Jordi Cruz and Samantha Hudson, hosts of the Netflix podcast 'You are still there'.
Series, documentaries and movies have hooked thousands of subscribers to
streaming
platforms
[on demand], but audio is the next ground to conquer.
Companies such as Netflix, MUBI and Amazon are increasingly expanding their commitment to podcasts, mainly connected with the promotion of the premieres of their catalog.
But, in these formats, one hour of talk a week goes a long way.
In
Are you still there?
(Netflix) fits everything, say its hosts, the versatile Mallorcan artist Samantha Hudson and Jordi Cruz, radio host and iconic host of
Art Attack.
During the just finished first season of this sound space they have invited people of all kinds to chat with them about issues such as family, music as therapy or LGTBI + representation and, also, about the platform's premieres. Anthropologists, sociologists, actors, and psychologists sit with them. “When I don't control a subject, I put myself on the listening side. And the same goes for Samantha. It is very interesting. We prepare the topics well, but you don't always have to tackle everything by providing information. You can also listen to others and put yourself in that place occupied by the person at home. Our only commandment is that we do not want to sit in on the chair ”, Cruz comments in a three-way telematic conversation last Friday. To which Hudson adds:“The concept is based on taking out three plastic chairs at the entrance of the house in your town and sitting down with a different lady every day to ramble and chatter. We do not have bad milk, we are just a little hooligans. Once a psychologist, Andrés Arriaga, came to talk about mental health and it turned out to be the most fun ”.
"Our only commandment is that we do not want to teach"
Jordi Cruz, co-host of the podcast 'Are you still there?'
It is not the first experience with the podcast in Castilian Netflix. In 2018, the Latin American division of the platform created
Nada que ver
, a sound space that serves as a guide for the listener / viewer to navigate through its vast audiovisual catalog. From Mexico and throughout the continent, radio host and scriptwriter Luisa Iglesias Arvide and comedian and TikTok star Javier Ibarreche analyze the latest releases with weekly guests. Although the Spanish format
Are you still there?
fulfills a similar function, uniting social media referents with radio professionals capable of attracting the attention of several generations of listeners, his weekly appointment with these meetings includes talks that are broader than the mere recommendation of series and movies.
The chemistry that Hudson and Cruz give off as a couple is one of the mainstays of
Are you still there?
, which began as an eight-part format and eventually expanded to 29. The two met, at the suggestion of Netflix, through a video call. "It was love at first sight," says Cruz. “In this year together, dealing with all kinds of topics, I have learned a lot from her. For that, you have to have an interlocutor who attracts you and Samantha has that magnet that, when she tells you something, you pay attention. There are times when I keep quiet in the middle of the podcast because I'm reflecting on what he just said ”. To which his microphone companion replies with irony: “We are like the mariliendre and the fag from the institute”. Hudson confesses that his silences happen when he does not know how to continue spinning the program. Cruz's experience always comes to the rescue. "Actually, we often talk about the intergenerational gap, but we do it with grace",says Hudson, who met
Art Attack
via the internet, long after its original broadcast on television in the late 1990s.
Netflix has been producing podcasts in English for years, albeit as extra content that accompanies its major releases.
Series like
The Crown
,
Stranger Things
,
The Witcher
and
Martin Scorsese's
The Irishman
have had their own.
This format would be one of the star content of a new service that the platform is considering launching, called N-Plus.
In it, it would collect and bring together in an orderly manner all the annexed content generated by its star products and that until now it has disseminated through external platforms such as YouTube.
The intention is that the user can access what were previously the extras of a DVD without having to leave Netflix.
Latin America, in the lead
Earlier this summer
, the
independent film platform MUBI launched
Encuentros
, a compendium of one-hour informal dialogues on issues important to its interlocutors.
Leading voices from Latin American cinema and culture come together to discuss their craft and their personal and intimate experiences in a rainbow of accents.
In its six installments, the voice of the Argentine director Matías Piñeiro, the actress Paulina García and the Mexican actor Gael García Bernal, among others, has sounded.
Logo of the MUBI podcast, 'Encuentros'.
For this project, the company has partnered with La stream del Golfo, the producer specialized in podcasts by Diego Luna and García Bernal himself.
Entering into this new bet is part of the DNA of MUBI, which is also a film distributor and producer.
"The films do not have an algorithm in MUBI, because they are selected by hand," says Sandra Gómez from Mexico and through Zoom,
MUBI Latin America's
marketing
director
.
"It was interesting for us to extend that conversation to the auditory level and for voices of Latin American culture to speak among themselves, without a presenter or presenter, about how they have experienced cinema through their work, but also that they did so as spectators."
Gael García Bernal, one of the founders of the production company La stream del golfo, who together with MUBI created the podcast 'Encuentros'.
The distribution through other windows, such as Spotify, has helped to find new users who approach its catalog.
“We have a captive audience, very cinematic, and we seek to reach others.
Some have reached us through the podcast, without knowing what we were doing before, ”says Gómez, who advances that
Encuentros
has a second season of six more episodes assured, whose production is still in its first steps.
In the case of Amazon, Latin America once again takes the lead in integrating the format in Spanish-language platforms, launching in early August
Including with Prime
, a new original Amazon Prime Video podcast headed by Mexicans Diana Su, Arturo Aguilar and Héctor Portillo, who will explain every week all the curiosities that are in the series and movies of their
streaming
service
Prime Video. But the company's commitment to the podcast goes much further, at least in the United States, aware that it is a business of billions of euros that does not stop growing. Taking into account the Spotify model, Amazon will invest at least 20 million dollars a year (17 million euros) in its own content in this format, the medium specialized in economics and business
Bloomberg
announced this week
. In addition, the company has purchased the distribution rights to
SmartLess
, a popular sound show hosted by actors Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes that exceeds seven million monthly downloads. And, at the beginning of the year, it invested 300 million dollars (256 million euros) in acquiring the American platform Wondery.
"I come from the world of radio, which I am passionate about, but the fact that the podcast allows you to speak up, without anyone asking you to put a song in between, is pure therapy", celebrates Jordi Cruz, who is already preparing together to Samantha Hudson the second season of
Are You Still There?
for Netflix Spain.
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