Yesterday was a good day for fans of quality TV. For starters, a new season of ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING finally dropped on Hulu. I use the qualifier “finally” because it’s been tacitly promoted pretty much all year, what with Steve Martin taking victory laps and having documentary biographies about his life being produced in honor of his turning 80, and Martin Short holding court on a tepid re-revival of MATCH GAME all summer long that in hindsight looks like a gig designed exclusively to promote this. Judging by both the quantitaive and qualitative reactions to it, were it not for the classy and lovely presence of co-star Selena Gomez for a couple of the hours, that might have gone down as the most disappointing reboot of an iconic show since the thankfully all-but-forgotten bargain basement version of PYRAMID that I was stuck with–the one that showed off the mediocrity of Mike Richards’ hosting talents long before JEOPARDY! and even his misoygnist podcasts.
Ironically, it was podcast news that made this season’s launch extra special, as VARIETY’s Michael Schneider shared yesterday:
Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building,” a series about podcasters, is about to get an official one of its own. Disney Entertainment Television is embarking on a major push in the video podcast space…with “‘Only Murders in the Building’ Official Podcast,” hosted and executive produced by series star Michael Cyril Creighton..
Creighton had previously hosted “One Killer Question,” an “Only Murders in the Building” aftershow that previously ran on Hulu as a companion to “Only Murders.” Like that show did, the new podcast will also feature Creighton as host, as he recaps and dissects each episode with the help of guests. Among those set to join Creighton this season: series showrunner and executive producer John Hoffman, as well as stars Steve Martin, Martin Short, Selena Gomez, Christoph Waltz, Jane Lynch and Keegan Michael Key, among others.
This reps a major initiative for Disney Entertainment Television, and puts it in front of several rivals as it curates an entire suite of video podcasts devoted to its top shows. “We built this slate of companion video podcasts to give our fans even more ways to connect more deeply with the shows they love,” said Direct-to-Consumer & Disney Entertainment Television Marketing president Shannon Ryan. “These are like a backstage pass for their favorite series, and we can’t wait to give fans the opportunity to expand their viewing experience, go behind the scenes with our creators and casts, and continue the conversation beyond each episode in an engaging and entertaining new way.”
Props to Ryan and her team for winning what I suspect was a series of internal battles with beancounters and haters that would typically see such an expense and endeavor as needless, since it’s traditionally been difficult to quantify what specific benefits a superservicing of uberfans provides. I happen to know a bit more about this than most as I was part of a company that had involuntarily pioneered what Ryan’s publicity team may have conveniently forgotten to mention preceded this initiative by more than a decade. Per the ever-trustworthy Wikipedia:
Talking Dead is a live television aftershow in which host Chris Hardwick discusses episodes of the AMC television series The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond with guests, including celebrity fans, cast members, and crew from the series. Segments on Talking Dead include an “In Memoriam” highlighting the deaths from the episode, an online poll, episode trivia, behind-the-scenes footage, and questions from fans via phone, from the audience, Facebook, Twitter, or from the official Talking Dead website.
The production company behind this was none other than Embassy Row, Michael Davies’ cost-effective shop that eventually found a home with Sony Pictures TV. Davies had been successfully doing this sort of stuff with the network that built its Five Pillars of Islam on fan engagement, Bravo, with his post-REAL HOUSEWIVES tea-spilling that executive Andy Cohen parlayed into his mercurial on-air rise to superstardom. When Sony began supplying AMC with scripted dramas like BREAKING BAD, spin-off BETTER CALL SAUL and the short-lived comic book-inspired PREACHER, AMC chose to continue the franchise, effective making our company the first to be producing what we naively termed “post-game shows”.
Except if you asked anyone involved with the scripted stuff, you wouldn’t have guessed that this was ongoing. Embassy Row, based in New York, marched to its own drums and rarely had any direct interaction with the Culver City crew, and only at the urging of top management when it did. Our team was instructed not to discuss any ratings spikes the TALKINGS might have out of concern that the struggles that we were seeing on the scripted shows might be exacerbated by something far cheaper showing signs of life. In the case of PREACHER, a show that had a heavy dose of in-house comic afficinados convinced it would be a massive hit, this became an especially sensitive subject, for in a realm that invented the “-Con” there were indeed uberfans–just not enough of them to warrant more than two modestly rated seasons.
Sony eventually decided that this nascent world of podcasting was worth another shot and announced with great ballyhoo that we were going to start a whole new division dedicated to it, a project I was assigned to during my tenure in marketing. The impetus, of course, was the perceived cost-efficiency–read that cheapness–of the effort. Senior executives seeing favorable ROI bragged about how this would revolutionize what they saw as our lazy and expensive efforts that rarely showed tangible results. We had on staff an executive who had previously served a consulting gig with Wondery, which perpetually ran a distant second to Spotify in the podcasting world but had still carved out a name as a proven provider of content. Instead of placing this under his stewardship, our leadership assigned it to the twenty-something executive assistant to the division president who had been dabbling in the area in his apartment. We struggled to produce a couple of audi0-only episodes for a short-lived ABC series called FOR LIFE which executive producer 50 Cent was intrigued by, but yet was unable to regularly deliver talent to. Out of what little respect I still have for the overtaxed Gen Zs involved, I’ll choose not to share how many downloads we got. Suffice to say it didn’t make any reported lists.
It was an effort that sadly mirrored the amateurish efforts of those who contributed to a now-defunct aggregator of fanboi celebrations, POST-SHOW RECAPS, which for a decade provided a home for hundreds such efforts, still available for those curious about what random fans with a microphone thought. It was nothing like the more nuanced world of more informed experts such as those attached to THE RINGER’s PRESTIGE TV deep dives which have become appointment listening and a genuine source of pride–and revenue–for Spotify. The kind of pride that has now prompted Disney to take this area under their wing.
Thankfully, the respected Ryan has significantly more internal clout than my old team did. and the evolution into video now provides a production entity with the ability to produce content worthy for the platforms themselves, and as Schneider reported this isn’t going to end with just OMITB:
“We were very intentional about the shows we picked to be part of this initial slate. These are hit series with rabid fanbases across a broad range of genres – from a propulsive thriller like ‘Paradise’ to a shiny floor competition show like ‘Dancing with the Star’s to a juicy drama like ‘Tell Me Lies’ – there’s a companion podcast for every viewer and every TV obsession. “
Among the other upcoming shows, the companion podcast to upcoming Hulu limited series “Murdaugh: Death in the Family,” will be hosted by the original “Murdaugh Murders” podcast creators Mandy Matney and Liz Farrell. Additional info including premiere dates, hosts and guests for that one, as well as the “DWTS,” “Paradise,” “Percy Jackson,” “Tell Me Lies” and “Mormon Wives” companion podcasts will be announced at a later date. And more podcasts for other Disney Entertainment shows are in the works as well.
Given how easy it now is for dedicated fans to share compelling content with the actual professionals involved, it’s in fact a true extension of Ryan’s marketing budget–and given the kinds of the shows that she’s named, many of them would otherwise have trouble getting allocations for more traditional spends in the cost-conscious world we now operate in. And platforms like Hulu can far more readily and accurately produce data on how many podcast viewers watch the show and how their viewing frequency differs from the vox populi. One can easily identify “gold card” viewers–and, of course, study how to most effectively market other shows and sponsoring partners to them.
No, Disney isn’t the first producer to make podcasts a priority. But they’re making a much bigger deal out of it and seem far more unified than those that preceded them. Best of luck. And hey–maybe give that old Sony executive assistant some consideration for one of those future gigs. We all deserve second chances at some point.
Until next time…