Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — After building his Westwood One radio syndication house into a $500 million powerhouse, Norm Pattiz moved on from radio.
Now, he’s turned his building skills to podcasting, where his PodcastOne company produces and distributes programming from the likes of former Los Angeles Laker Shaqueille O’Neal, comedian Adam Carolla, actor Alec Baldwin and former wrestling star Steve Austin. He has a roster of 200 shows and 100 million listens weekly to his fare.
Pattiz recently sold a 30% minority stake of his company to broadcasting veteran Hubbard Radio. Terms weren’t disclosed, but Pattiz has pegged the podcasting market as worth $50 million currently and has said PodcastOne is approaching 50% of the ad business for podcasting.
In a chat with USA TODAY at PodcastOne’s offices here, Pattiz talked about why he sees podcasting as the new frontier, and his belief that radio has nothing to worry about.
USA TODAY: PodcastOne is different from many of the places where people get to listen to podcasts, like Stitcher, TuneIn and SoundCloud, in that most everything you run is exclusive, correct?
PATTIZ: Right, we’re not on platforms that offer podcasts, because they sell advertising inventory around the programming. We exclusively represent all the ad inventory on our network.
USA TODAY: What made you want to get into podcasting as a business?
PATTIZ: I saw it as the digital version of Westwood One without the constraints of syndication. I wouldn’t have to get drunk with program directors to convince them to run my shows.
USA TODAY: Why do you think podcasting is a better buy than radio?
PATTIZ: If we deliver 1 million impressions and radio has 1 million impressions, people have to press a button to get us, unlike the radio listener, thus our listener has a far greater connection to the podcast and host.
USATODAY: What advice do you have for podcasters looking to break in?
Jefferson Graham interviews Norm Pattiz at PodcastOne's studios in Beverly Hills. (Photo: PodcastOne)
PATTIZ: It’s not too late. There are over 250,000 podcasts on iTunes. Most are broadcasting out of their garage, or something similar. The average podcast on iTunes is listened to by less than 100 people. If you find yourself with a growing audience in the thousands instead of hundreds, and think you have something that could be bigger if it was promoted properly, and have a hankering to make some money, then give us a call. We will promote the heck out of the podcast on our network, so if you wind up not getting listeners, it won’t be because nobody knows you’re out there.
USA TODAY: What kind of money are people looking at?
PATTIZ: Most podcasters have been making no money. With some shows, if we can generate $50,000 to $60,000 a year, they’re thrilled.
If we go out and get big names, and one episode leads to two or three a week, that could lead to making at least $1 million a week.
USA TODAY: Why did you sell a stake to Hubbard Broadcasting?
PATTIZ: I didn’t need additional investors. but in the last year, it became obvious we could sell a minority share, and still have majority in our hands.
I’ve been preaching to radio they should embrace podcasting, to show that radio and audio continues to grow. We wanted to do the deal, to show other companies interested in the space how serious it had become.
USA TODAY: How is radio doing?
PATTIZ: Radio will always be a mass medium consumed by millions of people, but traditional radio on broadcast is not growing at all. The competition from digital is significant. Radio used to be the only place you could get new music, now there are music services. Talk radio was only consumable on broadcast band, now everything we do is talk oriented. So there’s a lot that’s not exclusive to broadcast radio anymore. We believe radio needs to embrace podcasting, because it promotes audio.
