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EXCLUSIVE: The Rest is Politics is to host a live YouTube U.S. election special from New York, bringing together talent from the stable of Goalhanger podcasts.
Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart, Anthony Scaramucci aka ‘The Mooch’, Dominic Sandbrook and Marina Hyde, who helm four Goalhanger pods between them, will all feature on the night of November 5. Rest is Politics duo Campbell and Stewart will host the live event, which will stream on YouTube from a New York venue. Scaramucci, the former Trump aide-turned vehement Trump critic who now fronts The Rest is Politics: US with BBC North America’s Katty Kay, will play a key analyst role, “bringing valuable insights from every angle,” he told Deadline.
The coverage will come live through the night and following morning. Alongside Scaramucci, Goalhanger is tapping into its stable by enlisting Hyde, the Guardian columnist who hosts The Rest is Entertainment with Richard Osman, and The Rest is History’s Sandbrook, an expert in post-World War Two American history. Other guests from outside Gary Lineker’s outfit Goalhanger will also feature.
Tony Pastor, who runs Goalhanger with Lineker and Jack Davenport, said the idea for the live special percolated when Campbell and Stewart – whose show has taken the UK pod world by storm in recent years – featured on Channel 4’s coverage of July’s UK election. With millions of listeners per week, Pastor and co believed The Rest is Politics had enough of a following to go straight to the audience via YouTube.
Pastor is aiming high and hopes that the The Rest is Politics election special can be the “fifth option” on the night, up against big British beasts the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky News.
“I felt slightly like I had leant Channel 4 our talent and our audience,” said Pastor. “Alastair and Rory were reasonably diluted by the breadth of Channel 4’s excellent talent and we just thought our audience wants more of them, so why not broadcast live on YouTube, drawing from our own talent.”
Pastor reeled off a string of stats to back up the move. The Rest is… stable is downloaded 42 million times a month, giving tonnes of scope for cross-promotion of the election special between shows, he said. The Rest is Politics alone, Pastor added, has been downloaded 12 million times over the past 30 days and almost half its audience is under the age of 33. Pastor said viewers migrate to YouTube during big events, pointing out that the Lineker-hosted Rest is Football amassed around half of its viewing from the platform during the recent Euros soccer tournament.
Going where the audience is
Meanwhile, the new U.S. version of The Rest is Politics is reaching more than 1 million people per episode via both audio and YouTube. Scaramucci and Kay’s pod has more listeners in the U.S. than UK, Pastor said, meaning that the YouTube election special could attract audiences on both sides of the pond. Pastor previously described making a show in the U.S. as the “holy grail.”
“A key to good distribution and engagement is to go where the audience is. YouTube is the largest digital media platform, and it allows us to maximize engagement with our audience,” added Scaramucci, who famously lasted just 10 days as Donald Trump’s communications director and has since been a staunch critic of the former and possibly next POTUS. “I have had an amazing experience with Goalhanger and The Rest Is Politics: US. It’s been humbling to see how many people want to hear our voice and obviously trust the TRIP: US team to bring them interesting voices.”
Pastor said the team is “very much leaning on ‘The Mooch’ to pull in some of the biggest and most interesting characters from U.S. politics.” Hyde, whose Rest is Entertainment pod is Goalhanger’s newest, will bring her trademark “acerbic wit,” according to Pastor, while Sandbrook “is an absolute expert” in the American history field. Media experience company Dizplai has partnered with Goalhanger to bring audience interactivity and real-time data to the show.
The move is the latest big swing from WME-repped Goalhanger, which has been slowly expanding over the past five years off the back of the success of its main franchise. The company calls itself the nation’s largest independent podcast group.
The announcement comes at a fascinating time in the U.S. election run in. Kamala Harris is inching steadily closer to Trump in the polls and Trump has just fallen victim to his second assassination attempt in the space of just a few weeks.
