135 Jay Soderberg | From Radio to ESPN to BlogTalkRadio

Jay Soderberg, a.k.a. PodVader, emerged from the radio broadcasting world and is now fully immersed in podcasting. He’s been the Head of Content at BlogTalkRadio since 2014 and previously worked at ESPN for 16 years, spending his last eight years there as the lead producer for all their podcasts. He is the host and founder of the Next Fan Up podcast and a big champion for independent podcasters. As Jay puts it, he’s “fighting for the little guy” so they all have a seat at the table when podcasting becomes too big for the world to ignore. Fortunately, BlogTalkRadio helps him advance this narrative by helping podcasters get better at what they do, grow their audience, and monetize their shows. I’m happy Jay entered the podcasting arena and confident that the future of podcasting will be better off because of him.

07:01 - How he got the name, ‘PodVader’
09:00 - How he’s seen podcasting explode and the corporate vs the independent podcast
10:33 - What got him into podcasting and who influenced him early on
13:53 - Eric Hutchinson’s theme song for the Fantasy Focus podcast
15:06 - The Coke Zero campaign
17:10 - How the audience driven Coke Zero ad got started
19:19 - Matthew Berry’s background and podcasting experience
22:42 - The “It” factor - what makes a great podcast
25:13 - His love of radio, the “Lego Tapes” and his desire to become a radio broadcaster
32:15 - Can radio and podcasting co-exist?
34:37 - Adam Curry’s Podcaster Pro audio device
39:49 - His time at ESPN and working for Andy Toh at Blog Talk Radio
41:38 - Andy Toh as the Bill Belichick of podcasting
44:30 - What does Blog Talk Radio do and how can it help podcasters?
52:58 - Host read ads on Blog Talk Radio
01:05:06 - The one most misunderstood thing about him
01:05:58 - What he’s changed his mind about recently