Just B Rant: The Birth of Just B

Published Feb 7, 2024, 5:00 AM

On the news of a podcast award nomination, Bethenny takes us through the history of the podcast, including some unexpected stories and its unusual beginnings.

Yay. We received an iHeart Podcast nomination for Best Pop Culture Podcast. There are thousands and thousands of podcasts, thousands, millions. Maybe I don't know. I know there are thousands. I don't know if there are millions. There are a lot of podcasts. I mean every day there's a podcast popping up. I'm so grateful and honored. The best kind of nominations or recognition or awards or anything, acknowledgment, is when you didn't even know the thing existed. Like that's when it's really fun. It's like a surprise. Someone's like, oh, wait, you were nominated for, you know, an Academy award. I'm like, oh I was. I didn't even know. I was like, I didn't know I was submitted. I'm so excited, Like, yay, it happened. In the beginning when I started the podcast, I remember someone saying Hillary Clinton just tweeted at you, like what because Karen Swisher, this big tech reporter, had mentioned that Hillary Clinton and myself and her were all in the top five podcasts, and I was like, top five. I didn't know there was even a list. Yay, Like it's so fun to not know anything. Ignorance is bliss. And the reason is because it's doing something that you just love to do. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, a rating doesn't matter, the money doesn't matter. Like it's just a place to vent, to discuss, to express, to laugh, to learn, to inspire, to be inspired. I mean, that's truthfully the situation. And I haven't told that many people this, but in the beginning, the podcast cost me money. I had a really bad deal. The first year. I had been told by several people, including ironically Andy Cohen, that I should have a pot I guess I'd be great at podcasting. That was sort of connected to him wanting me to go back to Housewives and like use it as a storyline like my podcast. But still he was right that I'd be good at it. And years before I had been on serious radio very briefly. And then they wanted me to have a show every day. And I said to myself, as this pre pandemic, I can't imagine a world where I have to go into serious radio every day in midtown. Like I said, I don't think there's a number you could pay me to have to sit in an hour or two and from traffic. I literally said, if you gave me ten thousand dollars in air mez like I still wouldn't want to get in the car and be two hours, Like I just don't like traffic and stress. I just like things being free. I'm mean, I'm literally in a Winning the Pot shirt now with him doing yoga poses and I slept in the pan semic because I was doing yoga and I came down to rant. But so then I agreed I would do once a week and maybe twice a week, and they wanted it to be I think they wanted it to be live. And it was this woman Melissa that used to be at the Today Show. And then because of these really really obnoxious women connected to Goldman, Sachs and Trump, and they were really really obnoxious at this concert and I doused them in orange juice. And it happened to be a concert that was put on by Sirious and the guy whose wife I doused happened to be the Series A investors and serious and you know, I thought I was gonna be like the next Howard Stern. And then they pulled the show because of the orange juice splash, which is funny because like Howard Stern is so irreverent. I will say and do anything to anyone, but I'm certainly not Howard Stern. I didn't have that kind of power. And anyway, it was the best thing that ever happened to me, because years later I was asked if I wanted to do a podcast and I said yes during the pandemic, but I didn't even know what it meant, and I didn't know what the deal meant. And long story longer, the deal that I made just it sounded like, Okay, it's gonna be a couple of hundred all was each like episode to produce and have a production company do it. But it ended up being that the production money, combined with the faulty way that this particular company was selling advertisements, meant that I ended up making no money the first year. I was like, I had such a successful podcast but was making no money and it was hard to figure out the accounting. And I remember calling Dave Portnoying a bunch of different people on the podcast space to be like, how do people sell advertising? Because they pitched to me to sell like a hair growth product when Hillary Clinton was on, and it just seemed like a like a bargain batch advertisement versus like curating it to a big guest that's coming, so we would have the same shitty advertising if Matthew McConaughey was coming or Mickey Mouse was coming. And it just felt like Hodgepodge botched. And this partner that I was with at a big entertainment company, I was like, you're gonna let me the fuck out of this, Like I kept badgering them, be like you're gonna let me out because I I'd called other people who said, you know, my podcast was successful and they wanted to produce it. But I couldn't get out. And I don't remember what it was, but I was just like, I'm not a person you want to fucking have a bad divorce with, So like get me, let me add of this. Like you're not happy, I'm not happy. I don't want to take this up the chain at your company, but I will and like, just let me the fuck out, which I've done to other times and other deals. By the way, when I know that the marriage is not going to work in business, I wanted to be seamless clean, no arguing. There's always a loophole. I just want to get out properly and break up nicely before it gets not nice. So that was basically what happened. But in order to get a podcast on iHeart, I had called a couple of people and one of them was Connell Byrne. He is the head of iHeart podcasting. He's like a powerful, powerful guy in podcasting. And I don't know why I knew that. Oh, I know because I had been on Riah years before and a guy that I matched with who his title said iHeart, and I called up and said, do you know anybody? And he put me in touch with the chairman, who I called on a Saturday Halloween and was like, listen, I this podcast. Is like, we're well aware of your podcast, and I'm like, how do I you know, how do I get in the game? So we did a podcast deal. It was really fairly easy. He's a very cool guy. The guy who works right under him, who also is like sort of in charge, also a very cool guy. They kind of let me do what I wanted, and like when a year later it wasn't exactly how I wanted to go down. There were just things that I thought needed to be changed. They got on the phone with me. I told him I needed to be changed and like it jolted and it it got great and this past year was amazing. We were number one in the world and we have had so many successful guests and stories and it's really like, you know, like your massage a dough not too much, you don't overwork it does so it gets tough, but like a little bit, so you figure out what it's going to be molding it. And this podcast is like that, and it sort of became a space for people to come and share something that might be an unpopular story or they'd been misrepresent or you haven't heard the full story or the story's been told for them, you know, or they are just not liked, but how do we know what person they really are because of how they're being positioned in the media. So it's been really, really, really nice, and I'm really grateful and I'm really grateful to you. So hopefully we'll win the award, but actually I don't care, Like I'm just excited, and I'm sort of bummed because it's a south By Southwest, which is like super legit, and I want to go because I want to accept my award. Problem is it's the day before I'm supposed to be in Australia for these two appearances. I'm going to Melbourne and Sydney. By the way, buy tickets to my events in Australia. I'm so excited. I live for Australia and I love the people and I love the culture, and I'm taking Brian and I'm doing an appearance in both cities, which I've never done Melbourne before, So buy tickets. But the most important thing is that I'm leaving for Australia the day after south by Southwest, So I mean, I don't know how I could finagh all that. If this award was in the morning, I go fly home and then the next day I'm getting on a plane for like almost thirty hours. I'll do it. I'm gonna win a fucking award. I'll do it. I don't know when they figure out who wins the awards, but yeah, I don't know. I don't know. My heart, let me know. M

Rants with Bethenny Frankel

Bethenny Frankel tells it like it is. RANT Definition: speak or shout at length in a wild, impassio 
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