How we consume media is changing faster than ever, and podcasts are leading the way. Host Juliet Clark and seasoned media expert Tracy Hazzard explore the shift from traditional media to podcasting, highlighting how it’s reshaping media consumption and engagement. They discuss the challenges of algorithms, censorship, and declining trust in mainstream outlets, while revealing why podcasts offer a unique, authentic platform for creators and audiences alike. If you’re curious about how to adapt to the evolving media landscape, this episode has the insights you need.
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Beyond The Headlines: Understanding The Shifts In Media Consumption
The State Of Media Today
Welcome to Promote, Profit, Publish. I’m your host, Juliet Clark. Today’s discussion is going to be very interesting for many of you. I’m looking forward to it. Before we get started, I want to remind you to go over our monthly training for February. Our trainer this month is brand director, video podcast, content creator, author, and international speaker, Joey Garrity. She’s going to be sharing superstar strategies to transform your influence into earnings. Great presentation. I’ve seen it before. She does a wonderful job and her programs are amazing. That will be on the 1st Friday in February. You can go over and sign up at BamagTraining.com. As usual, our monthly training for authors is free.
Today’s guest is Tracy Hazzard, which many of you know. I love her. She’s so knowledgeable. She’s a seasoned media expert with over 2,600 interviews from articles in Authority Magazine, BuzzFeed, and her Inc. Magazine column, and from her multiple top-ranked videocasts and podcasts like The Binge Factor and Feed Your Brand, one of CIO’s Top 26 Entrepreneur Podcasts. Tracy brings diverse views on what works and what doesn’t work in marketing, branding, and media from thought leaders and industry icons, redefining success around the globe.
Tracy’s unique gift to the podcasting, marketing, and branding world is to be able to identify that unique bingeable factor, the thing that makes people come back again and again, listening actively, sharing as raving fans, and buying everything you have to sell. We’re going to be talking today a little bit on the political side, not a lot of politics but more about why podcasting won the election, and how media has transitioned from that traditional model into an alternative model which is amazing and puts all of us in the driver’s seat. Stay tuned.
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Tracy, welcome.
I’m so excited to talk about this. When you told me you wanted to talk about the state of media today, I was so excited.
I’ve been wanting to talk about this for a while. I mentioned in the intro that during the last election, people didn’t understand that this was the podcast election. There’s been this huge shift. You mentioned there’s a Wall Street Journal article about it this week. I know that the White House Press Secretary is talking about bringing in podcasters, and the mainstream media is going to the back of the room or back of the bus. Talk about that a little bit.
Think about it from this perspective. What we discovered in this last election is that the mainstream media is focused on clickbait. They are focused on what is going to sell advertisements. More engagement doesn’t mean better engagement. It doesn’t mean better. It just means more. When we look at that, we have an audience who’s sick of it and they are boycotting. From both sides, I’m hearing a significant boycott of all mainstream media. They’re going dark on mainstream media, which means they’re not consuming any news or any news magazines. That means that your message can’t get out there, especially if you’re doing paid media because those are blockaded.
I’ve switched. I try to watch all sorts of media and thank God, I don’t have to watch mainstream media anymore because sometimes some of them, I feel like, “Oh my God. Are you off your meds?”
I get so frustrated. I used to feel like there was a level of news that I could get every night. I would say, “For 30 minutes, I’m going to get the real news of the day.” What I found was their titles were misleading. Their stories were half-baked and not complete. I got sick of yelling at the TV going, “Ask this question.” They’re not asking the question the way I want to know and get to the point. They’re not telling you information about earthquakes and things that matter to you in your daily life, or your area, or where you’re from. That’s not going to help you. If you consume that, it’s no better than clicking on those clickbait ads.
When it’s that failure to make a difference in my life, it’s a waste of my time. That’s what we’ve seen as an abandonment of all of that kind of media across the board. We’ve seen a significantly lower social media following and engagement as well. If you were a social media influencer, their traffic is way down. That’s because we don’t see them doing anything but working towards the algorithm to succeed. I don’t want to be a part of their algorithm.
If you didn’t want to be on the clickbait on mainstream media, why would you want to do it on something you know is algorithmically driven? You would just abandon that. Those two things have completely lowered to the point at which they are no longer a viable option to sell your books, to sell products, and to sell services. It’s not pressed for you. It’s not going to work in what you used to be able to achieve with it.
I have to admit, and I think I’ve told you this before, somebody brought a podcast to my attention back in 2016. I listened and I was like, “That sounds so conspiracy theory.” Three weeks later, something landed in the news and I have listened to that podcast ever since. Some of it probably is, but what it prompted me to do was read.
When they bring up government documents, I would read them and then I would go back to mainstream media and say, “Who’s telling the truth here?” I found that 3 out of 4 of what I would consider mainstream channels now are lying, or there was a spin like, “We’re going to spin this to our side.” Fox was spinning it towards their side. I watched another channel. They’re trying to go public because they validated what I read in the documents. Like him or not like Trump and the fake news, the more he said, the more it was like he was right.
I don’t know that he’s right about the way that he sang. He’s demonizing media in general, which we’re part of the media. I don’t want to be demonized about that. There has to be some amount that you can trust. It is true and it is simply because they are going after the algorithm. They’re spinning to that for it to get the circulation that they’re expecting so they make the money that they’re expecting.
I’m sure there are some great journalists out there. I feel bad for them. I quit my Inc. Magazine column because I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t take the push to cover Elon Musk for the 500 times even though I’ve never met him and never interviewed him. I have no idea what he thinks, but if I put his name in the title of my article, it gets more publicity. It gets more circulation than if I didn’t.
It’s not what I wanted to do. It’s not what I wanted to achieve. It’s not who I wanted to be out in the journalistic world. I said, “No, I’m done with that,” but I didn’t need it. It wasn’t my moneymaker, but if your business is writing articles and making money, you have to play to the algorithm. It is eventually going to infect you. You’re going to do it naturally because you’ll make more money off that article. It’s human nature. It’s going to keep doing that.
If your business is writing articles and making money, you have to play to the algorithm. It is eventually going to infect you. Share on XI always tell this story about Moby Dick, the book which they forced on us in high school. I don’t know about you but it’s this giant book, Moby Dick. Moby Dick was written as a serial in a magazine. That’s why it’s three times longer than it should be to tell the story. They have something they call corollary chapters. This is the term I learned in high school and it has stuck. Corollary chapters are these chapters that talk about the beautiful ocean, the way it felt, and the birds in the sky. It was a no-plot move until the very end of that chapter, which would leave you hanging for the next month’s issue or the next week’s issue because it’s weekly. It would get you to come back for the next issue, but he got paid for the article.
Can you imagine today? Look at Netflix. I’m trying to watch Yellowstone. That’s weekly. Can you even imagine a monthly magazine? I would lose interest so fast.
I don’t know that as much. I should look that up because I’ve told that story many times. I should look up whether or not Moby Dick was stripped out over months or weeks, but I’m pretty sure that whatever it was, they were working towards trying to make sure they got somebody to come back, stays, and buy the next issue. Because of that, then he would make his money off of the next issue and the next issue. That is why it’s so long. There’s no value in it to the readers, the listeners, and the viewers. When you get to that point, you know you’re not valued and you quit it.
That’s what’s happening right now. We are boycotting the uselessness of that type of media right now. It is harmful. This is keeping me up at night. I have to admit that. I’m sitting back thinking how in the world can I make sure that the wonderful clients that I have who have these great businesses get the message out, are able to advertise, and make money, are able to get out their message about their books, their services, their company, and their brand in general. How do I do that with the state of media today? It’s really hard to make that happen.
It’s even harder if you’re paying for media because prices are going up. They have fewer people taking and they need to make their money. They are gouging what they used to be charging. Prices are going up on paid media and advertising dollars are going down because they cannot achieve circulation. You are getting less for your money over there even if you’re putting the same amount in.
What gets me about the mainstream media is if I see another commercial from Pfizer telling me to take this wonderful drug that may cause death or diarrhea.
My kids think that commercials are novel. They stop and watch them when they do happen like when we’re watching football or something. There are rarely commercials any other time that we allow. They watch those and she’s like, “Why would anyone take that? What is wrong with people that they would even consider that? Why would they do that?” The idea of a commercial, they don’t get it. They don’t understand. Commercials are things that you hit skip as soon as you can.
It’s funny. During COVID, I used to get mad and yell at the TV because I was a former ad exec. I saw this all, “We’re in this together.” I was like, “Why aren’t you guys doing humor?” We need to laugh.
It’s a pattern interrupt. We need some of those things. I know. They’re doing a terrible job. There have been a couple that I’ve noticed that made me laugh out loud. I was like, “That’s a good one,” but it’s very rare. The other thing that is happening and you know this better than anyone is that there’s a lot of platform censoring.
Somebody asked me the other day, “What is it with all the censorship on YouTube?” I was like, “It’s not. It’s about the advertiser. It’s not about them caring about what is being said. They make money if you say that.” He was talking and it was valid. He was talking about suicide support. The minute you mentioned the word, that’s a problem. If you don’t couple it with the word support like I just did. You have to do that or it becomes a censorship problem.
Censorship is about advertisers. It’s not about them caring about what is being said. It’s all about profit. Share on XThat’s one of the reasons we’ve gone over to Rumble too. I know you guys post our podcast and you do all the work over on YouTube but we’re also over on Rumble because there is no censorship over there.
The circulation is a lot lower over there and it’s very limited in terms of audiences right now. I think it will grow, but it hasn’t grown up. YouTube is the king. There’s no question about that. It has such a high circulation level.
What I love about Rumble is I don’t have to reach milestones to make money. It’s not a lot of money but it’s nice to get paid for your clicks on it.
The Rise Of Podcasting And Long-Form Content
It’s nice to get paid. Anyway, those are the things that are keeping me up at night. It’s thinking about how to get around this and how to make this work. The thing about podcasting that I love and that I wanted to make sure because everything looks like a nail because I have a hammer. Everything looks like a podcast because I have a microphone. I want to make sure that’s the case.
I spent a lot of time over the last month or so contemplating this and figuring out whether or not this is true. It’s so true that I am doubling down on it and applying for an NSF fund, a National Science Foundation fund, to be able to execute what we need to execute here for our podcasters. Podcasting has never been censored. It is not algorithmically driven. It is unable to be fake news if you publish more than ten minutes, a show that’s more than ten minutes.

There are very few people who can sustain a character. Maybe Joe Rogan or Stephen Colbert on the other side. They could sustain a fake character for a period of time, but you have to be a great improv actor or you’d have to change your entire life to embody this fake person that you’re not in order to do it. It’s not going to happen. It is going to slip out who you are.
Tom and I, my partner and husband, like to think that we’re apolitical when we do our podcast. We got voicemail. We got hate voicemail over the summer. Tom was like, “How could they possibly know what I think politically?” I said, “You know.” When you gave examples of some podcasts out there, you revealed what you listened to. When you talk about your favorite ice cream, you’re revealing something about yourself. It will come through, whether you realize it or not, who you are. When you have to talk for 30 minutes to an hour, sustained week over week, there is no way for you to hide that authentic you. If you think about the world of AI, that AI pattern can detect it almost immediately.
We already know whether you’re right-leaning or left-leaning, whether you care about the social good in the world, or you care about veterans. Whatever it is, it’s going to know because of your repetition of those things in examples or whatever you are doing as you’re talking through things. References to other people, things you watch, things you listen to, and things you read. Those make a difference and it will know instantly your preferences.
This is why I have a big fear of our kids about all their information being tracked and utilized by AI or by Google for that matter. By the time they hit age, it will know them so well that it could manipulate them immediately. We have to be careful with this information, but we can also use it to our advantage. That’s what we want to look at here. If the best way for me to get across who I am so that somebody will buy my book is long-form content, the only place to do that today is in podcasts and some videocasts that are sort of podcast style. That was the Wall Street Journal article you were referring to. They were saying that more and more people on YouTube are watching talking heads for hours on end.

That is watching a podcast. That’s what it is. It’s not any different. We do that every week on our livestream. We talked for 30 minutes and we gave our views and our opinions. We talked about how to be a podcaster every single week live. That’s a talking head model but people are watching that. I’ve had a lot of arguments with social media influencers like, “That’s never going to work. It needs to be two minutes and it’s got to be fancy with all this flying graphics, interrupt, and everything.”
I said, “That’s great if you want two minutes, but if you want someone to watch for 30 minutes, if you want someone to hear your message, if you want them to buy more from you, if you want them to buy that book and read that book, if they’ve listened to you that long, you’ve been in their ear, you’ve left an impression. They like you enough to stick around. They’re going to like you enough to buy the book.”
That is very true. When you talk about buying, I know everybody hates him, but I heard a statistic the other day that Alex Jones sells $60 million with a product a month. I should be a freak.
There’s a reason that The Onion bought his stuff because it’s valuable. The keyword value on the website is transferable. They’re going to flip it but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what it says. All that matters is what the keywords are and that’s The Onion model. They can flip something around to mean the opposite of the sarcasm to what it was originally written for. Now, they’re selling products off of those keywords and they’re going to make a ton of money off of what he built.
I don’t think he actually got the products.
He doesn’t get the products, but they get the keywords, which is how it sells. That’s how it drives the traffic through. Those things are valuable when you can do that. The other thing that you authors out there care about is this platform that you’re building. A platform is built on the authority of others. That’s why you want mainstream media out there. That’s why you want it because you want Inc. Magazine to say you’re great. You want Entrepreneur Magazine to say you’re a great entrepreneur. You want those things, but when those things have no value and they don’t lead to more audience, then your platform isn’t valuable at all anymore, or when everybody has them.
A platform is built on the authority of others. Share on XI’ve never been a huge fan of those press release programs that go out there and buy labels for your site. The ones that buy valuable backlinks are worth it because high-value backlinks, high-value cross-links from someone who has a high influence in my niche, in my keywords with my audience matters from both to somebody who looks at it and goes, “They’re endorsed by so and so. Great. That must mean something to me.” It also builds the actual technical growth that you need for your platform.
Numbers Talk: The Truth About Podcast Ratings
Let’s talk about numbers briefly. I’m not going to name the podcast because I’m sort of an independent. I listen to all sides but I’m listening and watching the ratings. There are many podcasts out there that are beating the ratings of CNN, MSNBC, and some of those bigger platforms out there. A lot of those shows are beating those ratings in the same time slot.
I’m going to say that those rating numbers are lies. I’m straight out saying they’re not real, but it is true in the sense of listen-through and other things. It’s not as visible. It’s not like we have the Nielsen ratings and the chart matters. The charts out there are owned by the same companies promoting the platform that you’re listening on or watching on. It’s not real and I can tell you that for sure because I’ve launched over 1,200 shows for our clients. When we look at the ones that are high-ranked on those charts, they don’t have the listeners that some of the lower-ranked ones do.
They’re not apples to apples in terms of listenership. I want you to be aware of that. Just because something is not ranking on a chart doesn’t mean you should skip it in terms of being a guest, listening to the show, or consuming the show. If it’s valuable in your niche, it’s valuable. Do not pay attention to those from that standpoint. However, there are a lot of numbers out there right now that are comparing the audience levels.
There’s a reason why people leave a media channel and go and start a podcast because they know they’re going to make more money and they know they’re going to get more listenership, but they’re bringing their audience with you. For you to start a podcast and think you’re going to get an audience built in from the platform is a mistake. You have to bring it with you. You have to build that audience yourself. That’s hard. I want to make that clear.
It is, and if you look, you’re seeing a lot of those mainstream media people like Megyn Kelly. She has an incredible number of listening every day that she’s built up. Tucker Carlson. Who else can I think of? Don Lemon thought he was going to and he was a complete flop. You get the flavor.
How To Build A Sustainable Podcast Audience
You have to be able to sustain an audience with the podcast. If you’re going to go out there and do it because there is no algorithmic boost as we talked about before, it has to all come from what you’re capable of doing. It’s a whole lot easier if your listeners, viewers, or fans are raving fans or binge-listening fans like the show I have called The Binge Factor.
If they want more of you, not the topic of you, then you can sustain that. That’s the difference. Now, on the topic side, that is fairly easy as well. If you are very niche and narrow in your topic and not broad like we see these entrepreneur podcast shows. They will die. I can guarantee it If you’ve got like, “The Entrepreneurial Leader.” If that’s the name of your show and then you’re like, “My premise is that I’m going to interview leaders.” Your show will be dead in six months.
You will not be getting the listeners to boost your ego enough to keep going. You’ll feel like a flop and a failure and you will give it up. No one types entrepreneur leaders into search engines like Apple or Spotify or any of those because it’s too general. They type in, “How to lead hundreds of employees.” They type in what they need. It’s become that and then they find a show that says, “That person has the experience that I want to hear from.” That’s how they go into it.
It’s how we got 100,000 listeners a month on 3D printing. They were looking at how to 3D print. They wanted information about our 3D print tips. That’s what we were solely focused on. They came to us because we 3D printed it. We don’t just talk about the news. We talked about the actual act of doing it, how hard it was, and what tips we had.
We talked to people and we were out there. We were their curious frontman and frontwoman. We were both, and that’s how we did it. You can do it that way and think about your books. Your books have a category. They have to be in a niche in an area. To succeed on Amazon and succeed in the book sale world, dive deep into that. Stay in that. This is not about you. Anyone who also puts their name on their podcast is going to fail.
The Joe Rogan Show. I don’t know about that. That’s a different game.
That’s why they listen. That’s the only reason they listen. It’s because it is him. You have to bring your own audience if you’re going to do that.
He had a substantial audience. That’s what I was trying to say with Megyn Kelly.
She brought people who wanted to listen to her because they were not able to get her anywhere else anymore, and so now, they brought her over. This is where it’s so valuable, but you have to stay connected to that audience to be able to transfer them from one media type to another. That’s when you have a platform. That’s what it means.
It means I can take them from YouTube to my podcast, to my blog and sell them something. I can take them from my podcast to my blog to sell them something, not social. Social is an aside. Social is a growing of those people who find out about you. Social is not going to sell you any products. Social is going to get them to maybe consume an episode and check you out. That’s all it is. It’s a commercial, back to what we were talking about before.
I have to say that my very favorite podcast, which will reveal nothing for you except that I’m a sociopath, is True Crime.
True Crime is a different model. True Crime is an entertainment model. It is a corollary chapter model. The more episodes we do, the more advertisers we have, the more money we make. We can drag this thing out.
They have some of the funniest stuff where they go into these old murders like twenty years old and talk to these degenerates who hopefully cleaned up their lives. It’s a lot of fun.
It is an ad entertainment model. It’s a different model than those of us trying to sell our stuff or our own books.
Start Your Podcasting Journey With Tracy
It very much is. If people wanted to start a podcast, where would they get a hold of you guys?
That is so easy because we are live every week on YouTube and we are live every week pretty much everywhere, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter or X, whatever you call it now. We are still live in those places Every week, we give tips. The best thing to do is to go to Feed Your Brand, which is our podcast for podcasters. It’ll talk about how to start a podcast and talk about various things. We talk about authors all the time because Juliet comes on my show. We have various points for that as well.
Everything is contained at PodcastersUnited.org. It is a non-profit that we formed for free tips, tools, and resources. The company that I run, Podetize, is a significant sponsor of it and so is Juliet’s company as well as Superbrand Publishing. We are sponsoring that because we want to make sure that not only do you start one but you start one that you’re going to keep and continue and have the support you need. If you can’t afford the support, it’s there for you. There are hundreds upon hundreds of content. There are tips and resources for everything you want to know. You can find out how to reach me from there because every social media is linked to me from there too.
Plus you and Tom are live on LinkedIn every Wednesday at 1:00 mountain time.
Noon Pacific time is what I say because it’s self-centered. We even go live. We will be going live on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. It’s a simulive. We’re live airing it, but we’re not actually there. It’s a cool thing. With the streaming tools, you can stream a video that’s never been aired before live at that moment in time, like a watch party if you think of it like that. That’s what we do on holidays. We did it live though. The day before Thanksgiving, we did one.
Guys, I’m going to tell you that even if you’re thinking I don’t need a podcast right now, I would still go watch. We try to drive traffic from our authors to their live stream on LinkedIn when we think it’s author-pertinent. That can be audience-building. It can be they are all over here with what they’re doing with it. I would check it out and look at their weekly schedule and see if there’s something as an author that could help you as well. We try to get into a lot of that when we send out the newsletter as well.
Breakthrough Author Magazines is one of my favorites to write for. I still write for some magazines and it’s one of the few. One thing I want to say about this is the platform. How many times do you hear that as an author when you want to self-publish and you want someone to publish it? They ask you what your platform is about.
The platform is something that is hammered into the author’s brain over time. It will make or break you. If you are paying for mainstream media or paying for any media spots at all right now, and you move to have a podcast, I can tell you for certain that you will stop paying. It will take a little bit of time. Eventually, you will stop having to pay for media because there’s an exchange that you can allow.

That is your in-kind payment. That promotional exchange is worth more than the money that anyone in the mainstream media would make by having you pay to be on their shows. Eventually, you will stop paying and you will get more valuable media exchanges.
Yes, you will. I do that a lot from the people that I have on the show. By just them sharing, we get new people all the time. Tracy, thank you so much for doing this. I know you’re super busy and we will talk soon.
Important Links
- BA Mag Training
- Tracy Hazzard
- The Binge Factor
- Feed Your Brand
- Podcasters United
- Podetize
- Superbrand Publishing
About Tracy Hazzard
Tracy Hazzard is a seasoned media expert with over 2600 interviews from articles in Authority Magazine, BuzzFeed, and her Inc. Magazine column; and from her multiple top-ranked videocasts and podcasts like The Binge Factor and Feed Your Brand – one of CIO’s Top 26 Entrepreneur Podcasts.
Tracy brings diverse views from what works and what doesn’t work in marketing, branding and media from thought leaders and industry icons redefining success around the globe.
Tracy’s unique gift to the podcasting, marketing, and branding world is being able to identify that unique binge-able factor – the thing that makes people come back again and again, listen actively, share as raving fans, and buy everything you have to sell.
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