[Werking Title] with Eliza Lambert: Nate DuFort on Kids Podcast Content
By: Eliza Lambert-Arnold
Nate DuFort used to manage large-scale comedy events for Second City. These days, his podcasts are full of humor and humility, but they also often cover challenging topics, from aliens to racism. Since becoming a dad, Nate has studied kids as an audience (and their parents), creating intimate and informational earfulls for families.
In this interview, Nate discusses co-listening and owning your relationship with your audience, painting a brighter future for podcasting than you’ll hear elsewhere.
Eliza Lambert: Nate, charming to speak with you. The first question I've been asking people is, what do you consider your first job?
Nate DuFort: The first job where I was collecting a paycheck was working at a large produce stand in Michigan; stocking, dealing with customers. They closed when produce wasn't in season but re-opened for a month just to sell Christmas trees and decorations. It was my favorite time of year.
EL: What skills from that job do you still use today?
ND: There's something to be said for manual labor jobs. I am very much from a working-class family. To be able to cut through the noise and just do the work, that's so much of everything; working in theater, working with artists most of my adult life. Walking the floor, stocking things, in and out of the freezer all day. It reminds me that there is no shortcut for just doing the work. You level up skills by just doing the work. There aren't excuses of sitting and waiting for some outside force to give you something that already exists within you. Just do it.
EL: I was wondering if you were to create a niche for yourself within podcasting, cause now that we've expanded, we can have niches within the niche of the industry. What niche would you set up for yourself?
ND: Middle grade bordering into YA fiction. So much of my directing work and acting work is in the fiction space, truly working on genre, be it horror, science fiction, or even beyond that for middle grade and YA audience would be my sub-niche.
EL: Why did you choose children's media?
ND: I am a father. As cliché and ill-humored a joke as it is, the single best thing I've ever produced is my daughter. There came a point I wanted to expand my reach beyond theater, I was looking to digital media and I hadn't fallen really on exactly what I wanted to do, except that I wanted to work with people that I loved and build off of the relationships that I've been working on for years. Through a series of introductions, I ended up having a brilliant all day conversation with Jeff Ullrich. He asked me, "What do you want to do?” I said, "I want to move into this storytelling space." Obviously, the founder of Earwolf and Midroll Media is going to have a better sense for business than the guy making yuck yucks for the local comedy theater.
EL: Second City is little bit more than that, but OK.
ND: He just asked a question that changed my life and it was, " What are you listening to in the car right now with your daughter?" And my answer was, "The fucking Frozen soundtrack, on repeat, again and again and again." That was it. He flipped a switch in my brain with that one simple question. Without saying it, this man was handing me the next phase of my life to me at the time, seven years ago. There was very little middle-grade content in podcasts. There was stuff for preschool and elementary students, and then teens are listening to the same content we all are and very much favoring whatever is in vogue right now. But for middle graders, for 8- to 12-year-olds, which my daughter was just about to hit, there was nothing. I set out to create that. The first show that we created came from an idea from my daughter. She came home from school and asked if we could perform the Bloody Mary ritual in the mirror. Immediately my brain says, "Actually, there are some things you should probably know about that myth and why it is perpetuated." and then that became our first show, Unspookable.
EL: What do you think is most misunderstood about kids audio?
ND: There are three core issues with children's podcasting.
The first that until recently, Apple didn't even make a distinction between parenting and family podcasts, primarily advice podcasts and audio intended for children. Be it the charts, marketing, and promo, we're all competing for these very few slots that their editorial team chooses for amplification. All of these shows were lumped together, making podcast discoverability issues that much more challenging for parents looking for content for their children.
The next two are really tied around monetization and advertising which is the bulk of podcast issues already: creators are not paid enough or equitably across media, genres. But with advertising and children's content, we're seeing a lot of the data only in recent weeks that we are drastically underestimating co-listening. Multiple people will be listening to the same episode at a time, be that in a car ride or, more specifically to my world, parents and families listening with children, children and their adults listening together.
This is a thing we know specifically from Unspookable – because of how much feedback we get from parents – that our episode[s] opened up a larger conversation with our middle grader or preteen about why we share history, the way we share history. I'm not going to say that every listen counts for two listens or three listens, but the good majority.
Cumulus Media and Signal Hill just put out the insights that 36 percent of weekly podcast consumers with children say that they listen to podcasts with their kids. That's 30 percent of a listening audience. That's not even children listening with their parents. That's parents listening with their children. 12 percent of those people say that they listen with their children frequently. Those numbers are huge.
The other challenge is dividing those audiences into age appropriateness and maturity. Obviously, the shows that we work on are for the oldest range of children. It's always going to be a challenge for marketing and for advertisers to see those subsections of subsections. If I know anything from business though, being able to play to a specific niche is important. Every single thing that you want, as you can narrow down your audience more and more, you can more specifically market to them. A lot of advertising is too broad, and that's because only the largest advertisers are really in the audio space. What we need to do is build a comfortable space to bring in smaller brands and services, so that they can sell to their niche. That means that we need to have a conversation about the benefits and safety of podcasting for advertising with these brands. The return on investment in advertising in this space, those numbers speak for themselves. How do we get smaller brands to engage in that space?
EL: You are someone who thinks so much about operations and how to explain yield and data to prospective marketers, advertising contexts. I was wondering how you think the industry has changed since you have been in it?
ND: Well, there are more options as an advertiser, Seeing the saturation of podcasts everywhere and not being able to narrow your focus. There are pros and cons there. It's been great that I can advertise across an entire network if I'm a brand and buy ad bundles from Wondery versus just advertising on a single show there. But that saturation and a lot of the producers and creators looking for immediate success has created a lot of noise. Especially at a time where podcasting doesn't pay the bills in other media. We're seeing coverage of podcasting, for independent creators in particular, going down. Podcast coverage in magazines, print, digitally, are not keeping the lights on for these print media companies. Coverage is getting smaller while there is more content and more shows entering the world. It has been at least since post-COVID and the numbers dip. Last fall, Apple redefined a listen. We have seen the coverage be primarily negative, when it comes to podcasts, that listening is down, advertising is down. These are things anyone in podcasting can tell you simply aren't true. Yes, revenue is down. It is nothing more than a market recalibration, the pendulum swinging back from gross overspending from some of the larger companies. These were all things any and all of us predicted and are weathering that storm; some of us not fast enough, or we haven't built organizations or processes that are nimble enough to react and sustain these leaner times. But we're trying.
EL: You're someone who came in from and has connections in much more formalized media areas before coming into podcasting. So I think you have sight on different models and, and the evolution of industries and ideas. Where do you think the industry is going, if you were to guess?
ND: The future is one of my favorite words: 'community. ' If we look at how comedy has reinvented itself as a genre, in getting away from some of the larger networks to own their relationship with their audience, having that be a two-way conversation, being a Patreon or subscription model, access to Discord, and direct access to creators. But it is about owning the relationships and monetizing on a one-to-one level versus looking to outside advertisers. In building more niche content, you're going to find an audience that is more committed and their engagement is worth infinitely more. It will open up more opportunities for adapted work, be that multi-language, multi-lingual, or multi-media derivative works. Once you have an audience where you can say, “We may be one-tenth the size of what we would be on these other platforms. But I know for a fact 50% of our audience will buy or engage with anything that we put out.” That is a model that you can truly start building budgets off of, that can withstand any recalibration of the market. If you own your audience relationships, there will be no such thing as a downturn in the market shuttering your operation.
