recovery ships were waiting in the gulf of mexico to reach the capsule and crew. now it's time for a look at the weather with darren bett. mhr sunshine and showers, heavy showers around right now, but showers around right now, but showers were gradually ease through this evening. —— a mix of. alt was the west cloud increasing, some rain coming in from the atlantic, breeze picking up, it means frost night will be more limited to eastern scotland and the north—east of england. many places starting the day dry on monday, the wind blowing in this cloud, rain pushing its way across the west. most of the day to reach the south—east of england and east anglia, drier in northern scotland and some western areas

turning showery. low pressure driving wet and windy weather, strongest wind to the south across england and wales, gusts of 50—60 mild power, staying windy in the evening. because of the wind and rain, it will be a cold day. —— 60 mph. it stays cold through the week ahead. hello, this is bbc news... the headlines... people in england may not need to self—isolate if they've been in close contact with someone with covid. daily rapid tests will be offered as an alternative to ten days quarantine. india has recorded its highest number of coronavirus deaths in a single day since the start of the pandemic. a national day of mourning in israel, after 45 people were killed by a crush at a jewish festival early on friday. surgery in the womb — a pioneering procedure to repair a baby's spine while still in its mother's womb continues, despite pandemic pressures.

hundreds of manchester united fans invade the old trafford pitch, protesting against the club's owners, ahead of this afternoon's game with liverpool. now on bbc news — sscial media, anti—social media, breaking news, faking news — this is the programme about a revolution in media, with amol rajan, the bbc�*s media editor. hello. why does so much of the media now need a subscription? netflix, amazon, disney plus, i could go on and on. 0ne terrain largely immune until recently has been podcasts. maybe not for much longer, because apple and spotify are rolling out a feature that will let podcasters charge a monthly fee to hear new episodes. is this the beginning of the end of the world of podcasts

as we know it, is this the consolidation of the industry around a handful of tech companies stifling new entrants, creaming off the biggest stars? or is this a wonderful thing? quality course, maybe customers should pay, enormous budgets thrown at tv drama, are we going to get a new calibre of podcasts that will blow our ears off for a few quid each and every month? —— quality costs. i have put together a panel of friends to talk this through. declan moore is the head of international for wondery, the publisher has hits like dirtyjohn, no surprise that last december wondery was bought by amazon. caroline crampton writes about podcasts, she also hosted shedunnit, unravelling the mysteries behind classic detective stories. imriel morgan founded her own podcast agency, content is queen, she presents a few herself, and matt from folder media, he is a co—founder of the british podcast awards and knows everything and everyone.

casting you as god, matt! we will find out soon. welcome, let's find out a bit about the stories you have been telling. declan, tell us about wondery — international hits, you have gone very british. yes, thank you for having me, we launched ourfirst non—us, international local production, british scandal, we are excited about that, quite a number of number one shows, 33 in total in the us, including doctor death and the shrink next door, six number ones in the uk, really excited to launch our first original show hosted by alice levine and tom forde.

—— matt forde. this is your account of the alexander litvinenko poisoning. he looks around the conference room, inside the room is crowded with journalists. he looks back at the agents. this is what we are not told about the federation - of small businesses. “ we are —— we are not talking about. no, though hopefully we will at some point. this is what used to be the kgb. yes, federal security service of the russian federation that came in at the end of the soviet union. high production values, a little gentle humming music, who is your target audience? we place a tremendous emphasis on creating what we call emotional, emotive, immersive storytelling and transporting the listener into the shoes of the protagonist and where the action takes place. what we are doing is telling this story, that many might remember from 2005, for a new audience and injecting a certain amount

of humour and balancing things, the laughs with the levity and bringing this story to life. are you trying to appeal to particular people, do you have research? i assume amazon have strong research. do you have a particular demographic or peeling people away from linear stations, and existing podcast markets, do you feel there is a gap? absolutely, there is a tremendous opportunity for audience growth, 37% in the us are monthly listeners of podcasts, and two thirds who are not. in the uk latest figures it is about 20—22%, so the whole space is growing at a rapid pace and the stories we tell have appeal. new listeners discover podcasting for the first time and we are providing immersive stories.

who do you think about your competition? 0ther podcasts or linear stations? there is lots of of room and space for audio consumption, great to see lots of new types of platforms that listeners can find and we are seeing with the growth, as they discover it and stories that they like, they are coming back for more, tremendously loyal, building relationships with the hosts, interested in these great stories that we are telling. is this show, which is new, exclusive to one particular podcast app? you have your own app that gives early access, so where do you get a thing like this? yes, it is available everywhere, amazon music, apple podcast, wherever it is you get your podcasts. there is the opportunity if you are a paying subscriber to access episodes that are out

for you, and prior to general release. —— that are ad—free. caroline, wondery is a us podcast company that has attracted huge investments before the amazon purchase, what can wondery offer the uk market that we do not already have? what you mentioned, money and funding, we have had some great ideas and creators in the uk but we have not had a home—grown venture—backed podcast studio that has tens of thousands, if not more to spend on a single show. i think that is where wondery could bring that. you were one of the early innovators in this field, do you think it feels like there is an enormous exciting moment around you and you want to have a slice of it? there has been a few of those, i know people always look back

to 2014 and the debut of the first series of catlike cereal, to 2014 and the debut of the first series of serial, and always gauge these things by how difficult is to explain myjob. "give me your phone," let me show you. now all i have to say, i make a podcast, and the question is, what is it? is that true of older people as well? i think so, my dad has been through an evolution where he used to think a podcast was when he looked up a listen again of radio four, now he listens to all kinds of things. looking at economics, you host your own show looking at golden age crime, how does that earn you money? different ways, i have a membership scheme associated with it, not dissimilar to wondery, a platform i built myself

where i have about 500 paying supporters who pay for early access, ad free access and the community that goes with it, as well as bonus audio, also advertising, and when i have time and energy i sell merchandise and get donations and grants. let's hear a bit. what does any of this have to do with murder mysteries? - these two forms of puzzle, the crossword and the classic fair play whodunnit, were exploding in popularity at the same time and this collective passion had a common source in the so—called puzzle craze of the period immediately following the first world war. the critic alison lyte has described the effect of murder mysteries in this period as the mental equivalent of pottery. the same could be said of word puzzles. people love whodunnits and crosswords because they are absorbing and distracting

but not disruptive. that would sound to my mind not at all out of place on radio four. are you trying to poach radio four listeners? do you have a sense informed by data for your target markets? i am certainly not trying to poach anybody, but i do think it is a format that people are familiar with, you get not the most accurate data necessarily from your podcasting hosting provider, but i do get more listeners in the us than in the uk, it was the other way around when we started out. possibly the agatha christie equivalent writers are very attractive to anglophiles in the us, but that was a surprise. that it was more popular there. what was your instinctive response to the news that apple and spotify are going to let people

like you charge a subscription, does that appeal? i cannot say it appeals to me in 2021, i think if it had been launched five years ago, people like me might have been more interested. we all have systems now, i have my own completely independent platform company, like wondery has their own app, they have big publishers like npr on—board to offer subscriptions, but we all have built an ecosystem and i personally think they have missed the window. fascinating. matt, apple is not the first company to do it — declan�*s company as we mentioned, audible also — has apple doing subscriptions fundamentally changed this industry? the one positive for apple is they make it very easy to start a subscription, so there might be a bit of a road you have to travel independently to get it to work as a consumer, but for apple it looks

like buying an app, you can hit a button, they already have your credit card details, less friction, but the downside, they will take 30% of your revenue for the first year, dropping to 15% for subscriptions in the second year. not necessarily earning so much per user but you can get more money from more users. thinking of younger listeners, hearing all these people talk about how easy it is to get into podcasting and that there is a gold rush, young listeners do have stories they want to tell, is it basically, with these new entrants, is it easier than ever, is it true to say it is easier to get into podcasting, set up a studio at home and build an audience that is paying? it is easy to create audio, you can get that somewhere, and get into the platforms, that is easy also.

the question is if it is any good, and also the challenge that all media has, especially digital media, is how you get awareness, how do people learn it exists? a lot of podcasting grows from word—of—mouth but also promotion — when you go to spotify or apple podcasts, there's mentions in newspapers or online social media, so that is your challenge. one of the issues that smaller operators might face with the big guys doing a good job is getting squeezed out. is it harder to find spots where people talk about your show where you can grow awareness? you cannot really grow a subscription business until you have a free to air audience first, so lots of places talk about converting free subscribers, so if you can convert one or 2%, you still need hundreds or low thousands to get people to start paying, or they really have to really like you, that is the other option — can you create an amazing

relationship with your audience which spikes your numbers where a high percentage of people now want to support you by subscribing? because we are doing this on zoom, i can see you all, you all started smiling when people wondered if it is any good, you must have all lisened to a lot of bad podcasts. you run content is queen, what is it? wannabe is a podcast by young women of colour who are taking their careersin their own hands, careers in theirown hands, so it is about giving them the tools they need to take consistent action to pursue those careers. we speak to really high—achieving and high—profile people including writers and cartoon creators.

basicallyjust going through their stories and journey, that is what we do with wannabe. with content is queen, it is about community and helping your podcast enter the market successfully because it is so much harder now to make something good that will be listened to, picked up and promoted. has it got harder than when you started? you and i did a piece together on this before. you have seen changes over the last few years, what specifically has got harder? harder to get the word out. content is queen started as a podcast marketing agency, that is what i am most referred for, where all my money comes from, from podcast marketing specifically, it is a niche and a special skill set because it is not hard to get people to click through and listen. there are things, that is a specific way of marketing yourself

and your show and talking about it, pitching your show, that a lot of new creators are not very good at because they are not marketers or promoters. on top of that you also have to make sure the content you are trying to promote is promote—worthy, especially in the big places like the guardian or the ft. let's hear a bit of wannabe. listeners can make up their own mind. i wasn't thinking about my mental health, i was thinking about being the best i could be and that was my primary focus, i came second to that, which looking back was not the right decision, but it was what i committed to. for the most part i destroyed my mental health. it got to a point where i found it very hard to find joy in my life. i was so consumed by the negatives, but i think over time i found this balance,

accepting this as the world we live in and this is the kind of discriminations that trans people face but i am doing my best in my ability to make that not happening but i need to give myself a break within it and that i cannot continue to live this way. do you find that interviewees open up on a podcast in a way that they might not on other media? i think so, there is something about not being seen that makes you far less self—conscious and open to having a conversation. it also just comes down to how good you are at asking questions and interviewing, and really being curious and intuitive in the way that you go about conducting these interviews, and i have done over 115 episodes, so i have had a lot of practice and it has been iterating, and i have been able to get bigger and bigger guests by virtue of having a lot of practice of asking those questions.

i am still often getting the response of, well, good question, no one has ever asked me that on a podcast. again, it is looking at what the listener wants but also how curious i am about this person. let me go back to something earlier, you said it is getting harder than ever to get the word out. some are listening to this saying, hang on, it is a gold rush, amazon are putting money out, social media platforms where it doesn't cost anything to go on instagram, how is it harder to get the word out about a podcast now than three or four years ago? it is really about the fact there is a lot of podcasts. it is saturation, not as saturated as youtube or any other media, but there is so much out there and it is hard to distinguish what is good without pressing play, and presently it requires a level of time commitment,

so that is why we see, we launched a fund injanuary where we gave out £10,000 to podcast creators were just starting out or have established shows promise. from that result we saw that loads and loads of people would like to spend money on cameras and video setups because they want to document their podcast in video, because that is how they think they will grow their show. they see youtube as the avenue in which they will be able to do that. it is challenging without having a way, besides an audiogram, depending on how well you do them, there is not a tremendous amount out there to promote a market deal, so it is harder to get people to commit the time, especially if you look at a new podcast, i do not have an hour and 40 minutes to try out your new show, who has time for that? —— promote and market audio. especially if you are brand—new with no reputation.

it is difficult. declan, i wonder if i could ask you that, you are here to talk about wondery, i wonder if there is, you might feel a little bit circumspect about the possibility that there is this enormous consolidation of power in the content business, and i wonder if you could respond to that, the danger that some smaller innovators might get crowded out. i think it is more - opportunity for creators because there are more essential outlets for their stories _ and greater audiences . to listen to those stories. we have a lot of producers in the uk who are working with companies - in the us for their shows, - and i feel, providing more choice is going to help us all. for sure, we need more stories to come into this space, a lot. of areas are underrepresented - and we are really at the early days, even though we are 15 years into it,

but still the early days| of becoming that mass media consumption outlet. i actually completely agree, the last time i was on the media show, one of the heads of the bbc said the same thing, it is a good thing if the bbc and other places enter this because it creates a bigger expansion, more listeners come and they trickle down, landing on the independent podcasts, but the average new podcast only sees around 136 listens per episode, that was the latest stats last year. whilst it is true that it is becoming more well—known as a term and people know what it means when you say a podcast, in terms of the discoverability as an independent creator, that is still remaining to be seen, you still need to have a relationship

with a curator on a platform for your podcast to be on the front page to be clicked on and discovered, so yes and no is the answer. caroline, you are nodding. i completely agree, adding that podcast entering the general vocabulary is great and big publishers like the bbc and others do that, if you're listening to bbc podcast and seeing that you'll go and listen to content is queen, how do i know it exists? —— adding the word podcast into. the rising tide lifts all boats metaphor only works to a certain extent. where does the bbc fit into all of this? what do you reckon this all means for them? can bbc sounds complete with spotify etc? —— compete. there is a big battle going on between apple and spotify, they are the two big players. apple historically did very well,

they helped birth podcasting at the beginning, they started the consumer podcasting boom. spotify have done a much betterjob in the past two years of promoting podcasts, building up, numbers out today — 380 million people use spotify every month. one of the dangers is, that could be independent creators, you fall down the cracks in between that battle, and spotify and apple are speaking their devices and apps and services, some of that is built on content from bbc, the people on this programme also, it is not like netflix where they are writing paycheques to all creators, they are offering a way to make money or reach audiences, but they are also competitors. —— speccing their apps.

if you look at spotify they make their own shows, or a lot of companies that do that, not only are you trying to get your show promoted on their platform, you're also competing against programmes. that will be more of a challenge, you add subscription to that, it is difficult. the bbc, massive scale, great programmes, bbc sounds does well, but can they put subscriptions into their app? probably not, open to a lot of problems. it becomes a new competitive place for the bbc, and they still find the same challenges that smaller creators do with getting content promoted. also they are battling for space on apple's podcasts. people may not know the sort of sums

we are talking about, spotify paid joe rogan $100 million to make his podcast exclusive to them. wondery and amazon — amazon paid $300 million. declan you do not have to confirm but you can tell us if it is wildly wrong. caroline, people are worried that when you have influences of californian west coast companies, you have a culture of homogenisation. —— influx. netflix, disney would say they employ local people, but you do have the stories that define our culture being funded from a patch of earth on the west coast of america, do you worry about what that will do to podcasting? i do not worry about it so much in relation to california or any one place, but i think the boom in podcasting and its success has given a homogenisation of sound. people here are really successful with true crime shows,

and others think if they have that, if i have a different country, but maybe if i make it sound like that, fans of that show will also like my show, and it is getting to the point where it is being parodied on saturday night live, that kind of homogenisation is definitely something i'm aware of. one thing i would imagine, what is encouraging for people in the distribution tiers, we have marketers and advertisers coming into this space because they see the audience growth. there was a report last week on digital media, podcasting had the highest increase in advertising investment in the uk of any digital medium, up 43%. that provides more funding into this space for those who are creating great stories that need to be told. thank you so much, declan moore, caroline crampton, max deagan,

and imriel morgan. —— matt deagan. i will be back next week, thanks for your time. we have got a mixture sunshine and showers at the moment, still heavy showers at the moment, still heavy showers around right now but though showers around right now but though showers will gradually ease through this evening and we will get clearer skies for a while. towards the west, cloud increasing, rain coming in from the atlantic, breeze picking up. frost tonight will be more limited to eastern scotland and the north—east of england. many places starting dry on monday, the wind blowing in this cloud and rain, pushing across the west, taking most of the day to reach the south—east

of the day to reach the south—east of england and east anglia, dryer in northern scotland. western areas turning showery later. low pressure driving wet and windy weather, strongest wind to the south across england and wales, garstons of 50—60 mph. because of the wind and rain, it will be a cold night on monday, staying cold through the week ahead.

this is bbc news. the headlines at 4:00... people in england may not need to self—isolate if they've been in close contact with someone with covid. daily rapid tests will be offered as an alternative to ten days quarantine. it's been particularly difficult for children, often self isolating from a contact in their year group they have never actually seen or met, and they are off school for an extra ten days. so, i think this is a really positive step. india has recorded its highest number of covid—19 deaths in a single day since the start of the pandemic. hundreds of manchester united fans invade the old trafford pitch — protesting against the club's owners — delaying this afternoon's premier league game with liverpool.