interesting that, as kind of a backdrop to this for the Joe Rogan kind of situation, is that he's got about 15,000,000 Spotify followers right now. And that that podcast is available in a video form and an audio form. So you can take your pick. Right? And he has 17,500,000 YouTube subscribers. So it doesn't say anything in here about how many how many Apple followers that he has. Yeah. Or but it says on Spotify. That's because he's hosted on Spotify, and he's
a partner of Spotify. And They're not gonna talk about Apple numbers. I kinda wonder how much of that interview with Donald Trump, in the back of Joe's mind, thought about his relationship with Spotify. Because if I think about the the history of him being on that on that platform, is that there has been times when he's been very controversial on that platform, and Spotify was, you know, having some second thoughts. Yeah. It wasn't
that long ago. It was only a couple of years ago that this happened, and maybe wouldn't have been renewed or something. I mean, I kind of felt that tension. Right? Back especially during during the pandemic time frame. So I do kind of wonder if Joe has to kind of, like, hold back on some things, and maybe not talk about certain issues. Because I think he did get some heat for not challenging Donald Trump about the whole COVID vaccine and that kind of
stuff. So I don't I just wonder if he has to kinda couch his questions and his conversation, keeping in mind that his his platform is who they are, right, and what their what their values are. Well, that's that's a good question. The only way we're ever gonna know that is if Joe leaves Spotify. And then those stories will come out maybe depending on the exit NDA he has. But he's under contract right now, so we'll never know.
Yeah. Because I did hear him say at the very beginning of the interview that he wanted to talk about this subject, but he needed he couldn't play certain things on the screen because YouTube would ban him or block him. Yeah. Right? So he said that at the very beginning of the program,
which I thought was interesting. But, you know, this gets back into our earlier conversation about, like brand safety and these tools where content creators have to censor themselves around what they say and what they can't say, the questions that they ask, the topics that they cover, because they're concerned about monetization and takedowns. Yeah. If they're on a platform that does that. It does that. Right. Which a lot of the platforms do.
Well, you know, I I you know, to be honest with you, I had plenty of other things to do I could have done for 3 hours. But I wanted to be able to and the reason I wanted to watch it versus listen to it in this regard was I was looking for those cuts. Yeah. There's any language stuff that you can pick up in the video. And I was and I was looking for edits and I, you know, I was looking for
things, you know. And and so from that regard, that's the reason I want and normally, I would just listen to Rogen, when I do. I don't know if he has a guest that is is coming on. But here, you know, if you think about this, this is a was an incredibly strategic move by the
Trump campaign and being on Rogan. And now that his running mate is going to be on, that that's that's, you know, that's an that shows you, at least in my opinion, that they want the hard questions and they want to be challenged and whether you like it or not, you can then make your own judgment on the on the responses. You know, no one when he when he does his rallies and all of them and even Kamala, they do run the same playbook, same script,
same things. It's just a rinse, wash, repeat, different city. So unless he says something outlandish or she says something outlandish or If there's something in the news that's happening at that time, then they'll pick up as a segment. So, you know, what you see in the rallies is the same same sound bites again and again and again that make it through TikTok and all the other places. Yeah. And that's not what I wanna hear.
No. That's true. I mean, it and that's what's great about them doing these long form podcasts. And there's another piece of this too, is that one of the problems that we see in the media landscape, especially around politics right now, is each side doesn't really wanna listen to the other side. Oh, no. Right? They they focus on getting, sound bites about what the other side says. Yeah. Right? And so nobody's really listening to the whole conversation, really, of any of these candidates on the
opposite side. Right. Right. Yeah. So those that are in favor of Donald Trump, probably never never listened to the entire Kamala Harris conversations on the interviews that she does. Right. Right. And inverse the the, the Democrat side of the fence probably never listens to the entire conversation that Donald Trump's because they're so repulsed by him. Right? They can't they can't handle it. Yeah. They they they they they they wanna, you know yeah. Right. But it's so important for people.
I want I've been saying this for a long time, is that it's so important for all of us as voters in the United States of America to actually listen to both of these people talk in long form conversations and really get to know them, not just rely on sound bites that comes from the mainstream media. Get into the details. Now here here's here's I'm gonna take a People aren't willing to do that though. I'm gonna take a little different approach.
We kind of know what we're getting with these 2 candidates. There's kind of Some more know more than others. Right? And some people know whatever they've heard. But in the real nitty gritty, if we want real change to happen, senators, House of Representatives, local state legislatures, your county commission, your county commission, your all these people that are on things that do really affect you besides taxes and the debt and everything else. Your your local zoning. This is where we need more
because I I went to vote, Rob. I got my absentee ballot and I've already voted too. And I'm asking my sister, do what's the story on this candidate? I don't know who they are. I don't know what they do. I don't know if I should vote for the Republican or the Democrat or the Independent. I said I have nearly a clue. Especially in the local races. Yeah. So I'm and I'm like and and she's kind of tuned in, so she gave me her opinion.
And you know, and to be honest with you, I took her advice and picked the candidate she suggested because I trust her. But if if I didn't have someone to reach out to, I would have had to if if I really cared, I would have had to went online, found their website, tried to sort through their BS sound bites and figure out, okay, what is this person?
If we could actually have, I would sit through 5 or 6 hours of content to hear the presidential candidates, the senators, the House of Representatives. I would listen to local the local candidate and really know who I'm voting for. You know, my, situation happened oh, it's been probably 10 or 15 years. I was in still living in Hawaii and, Hawaii is I mean, it's it's it's hardcore. I think there's one token Republican, the whole state.
And, I was, it was a 4th July, event and I was hanging out with family members and, department of our, relatives who's now just a matter of fact, I just went to his funeral when I was in Hawaii. Him and I were sitting there talking and in walks the politicians. Right? And the question was asked, where did you go to high school? And no no real substantive questions. So Todd, of course, I don't care what high school you went to in Hawaii.
That's a thing. And I I so I asked the candidate 3 or 4 things, about its issues in Hawaii and he responded. And I didn't know until later that the guy was a Republican. And so, you know, I'm kind of on my phone and then, of course, my uncle's like wow. I really like him. He's that that those are great questions and you get great responses. And I said I said uncle, I said, who who do you normally vote? I'll always vote straight ticket, Democrat. Oh, right. And I said you realize
straight down the line. Right. And I cross. Yeah. And I said you realize he was a republican and he I kinda got this kind of he had this like moment where he was like, I could tell that there was a shift. Now I he may have still voted straight Democrat, but at least set a flag in his head. And I again, I didn't know when the guy came in the tent because he didn't say I'm so I'm running for such and such district and blah blah blah. And, so for me, it just tells me that people really don't know
who their candidates are. They don't know their issues. They don't know what they stand for. And if we did, if we did, this country would be a hell of a lot different. Yeah. I actually registered in the state of Connecticut as unaffiliated. So I I I didn't designate a party. I don't really believe in that. I I don't believe you have to reg We we we we should be put in these silos to say, well, you're a democrat or you're Yeah. Yeah. I don't think in Michigan, we have to declare.
That's why I I register as unaffiliated because I wanna be able to pick the Yeah. The people by by who they are. I don't think in Michigan I have to declare which party I'm part of. Some of the states actually re require that because one of the reasons is because of the the primaries tend to be either Republican or Democrat. Sometimes they happen at different times of the year. So those people need to be identified, I guess.
So we didn't wanna turn this into a political show, but I think the the the importance here What's the mapping back to podcast? Yeah. The mapping is is there needs to be more of this. Right. And you know, we need to have the ability to be educated on, you know, who's going to who's going to represent us and you know, run up the debt or you know, spend more money on defense or whatever your whatever you want or don't want.
You know, you should have that education. Say, okay, I don't want this person because Right. And and I think it's also safe to say that, you know, mainstream media could do this too. The problem is that they've lost trust. No, no. They've lost the trust of the of their audience and their audience is going to where they feel like they can trust
to get more authentic and real conversations. I mean, I mean, of all the people that could be doing this, it's mainstream media because they have the reach, they have the ability, they have the the reputation from the past, not so much in the present, but but, you know, they could be doing this too. I mean, they could be doing interviews like this that reach this kind of scale, but nobody trusts them. I think the part of the issue is, as well is when they are accused of being biased,
they say, oh, no. We're not. We're not biased. We give fair and equal coverage, but there's so much inside the tent. They can't see beyond the horizon of what they're involved in. Where the rest of us see this big picture like, oh, yeah. They're just a, you know, it should be, d and, d and c and b c. Right. You know Well, I think that all these big networks have made a mistake by being a network that puts on a debate.
I think it's been a just a blunder on their part, because what we've seen them do is expose themselves as being biased Yeah. In a significant way. I liked it in the past, And because we we we used to have a bipartisan or an unpartisan, election debate committee Oh, I don't remember that. That used to put these debates on, and they hired an independent video production company to come in and create a video feed out of that event. That's how it used to be done.
Now what's being done is it's being earmarked to be it's gonna be a CNN debate, or it's gonna be an ABC News debate. And if those networks are biased, and they come into it and give them the impression that they're biased, then that's gonna taint them as an untrustworthy Right. News organization. So I think that that these debates should be put on an an unaffiliated and unbiased
organization. Can you imagine having, Rogan doing the debate and having both candidates in separate rooms where they can't see each other or hear each other? And well, yeah, bring bring Joe Rogan in, bring, you know, a representative of across the board media out there from the independent side. And have them in separate rooms where they can't hear each other and they'll
say, okay. Here's the question. And one candidate gets the question and the other and you can't do they can they they can't rebuttal because they haven't heard each other. I think that would be a really that now that would be a debate I would actually watch. It wouldn't really be a debate that's not a debate. You're siloing them so much where there's no dynamic between them. That's that's kind of the whole point. Well, then that's I
guess it's not called a debate. It's a, you know, it's a it's a Just an interview. That point. Right. They both get the same question. Right. But I think bringing in people that are not affiliated with the with the population has associated with as a biased one side or the other network. So so as the This is key. So as the podcast listeners are out there, you know, do you see an opportunity here, you know, for the ability to add We've talked about local
podcasting for Yeah. For years or actually, especially in the last couple of weeks. We've been talking about it. The challenges is no one would have went on Rogan unless he had as big of an audience as he has. So that'd be the another thing. It's a economy of scale. So can you get a local politician to go on a local show that may have a small local audience? They may not find it worth their time.
So it just depends if it's a local candidate for, like, the state house or the state senate or something like that. You're you're right. That's why there needs to be some local state level, city level podcasts that are out there that that reach a large percentage of the population for them to do it. I Yeah. I I agree with you. And I don't I think to some degree those exist, but not at the level that they're that really needs to happen.
Because I think it would make a a big difference because, you know, most of you are so disenfranchised with the election process at this point. It's kinda interesting, being overseas at this time because I'm getting questions, like, from people that are here and expats from other countries. And the basic question is is what the beep is going on in America? You know, that's the question I keep getting asked. What the you know, have you guys went insane? And it's not just about the
politics. It's everything. And, it's curious. It's curious to see this external feedback. And, what's even more interesting is they'll be very vocal to tell me who they think should be president. And I'll say that based on the conversations I've been having, you know, Kamala better be happy that they can't vote. Because the majority of people that I run into, they don't know the nuances. They just see the personality.
And I did see that, Arnold Schwarzenegger came out today with a public post endorsing, Kamala Harris. Well, that's not surprising because well, maybe He's a former republican That's true. Governor of California. Right? So again, but again, it is curious to hear the commentary at least locally. And I don't like to talk politics. Matter of fact, being a visitor in the Philippines, you shall never talk about local politics. It's a it's a taboo thing. Stay out of their business.
Don't talk about their policies. Don't don't don't because most people are going to not necessarily have positive things to say and it can get people in trouble. So, you know, and there's a lot of youtubers here that are on the borderline and I'm like, why why go on the borderline and this is our country, you know, they they're gonna do what they're gonna do, stay the hell out of it. So, and I think that the reason we're talking about it tonight is that we're just
seeing such a big impact on Yeah. On politics right now, that is rooted in independent created media. Yeah. And that includes podcasting. But I think it's it's an interesting maybe we've crossed over a threshold here, Todd, where this this medium that we call podcasting and new media and YouTube or, you know, it depends on how much of an inclusion that that that you wanna have here has really taken over the mantle of being the mainstream
media now. Right? People have voted with their eyes and their ears. Yeah. How many if if you had 300 how many what is the population of the United States right now? 300 something. 365,000,000 or something like that. Population of USA. Let's see here. 335,000,000 people. 35,000,000. And so Rogan has had 36,000,000 views on his 40. 40. Just on just on YouTube. So he has reached 10% of the well, of course, there's probably some I'd like to see that breakdown.
How much of that is US and how much of that is foreign from a listener standpoint? But I would say probably he's reached at least 10% of the electorate. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, if you look at the 18,000,000 views on Twitter x, you know, between those, just those 2 is 60,000,000. And then you add up the the almost 25,000,000 that were on other podcasts that Donald Trump has been on. And then You know, I mean, you're getting some serious numbers. What was the numbers that she did on, caller daddy?
I've I've I've never seen those numbers, so I don't know. I don't know. And that would be the number I'd wanna see. But you I can't imagine that that one hit the this this much. I would think it would be at least a1000000 or more, but it's hard to say. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Someone knows someone knows a colleague find out if you look it up in in YouTube to find, that conversation. There's gonna be a a view
count that's gonna be underneath that. Now granted, we're not gonna know what the interview on the audio podcast was, but let's see here. It's Spotify. Again, let me look for YouTube. Again, I can't find it. It's not in the search results. So oh, here we go. Call her daddy. Alright. See okay. 744,000 views. On YouTube. Not even a 1000000. Wow. Well, yeah. So in that regard then, the Rogan man, he knocked it out of the ballpark, didn't he?
If you can reach 10 if you can reach 10% of the US population. Just in one interview. That's that's that's incredible. Yeah. But it wasn't If that's what he did. I mean, it was a lot of people that probably consumed that from other countries around the world. Yeah. But still, it's this let's say 5%. Mhmm. You know, that's that's a creator's dream to reach that many people. Yeah. And the cable mainstream media is not
getting anywhere close to that. And it wasn't on new and trending on YouTube either. No. Of course not. There was saying, you know, there was a I saw some TikTok video about what was trending at the same time and people were laughing about, you know, it's just bullshit stuff. It was, you know? Yeah. Yeah. What I don't know. I again, we're trying Some on the scale. Right? Yeah. We're trying not to we're trying to give a good perspective here, everyone. So don't get mad
at us. We're just, you know, we're just telling the numbers that we see. Yeah. Well, the numbers tell a story. That's that's why Well, I I hope she Numbers can really tell. I hope she goes on. I hope she agrees to come and go on. I do too. You know, she's got some time. It's time is running short. You know, today is Wednesday. So I would say for it to be effective, it either had to be Thursday or Friday at a minimum.
It's not gonna swing the needle on a Monday for sure because, you know, half the population's already pre voted. So Yeah. That's that's what I'm gonna say. I I think the last number I saw was over 50,000,000 people have already voted. So Yeah. And they keep, throwing more and more names, noncitizens off of, the various voter lists around the country. I see. Well, to be fair, that that Supreme Court ruling only affected 1600 people
in one state. So I don't want to add to the hype of voter fraud and all this other stuff, but it is nice to see that they were able at least one state was able to remove non citizens. Now again, some states allow non citizens to vote on local issues. Yeah. And again, I've got a pretty strong opinion on that. I think it should be, What's the federal law that you have to have ID, right? Well, no. No. Not at all. It's state by states decide on ID.
California California, it's against the law to ask for an ID. Now, so some states don't state by state decides on. I think it should be a federal law that you have to show ID or something that have a way to prove if you don't have ID that you are who you say you are. Every, you know, there's not there's very few people that don't have a social security number. But again, social security number. Some sort of a state ID
because the state requires it. I mean, you can't even do anything without a state ID. Social Security numbers, though, can be issued to noncitizens too. So but I don't know if there's a way to flag who is and who isn't. The reason I know that is, Shoko had a Social Security number when she worked for duty free in Saipan when she was just 19. And when she moved to the United States and we got married and then we did the immigration thing,
her her social security number didn't change. It carried over from when she was in Saipan. I I I was astounded. I didn't realize and there was no special provisions on the social security card at all. She just got a number. So and she didn't know that she'd paid Social Security taxes in as a non citizen. So Yeah. Yeah. But curious. I'm sure that happens. Yeah. I'm sure that happens. The IRS still wants to collect their income tax. Well, some too much about Someone paid Social Security on
my end. I basically someone was using my Social Security number for a while and paying Social Security taxes on it. What? Yeah. Yeah. I had Social Security being paid on my, Social Security number, from another source. Someone used my, and it caused some tax issues. So I they they cleared it up. But for 2 or 3 years, someone had gotten a hold of my Social Security number and was paying specifically paying Social Security. So I'm sure someone got a job somewhere and, you know,
luck 1 in a 1000000. I was the one the number they came up with and or was it, did this person have have the same name that you have? Well Maybe they got confused. Who knows? No. I don't think so. And I don't know. This was this was in the eighties. So, it's just it seems odd that somebody would pay Social Security taxes or taxes on the behalf of somebody else. Yeah. Well, I've heard it's happened more than once. But again, in those early eighties, maybe the systems weren't
complicated enough to do that matching. They just came in on a number or whatever. Who knows? Yeah. And you think there would have been an ABC matching. But yeah. So yeah, I actually have still on my Social Security records some credit for income that I didn't actually earn. Wow. Never had that happened to me. No. I guess I've been lucky. But Yeah. Alright. Well gonna be interesting here in the next week to see what happens, you know? Yeah. I I think it's gonna be a bumpy ride would be my
my projection here. I don't think it's gonna go smooth. Well, I don't think we'll know on Tuesday. We'll probably not know until the weekend. It's probably gonna be at least a few days afterwards. And then all the lawsuits that each sides throws. And it's amazing how other countries can do it all in a day. They they vote and they report and they have everything done in a day and then they they require in person voting with an ID.
I've been in countries before where they put a, it's either on the hand or on the head. They put, like a mark. They mark you if you voted. And so that way, that stops you from it doesn't wash off for 2 or 3 days. I don't know if it's on the hand or on the I can't remember where, but that's how they they ensure that you haven't voted twice. I think I've seen pictures of, people in other countries that have voted is that their their fingers Or maybe their finger. Yeah. Their
fingers had a color put on it. Yeah. I can't They have to dye their finger. Yeah. Proves because if they voted again, that that could be tray tray. Yeah. It's something that doesn't wash off for 2 or 3 days. So, can you imagine Americans being asked, put your hand in this green ink? Very barbaric. There would be there would be lawsuits abound, you know. Yeah. I got him traumatized because, you know, now people know I voted. Paper ballots. Right? I mean, that's how I
voted. I voted on a paper ballot here in Connecticut. Me too. On my absentee ballot. I early voted. Actually, I went into a polling location Okay. And actually voted in a polling location in a little cubicle thing. Right? And it printed out your ballot. Right? It printed out. It was actually right. I used a pen and ink on a on a ballot that had my name associated with it, and I put it into an envelope and I brought it over to the,
there was a person working Scanning machine. A desk there that no. They didn't scan it. They just took the envelope from me. They you know, I sealed the envelope with the ballot inside of it, and they dropped it into a bin and said this will be counted on, November 5th. Oh, The way and when I voted in the primary, of course, it was on election day, the machine I used was digital, but it printed out the ballot. I know some yeah. Yeah. Some some systems did. Yeah. And then it scanned.
And they only had one of those machines. Everyone else was printing on paper ballots. So it was kinda weird. I think I've also heard that some of those machines will, happen, seem to print the wrong selections My out. But but thank goodness that the voter can see what that Yeah. That was before they turn it in. My sister is, the county clerk for our town or she's the clerk. Excuse me. Township clerk. So she runs the voting in our township.
And, of course, I was asking her 82 questions on, you know, how they validate the machine. And she says, oh, yeah. She says, you know, they're like, I think the day before if there's a process that they run, like, 30 or 40 ballots through this thing and mismark ballots and making sure the machine is calibrated. So Properly to to credit the right Yeah. People with the votes. Right? Right. So and she says if the machine throws an error, she said all those ballots come out and have
to be man hand hand counted. I'm like, oh my god. So Wow. Yeah. Okay. And it's a small township, so it wouldn't be probably 6, 7, maybe 800 people. So not an unsurmountable task, but I think that's why I don't think there's any way to game a paper ballot that has ink on it. No. Right? Versus trying to do it in a voting machine and have it output something. I think there's a risk factor that But I guarantee your ballot is going to be put something. But I guarantee There's a
risk factor there. But I guarantee your ballot is gonna be scanned after that ballot that you had. Oh, it will be. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I'm sure that's true. So eventually, it's gonna be scanned anyway. There's not a person there counting and marking a note on a piece of paper. Yeah. Yeah. They're not making a a towel. Yeah. But to count, you know, like There's another 5. The slash through it. You know, that's 5. That's 10. Right? Yeah. Alright, everybody go vote,
if you haven't voted. And, we'd love to hear your feedback on what you think all this means for podcasting. And, Yeah. Well, local local podcasts are the key to all of us being better informed about the candidates. You know, don't do like I did have have to make has to ask my sister about local candidates, you know? And then yeah, I think we also have to ask the question at some point in during this path, do we think that the mainstream or cable media will learn their lesson? No. Right?
Not not until they're broke. Which means that the path that they're on is to complete destruction Yeah. And lack of relevancy over a period of time, which means that podcasting and new media and these platforms will continue in their escalation of importance. The beauty of being where I am now, I'm getting no political ads. I don't, I don't have mainstream media. So all I see is soundbites, from anything that I may be flipping through
and TikTok and stuff like that. Yeah. Or or x. So I'm not being subjected to the pain that the rest of you are in in getting political advertisers. Although I did see a GoDaddy ad being, being run-in Spanish. So I sent a note to my GoDaddy rep and I said, hey, wrong language for the country. You know, they they yes. They had a Spanish background and some of the words mean the same, but you should not be running that ad there.
And and I'd been seeing it for like 2 weeks and, 2 days after I let them know, the ad went away and was replaced with the English speaking ads. So I thought, oh, so the message did get through. Yeah, Todd. And I think you raise an interesting point around political advertising too is that I'm not sure that those those political ads really work anymore because there's not that many people watching cable television anymore. No. But it's their cash cow. It's how they survive.
Yeah. I I think it's kind of a waste of money to be quite honest with you. I mean, probably most of the play that these ads get, or is when they're taken, and put out on x or, YouTube or any of these platforms or a part of a podcast. Right? People will play these in their shows. One tactic you can do is if you if you specifically hate a specific candidate and you're on Facebook, make sure you let their ads play all the way through so they have to pay for them. Right. Yeah.
Spoke those brands. Well, you know, yeah, just, you know, just play and make sure that, you know, that's one less ad someone else on the other side will not see. Right. Right. That's true. That's true because they do by large numbers of impressions. Well, I I've seen mostly, democrat ads on TikTok. They bought heavy into TikTok. So believe it or even here, I'm seeing democrat ads on TikTok, which is kind of weird.
You would think that they would filter that so that, you know, me watching TikTok in the Philippines would not go against their budget, but it has. Maybe they they know that you're Oh, maybe maybe. Yeah. Maybe that targeting is exactly right. That's probably what it is. They're not that I guess they're not that stupid. Okay. We we've, went pretty long here. So, let me, prep the
the the captions here. How you guys you know, this new I'm using for those of you that don't know, I'm using Restream dot io right now to do the show. And, it's it's a great it's it's it's $50 a month, but it's, you can restream to multiple. We're streaming to 8 different platforms right now. So it's a a viable replacement, from StreamYard. But you can find us at new media show.comforward/live. Of course, our Twitter account is at nmspodcast or you can find the link at new media show dot com.
If you have a comment for me, you can send it to [email protected]@geeknewsonxor@[email protected]. And Rob? Yeah. I can be find I can be found at, [email protected]@gmail.com also works. And on x@robgreenley, the two e's on the end, and I have a website, robgreenley.com. So it's safe to say I can be found on all of the major social platforms and on my YouTube channel too, where I do a bunch of shows up there, on, on variety of topics and,
and even even EV vehicles. So if you have an interest in that, and what's going on, that would be a good good place to go. So And if you have not yet subscribed to the show and you're watching this, I've got a QR code up there in the right hand column above, Rob's head that, leads you to the new media show follow or subscribe page. So, make sure that you, you subscribe to the show when you're over at newmedia show.com. And those of you on YouTube and Facebook
and wherever else you've been commenting. I the the listener count says pretty says, where is it at? It shows me how many people are watching, but I don't understand where they're all coming from. So Yeah. Yeah. It's it's usually just an aggregated number. Yeah. Probably. So anyway, everyone, thanks for being here and we'll be back next week with another exciting edition of the new media show, not the old media. So everyone, thanks so much. And, thanks to mom that's listening out there. She said
go podcasting. So, everyone take care. We'll see you next time. Bye bye. Okay. Bye, everybody.