🎙️ Listen to this episode:
Full Transcript
Caloroga Shark Media. Hey there, I’m Johnnie Mack, and today I gotta talk about some other stuff as I’ve been talking about for the weekends of January. I just wanna just do some other things, experiment with the format a little bit. I was running the stats from twenty twenty five to see what was resonating or not. I’m always trying to grow the show and get more listeners in.
I ran this through AI, and the AI tells me based on episode performance. Conflict driven stories outperform announcements. Comedy intersecting with politics, money or elite institutions drives engagement. Comedy intersecting with politics goes to both Colbert and Kimmel. Intersecting with money is the Rio Comedy Festival, and elite institutions is things around the White House or perhaps the Kennedy Center.
The secondary episodes are comedians responding to comedians. So if I can find a story where you know, comedian calls out comedian, why those do really well and actually outperform the original event, that’s interesting and what underperforms is neutral coverage. So you guys like me like a good fight, which brings me to today’s topic of comedy neighborhoods. I use this website called refonic r E P h O N. I see.
It’s a podcast analytics platform that aggregates and models listener behavior. They pull it from the Apple podcast data. But what they try to do is visualize relationships between shows. They create this like really cool graphic where you’ll see, like if I type in daily Coming News, they’ll be lines connecting to other shows. So they kind of map it out the way they map out a star chart on your favorite science fiction show.
So here in the middle, I see Daily Comedy News, and then there are lines to different shows, so I see like a direct line. One of the closest things is the Last Laugh podcast that makes sense. Lewis Black’s Rant cast to the Netflix is a joke podcast. Then some longer line things like Conan O’Brien and Club Random and the Weekly Show even to Late Night with Seth Myers. There’s an overlap between people who like the Seth Meyers podcast and me.
Now that’s funny. If we zoom out, we go deeper into the universe. Out past the Seth Myers orbit is the Cobert orbit. If you go out far enough, you’ll go to pot Save America. That’s interesting.
But then even within these if you zoom in here, now here is what they call a neighborhood. And I have tenuous connections to some of these shows, but all living in what they call the same comedy neighborhood are Two Bears, One Cave and Bad Friends and Whiskey Ginger, Bill Burr, Tosh Are You Garbage? So like you could see all those shows kind of sharing an audience, and I only somewhat share an audience with them. So as we break this down, and again, I was looking at this because I’m always trying to grow the show, and I wanted to figure out, all right, people who like this show also like what show? Maybe I should talk about that stuff a little bit more.
And you can go to this thing. It’s rafonic dot com. Just look up comedy neighborhoods and it explains that each line represents shared subscribers. Distance matters. Shows that appear close together share a higher percentage of the same listeners.
Clusters form when many shows share overlapping audiences. So that list I just gave you of like Whiskey, Junior and Bill, They’re all sharing an audience together. And I’m a little further away from them. So what did Johnny Mack learn AI and tells me? The first clear observation is that Daily Comedy News does not cluster with stand up comedy feeds, Joe compilations, improv podcasts, or TikTok driven comedy properties.
Instead, it sits inside a dense cluster of talk based, personality led legacy comedian podcasts. The closest and most consistently linked shows include Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. The show emphasizes extended conversation, recurring co hosts, and minimal topical urgency. WTF with Mark Maren, known for introspective interviews, long run times, and a focus on creative process SmartLess I should probably talk about those guys a little bit more. While lighter in tone, it is structural, similar long conversations, familiar hosts and minimal emphasis on topical comedy.
And Fly on the Wall with Dana Carvey and David Spade, which interesting enough talk about rhads not taken. I was with Cadence thirteen when they did that deal. I still don’t know why they didn’t ask me to produce that. It’s fine, I’m not upset, and my mom was pretty sick at that time, so that might have been the choice that maybe my head wasn’t totally in the game. That could be the reason.
And I don’t mean that as a dick. My boss was very very very very very I can’t say very enough times, very very very kind. It gave me a lot of rope and a lot of space to just do what I needed to do at that time. So it could have been that that they didn’t want to burden me with having to produce another show. Because I do play hard, so if you give me work, I will do it so as I do out loud therapy here.
That might have been an act of kindness. But on paper, I’m the person you know, age wise or resume wise, I’m the person you probably would ask to produce such a show regardless. We share an audience to Daily Comedy News and Fly on the Wall, a nostalgia driven interview show. Now it’s interesting here is Maren’s older than me, Carvey’s older than me. How old Spade he’s older than me?
Right? Yeah, Spade’s sixty one. I’m fifty six. In case you’re curious, I think Jason Bateman is my age. Bateman is fifty six might be fifty seven by the time you hear this, depending on what I deployed it.
January fourteenth, nineteen sixty nine is his birthday. Happy Birthday, Jason Bateman. So yeah, all right, So it makes sense that people who like dudes in their fifties and sixties like other dudes in their fifties. Does that all makes sense to me? Like, I don’t expect the TikTok comedian fans to dig what I’m doing here.
As I was talking with Mike Chisholm from The Letterman podcast recently, I was like, you know, we’re sitting here talking about a show that came out forty years ago. AI tells me, also appearing within the cluster or shows like Rob Low, Good Hang, and other personality led conversation podcast that prioritize familiarity and low conflict listening. The data indicates that listeners who subscribe to DCN are the same listeners who’s subscribe to those shows. That implies a set of preferences to this is you guys. You guys subscribe to hosts, not formats.
Thank you. I take that as high compliment. They value continuity over novelty. They tolerate long run times in conversational pacing. They’re comfortable with analysis, reflection, and repetition, which reminds me one time, Joe Quoitnaw, I’m not going to do that today.
Oh this is interesting. This cluster skews heavily towards comedian and entertainers whose primary career breakthroughs occurred before the rise of social media comedy discovery. These are not emerging voices. These are established figures using podcasts retain and monetize existing audiences. Very interesting.
I’ve got more analysis after this break. Continuing our look at the Daily Comedy News comedy neighborhood where I find myself, AYI tells me. The map shows adjacency to a second, smaller cluster focused on comedy as process rather than performance. Shows like Block That’s Neil Brennan’s Pod and Good One appear as secondary neighbors. These podcasts explicitly analyze how jokes are written, how bits evolve, and how comedians think about craft.
They’re not built for casual listening. Their presence in the Daily Comedy News neighborhood suggests that a meaningful portion of the audience is interested in how comedy works, not just consuming it. That makes sense to me. I would imagine that is one of the reasons you pick this particular program. A third nearby grouping consists of comfort oriented conversational podcasts.
Again, I will take that as a compliment. I’m just trying to keep you company here. I’m not a comedian. I’ve never performed comedy. I don’t claim to be a comedian.
I don’t claim to be funny. Hopefully I’m amusing at times. There seem to be some recurring bits that people like, but I’m obviously not here shucking jokes. The AI says these are low stake shows designed for passive listening. Their connection to DCN reinforces the idea that this audience values predictability and routine.
Finally, at the outer edges of the cluster, remnants of legacy late night television ecosystems appear. Podcasts tied to the daily show, late night hosts, and political comedy are connected, but with weaker overlap. Equally important is what does not appear near Daily Comedy News. This is interesting. There’s little to no proximity to stand up album feeds, short form comedy podcasts, or personality driven, shock or argument based shows.
Those live in separate neighborhoods with different listener behavior. The data suggests that Daily Comedy News serves an audience that uses comedy podcasts as contextual media, not entertainment first content. These listeners are tracking an industry, not chasing laughs. Some good analysis here by the AI. This data indicates that podcast subscriptions, unlike social media follows, are conservative.
Listeners are reluctant to commit time to unfamiliar voices unless trust has already been established elsewhere. In effect, discovery has moved out of podcasts. Short form video platforms now handle discovery, podcasts handle retention. That division explains why comedians who break on TikTok or Instagram often struggle to translate that audience into podcast subscriptions, while legacy comedian maintain strong audio audiences even as their television relevance declines. Another conclusion from the cluster structure is tone tolerance.
Listeners in this neighborhood tolerate introspection, repetition, and even periods of low energy Hi I’m Johnny Mac. What they do not tolerate is chaos. Podcasts built on confrontation, outrage, or aggressive performance styles are structurally absent from this cluster that makes sense. I’m not a yeller and screamer. The dominant cluster around Daily Comedy News reflects listeners who likely aged out of appointment television and high energy stand up consumption.
These listeners still on comedy, but in a format that integrates into daily life rather than demanding attention. Interesting stuff there, and that’s today’s episode of Daily Comedy News. I’ll see you tomorrow.