ABC Backstory

If You're Listening podcast launches a video version as audiences increasingly want to watch as well as listen

On the afternoon of Sunday, April 3, 2022 I was more nervous than I'd been in years.

I was standing backstage at the Newcastle Conservatorium of Music Concert Hall, about to present an event at the Newcastle Writers Festival.

Now this shouldn't have made me nervous. I had performed at Writers Festival events before.

I had been on this very stage before, many times in fact.

I have a photo of me singing in a kids choir there at the age of four.

At the age of 16 I did something uncharacteristically cool on that stage while working on the crew of a concert there.

I took a diving catch of a stand holding an expensive condenser microphone, which had been kicked over accidentally during a set change.

The audience applauded, it was great.

After decades doing amateur theatre in Newcastle, a crowd of a couple of hundred — many of whom I knew — wasn't enough to intimidate me.

The reason I was nervous was I was trying something I had never done before

I was presenting an adaptation of an episode of my ABC News podcast If You're Listening.

For weeks I had combed the ABC archives and dug up videos of steam ships and power stations and coal-fired ferries and even electric cars from the 1960s — all for a story about the history of the coal industry in Newcastle.

It was a significant departure from what ABC podcast geniuses Yasmin Parry, Will Ockenden, Jess O'Callaghan, Ruby Jones and I had built the If You're Listening brand on — wacky stories of Russian spies and Donald Trump's antics.

And yet, the audience seemed captivated by these antique films and voices from the past.

A magic formula

A year later at the 2023 Festival, I had another crack — this time telling stories of nuclear submarines and spy balloons.

The crowd spilled out the doors. People sat in the aisles and stood against the back wall of the room.

Several people were turned away.

There was something to this. The storytelling style we'd spent years developing was clearly working just as well with pictures.

But podcasts don't have pictures.

Things either include vision or they don't — trying to make something that works as both a podcast and a TV show has been tried before — and failed.

Anyway, this year we're going to test that theory.

For the last few months, I've been converting my home office into a TV studio.

My producer Yasmin Parry and I have been learning new skills, and practising writing for both the eye and the ear.

If You're Listening will be available on the ABC Listen App, all podcast platforms, as well as on ABC iview and YouTube.

We want this show to be as listenable for a podcast audience as it is watchable for a YouTube audience.

We're ready to launch. But it took us a few months to get here.

Podcast listeners flock to YouTube

We first considered changing the format of If You're Listening late last year.

We were making significant changes to the podcast anyway — going from a seasonal show about one topic, to a weekly show covering a different story each week — why not try video as well?

After all, YouTube is now the leading podcast platform, overtaking Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

In the last year, multiple surveys have found increasingly large numbers of people want the option of watching their podcasts, not just listening to them.

In January, research firm Morning Consult found that a majority of US podcast listeners prefer to watch their podcast hosts as they listen.

The trend was particularly clear in younger audiences, with research from Edison and SRX showing that 84 per cent of Gen Z listeners (13-24 year olds) get their podcasts on YouTube.

Respondents said they enjoyed seeing the facial expressions and gestures of their favourite podcast hosts as they talked.

YouTube has been trying to capitalise on this, launching a podcasts tab within YouTube Music. It's available for US users with plans to roll the feature out for other countries down the road.

YouTube explained how the feature would work in a Google blog post.

It allows users to skip between audio and video, and doesn't require a subscription.

Trial and error

Earlier this year, ABC News made its first podcast foray into YouTube, with ABC News Daily, which posts every weekday.

ABC's Coronacast podcast is also available on YouTube, where science communicators Norman Swan and Tegan Taylor discuss the latest COVID-19 news.

We went through a lot of trial and error to land on a formula for If You're Listening.

It was important to us that we capture what has worked about the podcast for the past five years, while offering something extra for the YouTube and iview audiences.

We consulted with the ABC's smartest social and video minds to understand these new trends, and created a new format in collaboration with digital video experts in the ABC News team

We constructed a set in my basement, piling shelves high with books, boxes, an old projector, and an old atlas.

We scoured the ABC archives, looking for vision and quotes, we made graphs and the occasional hand-drawn diagram.

We bought a new camera about the size of my hand, and we hit record.

I've tried my best to bring my amateur theatre experience to the screen — though I have been told I could wind back the facial expressions and gestures a bit.

We're trying to meet the audience where they are, to forge into new territory.

It's an experiment, but we're excited about it. We hope you are too.