Dan Snow, founder of podcast network and streaming platform History Hit, said that he can’t be happier with the way his career is going at the moment in the latest episode of PodPod.
Since selling History Hit to Little Dot Studios in 2020, Snow is now working in his new role as creative director at the on-demand network and continues to host the Dan Snow’s History Hit podcast, which started his legacy when it launched almost eight years ago.
“I've never been happier professionally and it was worth going through some tough times… if it was easy, someone else would do it, right?” said Snow. “And so it was hard, it was touch and go at times, but that's okay because that's what it's meant to be like.”
Snow told PodPod that on average, the History Hit platform gets a million unique views per week on its website, a million listeners across its original slate of podcasts (numbering eight in total) including The Ancients and Gone Medieval as standouts, and has grown to 600,000 subscribers on YouTube in a space of one year.
The historian also mentioned, however, that not everything is always going to take off easily and that there have been failures along the way – although he says most have been very random – but the advantage of having your own platform is being able to get back up and try again.
“In a way I'm like a terrible optimist and so nearly everything doesn’t work, and then I just collapse, pick myself up and do the next thing,” said Snow. “And some things really don't work and you just have no idea why, and it's gutting.
“The great thing about having your own channel is that you’ve got more rounds in your chamber than you like… Lots of things fail and I think you should not panic. I think the traditional broadcasts used to panic quite heavily when things fail. They’re like, right, 'We’re not doing any more boats for years to come.’”
Since its acquisition, History Hit has been making efforts to expand its footprint with its recent appointment of its first-ever commercial director, Jennifer Bennet, who will use her 15 years of experience to oversee the network’s launch of new services, manage content partnerships, and increase the company’s line of events.
