Podcasts site, forced to pause for lack of money

Radio stops for three months. The first paid podcast studio struggles to find enough subscribers to continue the adventure. Explanations from the co-founder, Pascale Clark.

Three months of reflection. It’s time for Pascale Clark and Candice Marchal to save Radio . The “native” podcasts studio, launched a year and a half ago , has not found its business model – despite the support of a thousand subscribers, against six thousand over three years. While the craze for podcasts is exponential, Radio – which has contributed to this revolution in use by offering the first pay platform in France – may seem ahead of its time, in a context where the French are accustomed to “consume” free radio. Interview with Pascale Clark, co-founder of the studio with Candice Marchal.

How do you envision the coming months?
With Candice, we decided to ask ourselves a few months to think and try to project ourselves. We believe that a solution is possible, we seek it. We see a lot of people and receive many offers of collaboration. Nothing is excluded. For almost two years now, we have projects in the fallow because we did not have the time to process and develop them. This break will allow us to review our productions and come back with a more refined, assertive and, hopefully, surprising editorial proposal.

“The free sound does not exist: either it is paid by the fee, or by listening to long and recurring advertising pages.”

In the United States, subscribing to a podcast platform is common. But can the paid model work in France?
Free information is an illusion, and can even damage our profession by playing on the spectacular and the clicks. Citizens are beginning to understand that quality information has a cost. But it is true that we are the first to have imagined to pay to listen to good sound. The free sound does not exist, it is a lure to believe it: either it is paid by the fee, or by listening to long and recurrent pages of advertising.

What are the new economic solutions for Radio?
We realize that our ambition (to go on the field, to spend time there, to mount, to realize, to take care of the sound) requires means that we do not have. Several possibilities are therefore available to us: to find new investors who correspond to our ethics, to associate ourselves with other independent media, to propose our know-how, our voices, our signatures to those who are looking for quality podcasts. If a patron reads you, we will meet him very willingly!

When you created Radio, you did not want commercials or financial commitments with industry magnates who own most of the French media. What about today ?
It will not change. Mechanically, the concentrations are harmful to the multiplication of the glances. As far as advertising is concerned, our ideal world does not contain noise pollution that encourages consumption. On the other hand, we would like our media to be recognized by the CPPAP (Joint Committee for Publications and News Agencies), which would enable us to increase our VAT from 20% to 2% and to have access to the aid planned for the new media. However, the award criteria are not adapted to our time: only writing is taken into account and not sound, even if it is of public and general interest. If the new Minister of Culture, Franck Riester, had two minutes to agree to talk about it, it would be with pleasure!

“We did not take enough into account the almost perfect marriage between the podcast and the series.”

Can you imagine reading the advertising of your partners before launching a documentary, as it is practiced on other platforms?
There, I take a shot of old: I’m from an era – a school? – where watertight partitions separated journalism from commerce and information from communication. It seems that porosity has invaded some new media. With Candice, we did not ask ourselves the question: all our time and energy was spent on content, topic angle, journalism rather than marketing and communication. We promise to try to make progress in the last two areas.

The ergonomics of the site is it to rethink?
Absolutely, a redesign of the site and the application is a necessity.

Why not have developed documentary serials such as Serial American Serial to retain listeners?
It is true that we have not sufficiently taken into account the almost perfect marriage between the podcast and the series. We tested very different formats, it was also the best way to test everyone’s tastes. However, we will not close a Serial in France, or it is to find ours, which would not necessarily go through a court case (the US and French judicial systems are very different), because you need to know to invent and not to copy.

“We have preceded fashion and have to wait for it to become a wave.”

Are fiction planned?
Ideally yes, economically not yet!

And the talk? These programs with guests and debates around social issues?
The sound as we imagine it in podcast on Radio is the ideal vector to take the pulse and listen to the human voices. It can only be done in the field. Radio has produced and directed nearly two hundred and thirty reports and documentaries. We give the floor to people we do not hear elsewhere (or when we hear them, it’s twenty-two seconds). We have worked dozens of journalists, authors, directors … among other things we obtained the Franco-German Journalism Prize and were nominated for the Prix Europa.

From my career [to France Inter, RTL …, ed], I kept the taste of direct studio, but it has not yet its place on Radio. And then round tables are sufficiently present on traditional radio and new platforms.

Have not you arrived too early in developing the uses of the podcast in France?
We have preceded fashion and have to wait for it to become a wave. It’s about holding in the meantime.

The scissors cut, the languages ​​are loosened: from house to house, France Culture followed Mikaël, hairdresser, who, every month embarks for the island of Sein and chains home visits. Head on the confetti of Finistère.

Every month, when Mikaël goes to the island of Sein, in Finistère, he is welcomed as a savior. His job ? Hairdresser. The island is indeed lacking, and the trip to the mainland would involve having to sleep on site: out of season, there is only one boat per day. In this report by Elise Andrieu (France Culture), we follow the benefactor on tour, who travels the sodden streets of the island dragging his equipment behind him – a big briefcase equipped with wheels. Ambroisine, Greg, Jeanine, Anne … home visits are linked, transforming the salon, the kitchen or the bistro into a hairdressing salon. Could it be the inconvenience of the wind or the fear that it will not come back? All Senanes ask him the same cut: very short. These sessions also sometimes lead to gentle conversations about femininity, bad weather or the history of the island.

Through reports full of humanity, broadcast on France Culture, Lydia Ben Ytzhak takes us to four places in the world affected by climate change.

Neither science fiction nor a scientific account of the global future, the documentary series that Lydia Ben Ytzhak proposes on France Culture combines climate change with the present. “Meeting people who are experiencing these upheavals right now seemed to me to be the most tangible way to make the ongoing tragedy palpable,” says the journalist who takes us to four places in the world already affected by climate change. .

Between sadness and beauty, urgency and contemplation

In Bangladesh, people are struggling between increasingly intense rainfall and water discharged upstream by Indian dams. “The floods of the delta are increasing, and a new season has appeared: a kind of pre-monsoon,” says a researcher. Every year for three to four months, Padma, “the river that destroys everything”, drowns houses and children. Wherever his dirty water overflows, he sows fever and diarrhea. Fifteen million Bangladeshi are exiled then. In Portugal, in October 2017, “a fire not normal” killed dozens of people in two days. ” Usually, fires come to an end at the end of the summer …” says a firefighter, who does not feel concerned by climate change. “The proximity of danger is not enough to raise awareness! “Irritated the reporter, who sometimes has the feeling of” preaching in the desert. ” She seeks the right words: “The increase in temperatures does not cause forest fires, it aggravates the factors that trigger them … not obvious to alert the public while respecting the nuances of science! “

The listener looking for evidence will find them in the Corsican episode devoted to the Scandola marine reserve, “living observatory of climate change” . There, a plant crumbles on the surface of the sea, leaving its mark over the years on the rock. “The water level has been stable for about a thousand years. Between 1995 and 2015, it rose 6 centimeters, ” worries a conservative. In front of the scrambled waters of Asia, the crystalline sea of ​​Corsica or the moving sand of the Aquitaine dunes, Lydia Ben Ytzhak marvels. Her descriptions, curiously happy, move us as much as the dramatic testimonies she gathers. Between sadness and beauty, urgency and contemplation, four reports stretched like mirrors to awaken our environmental consciousness.

Bach, Mendelssohn, Liszt, a Hungary he no longer recognizes, Jewish roots … France Musique devotes its major interviews to the captivating András Schiff, too rare in France.

His word is the image of his game: tender, balanced, relaxed, without emphasis. Invited all week at the microphone of Philippe Cassard , the Hungarian pianist András Schiff, born in 1953, gives himself with the same accuracy, the same clarity as when he delivers a fugue of the well-tempered Clavier of Johann Sebastian Bach, of which he is specialist. Without ever pressing the resonance pedal. “I do not like to start concerts fortissimo, I prefer when it’s pianissimo, to seek the touch, listen to the acoustics”, he confides during the interview. The rest is in keeping.

Do not set foot in Hungary anymore

Whether describing Hungary from his childhood, his “very gray” atmosphere , where he attended the recitals of mythical pianists (Arthur Rubinstein, Annie Fischer, Sviatoslav Richter), or that of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán , in which he now refuses to set foot. This country, marked by intolerance towards the Roma and an “unofficial anti-semitism”, is no longer its Hungary, saddens the one who today has become a British citizen.

The same tone when it comes to rehabilitate some of his fetish composers, on which he believes miscellaneous misconceptions: Chopin, more classic than romantic in his ears, “which leaves little freedom to the interpreter” ; Bartók, “a great pianist who played with a lot of rubato” ; and especially Mendelssohn, largely underestimated, especially because of the anti-Semitic attacks he suffered from Wagner. As for Liszt, the maestro deplores that his music is treated so “exhibitionist”, so “brutal”. That is why he himself plays so little the pages of this illustrious compatriot, who nevertheless founded the school where he was trained, the Franz Liszt University of Music, in Budapest.

A major interpreter of our time

From this interview punctuated by carefully selected musical extracts, we will remember the voice of a musician considered throughout the world as a major performer of our time. A voice, too, where the dramas of history resonate – his family, Jewish, survived the Holocaust. Unanimously hailed for his immense and ambitious record production (he recorded all Bach and all Mozart), András Schiff is, oddly enough, little present on the French stages. And is even less so in interview. The one Philippe Cassard has collected here is “the first big interview” ever given in France, says the animator, himself a brilliant pianist at the international career. Which makes this voice all the more precious.

Little, Lena has deployed treasures of inventiveness to hide his stuttering. Then overcoming his disability by becoming a speech therapist.

Its fast flow, combined with its slightly shy tone, puts the chip in the ear. The story of Lena, if it were less delicate, would be one that begins with “What is the height for …” This young orthophonist, modest and determined, goes back to Transfert (on Slate.fr) the thread of his career and his faults. Her first difficulties making friends at school, her fear of speaking in the evening, her need to prepare what she will tell the baker, the terror of having to make a call. Indices that lead her to the path of a rare and little-known condition: masked stuttering. His symptoms are perfectly hidden behind inventive strategies of avoidance, without erasing their suffering. Faced with this paradox, Lena gives the listener a beautiful lesson in life by confronting her stuttering, which has become an asset of choice in her relationship with patients.

In 1901, we learn that a woman has been locked in sordid conditions by her mother for twenty-five years. The story of a captivating captivity to listen to online.

“Like André Gide, I have a strong taste for news, because they mark the intrusion of baroque into everyday life,” says François Truffaut in a 1967 archive, rebroadcast by Philippe Garbit in Les Nuits de France Culture . Invited to read one of his favorite books, his choice focuses on the abominable story of La Séquestrée de Poitiers, retraced by André Gide. In 1901, an anonymous letter informs the Attorney General of Poitiers that Blanche Monnier is locked in a room repugnant to dirt, for twenty-five years, by her mother and her brother. With a certain talent as a storyteller, the filmmaker reads reports and testimonies of the time, describing the worms that swarmed on the bed of the captive, who had the strange habit of systematically calling any object his ” dear little object. A story in seven episodes as baked as captivating.

The writer, actress and director tells Johanna Bedeau, about France Culture, how she overcame her deafness.

“No matter how much I screamed, there was something that was inaccessible to me. “Deaf from birth, Emmanuelle Laborit was nicknamed the” Seagull “as a child because she was shouting to be heard.

She has since found other ways to express herself. Writer, actress and director, she tells to Johanna Bedeau in A naked voice, on France Culture. It accurately portrays the disarray felt in adolescence in a silent world, the revolt against the denial of the deaf community and its fight to make theater.

How to find one’s place in a world that language shapes? By the sign language and by the language of the body. Through the theater and the voice of commitment to the benefit of the hearing-impaired community. An enlightening interview, tinged with humor and pretty cries “so that the world of the deaf is no longer the world of silence”.

To listen again while drinking a prosecco, the Cinema Tempo of Thierry Jousse devoted to the music of Italian films.

Gominated hair, fine mustache and naughty look. Such is the paraphernalia of the womanizer played by Alberto Sordi in Antonio Pietrangeli’s Le célibataire. This acidic comedy about machismo inspired Thierry Jousse a delightful Ciné tempo , devoted to the golden age of Italian cinema.

Between two synopses, the producer lists the sparkling tracks of Mina, the singer who plays the soundtrack to L’Eclipse, Antonioni. Twisted notes rise, and we see Monica Vitti wandering the streets of Rome before going to find his lover broker, camped by Alain Delon in a dark suit.

In the sounds of the 1960s, the listener delights in the worlds of Ettore Scola, Francesco Rosi, or Elio Petri. Jazz, pop and bossa-nova in Italian distill a summer taste. We are suddenly in a good mood, sipping a prosecco between Claudia Cardinale and Vittorio Gassman.

On September 2nd, Philippe Garbit, with great pleasure, unearthed an astonishing archive of crime at various times, whether real or fictional. To listen again in podcasts.

Does the perfect crime exist? We are in October 1948 and, according to the presenter of the radio station La Tribune de Paris, this package is fashionable in America. Around him, in the studio: René Piedelèvre, medical examiner, Jacques Isomo, lawyer, and Thomas Narcejac, writer. The discussion is going well. Nobody agrees. And if the perfect crime was only a novelist’s invention decided to show the extent of his creativity? Unless it is the work of a professor of forensic medicine, aware of all the pitfalls to be avoided by the murderer in search of anonymity. A pragmatic speaker cuts the class at the table: “If we know that there is a crime, the crime of this fact is no longer perfect. ” Exhumed from the depths of Radio France by the producer Philippe Garbit , this archive is part of a fascinating sound file entitled” The night special police, gendarmes, and some criminals! To podcaster on the France Culture website.

Judges, criminals and police speak out

“In real life, I hate killers and bad guys,” says Philippe Garbit. But without them, what would be bored … ” Fervent admirer of Arsene Lupine, he admits however that it would be silly to become a murderer when there are so many in the novels (1). He therefore takes pleasure in finding, for Les nuits de France Culture, sounds about criminals of all kinds. Among a dozen radio rarities, we indulge in the French adaptation of L’Ombre d’un doute, by Hitchcock . A dark history of killer old rich ladies, played on the radio by Michèle Morgan and Jean-Pierre Aumont in 1946 . A 1963 conference also attracts attention. For thirty minutes, Maître René Floriot gives a perky voice to the judicial errors and plunges us into a world before the scientific police, where “if justice is wrong, it still has a number of excuses when we see all those who strive to mislead it ” . Not very reassuring if you are an honest citizen, rather encouraging if you are a criminal. The floor is also for the police. The essayist Bruno Fuligni echoes the testimonies left by representatives of the law from 1800 to 1939. Far from relying on a moralistic literature, their stories even betray, in some cases, “an admiration, an indulgence for this or that mobster” . At the end of this listening (cathartic?), We will follow the wise advice lavished by Garbit in the preamble of his Special Night: “Let’s renounce to transform ourselves into a criminal.”

By mentioning for France Culture his illustrations of “Candide”, his frescoes or Roald Dahl, it is himself that the Englishman Quentin Blake speaks. In an exquisite French.

“Quentin Blake’s drawing is a writing, it even gives the impression that it is the writers who illustrate it and not the other way around. “So Daniel Pennac speaks he twirling the line of English, known for his illustrations of texts by Roald Dahl. For the Atelier de la création, on France Culture, Catherine Guilyardi met the London octogenarian to make him talk about his version of Candide de Voltaire, or frescoes he made in hospitals. In a charming French, Blake gives leads to better define it, without ever totally engaging. “When you create something, you do not really know what it is. The subjects, we draw them in his head, in his body, it’s like playing on stage, ” murmurs in an amused tone the cartoonist, keen on poetry and collector of feathers. A funny bird, in a documentary removed, which manages by the sound to make live the drawing.