Bob Bowdon Podcast Transcript
Bob Bowdon joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Bob Bowdon. Bob Bowdon is the founder and CEO of VidaFair, a pay per stream video platform. He is also the founder and former executive director of choice media, the leading school choice media group.
He has been a television producer, reporter and commentator for PBS and Bloomberg television. He also appeared as a reoccurring character in satirical news sketches for the onion news network, the cartel. Bowdon’s documentary reveals the nature and extent of corruption in public education. The film won a dozen film festival awards.
Well, good afternoon, Bob. Welcome to the show!
Bob Bowdon: Thanks, Brian. Great to be here.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I love this. I appreciate you doing a podcast with me today or this evening, rather in the same time zone. I’m generally traversing the globe, a lot of North America, but, but thank you again. And Bob jumping into your 1st question, then a fair offers a unique pay per stream model for video content creators.
What inspired you to create a platform that diverges from the traditional subscription models? And how has this approach been received by both creators and consumers?
Bob Bowdon: Oh, well, what, what inspired me was the fact that I hate subscribing to con subscribing to anything, actually, but a particularly content.
I don’t think I’m not; I don’t think I’m alone in that regard. People have so many subscriptions these days that you often forget what you’re subscribed to. In fact, just today, I was looking over a credit card receipt and I realized I I’ve been paying for a, I guess I won’t name it. All right. I will name it.
It’s ESPN+ I had; I didn’t even know that I had a subscription for that. Who knows how many months I had been paying for this. And I went through the laborious process to try to figure out how to cancel it. By the way, the trick is if you just cancel your account, the subscription remains, you actually have to You have to unsubscribe before you cancel your account.
So, they make that fairly tricky. So experiences like that, you know, the simple forgetting to unsubscribe to services left me feeling like there is enormous what we’d like to call subscription fatigue. Which is kind of a hashtag that’s taken on something of a life of its own people are are, you know, tired of subscribing to content.
And yet at the same time, if there’s a creator or an artist or a filmmaker or a comedian. Or a music video producer, you know, band or musical artists that they want to support. We found people are actually quite willing to spend a buck or two in that direction toward the artist, you know, not just to anybody, but if it’s someone they want to support, they’ll be quite willing to do that if it’s not a subscription paradigm, if it’s either a one off pay per view type rental of content, you Or if you do it through what we call our Grain Tokens, which is a way to give discounts to volume renters of videos.
So, the same way they think of a subscription as a way to have a discount, I can subscribe and watch tons of content and only pay that one fee. Well, we have a discount model that we call our grain tokens where people just basically buy a package of grains, and it spreads out the financial transaction cost over a whole bunch of rentals.
And that way we can offer them discounts that are make it cheaper than the pure just pay per view 1 off method. But nevertheless, it’s a way to support the artists you like without being asked to subscribe. Does that make sense?
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. And you know, you, I picked the first thing I picked up on it was your pain point, you know, these subscriptions gosh, they can be so convoluted or you forget about them.
And before you know it, you’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to be thrown down the drain. No, but I really look crazy. I mean, when
Bob Bowdon: we were younger, you know, that was a common thing with gym memberships, right? Like it was, there’s this cliche of the person, they sign up for the gym and they go three times.
And then they, They end up paying for a whole year or something before they’re allowed to quit the gym subscription. It’s often, not always, but often subscriptions are a way, I think, to charge people for services they don’t use.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. And we know that with Planet Fitness there are others like that, that, Oh, it’s 10 bucks.
I’ll forget about it. I never go to the gym anyway. And three years down the road, you’ve, you’ve invested, you know, I don’t know, 400 into that. But for sure, at
Bob Bowdon: least, at least with the gym membership, there’s some possibility that you’ll remember someone will ask you about the gym, or you’ll talk to a friend who went to the gym that day.
And you’ll oftentimes with these content subscriptions, it just never comes up. And you just, it takes, I mean, it’s a quite a coincidence. This happened today. Brian, I was actually just saying, I had one of those credit card situations where you know, somehow there was some, yeah. Sort of charge I never heard of and the credit card company sent me a new credit card number.
So, you end up kind of going over anyway, it’s you, you get the idea, but I ended up seeing this charge to ESPN plus. And yeah, so it’s, it’s, it’s to me, it’s even more aggravating when it’s a content subscription. So we wanted to create a, you know, if you start with a blank sheet of paper and said, what would be the fairest way to design a platform?
We’re content creators of video content, whether they be filmmakers or. Or comedians or whatever, what would be the fairest way to let them monetize their work and they could offer a simple price. People could pay that 1 price and and basically, that’s what we created with a bit of fair.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome.
Thank you again out of a problem came a better solution. So. Bob, jump into the next question. Your documentary, The Cartel, exposed significant corruption in public education. How has your experience in investigative journalism and documentary filmmaking influenced the development and mission of VidAffair?
Bob Bowdon: Well, I’m not sure if you’ve heard me talk about this before, but it actually had an immense impact. I can imagine a scenario where I would just there are other things in my resume. You could have brought up and I would have said it had absolutely no effect on the creation of this did a fair content monetization platform.
But, yes, in fact, the, the doc, I did a documentary film on corruption and public education. It did extremely well. I went on several national tours with the film. It had a national theatrical release, by the way. But before that I went to film festivals all around the country. And what I would see at these film festivals and my film was a combination of luck and also, I’m proud of the work, but we did well enough that we got picked up by Warner Brothers for distribution and we were eventually on Netflix for about five years.
So, our film really was that kind of lightning strikes kind of you know, unlikely odds of a completely independent film being picked up for studio distribution. But I saw so many other works in these film festivals where no one had, I mean, if they were lucky, they got into one local film festival, all their friends and colleagues came to watch.
The film screen that one night, some of these people might have spent half their life savings and two years, you know, making some film that was their dream. And then after that one night, they all just went home and there was really nothing to do with it at best. They could put it on YouTube. But I just thought to myself going to these festivals, there ought to be a way for people to charge a fair price, maybe set their own creator fee, by the way, not be told what they should earn, but set their own fee, create a, you know, upload it to some sort of service and tell their, at least their social media followers and their friends, and at least be able to put it on an email blast or websites, you know, here’s a place you can rent my work.
Nothing like that really existed, at least in the way that we’ve done it. I could get into Kinds of services that are that would be the closest thing to a competitor that kind of exists, but there was really not a way to do that. That was fair, you know, to use the term that we like to use with a bit of fair.
We have to say fairness is in our name. We didn’t really think there was a platform that would be a fair way for, for people to monetize their work. So it was seeing that while touring the country with the cartel documentary film I did they gave me the idea, you know, this is, this is something that needs to exist.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And I’m, I’m so glad that the, the good work you did in that documentary actually got some traction and people could see and hopefully people are trying to make change for the better, especially in, you know, that the public-school systems.
Bob Bowdon: Absolutely. But please, we could, I could do a, I could do an hour-long interview on just that subject if you wanted to.
And in fact, have done many over the years. So yeah, I, I share your passion on that.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And Bob, we talked about this subscription fatigue a little bit already. It’s a growing concern among consumers. But how does that affair address the issue? But more importantly, what trends do you foresee in the future of content consumption?
Bob Bowdon: Well, I guess some of them are disturbing. I mean, the, the, the degree to which shorter and shorter content seems to be favored by, you know attention deficit, deficit disorder classes. You know, I’m not a concern that I’m unique or original in pointing out that does not tend to be the kind of content that is monetizable that sort of short 10 second, you know, tick tock, you know, people dancing kind of clip, you know, is not the type that people think of in terms of what they would pay for what they would, you know, what would be suitable for monetization, but it’s certainly a trend.
In that direction at the same time, though, you see other, you see, well, Joe Rogan’s podcast is usually 3 hours long. I mean, please, if I’d have been asked to consult in advance of that, you know, hey, Bob Bowden, you’re, you know, alleged media expert. What do you think about a 3 hours for the length of, I would say like, this is a terrible idea.
I don’t, boy, I don’t, no one’s going to sit for more than a, more than an hour. You’re crazy to make a 3 hour. And here, and here it is. Gaining traction, so I mean, I kind of to summarize those 2 points with sound contradictory, it’s that it’s kind of the long tail of media is creating a more and more different kinds of content.
That appeal to different kinds of thinkers and different kinds of the points of view people have and so it’s really kind of a richer and richer you know, set of content types that are available, not just now to be given away for free, but also monetizable through a bit of fair. So, I think you know, like, in the monetization space, for example what we started out with was mostly subscriptions, as we’ve talked about.
You had services like HBO, which people could subscribe to, and then online versions came like Netflix, you know, where you and et cetera. And now even Patreon accounts or a subscription model, but it’s a way people can monetize video that way. Separately, there’s been advertiser-based monetization, as we all know, from television networks like NBC to something like YouTube, which is largely advertiser monetize when people, you know, watch that way.
Of course, that said. A creator on YouTube, if they’re lucky and they’re monetized, they’ll get on average less than two tenths of one penny per view. 0. 18 cents per view is the average monetized YouTube video per view rate that people get paid. And that’s if they have a thousand subscribers and if they have at least 4, 000 hours of viewing time.
Meaning they get monetized on YouTube, but nevertheless, that is an advertiser base. So. So, so the big picture is here. You have the subscription platforms that have existed. You have the advertiser monetization platforms that existed. You have new kinds of other ways, which are just donation monetization.
There’s like a buy me a coffee is a platform. You can just pay someone, or you can pay them through. Through Venmo directly or through a cash app, et cetera. So, you can, that’s another monetization model, which you’d have to acknowledge exists just. Donation based, but we believe the sort of old school would be called pay per view.
But also, you could call it T.V.O.D. but this idea of just paying for a particular piece of video, including the ability for micro payment pricing. So, pricing that could be in the pennies. But I say the ability for that, because we still want our content creators to set their own fee, but the idea to pay out one very small amount, but pay them for the service of watching their work, we think is kind of the 4th and more upcoming monetization model for this this world that we’re having more and more people watching content, more and more people making content all the time.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And we certainly see a shift, especially the last 10 years. Everything’s been disrupted. That’s been a big word in our vocabulary, obviously, but we see that models trends in the market can change anything. So, I appreciate your insights. On where this is going and Bob,
Bob Bowdon: Can I say 1 thing about that?
Yeah, so that’s another thing is eliminating gatekeepers have also been a trend. I think writ large with the way the Internet is allowed empowerment of ordinary people to make content, et cetera. So, you know, that requires no. Agent, you need no manager in Hollywood or no agent. You need not have some sort of distributor agree with your work being worthy, et cetera.
The idea is on our platform. You can go straight to your social media followers and say, here’s my content. And if you want to support me, here’s a tiny little price that you can pay to watch my work. And we think the idea of eliminating gatekeepers is a really powerful and in a way kind of an unethical thing to be involved with.
Because why we should, you know, why should certain people be empowered to be the kind of idea police or the, You know, independent film police or the comedy police, et cetera. Seems to me that it’s a healthier world when people can kind of go straight to their audience and, and not need some, that kind of approval.
So that’s another, that’s another trend that the internet writ large, I think has enabled, but we’re also part of it ourselves.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. Just like this platform. It’s not only a web two traditional Base a publication, but we’re also built on web three, which is blockchain, DeFi, right? Power to the people.
So, I totally see you there. And last question of the evening, Bob, which marketing techniques or strategies have worked best for you and why
Bob Bowdon: I’ve talked about this on a few other podcasts, but I’ll try to, I’ll try to do it as succinctly as possible. You know, when we were first, when vid affair was new, we were kind of trying to do things that.
That almost like a big company would do like in my mind, I sort of thought, oh, well, people will accept us more if we kind of present ourselves like we’re, you know, like, it’s like, it’s the madman era in the early 1960s. And we’ll have these advertisements that will look slick and look like we’re a big company and look like we’re polished and all that.
And I, I think that it’s actually opposite in this era. For example, we went to a trade show and got a big booth and hired a huge staff and we had a breakout session in advance of the, of the trade show and, you know, at the conference and we you know, we try to seem like we were some biggest, you know, like, we were some big established company.
I don’t think people are looking for that. We’ve had, it’s been more effective for me to personally go and make videos with, on our Instagram or, or on our X or on our Facebook with me just talking with my face, just, hey, I’m a guy and I have a, this is a startup this is a startup video streaming monetization platform and here’s how it works and, you know, give us feedback and that sort of authenticity is, you know, On a part of the social media era, I think that and people respond to it better than if you try to be something you’re not
Brian Thomas: absolutely.
I appreciate that. And I think with authenticity comes trust comes credibility. And just makes it, it’s a game changer for consumers, especially when you’re trying to build a loyal fan base. So, I appreciate that, Bob and Bob. It was such a pleasure having you on this evening and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Bob Bowdon: Sure, Brian. Anytime. Appreciate it.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Bob Bowdon Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
