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Matt Shaer is the host of Over My Dead Body, a true story about a murder that takes place in Tallahassee. In fact, the case is still ongoing today. Matt is a print reporter who transformed into an audio reporter for his podcast – and he’s very good at it.
After listening to all seven episodes of the series we reached out to Matt for an interview. We wanted to get all the details on how he came across the story, how he researched the case, how much time it took him and the Wondery team to put the series together and, quite frankly, as much detail as possible about how big an operation something like this is.
We’re publishing our interview with Dan, in three parts (READ PART ONE HERE). We believe there’s a lot of great information in this interview for podcasters at every level. And, at the end of Part 3 of our interview, we are going to post the audio from the interview.
Here’s Part 2 of our interview with the host of Over My Dead Body.
PBJ: How many people worked on this project? Matt: I do not know the exact answer. People in relatively minor capacities like booking studio time, our producer in Atlanta. It is at least a dozen. We had the opening premiere in New York and I was doing a Q&A and someone asked this question. For me, as a magazine writer, that is a lot of people that have their hands on something, but my understanding now is they do use larger teams. For me, it felt like a lot but I think there are podcasts that are bigger operations than this one.
PBJ: How did you start a relationship with Wondery? Matt: I had written a very different story for GQ about the battle between Adidas and Nike for control of the sneaker market and Wondery approached me and said they wanted to turn it into a podcast: “We want you to write original scripts for a podcast and you can use your article to inform how you are doing it.” I wanted to see how podcasts were put together but I had no experience writing for audio. I think it was only four to six episodes. I met with Marshall and Hernon and they said let’s try this as a podcast. To be clear, with Sneaker Wars I did not narrate it. They hired a professional narrator. I just wrote the scripts. Wondery works like a TV production company. They have premiere shows they spend an incredible amount of time on and they have shows that don’t require as much. Their Business Wars series are not as highly produced. I had the idea that this podcast would be a version of that Sneaker Wars one and it was not.
PBJ: Is that what turned into Business Wars? Matt: Yes, it is a series. I think mine was the second. This was under the name of Business Wars.
PBJ: All of these people, time, editing, I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around how this makes money? Matt: Yes, but it does. When we were finishing up production on the podcast, Wondery’s advertising team was starting to reach out to advertisers. Wondery has the amazing advantage of having done two or three extremely popular podcasts. All had major advertisers. They were able to say we have a pretty good idea of how well this is going to do, and sign on initial advertisers. It debuted at number one on iTunes charts and sat there for a solid three or four weeks. During that time, more advertisers lined up and bought space. Wondery knows how many millions of ears these podcasts reach so they can set their advertising budgets. It is profitable. I don’t think this is true of every podcast and this took a lot of time. If you can build that momentum it can be money making. A TV production studio or book publisher might publish three or four books that bring in millions of dollars and they use the success of those to support others and take bets on other long-shot books. That is how Wondery works it.
PBJ: In terms of your role, do you get compensated up front? Matt: Since this podcast has come out I have received many queries from print writers who say I want to take a shot, what is the compensation compared to a magazine story. They way we worked it with Wondery is we had a sign-on bonus when they agreed to take the podcast, and then it was benchmarked throughout the process. As we obtained key interviews, finished scripts, finalized scripts, completed episodes and they were shipped, we would hit those benchmarks and we would get paid for that. It is work for hire. We do not have a piece of the advertising revenue but it is my understanding this is something more podcasters are asking for. I would encourage them to do that. Ours is tied to bonuses if it hits certain downloads. Retaining some piece of the rights for film or TV is important. Hollywood is always hungry for intellectual property and podcasts are uniquely suited for that. There is no surprise that TV networks are interested in snapping up podcasts because the episodes are easily converted to a scripted series or non-scripted. We did ask for a share of the rights.
PBJ: Do you consider yourself a full-time podcaster? What is your future? Matt: Initially, I just wanted to sit in my office and write and not narrate again, but that was because it had been exhausting to do, especially at the end. I love the process of writing and the control you have over it. I can see myself doing another podcast if the right story came along. My bottom line is a matter of the story. If you find one that works for audio or for print, but every story is not a podcast. There are certain genres that we have not been able to figure out how to make them work as podcasts. You can see that when you look at the iTunes list. It is politics, interviews, little bit of sports, but above all it is true crime. I hope people get more experimental. My favorite show of all time is this Gimlet show called Heavyweight, which is a really weirdly unclassifiable show. It exists in and of itself. There is nothing like it. I find that incredibly compelling. I am interested to see If we are in future able to make other modes and types of podcasts popular. In Part 3 of our interview with Matt tomorrow, we ask him if he thinks the wife (Wendy) killed the husband (Dan). Stay tuned.
Read Part 1 of our interview with Matt HERE.