Review of Shameless Acquisition Target

Don't miss the Q+A below with creator Laura Mayer

Oct 19, 2022

Laura Mayer is an ex/ podcast executive with more than a decade of experience. She’s been part of numerous podcast companies and startups, was Employee No1 at Panalopy (the Malcolm Gladwell publishing empire before they were acquired)….and has personally helped to launch and oversee hundreds of different shows that have gone on to become successful.

So she must be rich, right?

Either that or she’s already in the C-Suite office at Apple, Wondery, Spotify, or some other company that has already been through a buy-out, right?

Well, not exactly.

After learning more about her work and corresponding with her, I’m reasonably dumbstruck why she isn’t.

Laura hit that same note herself…and so she went back to investigate why all these facts are so, and created her new indie podcast. It’s hillarious, genre-bending and, as we like to say, bingeworthy.

Shameless Acquisition Target

Episode 1

Laura sets the stage by acknowledging that she’s obsessed with a few business things; specifically, the way in which success rains (and does not) down on people.

She dives into the heart of this matter by calling her first business role model: her dad. He’s the first guest…it’s clear they are related with their similar self-depricating wit and charm.

After she opens her own book of work and tells the gut-wrenching story about when she quit her job, how she was stripped of her “phantom equity” when she left (which was, important to note, before the gold rush came into town), and summarily exited from the building by the CEO.

With that, here’s her rationale for the show:

What I want to do on this show, and in life,
is to figure out how to catch these cycles [of acquisition] just right.
So that I can own a house, so that I can earn the kind of stability we’re all seeking.
But as we all know, we return to what is familiar…and in my case, that’s chaos.
This would be a great place for an online therapy ad…hint hint

All of this is out there above the fold, that is to say, in the first 10 minutes of the episode.

By doing this, she confirms one of the true tenants of being a host of a narrative podcast:

Hosts of narrative podcasts MUST have an ACTUAL connection to the story
Hosts of narrative podcasts need to have a REASON why he/she/they are telling that story (and why it matters now)

I’m going to argue, loudly, that this is the way, perhaps the only way, to authentically connect with an audience in the narrative podcast space.

When fancy production companies hire celebs to tell the story, they just don’t resonate. I’m thinking about Bunga Bunga. Even if you love Whitney Cummings (she cracks me up), listening to her tell the Berlusconi story feels disconnected.

Sure, she does a command performance. But I kept asking myself why SHE was in my ears talking to me. The answer? There is no connection…but it’s the way that the TV execs who have filled out the ballooning podcast industry executive space understand how to make their story worth more their advertisers who pay for the production. Celebs bring their own audience, so it’s like guaranteed income.

Laura doesn’t touch on Bunga Bunga…that’s my own reflection after listening to the first few episodes of this series. It got me thinking, and reflecting, on what I’ve learned and experienced in this industry already.

These facts pave the way to understand why choices like that one makes it more difficult, and more expensive, for independent shows to even get made. Which is also maybe why the bidding for this series begins at $1,000, and not $10,000.

As Laura illustrates, experience is not enough. You also need social capitol, celebrity and connection.

LISTEN FOR THE THEME SONG

Laura lays out the premise in some craftily written prose that she embeds in her theme song.

All the best podcasts are free
But free won’t give me
House money

To be acquired
That’s what I’d like

Shamelessly acquired
That’s what I’d like

And thus, the game is afoot.

To my mind, Laura has successfully made the first mockumentary podcast. Did you love Best In Show? Or Spinal Tap…or even The Blair Witch Project.

This is the podcast equivalent.

But Laura doesn’t wallow in cheap tricks. Listened to another way, this show is also a high-level business mastermind the podcast business landscape.

What this project has shown me, that entrepreneurship is about trying, so trying, so hard, often in public, and often failing, often so hard, often in public…

Want to be disavowed of all of the trappings about how the pipeline of podcast-to-tv ACUTALLY goes?

Do you remember the podcast Start Up? (it’s also on my inaugural playlist of foundational podcasts). It’s the podcast that Alex Blumberg published to chronicle the launch of his business Gimlet Media. The story is within the story.

5-star ratings won’t
make me flush

To be acquired…

That’s what I’d like

The breadcrumbs here are only for the podcast-super-nerds, because Start Up fulfilled “the dream.” That is, the podcast had its story rights acquired, which meant that a fictional TV series was made for ABC, which aired for just shy of three months before it was canceled.

Because Laura is a one of said podcast-super-nerds, she and some friends hosted a watch party when the first episode was broadcast in March of 2018.

Following on from the television disaster of Alex Inc, in Episode 3 Laura digs into why limited-run series are the thing no one wants to pay for, but everyone wants to make.

The podcast world, as Laura explains, works in the unit of measurement of Advertising Units….While a weekly show has 52-odd shows to sell ad units through, a limited series, which is a business term for a narrative storytelling podcast, only has a few. Depending on the series, narrative podcasts have somewhere between 5 and 10 episodes.

Fewer ad units available means fewer dollars….Even if you have a slim and talented staff working on your narrative shows, you still have to spread the expense of the staff’s work across this show across a few episodes, 6 episodes, 8, 12… of 52…and the cost goes waaaay up. All of that said, limited series often capture media attention. They win awards, they capture something in the air….an urgency, a current sensibility, that weekly chat-based shows, just can’t.

A well-placed narrative limited run series can put a podcast network, or a podcast production company, firmly on the industry’s map, and listener’s ears.

Laura has clear business advice for podcast production companies: have both chat and narrative shows in your production pipeline; one for the soul, one for the advertisers.

Here’s Laura’s actual idea - to make podcasts that work as podcasts

“It doesn’t take a lot of money…it takes giving a shit…”

And I would say that Shameless Acquisition Target, does just that. And, it breaks new ground by leveraging the ad space to create that as a gameshow-like component, but does this in a way that makes it part of the narrative, and the education plot.

“I make the rules, you write the cheques…”

That’s her refrain as she solicits more money for her show.

She starts the bidding at $1,000, which was only good as long as no one topples the offer. As part of the shameless story, she pitches the audience, both business and narrative, to dare anyone to bid higher, to take over the next sponsorship deal.

You get the feeling that anyone can play the game….because this is, in part, also a gameshow. And that makes you, the listener, feel like you’re part of the story.

Here’s another lesson about narrative podcasts:

Break down the fourth wall…the wall that leads to disbelief and imagination
Allow for a blend of fantasy and reality

Although the dollar amounts are shamelessly low, her technique worked. New sponsors do pay more money: Edison Research, Podglomerate…by the end of Episode 5, before the month-long reveal window begins.

Each episode also offers her income statement. It’s like a balance sheet for the series, and the point is made once again:

A seamless weave between the ad space and the narrative

It’s quite meta, but also, brilliant.

Laura manages to strike a balance where she doesn’t take herself too seriously, while still conveying that this is, actually, a serious matter.

She needs a job. She needs to get this series out of debt. She needs you to play the game…because even if you’re not a potential sponsor, your listening ears and your downloads are calculated towards the return.

It’s hard to to root for her. She’s charming, talented, exceptional in many ways…and yet she’s still there shamelessly asking for your money.

By the end of Episode 5, we all want this to be a different ending…we all want for this time to be different. This time, her work can be acknowledged, attributed, and compensated.

NOTE: The series is not over! Make sure you’re subscribed to discover the fate, what happens to Laura and this show, when she publishes the reveal in the 6th and final episode.

Q + A WITH LAURA MAYER

Samantha Hodder: Is there something you watched one day, or listened to, or a conversation with someone, that made the spark of this idea catch fire? What was the last straw?

Laura Mayer: I was talking with my husband, aka Danny from the podcast, about work and the podcast industry. Because, I am always talking to him about work and podcasting, and have always talked to him about work and podcasting.

There wasn’t something especially interesting about this conversation except for the timing and the specific situation. I’d recently left a job and was taking two weeks off to clear out the cobwebs. So, I had some perspective that comes with more rest (which I’m not great at taking). Additionally, and ironically given what I just said about rest, during this period of time my husband and I were sleeping on this “bed” that was actually two pieces of foam with a mattress topper, on the floor of our living room. By day: bad couch. By night: even worse bed. The baby had moved into what was our bedroom. I was not sleeping well. And I realized that, despite the on-paper career success and an extreme devotion to cheapness and saving money, there was no way I was going to be able to easily get us out of the situation of not having a bedroom.

I exhaustedly expressed a bunch of regrets about my career all at once: “if I had just done x,” “if I had just not said y,” “if I had turned down z,” which amounted to “if I had just figured out a way to cash out over the last 8 years, we wouldn’t be sleeping on our living room floor.” And Danny said, “why not make a podcast about it? Call it Shameless Acquisition Target.”

SH: Let’s talk money. Why did you start bidding at $1,000? Is that an amount you gleaned from personal experience, or is that part of the “joke?” It feels painfully low to me.

LM: So, I wasn’t planning on selling ads for the show. Not because I don’t like money. I love money. But because I didn’t know how to do it prior to the launch of the show, given that I didn’t know if anyone would even listen to the show. I didn’t want to over promise and underdeliver from an audience perspective.

I was planning on using the ad spots to ask famous people for $1,000, which is something my twin brother and I used to joke about doing as kids: write letters to famous people and ask them for $1,000 and see what happens. We once sent a letter to Conan O’Brien asking for $1,000, which is funny given his additional podcast stardom now.

Anyway, despite the similarity to the worst letter writing campaign in history, the $1000 number came, serendipitously, without prep, on tape from Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable. And since I was planning on doing the $1000 plan anyway, I just went with it.

SH: Spitball the future for me…IF this show continues, what does it look like?

LM: IF the show continues it becomes the basis for other series where someone (the host, or a subject with the help of a host type guide) is hellbent on achieving SOMETHING very specific. That something can be small (becoming the customer of the month at their local Starbucks) but the silly mission would be a way into talking about a larger topic (the fact that so many residential properties are owned by companies, making it very hard for people to buy homes in America without preexisting wealth, and it just so happens the Starbucks is in the commercial storefront of a condo building in which the condos are not owned by people but by corporations). Basically – if the show were to continue – I’d want each series to be like if Harriet the Spy was getting to the bottom of compound pharmacies in the US. Low/High, Unserious seeming/very serious seeming. Or, I’d just like to do another season about my other goal which is to get my cat on the cover of US Weekly….somehow.

SH: What gameshows do you watch and follow? Was this modelled after anything existing?

LM: I really only regularly watch Shark Tank and The Challenge. I’ve dipped into Love is Blind – but, is that a game show? Is love … the ultimate game? (pregnant pause). I mainly liked the first season of Love is Blind because of the Lacheys and the way Nick Lachey introduced himself in every scene. But, I digress.

SH: What was the WORST idea for this show that you’ve since discarded….how far into shameless territory did you actually travel?

LM: I almost hired an ex-Survivor contestant to be my accountability coach. This was during the time when I thought I wasn’t going to work with a producer at all. So, I wanted to hire someone to basically yell at me to get things done. It turns out that accountability coaching is **not** about yelling at someone to get their work done and it is very expensive.

I’m potentially on the brink of rejecting a very stupid idea to check into this new Best Western in my neighborhood for 48 hours to film 40 TikTok videos. So, starting my own hype house. What would actually happen is I’d check in and then fall asleep for like 24 hours.

SH: Given the tell-all in Ep3 about narrative podcasts, do you still believe in them? Would you put your money on the table to help make (another) one?

LM: I definitely still believe in narrative podcasts. But, I think that every podcast listener (current or future!) requires a balanced listening “diet.” This is to say, I think it’s rare that someone who’s really into podcasting is **just** going to listen to narrative shows. There’s a kind of attention required for those types of shows that can be draining if you’re not in the mood to do that sort of listening. I listen to a ton of chat, in addition to narrative shows. I think there’s a third “genre” that’s not being utilized as well as it could be– shows with a chat spine but also narrative elements. Personality plays with storytelling, both.

I’ve run out of money to self-fund the creation of a new series myself. But, if someone were to invest in me or my vision, I would certainly use that money to get them a return. I believe in narrative. But, I think that the distinction between narrative vs. chat doesn’t need to be so stark.

SH: Any interest to expand this notion of “gameshow” in the podcast space? What does that future look like?

LM: You’re giving me something to think about with the gameshow framing. I haven’t considered the show as a gameshow but … I sort of love it AS a gameshow.

SH: What about the development process for this show…what were your top 3 inspo, or guiding lights, or people/characters, that brought you down this road?

LM: The logline I used for myself was “Nathan Fielder meets Legally Blonde meets the podcast Start Up.”

The guiding principle was, and continues to be: to the extent that anyone is “made fun of,” I am the butt of the joke. I don’t want anyone feeling silly participating in this show except for myself.

SH: Would you shamelessly like to be ripped off with your concept? What if there are knock-off versions of this story that start to pop up out there? Is that the mark of success?

LM: Since I’ve launched the podcast I’ve been saying that I wouldn’t be able to listen to this show if someone else made it. It would make me too anxious – like, I can’t have my podcasts talking about podcasts! I listen to my podcasts to not think about podcasts! Which, I realize as I’m typing this, makes no sense. But, if someone else wants to make a similar show, to that I say Godspeed. I would not listen only because of my anxiety rather than any animus. Anxiety not Animus would be a good name for a production company.

SH: Give us your TOP 3 Outcomes for this show, ranked

LM:

1. I somehow make enough money that I can live in a 3 Bedroom apartment and not have the specter of returning to the living room floor bed in my mind’s eye.

2. Someone hires me to make my small empire of silly shit and, in so doing, purchases the RSS feed of Shameless in order to launch other shows off of it.

3. I get to make more stuff in my own voice.

Thanks for reading … please jump in with comments and questions below!