Adam Carollas Producer Mike Cioffi Talks

Interview with Mike Cioffi Producer of The Adam Carolla Podcast

November 5th, 2009 | Author: Mike McAllen

mike cioffi adam carolla

Show notes-
Today Mike McAllen of Grass Shack Events & Media interviews with Mike Cioffi Producer of The Adam Carolla Podcast and The Greg Fitzsimmons Experience Podcast and handles the new media for the Jimmy Kimmel show
Mike talks about producing a podcast for a show that already has an audience, working on monetizing the podcast.

Transcripts:

Mike McAllen: Welcome back to the Meetings Podcast. This is Mike McAllen with Grass Shack Events and Media. Today we have Mike Cioffi who is the producer of the Adam Carolla podcast, The Greg Fitzsimmons podcast and he works on New Media at Jimmy Kimmel. He is a general all around geek.

Mike Cioffi: That’s correct, yes.

Mike McAllen: Hi Mike.

Mike Cioffi: Hey thanks for having me, Michael.

Mike McAllen: Oh great and I ran into you at Blog World where you were there with the Adam Carolla Show and how do you like Blog World?

Mike Cioffi: It was great. It was the first sort of new media event I’ve been to. I’ve been sort of dabbling a new media for most of my career but I haven’t been focused on it until the past you know, 8 months or so and it was really neat to sort of learn about the industry at a big event like that and meet people who are trying new things and just sharing knowledge about how everyone – to create a better product or monetize or promote things. It was really a great experience.

Mike McAllen: Yes, it was really – so that’s I guess the third one I’ve been to and I always love that because you just walk up to somebody and say what do you up to, you know. Everybody has such different stories. They’re all trying you know, just the gamut of everything [Indiscernible] [0:01:22] just – it’s crazy. It’s crazy place.

Mike Cioffi: Exactly and as weird as someone’s idea maybe is to figure out a way how to apply to the podcast or live streaming, a new media show, it can all sort of mesh together pretty easily.

Mike McAllen: Yes totally and it is interesting. I heard somebody talking about it. It’s like when you go into a Barnes and Noble and you see all the magazines, you know, there’s magazines for everything. There’s always niches.

Mike Cioffi: Yes.

Mike McAllen: So all the people can go after whatever, you know. Anyway so – I had a great time there too. So tell me a little bit how you got into the entertainment business.

Mike Cioffi: Oh it’s kind of a funny story I guess. I was majoring in Political Science at St. Mary’s College in the Bay area and before I graduated, I wanted to say – to figure out hey, do I really want to walk myself down into a career of teaching or law school and being a lawyer? So I figured out I’ll take a year and sort of dick around with something fun just to see, you know, what happens. And so I actually went to a JC for a few months and they’re horrid places, truly terrible but I founded JC with a decent radio station and a couple of decent teachers there and while the students certainly didn’t give a shit, no one used the resource at hand, learned a lot about the radio and I already knew some – I ran a small radio show at St. Mary’s as well and landed myself an internship at a couple different places one of which was the Adam Carolla Show and I just sort of stuck with that one. I kept putting in hours and time there and eventually got a job and I got a better job and eventually I was you know, associate producer of the Adam Carolla Show and here I am today.

Mike McAllen: So great. I have a friend that actually went to college with at the Chico State where I went and he did kind of the exact same thing and he worked – and I don’t know if you might know him because – you know Dean Johnson because he said he worked with Jimmy Kimmel for a little while. He might be older than you though.

Mike Cioffi: Yes. I don’t recognize the name. I’ve only been at the show full-time for about a year now.

Mike McAllen: Well he was at The Man Show I guess. He [Indiscernible] [0:03:34] with them but now he’s been working for Bill Maher kind of the same thing. He started with Bill Maher way back when and doing you know, I guess he was an intern to start out with and now he’s like an executive producer there which is pretty cool.

Mike Cioffi: Nice. Great. Yes.

Mike McAllen: Yes, pretty fun. So where did you learn your geekiness then for Political Science? It’s not very …

Mike Cioffi: You’re right. That is not a – although it is certainly nerdy, it’s not sort of that geeky. I don’t know I sort of had a natural affinity for computers and stuff like that. My grandfather gave me his Carus 80 [Phonetic] [0:04:13 when I was 5 so I was learning basic when I was in kindergarten.

Mike McAllen: Wow.

Mike Cioffi: And yes and I dabbled a new media in high school. I helped with my high school's website but really from high school on, I didn't program or code a single thing. It was just your average nerd. I read a lot of Douglas Adams and was on flash dot now and again but I guess it's something sort of in the blood. It's not you know, something that I was trained to do. With that being said, when someone at CBS Radio would ask me to figure something out and I didn't work in new media at CBS Radio. I just sort of helped – I guess I was a liaison between our show and the new media department and Adam sort of picked up on that and said, “Hey, you're a geek. You're obviously a geek. Help me with this podcast thing.” And at the same time when I was at Jimmy Kimmel Live and opening for some new media projects and I was just a PA there, the same thing happened. It's hey, anyone's got a special talent for new media type stuff and I was the one that's raising my hand and that worked out.

Mike McAllen: That's great. So, what kind of stuff when you say these projects come up? Are they just online building this kind of social media stuff or what kind of stuff are these projects?

Mike Cioffi: For Jimmy Kimmel Live?

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Mike Cioffi: For Jimmy Kimmel Live, the opening that originally happened was the YouTube channel because the ABC [Indiscernible] [0:05:45] a department to deal with the website in generally so the first thing that the show directly had control of was the YouTube channel and from there we got a few more social media pages that we control directly which is nice for a show to be able to do in-house instead of you know, hand over to a different department so that’s what I do there.

Mike McAllen: Right. It’s so interesting to me how your side of the business from somebody who’s been going to all these podcasting and new media conferences and everybody’s trying to start up and you kind of come into the other direction. You already have your audience which is great, you know.

Mike Cioffi: Yes.

Mike McAllen: But to get them to figure out how to get to your show is I guess your new battle or do they just come?

Mike Cioffi: No, no. It is – it has been a battle a little bit. I mean it’s two different things. Adam and Jimmy both obviously have big audiences. Adam made it easy early on by plugging the podcast before we even knew it would work on Monday. He told his entire radio audience, hey listen Monday, I’m going to throw a podcast which helped in from there. It’s sort of was a self-sustaining cycle and we do little things from there. When we try to think of new ways, we obviously bug Adam where we can and places where people would hear a podcast would like to hear him and hear about his podcast.

For Jimmy Kimmel Live, it’s a little different, you know, people don’t go necessarily to the YouTube channel. They have to promote a lot within YouTube but then they also have to look at the goal at the end of the day like it’s the goal to get more people to tune into the show on Terrestrial TV or the sort of the destination on its own and you know, tune in language and promotional banners end up playing a big part of all that.

Mike McAllen: It’s very interesting. So take me through you know, a day in the life of your life. Tell me what you do on a normal day.

Mike Cioffi: On a normal day, I wake up and I deal with the podcast, The Adam Carolla podcast or the Greg Fitzsimmons podcast, some e-mails at home. I sit down do some e-mails, make some calls, and then I head into the Jimmy Kimmel Live offices a little later in the day because I’m there very, very late. And that’s – the bulk of my day is at Jimmy Kimmel Live dealing with ABC and internally at the show, how are we going to promote this or we’re putting up this clip making sure instead of expired, it had been pulled down talking to Hulu or something like that. That’s the bulk of my day. I end up staying there until about 11:00. I actually cut the next clips [Phonetic [0:09:31] myself on the edit base there. I do those clips, upload them to YouTube and see other places, come home, upload the podcast on Monday though so I skip the Jimmy Kimmel Live cutting process because you don’t have live shows on Monday’s and I do the Greg Fitzsimmons Show. So I come home do one of those two things either the podcast or Greg Fitzsimmons podcast and then I wrap up in that with sending a little e-mail about the YouTube clips.

Mike McAllen: Wow. What a long day.

Mike Cioffi: Yes, it’s a bit of a long day. Yes.

Mike McAllen: So what do you cut them with? What kind of stuff are you using? Do you like to use Final Cut or you …

Mike Cioffi: Avid.

Mike McAllen: You’re an Avid. Wow. So you’re an editor also?

Mike Cioffi: I wouldn’t say audio editing. I’ve cut my teeth in radio. I feel like I’m pretty good at that. Video editing, I can just sort of export things. I won’t say I’m a strong editor.

Mike McAllen: So how are you guys monetizing this basically for the – I guess the Adam Carolla or the Greg Fitzsimmons Show? I guess the monetization for Jimmy Kimmel is pretty much the ABC stuff, right?

Mike Cioffi: Yes.

Mike McAllen: So how are you doing that for Adam Carolla? How was that all working?

Mike Cioffi: Well the tricky process for Corolla since, he’s still technically in his contract for CBS Radio. He stayed through the end of the year and so we didn’t want to screw that up and necessarily sell something against that. So we figured out a deal with CBS where for the remainder of the year plus a few more months, CBS is free to sell spots in the podcast. Spots being either pre-roll, post-roll or in-show mention and we do a register [Phonetic] [0:10:30] of that. For Greg Fitzsimmons, me and Greg sort of have rain of what we want to do with advertising. You know, we talk to people like Podtrac which is a great company and sort of helps us find advertising at a great and you know, puts us – makes us part of the bigger deck which helps our sale and helps us and so we’re able to do – again the same sort of format. Do a in-show read early on in the show plugging whatever the product is.

Mike McAllen: Interesting. So I know that – I listen to the Adam Carolla Show pretty regularly and they have Adam and Eve as the – or you, I’m sorry. They – you as a sponsor. So is that with CBS then?

Mike Cioffi: Yes, CBS sold that. CBS sold that for [cross talk] …

Mike McAllen: Oh wow. I guess – and it’s the perfect sponsor to plug probably.

Mike Cioffi: Yes I mean it is. In a lot of ways, it’s a weird time. It’s kind of weird like hey, what are you selling on the podcast but it’s a good test because it’s something that – and there’s a lot of other things that would have done this but they’re not necessarily spending money on podcasts. So it’s a good test because this way you can find out a lot of these people are listening to the podcast in front of their computer which is basically the checkout line for a lot of stores these days.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Mike Cioffi: For like the Amazon.com, whatever your online source, you’re right there. So if you mention them early in the podcast, hey I’ve got this great deal check it out, you might really get a sale much easier than you would with a radio spot where it says hey, hit Radio Shack, you might not see a Radio Shack for a week until they forget about the spot by then.

Mike McAllen: Yes, that’s a good point. That’s a very good point. So what about like the bandwidth and cost for all that or you guys just – did you just started up and – because you have such a huge audience that it must be expensive or …

Mike Cioffi: Those costs were massive. Adam used to talk about it a lot in the early days and we say, I was still sort of getting used to all this. I wasn’t ready for the size of the audience that Adam was going to bring. Luckily, I found the great CDN that was ready for you know, as big and small the project as we were using and CDN was Cash Fly.

Mike McAllen: Oh yes, yes.

Mike Cioffi: And our bill in the first few months range between $7,000 and $11,000 for bandwidth which was pricey. Right now, CBS is picking it up as part of our rev share deal but it’s a massive amount of bandwidth and it is a big cost at the end of the day.

Mike McAllen: And that’s – and I saw that he interviewed Leo Laporte who has his you know twit network and he has Cash Fly and AOL. I think they sponsor his just for mentions on the show which is probably something you guys could do too eventually.

Mike Cioffi: Yes. Well like I say right now, it’s sort of handled by CBS but that would be a great way to deal with that in the future.

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes. And then also you have the CarCast also. You’re doing that one too?

Mike Cioffi: Yes and that’s another – that sort of falls into the CBS umbrella.

Mike McAllen: Because I saw Adam and I last heard he was talking to Scott Monty also from Ford.

Mike Cioffi: Yes.

Mike McAllen: And I thought wow, what a great sponsor. So that would be – you guys …

Mike Cioffi: Oh yes.

Mike McAllen: So I wonder if that would work out. I guess you probably can’t talk about it if it is anyway.

Mike Cioffi: Yes. It has occurred to other people to say that much. It could be …

Mike McAllen: I won the Rocket Scientist but I saw them sitting together and I put it together myself.

Mike Cioffi: Yes.

Mike McAllen: With your booth, it was perfect with the whole Ford – your booth there at the Blog World with the Ford booth right across [cross talk] …

Mike Cioffi: Yes. Yes, it’s no accident. Yes.

Mike McAllen: Yes. Yes and that car that they had out there, was it a Taurus?

Mike Cioffi: Yes, it’s worth with the SYNC.

Mike McAllen: Man, it was cool.

Mike Cioffi: [Indiscernible] [0:14:40] yes. Those SYNC – like the features that SYNC has like Ford is really you know, they’ve got some break hours.

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes. I drive a Ford. I have a Ford of 1954, Ford of 100. It doesn’t move though.

Mike Cioffi: Yes because it sync up with your iPod when you log in.

Mike McAllen: No, no.

Mike Cioffi: Yes, yes.

Mike McAllen: No, it won’t do that but so for the Kimmel Show, you’re doing a lot of the – just YouTube channel basically, not just but you do the YouTube channel and did you work with them beforehand on other stuff?

Mike Cioffi: Yes, I started as a field PA, as a day player so as needed, I would come in and be a PA for a day. And then about a year and a half ago, I want to say that they brought me in as a full-time everyday PA for the production and then you know, back in January of this, I started doing the YouTube channel and then eventually – recently with that is we’ve mixed in some social media especially Twitter and MySpace and stuff like that.

Mike McAllen: Very cool. So tell me a little bit about the Greg Fitzsimmons Show and how that came out about.

Mike Cioffi: The Greg Fitzsimmons Show is great. That came about when – I forget if it was a call or e-mail but you know, after he came on the Adam Carolla podcast, I just got a call or e-mail out of the blue like hey, I’m thinking of starting a podcast and I need a new producer for my series of XM Show. Would you be interested and it just happens to work on the one evening of the week where I’m free. So I was very interested in that. So it’s been pretty good, you know, I helped him with the series XM Show which is live on Monday night and right after that, we do a podcast. It’s been fun.

Mike McAllen: Oh that’s awesome. So how many shows are you pumping out for all of these – well for the two podcasts a week?

Mike Cioffi: How many shows between Corolla and Greg?

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Mike Cioffi: Between Corolla and Greg and I guess the CarCast, Corolla is five, CarCast is one and Greg. So I guess seven podcasts a week.

Mike McAllen: That’s pretty amazing. That’s a lot of work.

Mike Cioffi: Yes, yes. It keeps you busy.

Mike McAllen: Yes. So what’s on the horizon then for you? Are you planning on starting a kingdom of podcasts that you’ll have and lord over?

Mike Cioffi: That would be all right. I don’t want to get too ahead of myself, you know. Right now, my schedule is already getting pretty filled up but you know, I certainly keep my eyes open for other opportunities if they’re out there.

Mike McAllen: Yes, very cool. So is there anything on the horizon that you got your, you know, your eyes set on or is it you’re just going to hang onto this for a while?

Mike Cioffi: Yes, I’m pretty much hanging onto this for a while. Every once in a while I ran into a comedian who I might ask if they’re interested in a podcast but other than that, you know, I pretty much am happy with where I’m at.

Mike McAllen: Yes, it’s very cool because you have a good formula going it seems and it might turn – it’s really neat to see how you’ve done this because like I said, I’ve only seen from the other way where you don’t have an audience and you’re trying to get an audience all the time.

Mike Cioffi: Yes.

Mike McAllen: Yes, pretty cool. And thank you very much for talking to me today.

Mike Cioffi: Hey, no problem. Thanks for having me.

Mike McAllen: Where can people get a hold of you if they wanted to chat with you? They say you’re on …

Mike Cioffi: If they want to contact me?

Mike McAllen: … yes.

Mike Cioffi: Yes. I’m on Twitter, Twitter.com/Cioffi@Cioffi, c-i-o-f-f-i and that’s the same thing on Facebook, Facebook.com/Cioffi, c-i-o-f-f-i.

Mike McAllen: Very cool, very cool. Yes, I saw you on Twitter this morning. I added you up there. So but anyway, thank you very much for talking with me and maybe we can talk again in the future and see where your path has gone.

Mike Cioffi: Sounds good, yes.

Mike McAllen: All right. Thanks a lot, Mike.

Mike Cioffi: Hey thank you, man.

Mike McAllen: Okay. Bye-bye.

Mike Cioffi: Bye.
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