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Robb Report's Bill Curtis On Why Podcasting Is The Next Media Frontier

For today's interview, we spoke to Bill Curtis, the founder of Malibu-based CurtCo Media (www.curtco.com). Curtis is the former publisher of the Robb Report, which he sold back in 2015, and has a long history of operating media companies that have published such titles as Home Office Computing, Home Theater, Mobile Computing, Worth, and many others. We spoke to Bill about CurtCo's move into the podcasting area, and why he thinks podcasting is the next frontier in media.

Talk about what CurtCo is working on?

Bill Curtis: To give you a quick history, CurtCo has a 30 year history. We have published 74 different magazine titles over the last 30 years. We've had event companies, and clubs, and web businesses, all vertically focused on either passions or really exciting subjects like knowledge management, sales, field force automation, and home office computing, small business, bedtime reading... all the way through to passions like the Robb Report, which was operated by CurtCo for almost two decades. We built that into the authority in luxury in 18 different countries. Now, we've taken what we've learned about developing an impassioned audience, and creating content that they would find interesting in the long term, and engaging them in a different format than print, or on the web, or in the form of events and clubs that we've done before. We've obviously pivoted into what I think is today's most exciting media market, which is the podcast world, which is growing at a nice 40 percent annual pace. Up to 90 million people are now listening into podcasts, and we have been lucky enough to find a series of producers, directors, talent, and hosts, that are truly high quality and impassioned on their subject matter. It gives us the ability to do what we love, which it to create engagement and content that people find entertaining, informative, and authoritative, and moves an audience, and introduces the right kind of selective sponsors and clients to that engaged audience, in a respectful way. It ends up being good for both.

Why podcasting?

Bill Curtis: It's by far the most exciting platform right now. Podcasting is clearly a high engagement medium, when you look at the percentage of people who react to sponsors on podcasts that they love. More importantly, if you look at different media these days, the type of engagement and length of engagement is at risk. To a content provider, that's something you have to pay attention to. In our current case, we realized that radio is seeing channel and platform flipping like never before, websites are calling a three second view of an ad an impression, and the bounce rates for websites so high, it's kind of embarrassing. The time spent on websites now is so small, we realized you have to look at what audiences are actually dedicating their time to, because that's a good measurement of how much they actually care about those in a positive way. For an advertiser, you have to look at whether or not the message is even available to the audience. TV is having a terrible time at that, and unless you're looking at sports and news, when was the last time you actually watched a show in real time, as opposed to time shifting it and zapping commercials? Certainly, we know how print is doing these days, which is that people are using print mostly to look at the pictures. You have to measure the value of engagement by how much time they're willing to spend. If you look at the latest figures for podcasting, they say the average engagement is around 42 minutes long. That is amazing. We get to take what we love best, which is create uniquely entertaining and authoritative, informative content, and put that in a medium people are actually enjoying and receptive to. As long as we don't much that up, and create a messy experience, we can end up with a really dedicated audience. That, of course, is what you're selling to your advertisers. It's a moment to impress an audience which is particularly available to them right now.

We're excited about everything in podcasting. It's also a meritocracy, because anybody can put a podcast up. Of course, there are going to be some that have an unfair advantage over the guy podcasting in his garage or basement, but overall, the marketplace is based on quality of the content, the appropriateness of the subject matter, and engagement. We're really excited about that, because we love creating highly appropriate content for a really select group of people. That's very exciting.

How are you finding sponsors are looking at the podcasting opportunity?

Bill Curtis: It's an interesting question. We launched our shows all of two and a half weeks ago. It was important to us, even though we have a long history of successful companies that have created nice value for our investors—they resulted in an average of five times investor return on investment—that we needed to come to the market with more than just a concept. The first thing we thought they would ask, is even though you've got a history of running businesses in media, what makes you think you can create a podcast? We decided to launch the company this year and create our first handful of shows, and put four, five, or six episodes on each show so that we could answer that question, rather than doing a dance when asked.

That was our plan. It's a fairly unique business model for this market, and right now we have two distinct divisions. One division goes along the lines of what we did with the Robb Report for two decades, and is focused on luxury. Luxury, on that level, is dedicated to people who are sophisticated, really engaged, educated, and are looking to engage with the subject matter at the top of their game. No one else is doing that now in podcasting. For example, our Cars that Matter show is not for people trying to figure out if they want to buy a Toyota or a Chevy, there are plenty of shows out there doing that. We're instead talking to people who are looking at auctions for coveted vintage or collector cars. That's a narrow but extremely powerful audience. At the same time, with our medical show, it's not about light health discussions. We're talking to the most powerful, respected doctor and practitioners in medicine, who talk about their research, their specialties, and where the audience is also educated and engaged. We have five more shows coming on the luxury side. On the fun side, we have different show in the entertainment world.

What have you learned from your prior ventures that you are particularly applying here in podcasting?

Bill Curtis: You have to go the extra mile to not waste anyone's time with your content. That's absolutely crucial in magazines, and in the way we ran events. How we used to run events, is you have to make sure that when people leave an event, they think—the next time we get an invitation from you, we'll cancel whatever else we have going on to attend. That's what we want to be here. You have to make every minute special. In magazines, if you pick up Robb Report, you can see the passion behind its writing, and the way it approaches the subject matter, and how appropriate it is for the audience it is built for. You can't be everything to everybody, you have to be really focused and make it worth their time. Everything we've done there applies here, in terms of quality of that content. I got my start way back in New York at advertising agencies, on the broadcast TV and radio side, and this actually takes me back to my first love. There's nothing more important than making sure that every line you publish, every event you produce, and every time you publish a program or video, that it truly engages an audience at a level that makes them think that the next time this is available, we will go right to it. We work very hard to never, ever disappoint, and always be honest and straightforward, to never waste anybody's time, and always be impassioned and inspiring. We've done that in a number of ways before, and in this medium, frankly, that's a lot easier. You have more time to do it, and you can spend more time to make sure it's compelling. We're more excited than we've ever been before in our business history. This is such a great market and amazing opportunity, and fabulous growth opportunities, I'm quite excited.

The last question for you. Probably an obvious answer, given you've refocused on podcasting, but would you ever launch a new magazine in this environment, and what do you think will happen to print?

Bill Curtis: I think there are some magazines that will continue to have their audience. But, it's hard to get someone to devote the amount of time you need to read a magazine these days. This is going to be telling, but one of the reasons there are so many listeners for podcasting, is because people are multi-tasking. Anything which requires absolute focus is taking a bit of a hit. That's why young people are watching less TV than they were, and they are really much more in a “pull down” mode, because they want to be able to choose the information or type of programming they want, and pull that down at their convenience. They're probably doing three or four things at a time. They might be on social media, they could be driving, or what you, and podcasting allows you to do that be engaged at the same time. If you look at some of the research on what is happening, and if you look at what's happening with advertisers on podcasting, it's really about the kind of positive image it has with its audience compared to much of other media right now, where sponsorship and advertising has a much more negative image.

Thanks, and good luck!