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Podcasting can be a great business if you’re good at it, but I’m not sure anyone has ever been this adept at milking shareholder value out of a pair of mics. TBPN (it stands for Technology Business Programming Network) is a two-man video talk show that only launched in 2024. The show is punchy but generally upbeat about technology and the people who make it. Last week, the two guys who host it, John Coogan and Jordi Hays, sold it to OpenAI for a sum that the Financial Times reported was in the “low hundreds of millions.” The podcasters announced that they had won a “commitment to editorial independence,” lest anyone think OpenAI CEO Sam Altman might be angling to turn their show into propaganda. TBPN says it “retains full editorial control” over its programming and guest lineup. The hosts get generational wealth and perhaps retain enough editorial freedom to look in the mirror and tell themselves they aren’t sellouts.
OpenAI gets a podcast whose hosts have a good understanding of the tech media landscape. The company may also be getting loyal mouthpieces. The show’s editorial protections could prove to be hollow, and OpenAI could take a show that is popular with the Silicon Valley elite and make it into Pravda for tech. (In the highly likely event that the two podcasters are now OpenAI shareholders, they’ll have incentive to boost their new company.) TBPN will report to OpenAI’s top political operative, Chris Lehane, who recently worked for crypto interests after a long career in Democratic politics. We must all judge for ourselves whether OpenAI really just wants to “accelerate the global conversation” about A.I as they claimed in a post announcing the acquisition.
We can judge one thing now, though. OpenAI’s acquisition of TBPN is just the biggest punctuation of a sad trend in tech media, where sycophancy and cozy relationships with the industry offer the best path to stardom and riches. Many of Silicon Valley’s most powerful people have whined a lot in recent years about traditional media not being properly understanding of their companies’ brilliance and benevolence. Maybe it is natural, then, that a big swath of the most influential podcasters have come forward to offer a solution to those executives’ problems. This upper rung of tech media is moving toward flattering, access-driven coverage, where the powerful reward friendliness more than broader audiences reward independence. The TBPN acquisition is just a logical endpoint. Or maybe, more concerningly, it’s not even the end. It’s not like other big tech operations won’t be watching to see how this goes for OpenAI.
The mantra “if it bleeds, it leads” has been, at best, a mixed bag for media over many decades. What’s happened in tech media the past few years has been an inversion of that old principle often attributed to William Randolph Hearst. Famous executives, mad about not getting a perceived fair shake in the conventional press, have gravitated toward shows that will happily make them feel like important men of history who are setting out to build great things for society’s benefit. This often results in entertaining, informative work: Acquired, a deeply researched show by two starry-eyed tech investors, regularly tops podcast charts with dives into famous companies. (The show’s hosts do not pretend to be journalists and disclose that they might invest in the companies they talk about.) Their friendly approach has yielded cameos from Mark Zuckerberg and Jamie Dimon, among others. YouTuber Cleo Abram has nearly 8 million subscribers, billing herself as “a video journalist making optimistic tech explainers.” How optimistic? Enough that Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, is willing to sit down with her for an hourlong podcast. All-In, hosted by a bunch of Elon Musk–adjacent venture capitalists, has generated an enormous following for the same reasons.
TBPN comes from this vintage, talking in not-uncritical but typically kind terms about the tech world’s biggest players and getting lots of them to join them on their show. The hosts have both founded other companies and do not try to hide that they’re good buddies with lots of important Silicon Valley people. The hosts are not bashful about having conflicts of interest. They are famous for zealously shilling for their ad partners in an over-the-top way that borders on becoming a bit—although they have ceased to have advertisers now that they’re under the OpenAI umbrella. It’s amusing that Altman would say of his new hires, “I don’t expect them to go any easier on us.” Thank goodness that these tech-founder podcasters who are now in Altman’s employ will still be fair when talking about OpenAI.
The sleazy thing here, then, isn’t that TBPN was doing shoeleather journalism and may now find itself brought to heel by powerful A.I. interests. It is that this specific brand of tech journalism, if we might call it that, has gained so much purchase that OpenAI would be willing to spend nine figures on this show in the first place. Whether because audiences simply enjoy techno-optimism or because a friendly position helps with guest booking, it does seem like non-adversarial tech coverage is a rocket ship right now. TBPN isn’t even that big of a show, with more like tens of thousands of audience members than hundreds of thousands or millions. But that audience includes the right people, including Altman.
If you wish to see a public that is more informed about A.I.’s upsides and downsides, the downstream effects of these incentives are worrisome. I care less that OpenAI bought up a chummy podcast than about the validating effect of that podcast’s success on other aspirants in tech media. If the best way to hit it big is to make a podcast that someone like Altman adores, then the rest of us are probably in trouble.
Katherine Boyle, a venture capitalist at the powerful firm Andreessen Horowitz, wrote after the TBPN deal: “It’s incredible to me, six years post-Covid when institutional trust fell off a cliff for good, that people still think audiences care about editorial independence. Point of view, charisma, good humor, entertainment, preparation and most importantly, showing up and being normal matters.” As someone who’s made a bit of money in podcasting (though more like “a living” than “a hundred million dollars” and in sports rather than tech), I think that’s half right. Charisma and prep matter a ton, but I don’t think such explicit ass-kissing as part of an editorial posture would work this well in any other field, nor would audiences so easily accept an acquisition like this one. For example, Pod Save America is friendly to the Democratic establishment but absolutely needs to keep some distance from it for the sake of being interesting. If I announced that Ohio State had bought my college football show, I’d expect to stop being taken seriously when talking about the playoff race. In a case like TBPN’s, this calculus does not appear to carry.
There’s a particular grimness to this deal happening at this moment, and with this A.I. giant. OpenAI isn’t the first big nonmedia company to buy into a media product. Altman isn’t the first billionaire who might do a big media deal for reasons other than sincere interest in media. But OpenAI already stands accused of suppressing inconvenient internal research about the impact of its products. As we speak, Altman is asking for cooperation from both governments and (soon) public-market investors as he tries to secure the strongest possible future for his company. The New Yorker just unveiled years’ worth of reporting on Altman that strongly suggests none of us should trust him.
Whether you are an A.I. optimist or pessimist, you’d ideally agree that few industries have ever screamed out more for intense scrutiny at a particular moment than generative A.I. does right now. Marketing expenses like this one push the media ecosystem in a different direction. “If it bleeds, it leads” is no more, replaced by something that stinks in its own way. If it glazes, it amazes?
