Wednesday 27th April: TalkTV launches, Twitter falls, YouTube shifts focus

April 27, 2022

Morning! Today is the big day - later this evening we'll be live at the Publisher Podcast Awards 2022, celebrating the very best of the podcasting industry. Follow along on our official Twitter - or it's not too late to snap up a virtual ticket over at the PubPodAwards site. And don't be concerned when you don't receive a Media Voices newsletter tomorrow - it's because we're recovering from the revelry!

Look there's very little else going on in the media world at the moment. We're already as bored of all the speculation as you - but this from Scott Rosenberg is a well-argued piece suggesting the reasons why Musk bought Twitter. Other than to compensate for his total lack of any charisma, that is:

"Journalists fell in love with Twitter because it's a fast, open medium for sharing news. Then their presence on the platform transformed what was once just a buzzy, ephemeral social network into a conduit for world leaders, public institutions and social debates. In announcing that his offer to buy the company had been accepted, Musk called Twitter 'the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated'."

It'll be about six months until we see any real changes - and those that we do see will probably be ill thought-out and bad for vulnerable people. But as is quickly becoming clear Musk didn't buy Twitter for it to be a money-spinner, but for its influence.

Here's an interesting one - why didn't other journalists that were invited on Patel's Rwanda folly protest about the exclusion? There's an entire article to be written about the reputational price newspapers pay when they agree to be client journalists for the powerful, but that's what stuck out to me here.

We've spoken about YouTube's belated push into podcasting, but here's another hint at where the incredibly influential platform sees the future of media. It's already been pushing into the Shorts and Livestreaming spaces - this suggests it now wants to monetise that content in a more structured manner.

You can safely ignore the hype around TalkTV, which has launched with less of a splash than News UK will have wanted. As this piece demonstrates TV news isn't a huge money-spinner, so the real reason to launch one is for attention and influence. If nothing else, it's bad news for GB News. Yay?

This week's episode:

Catch up with our mini podcast series talking to the winners of 2020 and 2021's Publisher Podcast Awards. Whether you're thinking of launching your own podcast or want tips to level up your strategy, there's a wealth of knowledge and podcast mastery in these 15 minute episodes.

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