Channels with Peter Kafka

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Media and tech aren’t just intersecting — they’re fully intertwined. And to understand how those worlds work, and what they mean for you, veteran journalist Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers - and gets them to spell it out in plain, BS-free English. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

PŘED 1 DNEM

How TBPN Made a Tech News Splash

John Coogan knows what you’re thinking: the world does not need another tech podcast. And the world does not need another podcast featuring two dudes talking. Yet Coogan and Jordi Hays have started another tech podcast, featuring the two of them talking and… it’s a hit. In the span of a year, TBPN has become the place where tech execs go to chop up the news of the day - first in a daily livestream, and later in clips that circulate around the internet. And Coogan and Hays are carving out a niche for themselves: Insidery, in-the-know, but also not that serious about the whole thing. They don’t have a huge audience, but they have an influential one, and the beginnings of a very intriguing business. I talked to Coogan about how TBPN got off the ground, how it works today, where he and Hays go from here — and whether their success has built a playbook for others to follow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

39 min
PŘED 6 DNY

Patch’s AI Experiment: Thousands of Newsletters, Zero Humans

Everyone agrees that the decline/disapperance of local news is a big problem. No one agrees about the best way to solve it. So let’s check in on a new AI push from Patch, the people who have been trying to do local news, online, at scale, for more than two decades. Last spring, Patch CEO Warren St. John announced that he was running local newsletters for thousands of communities across the U.S., without employing a single human to make them. This week, I asked him how it’s going. No one is going to mistake these “Patch AM” emails for a fully-staffed local news outlet — and in fact Patch relies on other local outlets to help populate their newsletters. But they also seem like a well-meaning effort to provide residents with something, as opposed to nothing. Or, in St. John’s words: He’s providing them with a Kind bar, not a 5-course meal. Does that make you nervous about the future of news? Or optimistic? Somewhere in between? Take a listen and let me know what you think. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

39 min
3. 9.

Oliver Darcy Thinks the Media Doesn’t Get It. So He Built Status

One thing about the internet is that it lets you build really, really fast. A little more than a year ago, Oliver Darcy was an unemployed former CNN media reporter. Today he’s the proprietor of Status, his must-read media newsletter. In our conversation, we spend a little bit of time talking through the mechanics of his two-man operation, and how he thinks about the future. But I wanted to focus our chat and something that’s a little harder to sum up: How Darcy’s reporting and writing fits into the larger media landscape in the Trump 2.0 era, and why he goes out of his way to spell out exactly what’s happening. “We say the things that everyone else is thinking and no one is else saying,” he says. I think that’s part of it. Another is that Darcy is uniquely well-suited to covering right-wing media — which used to be on the fringes and is now squarely mainstream - because he used to be a right-wing media creator himself. So he’s particularly clued in to the way a lot of this stuff works, and impatient that others can’t or won’t see it. Oh, and Darcy has one bit of advice for people running big media operations wondering how they can get influential creators to work with them: “Don't let them leave.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

54 min
27. 8.

Why Henry Blodget is Building Another Media Company

Henry Blodget can’t help himself. The Business Insider founder is starting another media business, knowing full well how difficult the industry can be. You can watch him build it in real time: Regenerator on Substack, and Solutions on TikTok, YouTube and everywhere you hear your favorite podcasts. Henry — who hired me to work at Business Insider in 2007, back when it was called Silicon Alley Insider — sat down for a chat about what’s changed in media and the internet over the years, and what hasn’t. We also took time to talk about the AI boom, whether it’s a bubble, and why bubbles can be useful. It’s a blast from the past and a look at the future, all in one chat. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

58 min
20. 8.

ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro on streaming, the NFL and sports betting

The media industry has been waiting for ESPN to cut the cord for a decade. Now it’s finally happening: This week the sports TV giant will let you start streaming — without a cable TV subscription — for $30 a month. Why now? ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro is quite frank about it: Along with his boss — Disney CEO Bob Iger — he wanted to make as much money from the cable TV business as he could before it dwindled away. And even now, Pitaro says he hopes the new service brings in customers who don’t have cable — as opposed to getting ones who do still pay for cable to trade down. That illustrates the issue facing all of the big TV players these days: They know the future is a digital one, where they’ll have to work much harder to win and keep customers. So they’re hanging on to the old TV model as long as they can. At the same time they’re trying to build a profitable streaming future. That tension is the main thrust of this conversation I had with Pitaro this week in Disney’s new Manhattan headquarters. We also had time to get into his recent deal with the NFL, his ongoing commitment to sports betting — and whether ESPN is still committed to diversity in 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

48 min
13. 8.

A Busy - and Expensive - Summer for AI, with NYT's Mike Isaac

What makes a particular engineer worth $250 million to Mark Zuckerberg? What does Trump 2.0 mean — and not mean — to people building large language models? I didn’t know the answers to these questions either. So I got the New York Times’ Mike Isaac, who covers this stuff for a living, to walk me through some of the biggest questions in AI right now — which means we’re also getting at some of the biggest questions in tech. Warning: This is a pants-free episode. Probably still Safe For Work, though. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

52 min
6. 8.

Why the Algorithm is Making Comedy Boom, Again

The last time I talked to Jesse David Fox about the comedy boom it was… March 5, 2020. Since then, some things have changed. But in other ways it’s just the same: comedy - or at least, some kinds of comedy - seems almost custom-built for our current technological and cultural moment, and it’s easier than ever to get this stuff on your devices whenever you want. Or whenever the algorithm thinks you want it. Fox is a great person to talk to about this stuff: he covers comedy very, very seriously over at Vulture, and on his Good One podcast, and he has a lot of thoughts about the way tech - and perhaps politics - is shaping the stuff that makes us laugh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

59 min
30. 7.

What is TV’s endgame?

A decade ago, Disney CEO Bob Iger freaked out the media industry by acknowledging something many of us saw coming — his previously unassailable TV business was starting to erode. But even with a 10-year warning, today’s moguls seem unable to copewith 2025’s reality: The pay TV business is permanently eroding, and there’s nothing in its place that’s likely to generate the same kind of revenue and profit. But the people who run Big TV are trying to find answers, anyway. So I asked Lightshed analyst Rich Greenfield to talk through some of their moves. What will David and Larry Ellison do once they finally buy Paramount? What are the prospects for ESPN’s soon-to-launch streamer? What about Fox’s soon-to-launch streamer? Who’s going to buy all of these ailing cable TV networks that are coming on the market? And what kind of deals - if any - can get done in the Trump 2.0 era? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

47 min

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Peter Kafka

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The media and tech podcast

22. 12. 2024

Alfony

I love this podcast because the interviews are always engaging and informative. The guests are well chosen to give insightful look at what decision makes in the media and tech industry are thinking about.

Media and tech aren’t just intersecting — they’re fully intertwined. And to understand how those worlds work, and what they mean for you, veteran journalist Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers - and gets them to spell it out in plain, BS-free English. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.