What kind of podcast is Pablo Torre doing exactly? It is how I began our conversation this week for Meet the Podcasters presented by Point to Point Marketing.
The show is really three shows. I’ll leave it to Torre to explain it further a little later.
What is important to me is not just what the show is, but how it gets to the people that want to hear it. What matters in marketing a show that is trying to fill a niche that is still kind of undefined? Does video matter? How?
There are a lot of questions and Pablo Torre will be the first to admit that he doesn’t have all the answers yet. So, let’s find out together what is going on with Pablo Torre Finds Out.
Demetri Ravanos: How would you describe what you’re trying to accomplish with Pablo Torre Finds Out? It is a lot of shows in one depending on the day of the week.
Pablo Torre: Yeah. This is what my mom asks me. “What are you trying to do here? You’re working for Dan Le Batard? The guy who publicly complained about how your wedding had a black tie dress code?” And what I try to tell her is that I finally get to do the show that I have been wanting to do, even if I didn’t know it while at ESPN, full time, which is to say that I get to do all of the shows; three types of shows in one. You sort of summarized it pretty well there.
I get to do, once a week, a reported deep dive, an investigative journey through some topic that I guarantee no one else in the media is doing it that week in that way. It’s sort of like just an off-the-board entirely my personal curiosity-driven journalistic odyssey.
Then I get to do the sort of roundtable talk show with friends of mine like Dan Le Batard, Mina Kimes, Katie Nolan and so forth. I love doing that sort of a show I did that with Highly Questionable for years and years with Debatable; with PTI, Around the Horn. It’s sort of from that spirit.
Then the third type of show we do every week – we come out on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday – is more of a one-on-one conversation. I’m not saying that I’m trying to channel Marc Maron or whomever else, but it’s a chat show. It’s a one-on-one conversation with someone of interest, and I get to dig in on their life. For me, it’s a way to cover sports in a way that feels deliberately and sort of joyously different. The only unifying characteristic in all of it being my own curiosity, which is incredibly liberating and also admittedly kind of scary.
DR: I want to dig in on the investigative journalism episodes for a second because I do wonder what the difference is between doing a newsmagazine for Meadowlark and doing something like that with the resources of Disney behind you.
PT: Yeah, I mean. I got to call upon a newsroom – the biggest newsroom in sports media in the world – while I was doing ESPN Daily, and now I call upon a newsroom that I am building by hand, which is only tongue in cheek a newsroom. I am getting to do journalism in a first-person way without resources. And I say “getting to do that” because as much as it’s been a stress to try and do journalism without those resources, it’s also been really f***ing fun, you know?
What I’ve gotten to return to my roots on is the idea of like, “Go report this yourself.” So I have been tasked with like, “Hey, you used to be a guy who did long-form journalism for ESPN and Sports Illustrated and all these places. Do that again.” And for me, the solution is be mildly terrified, but then figure it out. I need to prove that I am not a function of the machine. I’m not a product of the empire. I can do this without those resources. I can do it because I have contacts and instincts and skills that I’ve developed over years.
I tell my staff all of the time, as small as we are, I think of ourselves as a newsroom and think of ourselves as making sort of a new age magazine. Not to belabor this point, but so much of doing stuff at ESPN, for better and for worse, felt like we were reacting to what everybody else wanted to talk about. That’s so much about audience metrics and all of that. It’s a very good business strategy, but when it comes to what I’m doing, Demetri, I’m realizing the bet I’m making is that like a magazine in olden times used to, I can present you with a story that you didn’t know you wanted to read or hear and keep your attention all the way through. And so that’s a fun challenge. It’s the challenge that got me hooked on sports journalism in the first place really.
DR: So that’s interesting because you kind of hit on something that I wonder about, about a lot of Meadowlark’s shows, because there is such an emphasis on the freedom to do the kind of things you want to. Are you hung up on numbers at all? Is any part of you paying attention to what hits or does it matter to what stories you choose to tell?
PT: I want to lead with an editorial judgment. It sounds very naïve. I want to count on the fact that I am leading with our interpretation of news value, which is, and you’re very astute in challenging this premise, because the thing about going it on your own is that, well, now you’ve got to support yourself on your own and metrics are how you support yourself. So if I’m in a corner jacking off –
DR: I’m sorry. Is that the Wednesday podcast?
PT:That’s right. That’s the fourth episode every week. Just me masturbating. Some would say it’s the three episodes we do already, arguably, given how much I talk about myself in them.
But to your point, I want to confess something. I am someone who launched this show with the explicit mandate of, “We’re going to do the stuff we think is good. We’re going to lead with our version of journalism and we’ll see where the chips fall.” Early on, the chips have been falling in sort of encouraging metric ways. I’m a total hypocrite. Now my message is not, “Don’t listen to the metrics.” It’s, “Guys, the metrics are validating our approach and this is amazing and in fact, this is a business,” so that’s really the early returns. What’s so exciting about it is that people are listening; people are watching. We debuted in whatever – the top three; top five, and whatever charts that are ephemeral, admittedly. We’ve been put into Dan’s feed and the audience has really taken to us.
We did an episode about the one transgender athlete in Ohio who was affected by the legislation. I went out there and interviewed her and it got traction, so much broader than what I had expected, well beyond sports. And all of these things, again, are hypocrisies for me, because I would have said to you in August, “I don’t give a f**k about metrics, but now, because the metrics are validating me, I’m saying, “Actually the story is changing a little bit.” I’m not going to be the artist jacking off in the corner. I’m the guy who wants to blare into a megaphone, “I think there’s another way to cover sports!” So that’s the lie that I’ve already confessed to with you.
DR: Let’s talk about the Le Batard connection. You mentioned that your show is now in the Dan Le Batard Show feed. Is that more important or are the appearances you make on that show more important? So much of success in digital media is about connecting with an audience, so exposure is great, but maybe exposure to your personality is more valuable.
PT: Yeah. I don’t know, man. For me, I care so much about Pablo Torre Finds Out, the show right now that I am prioritizing truly above all else. I love being on Dan’s show, and I will absolutely, shamelessly promote it in all those appearances from henceforth, but for me, I just want people to know that we’re making this thing. All the anxiety I had early on about metrics was, “We’re going to work so hard at this thing and we’re going to do this three times a week. I just want to make sure it’s not for nobody.” And so insofar as we get just amplification from Dan, again, appearances like this conversation with you in which I get to indulge like talking about this thing that I care so deeply about – that’s what I care about the most.
Look, it’s also a test, right? Like if an audience wants ‘X,’ if I give them ‘Y,’ do they ask, “Why the f**k are you giving this to me?” or do they get it? Strategically speaking, launching this show as a sibling to The Dan Le Batard Show, which is a Goliath of a podcast, I just wanted to make sure that I captured Dan’s fanbase, which knows me from those appearances you refer to on his show. They know that we’re up to some stuff, and from there we’re going to sort of build outwards. I’ve been gratified again that the building has sort of happened sooner than I anticipated.
DR: So the investigative journalism that you are doing now, I want to sort of go back to some of your history, both at Sports Illustrated and at ESPN. What is it that you can do when you are on your own in this way that’s a little bit tougher to do in more traditional media?
PT: So I did this episode in our first week that I really loved and cared about, which is the story of Bryan Davis, who is the man who bid a bazillion dollars – like $7 billion I believe his total bid was, maybe was nine by the end – but bid billions of dollars to the Washington Commanders. It was this treasure hunt story about, “Did this guy have the money? Where is the money coming from? Why is the Philippines involved? Why are all of these crazy details now filling this rabbit hole?” And to me, part of the difficulty was simply trying to do that in audio, because in a written piece, for instance, when I would do this sort of work for Sports Illustrated or ESPN, I would get to write the details out, and something that I’ve learned in audio is that it’s just harder to keep people’s attention. It’s really about, again, audience retention.
There’s so many details that I want to hit you with. That’s how my brain works. So the challenge is, as a storyteller – a literal storyteller in this case – “How do I tell you the story in a way that it is sensible and that you can retain it while you are like walking your dog and cleaning up after your dog?” You’re sort of like half-distracted. How can I make sure that I remind you about what the story is at recurring points without you losing the thread?
Hosting ESPN Daily was like this revelatory experience because I had never done audio-first storytelling before. I realized the theater of the mind of it. I was like, “Wait a minute. So it’s kind of like writing, but I can’t be as writerly.” It’s kind of like radio, except I’m asking more of the audience in terms of sticking with me as I unfurl something as opposed to lead with whatever the biggest story is that day. No, I’m going to slow play this a little bit. So the challenge is just me getting my feet wet in a medium that has presented me with challenges.
It’s all of the genre of show that I listen to as a fan. So I love like a public radio shows like This American Life, Radiolab, 99% Invisible; these nerd shows that are about audio for storytelling. So the challenge for me is to do that. Then also, I should say, develop a YouTube channel in which those audio-first stories also can play in video. Admittedly, so much of my brain, like a half of it at least, has been about, “Be audio first – use music; use scoring; use editing; use sound effects; use all of that,” but then also have it so that you can see me saying it on camera as well as the guest, as well as our reporting out in the field.
Building a docu-style YouTube channel; that’s the next challenge. I don’t think anyone else is trying that because it’s insane. Like, go to NPR’s YouTube channel of This American Life. They’re not trying to do the YouTube video version, and for better or for worse, we absolutely are.
DR: It’s funny. I was having this conversation with my therapist actually today, because a podcast I do got picked up by a FAST Channel called Origin Sports and I was telling her how cool it was that this thing I am making is on TV now and her hang up was, “So wait, people just want to watch you talk?” I told her, “You know, I don’t get it either, but that’s what I’m told.”
What is interesting, going back to what you said about NPR is that outside of people that are just attuned to audio entertainment – podcasts; radio; whatever – the shows that connect most seem to be true crime investigations. None of those have video elements and they are still tremendously popular, so I don’t know what that says about the importance of video to podcasters.
PT: I think that’s a fair perspective, Demetri. Also, a fair perspective by you would be to tell your therapist, “This is sort of defeating the purpose of why I come to you when you present me with this existential conundrum of, like, ‘Wait a minute, does anybody want this?'” But I feel you acutely.
Again, we’re on the DraftKings Network as well. We’re making a weirdo show that tries to be funny but also smart and low-brow and highbrow and do weird investigations for DraftKings. I don’t know if when they started the DraftKings Network, they were like, “We want this weird genre that no one’s done before,” but they’re trying it out. They seem to like it.
The question your therapist posed is also a question I ask of myself. Are we sure these people want to watch this? And again, early returns are encouraging, but maybe I shouldn’t be too confident in mid-September at this point.
DR: That ties into something that I’ve wondered about a lot of different podcasters, but are you specifically doing something that is newsmagazine-style at least part of the time? What is it you have learned that really matters to a younger sports fan, whether it is about the content or how it is delivered that older generations may have never thought of or just simply do not get?
PT: I am staggered perpetually by how young people are doing it. Like, I mean, in every way, just like you guys. Okay, so beyond just like, the salaciousness of, like, ‘Okay, social media is what? Now we’re at school and you guys are sending photos of what? To whom?’ Like, this is all dystopian, like genuinely terrifying. I have a 3-year-old daughter. All of it is very scary to me.
DR: Hey, I’ve got a 14-year-old daughter.
PT: Okay, so I am scared because I will one day, hopefully, God willing, have a 14-year-old daughter. I will have to reckon with what you have reckoned with.
Fourteen-year-olds, generally speaking, don’t really give a shit about teams in the way that like their forefathers did. That’s the research that I get that I’m fascinated by. Sports used to be this ancestral sort of heirloom. You inherited your allegiance. You watch games through the lens of, “Laundry is more important.” The team; the jersey is more important than the individual.
Now we’re in an era of clearly the tide turning. Again, it’s the fragmentation of media, the fracturing of audience. We’re just watching the individual’s feeds that we like.
This is like the conundrum existentially for the NBA, right? “People don’t want to watch our games, but they love consuming us on social media. Is this monetizable in the same way? Is this something that’s bad for us? Is it good for us that we’re like, over-indexed on it?”
For me, again as a newsmagazine guy, my instincts are twofold. No. 1, I should probably do a story that engages explicitly with the conversation we’re having from that more meta-perspective of like, “Pablo Torre Finds Out if I’m just too f**king old to really get how kids are now.” That’s like the actual story that I should engage with on some level, but the second thing is to sort of be a little more humble than I probably have been in the past about how little I know.
I don’t want to assume that kids are out, for instance, on narrative storytelling, if in fact, and this is just a hypothesis, they seem to begin to like individual human interest brands. I’m like, “Okay, if you’re into the characters, if I give you a character you don’t know, will you stick around for it?” I’m not trying to tempt you with, “Here’s your favorite team. Here’s what you should know about it.” It’s just not what I’m best at also, I should say.
So for me, if I can tell a story that crosses that age gap, I will be incredibly relieved. But I don’t know, man. The answer so far is that, like, I need to do more reporting. I would be a liar and I would be betraying my very premise if I told you I already found out the answer to that. God knows I haven’t.
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