This is an automatically generated transcript of the PodPod episode ‘Empire: Making it to your 1000th episode’. We apologise for any errors in spelling and grammar.
Rhianna Dhillon
Hello and welcome to PodPod, the podcast for podcasters of all levels. I'm your host Rhianna Dhillon and joining me on today's episode is Matt Hill, who runs Rethink Audio and is the co-founder of the British Podcast Awards and Adam Shepherd, PodPod's editor. Hello, both!
Adam Shepherd
Hello, hello.
Matt Hill
Hello, hello, hello!
Rhianna
Hi. So today's interview was a mammoth interview, I feel. We interviewed the hosts of the Empire podcast, which was very, very fun, it was very nerdy. It was film related, obviously. So I had a good time.
Matt
Yeah, you loved it, didn't you? You had a great time.
Rhianna
I was getting all the references. It is insane about the amount of work that goes into a podcast like this, because I think especially with Empire, which is a long form podcast, emphasis on long, yes, but I can't imagine just the amount of work that goes into not only researching it, recording it, editing it, promoting it. But I think we learn that this is something that they all do. In their spare time this podcast, this is not their main job, was that a shock for you?
Adam
That was a big shock. Because it is such an enormous commitment just based on the sheer length of the thing, the amount of time that must go into everything around it, the fact that they're having to fit that in alongside additional workloads, for me was just crazy. I mean, even juggling this podcast, which is, you know, part of my actual full time job and not anything like as long as Empire’s is difficult enough. So yeah, I'm in awe of the fact that they managed to do as much as they do.
Matt
It is interesting to think that it is their side hustles still after all these years, but I think that's the case for most podcasts, isn't it? I think even the most successful ones, it's not necessarily their day job, whether you're doing it for profits, or as a hobby, there is certainly an element of how do you fit it around your work life, the issues that you might get if you're a journalist, and you're therefore doing it as part of your job, but not really acknowledged. And your job description is therefore, like, how much of your day job do you let it take over? What are the priorities for your employer, which I think is something we kind of get into a little bit in this chat, which I thought was really fascinating.
Adam
I think work life balance is a big part of it as well. If you are trying to fit a podcast around a day job, you really have to be fully 110% committed to the podcast, or you just risk burning yourself out. I mean, case in point, this episode was pre recorded before Christmas, because we wanted to give ourselves a proper Christmas break. But these are the kinds of things that you have to take into account when you're balancing a recurring weekly podcast and the day job. And it's it's tough,
Rhianna
It is incredibly tough. And we will delve into all of that and more in this chat with the Empire crew. So here they are. Chris Hewitt, Helen O'Hara and James Dyer. So we're here with the Empire film podcast. It's actually a world that I know a lot about. Finally, we've been doing this podcast for a little while. And this is finally my comfort zone film. Because we've been trying to decide none of us can really come up with a figure we've settled on 821 episodes that you guys have recorded. So far. Does that sound about right?
Chris Hewitt
Oh, way more? How many? We're in. We're in. We're in the low 1000s moments. Yeah. We crossed the four figure mark some time ago if we count our supporters' specials as well, which we are absolutely for the sake of this. Yeah. But we've done 535 regular episodes, regular weekly episodes of the podcast, and we've done several 100 specials as well.
Rhianna
I mean, how, obviously, film is always going to be there. But how have you kind of kept that momentum going from the very beginning? 10 years, you guys have been going
Helen O’Hara
10 years.
Rhianna
It is an incredible feat.
Helen
It started off I think... Chris had been talking about since about 2007. I think it took us a while to actually find the studio space, get to grips with the technology we needed and get started. I personally thought he was being laughably ambitious when he said we'll do one a week. And I was kind of thinking, okay, we'll just want to wait like, you know, we should make it pretty short, like 20 minutes and we shouldn't promise a guest every week because that's a lot of pressure. And of course Chris was like, no, no, we're gonna do it properly. We're gonna have guests all the time. And I mean, this this episode that Chris is currently editing is what three sets of guests,
Chris
three sets of guests, two guests per set. Six guests. That's 12 limbs. per guest underneath 12 rooms for guests. We were interviewing some spiders. I Yeah. It's ballooned. I think it's a safe way to say it. The podcast had very humble beginnings in that it was myself, Helen, James, a couple of other people who are no longer at Empire and therefore should never be named again. We have Ali Plumb, who felt the same way. And we just decided to do the show run here, kids. And we did this without telling our editor that we were doing it. Which, yeah, the first, the first art editor knew Mark Denon, at the time, the first the first he knew of the impending Empire podcast was when he read about it in Empire magazine. When it was pressed, a was pressed. And he was checking some of the pages in my section, the new section. And I had snuck a little mention, oh, by the way, check out the first day, the first episode, the Empire podcast is coming in a couple of weeks time he went. He said, What is this? I went, Oh, yeah, we're doing a podcast. Anyway, All right, then. I mean, that was it. That was the level of editorial scrutiny we had to pass back then. I don't know whether nowadays we'd have to jump through hoops and make presentations and all sorts of stuff. But it was such a low-fi start to the show. Having said that, we had a studio, which again, most people who do podcasts don't have. But we didn't know what we were doing. I thought we had missed the boat, the podcast boat, because, you know, there was such a huge thing in the States. And it just felt to me like we had maybe missed our chance to do a podcast that will have some chance of making an impact. And if you look, if you listen back, and I wouldn't recommend this, you can listen back to the early days of the podcast, they are so fastly similar to what we do these days, but also fastly different to what we do these days, in that they're a lot shorter, which some people will think is better. That's a debate around a bit. Yeah, yeah. And we're a bit fumbling a bit stumbling in the dark. Not all of them have a guest. But it's mainly the length and the fact that we didn't quite know what we were doing. So the first I say the first seven or eight, not episodes, but I say years were basically trial and error for us until we finally hit upon a format we liked.
Rhianna
How did you James figure out what was working and what wasn't? Was that from audience feedback? Was that just a feeling in the studio?
James Dyer
Definitely not audience feedback, I think we've had a great deal of attention to that. I think it was very much the case that we'd often I mean, you have to understand we've all sort of worked for and with Empire at one time or another for a very long time. I've been here 22 years, because it's been 21 years, like it's you know, and haven't been in orbit for 19 decades as well. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it's been a long time, and we would sit in the office, and we would have these conversations. And we would literally spend hours every day just chatting about films arguing about films yelling at each other about films, often the same arguments about the same films day in, day out, that hasn't changed. And a lot of it was like people would come in, you'd see the work experience person just giggling away to themselves, listen to us bang on about this stuff. And I think there's probably identified this as like, there's maybe something in this, this might be quite entertaining. People could hear this, but we weren't broadcasters, we were all writers, we had no experience in broadcast, we had no training in broadcast. So it was very much to kind of feel it out and work it out. As you go along. And I think those early episodes, we were all trying to get our heads around, like, how do you behave? How do you modulate your voice? How do you speak as a broadcaster? How do you structure a show? Because we had no idea. We were just like, hey, we'll go in this room. And we'll just talk shit about films for the next 20/30 minutes and see what happens. And that's what it was. And I think so. Has it gotten more polished? No, no, it probably hasn't. But, you know, it's maybe longer. More focused again? No, probably not. But is it better? I think so. I have no evidence.
Helen
It's an impression. It's an impression.
James
It's an impression. It's a feeling.
Chris
The podcast really came about because at the time we were doing at the start of 2012 for some while video diaries at all the major film festivals in and around the world, the ones that would invite us anyway. And ComicCon and the LFF and Cannes daily video diaries that I would do when I went out there with Sam Toi, who was a great colleague of ours, he's not dead. He's in Australia, although it's much the same. And he left and the video diaries stopped when he left because he was so good at doing things on the cheap that we couldn't afford to replace them. And then we were looking for something to kind of fill that creative vacuum that was left and James is exactly right. But Helen was as much a driver of the podcast if not more. So back in the early days. You know, in terms of, you know, this is a great grip dynamic. We need to do something about it. I think it was even Helen, your contact who was a producer at the time within our company who said hey, listen, you know, I'd be available to help you guys do something if you wanted to do something. And this perhaps is a testament to how egotistical we all are. We thought you know, we need to share this banal pub chat with the world. And that's essentially what we want at this point. Cast to be everybody. And that's basically how it started. Yeah, I ripped the format off liberally. I'll happily admit it from the Guardians football unlimited podcast. And we went into a room. And we did four pilot episodes. Can you believe this? The first episode that you listened to if you listen to the first episode, which again, I recommend, no one does and is terrible. But if you listen back to the first episode, consider this. That was the fifth episode we had done, we have done four episodes that were worse than that, that we did not put out. Nobody actually kind of forgot. We wrote tests in the format. Yeah. Because, you know, we were not quite ready for primetime players at that point.
Helen
I feel like it gave us something back immediately. Because at that point, in the magazine's history, we were very much under pressure. The website in those days used to have, I don't know, 8 or 10 stories going up a day features going up, we were aiming for daily, we didn't always manage it, but we aimed, you know, we're recovering festivals and junkets and writing for the magazine, as well as the website and everything else. Chris, of course, had an entire section of the magazine to manage as well as writing, I think about 90% of the features. You know, we were all kind of pressurised and rushed and up against it. And I think we had lost some of that office banter a bit because we were under more pressure at that point than we had been maybe, you know, 510 years before and doing the podcast every week, going into a room just talking nonsense for an hour, I think gave us our you know, we spoke English occasionally. Yeah, occasionally. You know, that kind of gave us something back in a strange way. It kind of gave us our own Mojo. But yeah, a little bit.
Chris
Mojo is a completely different magazine, although it is also published by Bauer media, by now - an all good and evil news agency.
Rhianna
Where there are any clashes with the editorial side of the magazine, in terms of who you have access to, and, you know, exclusives. Does the magazine tend to come first in their eyes?
James
I think it works differently, just in terms of lead time, like the magazine has their own access to a much longer lead than we do on the podcast. I think we will quickly watch this, because we will love the podcast a great deal. But there was a sense that a lot of the access that we used to use specifically for the website, we essentially moved to the podcast. Because oftentimes, there was a period of time, sort of back when I first started where most interviews you do for online were 15 minute kind of in depth chats. And then bit by bit as video kind of emerged, they shrunk and shrunk, they became these four minute camera things, which was so homogenous. And so like every other interview, I started to question the worth of those, like, what's the point in having four minutes of someone just reading out sound bites, cuz you can't get a report in that time. And when they're in front of a camera, it doesn't work. And what we swiftly discovered was, when you were doing an interview for the podcast, it was an entirely different beast, they would open up you were talking to the person, not the not the star, and you just shoot the shit. And you talk about stuff. And we were suddenly like these, this is great content. This is brilliant interview stuff. And actually, this is much more value to the brand than having a four minute to camera piece. So you know, that's I think, where all short term access now goes, goes out of the podcast for that reason.
Chris
Yeah, we actually implemented a rule from day one that we have never broken. And we never will, that the interviews on the podcast are a minimum of 15 minutes, we will never take anything that goes under 15 minutes. And you know, yourself Rhianna. Again, we're back to the lengthy debate. But in terms of interviews, I think the longer the better because some of the greatest moments we've had on the podcast are those long in depth, deep dives into people's careers, we get time to relax, you get relaxed with the subject, you get to relax into their filmography. I'm thinking of things like, you know, our epic interviews with Chris McQuarrie about the Mission Impossible movies, which are, you know, we did six hours on one movie alone with the guy. And that was just one question as well. And, you know, I'm thinking about, you know, one of our first interviews was our very first interview with Paddy Considine, who, you know, is a friend of mine and a friend of the podcasts and continues to be and he came in, and he was very gracious with his time. But again, that's in the first or second episode, and that's really, really short. But our first major proper interview was Terence Stamp. Terence Stamp came into the pod studio back in the day and gave us 45 minutes of his time. And we were also nervous that we basically there were three people interviewing him that day, because we didn't trust ourselves yet to be able to sustain an interview with someone, there would be a lot of dead air and a lot of looking at notes and a lot of Amina nine, but that was something that made us think when it's not revolutionary, but this long format really, really works and you can actually, you know, dig into stuff with people Warren Beatty, we got like 45 minutes with Warren Beatty to dig into his incredible career there was just three the ones that come to mind but Helen you must move. You know, there must be ones that pop into your head as well.
Helen
Yeah, I mean, not all of them even super long, but just you got people kind of relaxed and in the studio and out of the junk room which is which is really, really key because I feel like when you know film stars come over to do junkets for those who don't know they they sit in a hotel room surrounded by cameras all day every day under law. It's getting their makeup touched up every 15 minutes. And yes, doing like 50 of those four minute slots today maybe. So if you get them, which we often did to come out of the junket physically come to our offices, put them in the podcast studio, and we would habitually give them an intro along the lines of work, you feel free to swear or feel free to go off on tangents feel free to talk, essentially nonsense. You know, we're here to just have a conversation. And that's why in the early days, we did have these sometimes two of us are more, you know, in to try and make it feel like a conversation between a group of people and not a sort of an interrogation. So, that just helped people feel at ease. I remember like talking to Matt Smith, about how a doctor, the doctor would run a bath at one point, you know, I remember Nicholas Hoult coming in in the middle of a snowstorm. And we happen to have been delivered a heart shaped cake that day to promote his zombie film. So we ended up eating the heart while talking about zombie movies.
Rhianna
Warm Bodies, right?
Helen
Yeah, warm bodies, great film. But you just get a little bit more kind of looseness and a little bit more fun. And you could actually see them almost visibly relaxed. In the podcast studio, as opposed to when you go to the jungle,
Chris
We drug them as well.
Rhianna
We're having these conversations about the length then. So we've been hearing about how podcasts have been getting shorter on average. And yours obviously does remain as lengthy as ever. So what is so tell us? Have you ever been tempted to kind of pare it back? Where would you even kind of start with that? And are there any negative comments from audiences about the length? Or is that what they love the most?
James
Well, I'm the only one who reads the reviews. I can say generally people, you get people kind of in two camps. I think there's a small contingent of people who, as we all are, are quite time poor. And they're a bit like, you know, they sometimes find it difficult to fit the amount of time because bear in mind that we have the Empire podcast, we have the Empire spoiler special podcast, which is behind a paywall, I do the Pilot TV podcast, which is our TV spin-off podcast, as well. So there's a lot of content that we as a brand produce. And sometimes people like guys, I also have to go out and see the sunshine occasionally, we can't be here all the time. But equally, and this came up very, I think strongly in the pandemic people, for reasons passing, understanding, just enjoy spending time with us, sort of in their ears. And so there's a sense that they quite like having a lot of it. And people skip through stuff. And some people skip the interviews and some people don't, some people have specific bits that they want to jump to. But I think, you know, obviously, we don't want to put out 10 hour podcasts every week, although I'm sure Chris would if he could. But I think you know that there's a sense of value. And there's a sense of community. And there's a sense of people coming together. And as I said certainly during the pandemic, I think actually it was a lot more important to people than any of us really thought it would be.
Chris
Yeah, it's a tricky thing about the length because this week's podcast, I try to keep it below two hours. Whereas if you look at the early days, we rarely went above 45 minutes, and that's including guests, and I listened back to last night just thinking they felt rushed. And I think that one of the reasons why people like our podcast, if indeed people do like our podcast, is because of that sense of you're eavesdropping on a conversation between really good friends. I mean, there's a lot of acting involved to attend today like Helen and I want to say Jeff.
James
It's James, my name is James.
Chris
James. Sorry, yeah. But you know, people like to luxuriate in that conversation. And you know, we do cut an awful lot out of it. If you can believe that, if an episode comes in at about 1.30. Usually we have two interviews there. So it's usually an hour of us being nonsensical. But we'll record for 90 minutes, sometimes even two hours. And so there, we cut the guts out of it, mostly for legal reasons, but sometimes, sometimes just to just trim it long and make it move a little bit faster. I do prefer longer podcasts, I'm disappointed for podcasts less than an hour. That's just my personal thing. I know there are people who gravitate towards shorter podcasts, I frankly, I would find it difficult to do that now would involve basically overhauling the podcast completely. There are probably two things that if we had our druthers and we had or our time again, we probably would look at things like the commitment to doing a weekly podcast now on one hand that helps you build up your audience and it's film and as you say, Rihanna film never stops, didn't stop numbers, pandemic, it's certainly not gonna stop for anything else. So it's just gonna keep on truckin. And you have to do basically 50 shows a year. That's just what we're locked into. That's a pretty tight schedule. That's a tough schedule. And the other thing is, whether we would look at doing fragmented shows is something that has crossed my mind from time to time or, you know, certainly a lot of brands these days, a lot of podcasts are experimenting with things like you know, obviously the patrons and paywalls and, you know, could you do a shorter podcast that goes out into regular feed and then do a longer podcast reward subscribers, that's certainly something that you know, we've talked about as well. But if we were starting from from scratch, whether you could do an NPR podcast review show whether you could do an NPR podcast interview show whether you could do an NPR podcast, news show, and then a listener show, you take all the segments of our show, and then divide them into their own shows, maybe that would be a nice way of doing four half hour shows every week, rather than one near to our behemoth. But I think it's difficult. Now we're so engrained, and the, you know, the audience have become so inured to the length, I'm sure a lot of people have turned off because of the length. But equally, I think a lot of people have been attracted because of the length. And I should stop saying length now because otherwise this turns into a very different podcast.
Rhianna
You have a tiered level of subscription. Do you think that your audiences would be okay with you kind of chopping and changing it up at this stage? Or are you almost too, too involved with them at this point, and didn't mix anything?
Helen
I think that would be very difficult. I think, you know, Terry, brought in the payroll for the spoiler specials only, and sort of made a commitment at that point that the weekly podcast will remain free and that that remains open to everybody. And I think that's been a really good compromise. Actually, I think that the people who want to go deep on these films and want to listen to us really analyse things to death, they have the option and it's there. And it's it's, I think we've got the price point right now, I think it's 2.99 a month, which feels, you know, like a cup of coffee. Like it's not, it's not a ruinous amount. So, that feels really good. But we still have the majority of our content out there for people to just pick up and experiment with as they choose. Really.
Rhianna
Going back to the brand of empire. What is the kind of audience share between the website, the print product and the podcast? James? Are they the same? Are they all used to drive audiences towards each other? How does it work?
James
Increasingly, now? Yeah, I mean, as all magazines, now we don't talk about subscribers, you talk about members, it's about membership. It's about sort of membership with the brand. And I think we've got better at typing these threads together. And you kind of end up with tiers of people that you've got sort of casual people who might just read the magazine, you've got people who might just browse the website, and then you get the more engaged Empire fans, and they are the ones more likely to engage with us across multiple platforms, they will listen to the podcast, they might listen to all of the podcasts, they'll subscribe to the Patreon podcast, or come to our live events as well, they come out and see us. And those are the people I think, form the core of who listens, they're the ones who probably listened to us since day one, they never miss an episode. And I do think it is now Yeah, it is a larger sort of brand umbrella. And we do cross pollinate. Like we have a an empire VIP service where you get subscription to the magazine, you also get free access to the paywalled podcast, you get priority booking at the live events, you also get to come to special VIP events that we've done some sort of Q and A's and screenings and things like that. So there is a sense of community and sort of people coming together. And, and that, you know, as I said, when we do these live events, and we meet up with these listeners, it always kind of I find it incredibly moving when people come up, and they genuinely tell you how much the podcast means to them. And it's a thing that I think is unique to podcasts, like you can love an author, you can love a film star, but you never feel you know them. And I think even I get this when I listen to podcasts, like because they're in your ears, they feel like you're friends and you feel like you know them and you spend so much time with them. And I think there's an intimacy that you just don't get in any other medium. And I just think that's incredibly valuable.
Rhianna
I did a brief stint on the Radio Times podcast, which is moved into a slightly different format, because they couldn't afford me and Jane Garvey, but we were claimed to have because we were separate from the magazine, we were able just to talk as we would give our own opinions very freely. But is that for you guys? Do you try to vary your reviews from platform to platform? Or is there very much like a sort of Empire defined position on everything?
James
There's definitely a canonical Empire of you, can't say we may be respected as much as we should.
Helen
This is the dilemma really, for any film critic at a collective publication, like the Radio Times like ourselves, you obviously are sometimes going to disagree with the official verdict by your colleague as that is inevitable. So what we try to do when we're talking about this stuff on the podcast, and we had a couple of instances of this just today, but you know, I disagree with the star rating for one of the films we reviewed today. And I just said so when I kind of tried to explain that, you know, my colleague liked it more. And so he has given it three stars, but it's a bad film.
Chris
And this is why he's wrong.
Helen
But yeah, it does have to be a careful line because equally you don't want to trash your own magazine's opinions, you know.
Rhianna
Of course, Matt, I'd like to bring you in.
Matt
I found this really fascinating. I think, you know, magazines generally seem to be really good bedfellows with podcasting. They fit the medium very well. And yes, as you say, you know, you could split off those features in the future and turn them into their own podcast feeds. But, you know, ever since maybe the mid noughties, really when the Guardian really dived into podcasts. You know, it's been a really rich scene for a number of brands. I wonder if people listening to this have a brand or magazine and aren't in podcasting yet. I don't know if you could describe what it's like to try and fit it around the day job. Like literally, I mean, you have your own studio, which presumably means you're in the office, you fall into it. You recorded the morning, you recorded it after a deadline. You've got daily deadlines, weekly deadlines, the monthly print magazine. How do you fit it all in?
James
Nervous laughter
Chris
We fit it in with a side order of a nervous breakdown. So basically, I'm doing two full time jobs. This is not the way we set out to do the show. It's just a way that things have evolved naturally over the years, that as things went on, I guess I started to do more and more of the admin on the podcast, more of the booking of the guests on the podcast more. You know, I was the host of the podcast from the beginning. And then it kind of fell to me to do most of the interviews, not all of the interviews. And so yeah, it is essentially I have my job in the magazine. I also have my job on the podcast, where I booked the talent, I interview most of the podcast guests, I edit the podcast as well. And we record the podcast, at least one podcast a week in our studio, which keeps moving around. It's like Brigadoon, it's hard to figure out where our studio is, it just disappears and then reappears in a completely different place. At the moment, because we've moved buildings as a company, we're working on a golden square. So in terms of fitting into my, into my schedule, it's honestly been really, really tough. And I don't think that I would have persevered with it this long had I not really grown to love it. I mean, I love doing this podcast. It is , you know, you hear the phrase labour of love. And we all love doing this podcast, you know, it's a great opportunity to keep in touch with your mates to share opinions of your mates. During the pandemic, it was incredibly important for us, it gave us a beacon, it gave us something to look forward to every single week. And, frankly, when a job is a pleasure like this, it's not that big a deal for me to move things around and to set time aside to do it. I think Helen and James feel the same way James, you know, pilot is equally in labour of love for him, although obviously one deserving of less time than the Emperor podcast. And Helen has you know, Helen's a freelancer so she's got a million different things. Time is money. Well, yeah, time is money. But you know, I will work through the night. I edit quite late. I will, you know, sometimes get up very early to edit a podcast as well. I will work on the weekends, I'm usually editing something, recording something, setting up an interview for something on any given day and the day job. Well, that's kind of become a different thing. So it's about trying to wrap those two things and trying to balance those two things is tricky, and has been tricky for the last few years. And getting that balance right is really, really tough. But I think we're getting there. And I think, yeah, I love doing this.
Matt
So what are the tensions that kind of prevent it from being like, same time every week? record for an hour? Turn it around overnight? And then it's out next?
Helen
I mean, at the moment, obviously, we have problems, we have to book the studio space, basically, because as Chris mentioned that the company is moving offices, we currently have a slight squeeze on studios. So that can be a little bit of an issue just at the moment. It can also just be the fact that you know, okay, yes, in theory we record on a Thursday morning, but we have to obviously figure out Jameson's pilots schedule as well, they usually record those afternoons. So we can't just simply move one around, and then just be you know, okay, yes, we're recording Thursday morning, but one of us is on a set visit, or one of us has scheduled the big interview for that moment. And that's the only time that you know, celebrity X could do. It's those kinds of things that keep coming up. Plus, obviously life may intervene. We've been doing every COVID, you know, crisp testing positive this week meant a whole bunch of interviews that were due to happen in person suddenly couldn't, at least for Chris. So we've been scrambling to try and cover all of those. So, everything.
James
But it's crazy to think that pre-pandemic like the thought of doing a remote podcast wasn't even something that had crossed I'm we're on Riverside. Now I use Riverside for pilots, like all the way through the pandemic, we did squad cast, we did Riverside with remote podcasts every week. Now we try not to do them, I think because the chemistry and the flow of it in the studio is night and day, like it's so much better. But the fact that we could, and the fact that we can has been a game changer and I think something like these platforms, makes podcasting accessible to more people because you don't need a studio. It's better to have a studio, but you can just do it remotely. And as long as you've got the equipment or semi acoustic room, you can get away with it.
Chris
Yeah, it's also changed us in terms of guests. One of the other rules we had and we imposed or self imposed rules from the beginning was that our interviews will only ever be face to face, we will only ever be in the same room with the person. And COVID-19 had other ideas about that. And we had to scramble initially to see if we could make this work. And you know, there were early days when Zoom just wasn't up to the task. You could argue still isn't and Riverside and squad cast came to the War but then they're in this is very arcane and maybe a bit inside baseball, but it's difficult sometimes to get publicists on board with things that they don't quite understand. So you can say, assume to a publicist, and they go, Oh, assume, ya know, assume, even though it's not the best in terms of audio quality, or you know, it can be but you know, sometimes it's a bit glitchy. And you go, Oh, this thing called squad cast, but you have to have his back, especially in the early days, you have to be on Chrome. And then they had to tell their clients who sometimes could be afraid, famous people, that they had to go on Chrome, and then it just became a whole thing and the whole thing fell apart. But it has also opened us up in a way that I had previously poo pooed. I was like, No, I don't care who your client is, if they are not going to be in the same room as us, we will not be doing them and now is basically like, yeah, do you want to talk to this person, they're gonna be five and a half 1000 miles away, I don't care if it means that we get to talk to Steven Spielberg for West Side Story. Brilliant, bring it on, make it happen.
Matt
I suppose the access that remote gives you sort of, it's almost the opposite of how the poker started in a way, which was, you know, you having a chat in the office and seeing that report and thinking maybe there's something in this, it always makes me think of the way no such thing as a fish started, which was, you know, the QI Elves, the researchers, basically having those conversations and just sharing facts at the office that becoming the format of their show. Do you think there's another generation empire? You know, sort of junior writers that are potentially handing over the reins in the future? You know, I'm saying maybe another 5000 episodes time, but do you see that kind of like transitioning my cold dead hands?
Helen
I mean, to be fair, they are on the podcast fairly regularly. It's usually not just three of us, but four of us. Assuming we can physically all get in a room. That's the only bottleneck tends to be manpower. But then Ben Travis, Sophie Butcher, John Nugent , all the rest. All of the younger writers are welcome. Basically, it's just a question of, are they free? Can they get here?
Rhianna
What about externally? Do you bring in journalists who aren't part of the Empire brand or family? And how does that work? Is that another level of kind of editorial that you need to get past?
Chris
Occasionally we do. It happened a lot more during COVID When we were doing remote recording. And we introduced for a while the concept of a revolving fourth chair, because there used to be four of us, you know, and used to be myself Helen, James, Ali Plumb, Phil de Semlyen and Nick de Semlyen. Am I missing anyone? No one died. We haven't had any major deaths in the podcast yet, which is good.
Rhianna
That ominous yet.
Chris
Yet. Another 5000 episodes to go by my reckoning, Matt, that's 100 years. So I suspect we may suffer one or two casualties in that time. But you're thinking about just how when we started off, we were always very, very tight on the idea for people. And whenever we went into the pandemic, that fourth chair was by and large, free, as we started to bring in every now and again, we would start to bring in people from podcasts that we really really liked. People like Dave and Kathy from The Cinemile, people like Joe Robinson from Vanity Fair, he's now with The Ringer. And we used to bring in you know, American people as well, not all the time. Because you know, there's always a worry Rhianna about chemistry, and about how people are going to fit in. So we would tend to bring in people that we knew, people that we liked, people that we respected. Because if someone comes into the podcast and kills a chemistry stone dead, then that week's episode is a bit of a write off. But despite that we persevere with James.
Rhianna
I knew there was a punchline coming.
Matt
I'm sure you've watched a lot more films and TV than I ever have. Maybe not just what is the representation of podcasting on TV? Feels like the most accurate or, in fact, the worst? Who does it?
Chris
Nobody's done it well. It's interesting because it's becoming much more prevalent. Podcasts are becoming a bit of a respectable occupation. Also, in films, it seems to be an occupation that people can actually make a living out of. So I'd like to talk to most people, talk to their marketing teams and see exactly how that works. But the thing that really gets my goat I don't know about you guys, is sound quality of podcasts and movies because people in movies who record podcasts tend to have their sound equipment I'm holding up a phone now and the subject could be 15 feet away across the room, and they just kind of wave the podcast recording.
Rhianna
Only Murderers in the Building.
Chris
Oh my god.
Helen
At least they have at least a setup mic stand for the voice over bits.
Rhianna
But they're also around one microphone.
Chris
And that room would be too echo-ey. I mean, what are you doing?
Helen
That's not the worst. What's the Sex And The City sequel? And Just Like That. She says it's a podcast, but they have live phone-ins? No, look, maybe somebody out there is doing that. I just don't understand how that works. I don't understand it.
Rhianna
It's another dimension from the future.
Chris
It's just, it's just to get your sound quality right. There's a film out very, very soon in which someone records someone's pivotal speech, shall we say, with a mobile phone that they have in their pocket, and the person speaking is at least 20 feet away. And they go ha ha, ha, I have your pivotal speech, which may or may not be a confession. And I'm just thinking that that's not going to stand up in court mate, you're not going to if you're going to hear this - *makes mumbling noises* - that's what you're going to get. So that's the thing that shakes my upper areas most.
Rhianna
So we have representation of podcasts etc. on film. What about representation of film and TV podcasts that act in direct competition to the Empire film podcast? I mean, I'm sure James at the Radio Times podcast had you quaking in your boots for the pilot.
James
You know what the thing that I tend to do is I tend not to listen to other films and TV podcasts. I will listen to policy markets. I will listen to comedy podcasts. I sometimes listen to deep dive stuff like episode by episode like I listen to the West Wing weekly and I'm listening to Time, that guy which is a look at the expanse week by week, I really liked those. Yeah, exactly that kind of stuff. But general ones that are like ours. It feels too much like work so let's get it out of my ears. I don't need that.
Rhianna
But you're aware of this all, you know, like Must Watch for example, is that something that you think about as direct competition or is there enough room for the two of you?
James
I always think podcasts are slightly different . It's strange, but like with a magazine it's not like we won't name our competition. No, but like with a podcast, you're more likely to have your competitors on and just sort of chat with them. And it's kind of a bit easier. It feels more collaborative. It feels like a much friendlier, less competitive space. I guess you're not competing for people's money you're just competing for their time, but I don't know it feels like we can all coexist maybe
Chris
It's a collegial atmosphere. Yeah, podcast I've always found but yeah, but we haven't had the Total Film podcast. People aren't happy to extend the hand of friendship across the waters but James is right. We've had people like I said the Affair mentioned cinnamal We've had you know, I listened to the cinnamal an awful lot and listened to evolution of horror you know a lot that Mike Munster he's a good guy. He knows what he's doing.
Rhianna
Oh yeah, I've heard of him, rings a bell. My husband we're talking about by the way.
Chris
Yes, absolutely. I listen to podcasts that feel different from what we're doing. I don't listen to anything that might be similar to what we're doing. It always surprises people that I never listened to entertainment but I never did. I respect the good doctor. I liked the good doctor. He is a good guy. I am proud to call him someone I will email every now and again about work stuff. But if you know Mark, if you're listening to this and I know you're not, I'm sorry. I've never listened to your show but here's the thing I'm sure he's never listened to ours either. But you know because he's probably thinking the same thing and also I think there's a little bit I don't know James you might want to do this maybe emission too far. There's a small part of me, the jealous horrible part of me that goes. I don't listen to that show in case it's better than ours.
James
Is that why you don't listen to Pilot?
Chris
It's why I'm trying to burn Pilot but I know you're not better than us so it's fine. But you know, I also like to listen to things that are markedly different. Cinemile is not our format, the Evolution of Horror is not our format so therefore it's okay for me to watch those so I don't get in a nervous tic.
Matt
There's nothing like a good flame war though.
Chris
Here's the thing, like Kermode and Mayo, God bless them. They've got it. They've got a cinematic advert and I think we should take that as a guide and we should do something with it.
James
I was in the picture house this week. And I saw that advert. I was like why don't we have adverts in the cinema like this is mad.
Rhianna
You absolutely should.
James
Money is obviously the answer.
Rhianna
I don't know if we have to wrap it up but just kind of maybe, just a little bit of advice for people before you go.
Chris
Oh I thought you were giving us advice. What is your advice? We could really use it. Can you just stop?
Rhianna
We'd love some advice from you about how you would recommend brands go about creating their own podcasts because some as we can see have been incredibly successful some not so - Radio Times podcast.
Chris
I mean, you say that but the Radio Times podcasts beat us to an award last year so it's true, the BSMEs I think.
James
I'm sorry about that guys, it's not gonna happen again. Don't worry about it.
Helen
I think the key is to figure out what out of what you are will translate to the podcast format. So what part of your brand or the people in your brand will translate to the format? Because that's the key. And that's going to be different for every different, different brand. But that's what you need to figure out. You know, I'm guessing the ideal home or something, I feel like they probably don't have an equivalent for the movie news section. I feel like on a podcast format, it'd be very hard to explain why the new range from Farrow and ball is good. I imagine maybe they're really good at it. But you know, the bit in their magazine where they go to people's houses, and they look at what fabulous work they've done. That's something that they could explain in audio format. So it's, I guess, just figuring out what is great about your brand and doing that.
Chris
Yeah, I mean, for us, it was personality-led, yeah, for the most part, but looking at it, you know, I think to extrapolate from what Helen said there, look at your brand. There are lots of things in Empire that could be turned into successful podcasts. But I want to steal those for the day that I go solo and try to break free. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. It's so true. So true. Yeah, we might as well maybe that's just quit now, shall we? Let's quit now. That would be what a flex. What a flex.
Rhianna
And finally, before we go, you've got to give us your best impression of Curtis daggers, please.
Chris
I wonder why you've said that. Yeah, can I say one more thing real quick, real quick, because I completely forgot to mention, you know, the, the live shows, live shows have been hugely important to us as well. And they've been a huge part of establishing not only our personality as podcasters, but our connection with the audience. And they've been really, really great. When we did a tour in 2019, we would have done more tours, had it not been for the dread COVID. And they are just the most fun they are they are warm, and an anarchic and hilarious, and it feels like, you know, the restraints come off in a weird way. And I think if you were doing a podcast, and if you can get into the live arena, and obviously it has to be reciprocated, you have to have people who are going to show up. That is an incredible Frame also, and I think, you know, our first one was episode 100. And since then, you know, we would do as many live shows as we possibly could every year. In fact, there may be plans afoot I'm looking at announced anything now but there may be plans to do live shows more regularly than we have been doing so far. But
Rhianna
sounds like you're free to do that. Yeah, that's the workload.
Chris
You know, at this point, I'm 90% Podcast. I'm more of a podcast now in my mind. So yeah, just just bring it on. But as for Curtis, doctors, I wonder why we Oh, no, with tears in our eyes, you encouraged I got accused, someone said that wasn't even a good impression. It's like me, that perfect spot is a perfect spot on your finger.
James
Honestly, if we're talking impressions, I do think the enduring legacy of the Empire podcast long after the rest of society has been reduced to dust is that Chris managed to do his impression of Anthony Hopkins in the age of Anthony might have been the greatest moment in. I'm just saying the history of Western civilization. Inception.
Chris
Yeah. I think we think we created the singularity.
Rhianna
Thank you so much to the Empire podcast for joining us on pod pod. Cheers. Bye. Thank you so much to the Empire team for joining us on pod pod. That was such an interesting chat. There was so much to kind of go over obviously, we talked at the top about the amount of work that goes into the podcast. I really enjoyed hearing about how it's sort of changing film journalism, podcasting, and especially about how they make their guests comfortable and how different that is from, you know, slightly more headlining tabloid journalism, I suppose. What do you think about that?
Matt
Yeah, I think the access that Podcasts can afford you is something of a revelation still to particularly print journalists, who obviously get their time you know, their 20 minutes and maybe like a short phone call or whatever. But suddenly to sit in the same room as someone for like an hour, hour and a half to record a podcast. It's absolutely fantastic. I remember when we started the show for the Sunday Times called Danny in the valley. Danny Fortson is the kind of technology correspondent there. And he was having enormous trouble getting tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley to come and talk to him for the Sunday Times because it was behind a paywall, and they were kind of manifestly against that. But as soon as he started the podcast, they all came and talked to him on the podcast. And then he managed to then write up those stories for the paper as well. So it can be something of a Trojan horse to getting not just good interviews, but actually getting that access in the first place.
Adam
Yeah, cause I mean, the length of the interviews that they get is astonishing. And Rihanna. You know, you've presumably done a lot of this sort of junket circuit and as I understand it, the amount of time you get for, you know, a standard junk The interview is far, far shorter than the level of time the Empire guys have for just one interview.
Rhianna
Yeah, it's mad. It's kind of varied over the years at the moment. If I have to do a junket for six songs, for example, we always insist on 10 minutes, and we will not do it for less than 10 minutes, inevitably, on the day. I know, inevitably, it gets kind of maybe squeezed down to eight or nine minutes. But I remember doing an interview, I think it was with Jonah Hill, where I got given three minutes. Oh, my God. And guess what the interview went? So well, I got through, I think nine questions in three minutes, because that's how verbose he was feeling that day.
Matt
Maybe they did your face.
Rhianna
So yeah, it's really interesting, actually. And of course, you cannot form any sort of connection. You're not expected to get anything really interesting from your guests. In that time. I don't really, you know, I don't really understand the concept of junket interviews anymore, they just don't, they don't do anything. Whereas you listen to Empire. And of course, you get these incredible nuggets and anecdotes, because they have the time and as they kind of pointed out, they feel comfortable in these people's company, you get to know people a little bit more. And face to face, of course, makes such a huge difference. You know, them insisting as much as possible doing it in person, I think is a huge, huge thing. But you know, I think we work on Zoom quite well as well. Right. Right. Well, maybe not.
Matt
Sorry for the delay on the line. Rihanna, I couldn't possibly.
Rhianna
I think it's time to wrap it up. Thank you so much, once more to Adam and Matt for joining me on today's episode of PodPod and of course to our brilliant guests, Helen O'Hara, Chris Hewitt and James Dyer. Thank you so much for listening. You can find out more on PodPod.com. Sign up to our daily email bulletins and please do follow us on social @podpodofficial. The podcast is produced by Emma Corsham for Haymarket Business Media, and I'm your host Rhianna Dhillon and I will see you next week. Bye.
