What is CBC Podcasts looking for these days?
Vol. 6 - CBC Podcasts' Chris Oke talks pitching and indie podcaster grievances.
Hihi!! Happy Pod the North Tuesday. Did you get snowed on this weekend? I did.
In this issue:
CBC Podcasts’ Executive Producer, Chris Oke, says he’s focused on really high quality content and growing CBC’s audience.
Canadian Indie: Chasing Enlightenment
True North Podcast Feature: Auntie Up!
Lots of fresh resources!
FYI: There are currently 31 long-term drinking water advisories in effect in 27 First Nations communities across Canada!
I’ve mentioned before that this newsletter was sparked by the open letter I wrote to Canadian podcast networks on the Vocal Fry Studios blog back in April 2022.
Here’s the gist of it:
It’s time for Canadian networks to use their power for good and consider being a little more generous with their time and funding.
I have a lot of feelings about the role of networks in Canada's podcasting ecosystem. A big issue for me has been the part they play in keeping it fractured.
To be clear, I come at this topic as both a full-time Freelance Podcast Producer and an indie podcaster.
Many Canadian podcasters I've talked to share the same unanswered questions I have about how networks are really collaborating with the industry as a whole — how the pitching and acquisitions processes are really going down.
Probably even more importantly, how their time is being valued.
At the risk of being totally shunned by CBC forever, I sought out to find some answers.
I reached out to CBC Podcasts’ Executive Producer, Chris Oke, to get his insights on some of Canadian podcasters’ most common frustrations when it comes to the ecosystem, pitching to networks, and podcast acquisitions.
Thoughts from the ecosystem:
CBC Podcasts’ Executive Producer, Chris Oke, says he’s focused on really high quality content and growing CBC’s audience.
If you’re big on going to Hot Docs Podcast Festival or any other Canadian podcast event like me, you’ve likely seen Chris Oke before in a panel about pitching. This conversation isn’t new to him.
But he was very gracious in letting me air out my pitching grievances and enlightening me on the way CBC Podcasts is handling pitches, who he likes to work with best, what kind of pitch is more likely to be successful, and much, much more.
Here's my conversation with Chris:
This interview has been edited and condensed for brevity.
Kattie: What is your pulse on the Canadian podcasting ecosystem lately?
Chris: I think we're really punching above our weight in terms of the mark we're leaving. There are lots and lots of English speaking listeners around the world that listen to stuff made in Canada.
Lots of great [Canadian] producers are doing amazing work down in the US as well, like Mira Burt-Wintonick who's worked on the new Radiolab for Kids series, Terrestrials. Chris Berube is working at 99% Invisible. Sam Mullins did a series recently called Wild Boys that was made for Campside, so that's a Canadian pitching a Canadian story to an American podcast company and having a big hit with it.
Production companies like Kelly&Kelly, Antica and Pacific Content, there's a lot of really international grade production companies that are doing incredible work here.
I want to get an idea of the CBC Podcasts head space.
Can you tell me about the balance between CBC making it’s own evergreen podcasts versus developing pitches that you’re receiving?
We don't have a set ratio of, “we wanna do a certain number of this type of show and a certain number of this type of show”.
Our two main pillars are that we want to produce or help distribute really high quality content and we also want to grow our audience.
In terms of where we find that content, we look far and wide and we don't limit ourselves to anything. So if there is a great indie podcast that's coming out, like Sickboy or The Secret Life of Canada, and we're listening to it and we think, “Oh gosh, we should have made that”, we're open to licensing an existing idea or an existing podcast.
But then at the same time we're always receiving pitches. We're always open to hearing ideas from individual producers, reporters, creators, or production companies.
We pride ourselves on sort of having the finger on the pulse of podcasting as well as the news and the zeitgeist. We're often spotting certain stories that we wanna investigate ourselves, so a lot of the pitches will come from inside CBC Podcasts or inside CBC as well.
It's really a balance of trying to find the best possible content.
Is CBC maybe more willing to produce their own show than sift through pitches? What's the dynamic there?
I think it's slightly changing. For a long time we did a lot more production in-house. But the industry's growing quite quickly.
A few years back, there weren't that many independent production companies outside of CBC — that were pitching to us at least. Even still today, there aren't a lot of people that have a lot of experience creating the world class audio that we're seeing today.
I'd say we're moving more towards doing more licenses [and] more external production companies or producers producing things for us. But there's still a large amount that we produce in house.
My next question was the classic, “what are some key factors that make a standout pitch?” But it sounds like the pitches that you're more willing to work with come from production houses and more established podcast producers. Is that the case?
There's always a lot that we're weighing. So a big part of [a pitch] is the idea itself.
The first step is always that we look at the pitch and say, “Is this something that we feel would work for us that meets our pillars?”(high quality content and audience growth).
But then we also look at the people who are pitching. If you're an individual with your friend, you come up with an idea but you have no audio experience [and] no track record, then that's something that we would factor in.
If we really love the idea, we do development phases. For example, a pitch comes in and there's a few outstanding questions. We will pay people to further develop or put together a pilot, or even just some audio samples of hosting or how it might sound.
With a more established production company who we've worked with before, we would be more likely to move forward.
The development phase is interesting for me because this has not been my experience as a podcast producer. I've actually gone through the pitching process twice and was disappointed by it.
Even after a couple of follow-ups we never heard back from anyone. We didn't even get an automated acknowledgement that the pitch was received or rejected. It felt like we were sending it out into the ether.
Understandably, people can get really attached to their pitch and then don't know what happens to it once it’s been submitted.
In other pitching environments it's pretty common for pitches to be acknowledged in some capacity or formally rejected but CBC doesn’t seem to do this. Can you share your perspective on this?
The department has been around for I think seven years now and for a long time it was just two people receiving emails and responding directly, so we have the Google Pitch Form now.
I think an automated reply would be a good idea. It would be good to know that [a pitch] has actually gone through, but I think we have on [the Google Pitch Form] that if you don't hear back from us within a certain amount of time then you can assume that we've passed.
For a long time we did reply to each and every pitch that came in but it became unmanageable. We receive nearly a pitch a day, but they're all being reviewed.
I'd also say there's plenty that goes into the decision and it often has nothing to do with the idea itself. If we get an idea and we're like, “this is too similar to an existing podcast” or something we're already working on then often we'll pass on those.
Do you think it's worth it to send an email to let somebody know about that?
Well, I thought the Google form sent you a note to say that it had gone through successfully.
I think it's just helpful to know some of the reasoning.
I understand it takes some effort to respond to every single pitch but without that dialogue I think it's left a lot of questions for people in the Canadian podcasting space.
Not to be too harsh, but I’ll add that most of the conversations that CBC has during pitching presentations at Hot Docs for example, start out with “there's already so many podcasts in this space.” It almost comes across like, “we don't want your pitches.” And then people do pitch and never hear anything back.
So there's something there to be addressed, otherwise why pitch at all?
That development phase you mentioned — if something is triggering your interest and you are going to email back to ask some more questions — how frequently does that happen?
It happens every single day. Like I sent four different emails about that this morning. It is fairly frequent.
Our development round table meets biweekly. And usually we have about two pitches, sometimes it's three. Once we've looked through all the pitches that have come in through the pitch portal and there are ones that we think “there might be something here”, sometimes even before that dev meeting we'll go back to the people that pitched and ask a few follow up questions.
And then within that group [we have] a number of different people with lots of experience in different genres across podcasting and different interests. Through those sessions we'll decide, “this doesn't meet our needs or our pillars” and so we decline and we'll usually go to the producer and explain a little bit more why we decided to pass.
Often there are additional questions like, “we really like this host but they've never hosted before, could we get an audio sample?”
I mean, I've never got to that process so it's obviously hard for me to hear because ideally I would love to have had an email back saying, “this is interesting, let's talk about it more”. But that’s more on a selfish note.
I think when we talk about how many podcasts there are out there, it's not to say like, “put a lot of work into your pitch”.
I would rather see a rough pitch with a really unique idea.
A lot of the pitches that we get are often repurposed versions of existing shows. The example I always go back to is “This Canadian Life”. But Canadians listen to This American Life and there's a lot of Canadians that work on This American Life. We're not looking to make a Canadian version of something that exists.
It's more focusing on the idea itself and making sure that's unique rather than the pitch itself being really polished.
On that note, what exactly is CBC looking for these days? Are there any trends there that you're looking at?
We're open to everything.
We've only done a little bit of audio fiction and have found that it's difficult to find audiences with fiction. But if we get a great fiction pitch we still take the time to look at that. We have a few that we're debating right now.
The genre that we've had the most success with, aside from daily news like Front Burner, is limited run narrative series. Whether that's more investigative true crime or whether it's more memoir or history. Within our team we've developed a real skill around that long form narrative storytelling.
We look for something narrative and character focused. We get a lot of pitches that are based on ideas or issues, but we've found in order to bring listeners in and keep them downloading episodes it really has to be character focused and narrative.
Kuper Island for example, was a story about Indian residential schools and the discovery of unmarked graves. But it was a story of four individual students. Focusing in on this one community, this one school, individual characters, allows you to understand the bigger picture.
Those are pretty hefty podcasts to be making. That's a lot of research, a lot of scripting — that's a lot to produce. If somebody's pitching that kind of idea, how much support is CBC looking to invest?
In those cases we want someone with this serious journalism pedigree.
Someone like Duncan McCue to be at the helm and oversee that storytelling. But then if it is a story that's a little bit more memoir focused, like Alone, you don't necessarily have to have a journalism background.
It sounds like if you're gonna go through the pitching process, you're more likely to have a successful pitch if you have some solid experience in the podcasting space, and you can be a good resource to the rest of the CBC team — provide some technical skills or writing skills, or just some really good insight that would be unique to you.
Yeah. In that pitch form, you're pitching yourself too: Why you're the person to be telling this story. What are some of the skills and experience that you're bringing?
So how is CBC approaching acquisitions versus pitches?
It's not super common right now, but is something that we've done.
The most recent off the top of my head is The Secret Life of Canada and Sickboy. But that's been like four years now, right? So it's been a while.
Has it been that long? We have been in discussions with other podcasts. I don't wanna mention the ones that we ultimately didn't go forward with because I think more often it’s their decision than ours.
In the meantime, there have been other shows that have been pitched to us or we've gone to people and we say, “Hey, we love your show” and it just hasn't worked out for whatever reason. But it is still something we're looking at.
I'm curious if CBC Podcasts comes together says, “We really should have a podcast about this”. And instead of deciding to make it on their own, they look for podcasts that already exist. What's that acquisition job looking like?
Well, we don't have anyone who's dedicated job that is. In general with all development we've made it a small part of everyone's job.
All of us are avid podcast listeners and we follow various newsletters and we're watching the Spotify and Apple charts and listening quite widely.
In those biweekly development meetings anyone from our team can say, “Hey, I'm listening to this show right now. It's something that we could potentially license”.
Then a Senior Producer, Executive Producer, or someone from our team will reach out and see if there's any interest.
One last tough question for you:
I know there's no need for CBC Podcasts to foster the Canadian podcasting ecosystem. Realistically, CBC is a media company that has it’s own interests.
But in that idea, I think there are benefits to CBC having more of a discourse with the people who submit pitches and with indie podcasts.
Can you talk about what CBC is doing to elevate the Canadian podcast space outside of CBC, or if that’s even of interest to you?
It's totally something that we're interested in and we talk about a lot. Podcasting is so new that often we are developing the industry above and beyond developing individual shows.
We're quite involved with the Hot Docs Podcast Festival or Vancouver Podcast Festival and events of that nature.
Inappropriate Questions was a show that was basically made as a class project that we loved and brought in house and produced in house with them. The producers on that show were quite new to podcasting and I think only Elena [Hudgins Lyle] was full time.
When the pandemic first happened we had Creative Relief Fund. CBC as a whole put that out and we had a number of podcast pitches that came in as a result. There were six that were selected for development and I think two of them went forward.
But I hear you about the pitches and potentially providing more feedback and that's something that we can look into doing more of. But we do take the development of the industry really seriously.
Here’s what Chris is listening to:
KILLED: KILLED reveals the true stories behind reporting that was once considered too dangerous, too fringe, too…SOMETHING…by the media.
Project Unabom: An in-depth look back at the Unabomber saga.
Björk: Sonic Symbolism: Björk discussing the textures, timbres and emotional landscapes of each of her albums.
Our Struggle: The life and struggle of Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard.
V/A Club: a bi-weekly podcast about movie soundtracks, hosted by Niko Stratis.
Check out this Canadian Indie: Chasing Enlightenment
They called themselves the Students of Light. Their leader, John Hanas, claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.
In the 1970s, a small religious sect called the Students of Light quietly moved into the core of Toronto’s rundown Junction neighbourhood. Some former members have called the group a dangerous cult, accusing its leadership of mind control, brainwashing, and abuse.
True North Podcast Feature: Auntie Up!
A celebration of Indigenous women talking about the important s***.
Aunties can be counted on to speak their truth without the sugar-coating. They will tell you straight up what you need to know and they aren’t afraid to mince words. It is an unfiltered conversation into the Indigenous world view — or at least the Auntie world view.
For your pod:
Nominations for The Ambies are open! The entry fee for members is $100, and non-members is $175. Enter by this Friday, November 18th 2022.
RESOURCE:
’s breaks down how she increased one podcast’s monthly listens by 155%. Read here.RESOURCE: Does your podcast have a media kit? Alexandra at POD.DRALAND has just launched her media kit template for podcasters! Make a copy of the doc & edit the colors and fonts to make it match your podcast/brand!
RESOURCE: Tired of sending your podcast guests an intimidatingly long “Tips & Tricks” email that they probably only read half of? Why not share this incredible video from Buzzsprout instead? It’s all the rage on Podcast Twitter.
RESOURCE: Want to know where your podcast ranks amongst others? More great stuff from Buzzsprout: check out their breakdown of platform stats.
What’s going on in Canada’s podcast ecosystem:
CONGRATULATIONS! The winners of The Canadian Podcast Awards have been announced, with Parkdale Haunt as this year’s people’s choice winner. ICYMI, check out the full list of winners here.
SUPPORT CANADA’S INDEPENDENT PODCAST NETWORKS: It’s fundraising season for two great networks, The Harbinger Media Network and CANADALAND.
- Help Harbinger build Canada's progressive podcast community.
- Help CANADALAND deliver quality reporting, news, and analysis that is free and accessible for all.NEW SHOW from CBC Vancouver: Land Back.
Gitxsan investigative journalist Angela Sterritt takes a deep dive into land theft in Canada in this new 6 part series.Do you NEED to edit your podcast?
's unpacks the pros and cons of editing a your podcast. Hint: Yes, you should edit your podcast. Read why.Award-winning Canadian podcaster and host of Disability After Dark, Andrew Gurza, has been harmed by Air Canada yet again. The Canadian Podcast Awards are bringing awareness to Air Canada’s continued damage to mobility devices and inhumane treatement of people with disabilities. You can too by joining me in sharing this tweet!
Let's help our friend and Canadian Podcaster @aagurza here and send a message to @AirCanada that they need to do better.Air Canada left my $30,000 power wheelchair sopping wet yesterday on my flight from Toronto to San Francisco. They also mangled my power joystick to the point where I almost couldn't drive it. Then, they had the audacity to get angry at me because I was angry. /1
Andrew Gurza @aagurzaIYCMI: PodCamp Toronto toys with me yet again.
Finally, a word from Joe…
Share your thoughts with me! Leave a comment or reply to the email newsletter.
Thanks for supporting Pod the North, I’ll be back in your inbox in two weeks!
Kattie @podkatt
Media kits, CBC inside scoops, and amazing recommendations, oh my! Your newsletter is one of the few I make sure I read to the end... and then go back and peruse all the links and goodies. THANK YOU for delivering more excellence Kattie!