Scoop: ‘Celebrity Memoir Book Club’ Hosts Unveil Their New Podcast Here First
Claire Parker & Ashley Hamilton share exclusive news of the ‘Good Noticings’ launch and strategy to keep 1M listeners hooked
This is a preview of Like & Subscribe, my standalone Ankler Media newsletter about the creator economy. I visited the set of Kasey Esser’s indie microdrama and reported on the wild world of TikTok Live, the Hollywood agencies battling over top creator talent and Amazon’s future in podcasts post-Wondery. Email me at natalie@theankler.com
When Claire Parker and Ashley Hamilton decided to end their Britney Spears podcast in 2019, they figured they’d have an easy time transitioning their modest but loyal following of around 1,000 listeners to the new show they’d cooked up all about celebrity memoirs. But when they launched Celebrity Memoir Book Club the following year, they lost half their audience. “We got down to 500 [listeners] at one point,” Hamilton tells me with a laugh.
Eventually, a whole new host of listeners found Celebrity Memoir Book Club and stuck around for Parker and Hamilton’s hilariously incisive takes on the pop culture climate as they discussed titles from Nevertheless by Alec Baldwin to Facing the Music and Living to Talk About It by Nick Carter. “All of the audience we have now is audience growth,” says Hamilton.
Over CMBC’s five-year run, they’ve grown their monthly audience to nearly 1 million across all platforms — and have hit No. 7 on Apple Podcast’s U.S. comedy chart.
Now, they’re attempting to end this show and transition to a new one without having to rebuild their entire audience. Last month, Parker, 32, and Hamilton, 34, revealed that they were closing the book on CMBC. “It’s the first job either of us have ever not been fired from,” Parker quipped during the pod’s final episode on Aug. 12. “That’s so true,” Hamilton responded, “and here we are firing ourselves.”
In reality, the move is more like a promotion for the pair, who’ve been teasing a “better, bigger, amazing new podcast,” per Parker, that will debut on Sept. 10.
And now, I’m back in your inboxes with a surprise Thursday dispatch because I’ve got the big exclusive scoop on this new show.
Good Noticings is the name of their new pop culture podcast, and it combines the thorough research fans craved from CMBC while allowing Parker and Hamilton to break free from the book club format. (“Good noticing” is something the two say often to each other, in response to a take or observation.) Every Wednesday they’ll bring listeners (via Apple and Spotify) their recommendations — from movies to plays to books — and then they’ll dig into the top celebrity headlines. Each episode will end with a deep dive on a topic igniting the internet that week. They’re going to let the news dictate their discussions (their first episode tapes today) but have teased that they could talk about Love Island and a more evergreen topic, like a book Parker is reading about the inventions that shaped modern society, all in the same episode.
Related:
“We’ve built a lot of loyalty and trust with our audience in that we’re doing more research than maybe the average pop culture podcast,” says Parker. “We really enjoy looking at a larger-scale story, looking at things in context.” Adds Hamilton, “We stand by the fact that there is a way to talk about pop culture and to just gossip about it without being constantly cruel. We like to talk about the same things everyone else likes to talk about, but I think people are grateful to have a more nuanced take.”
Parker and Hamilton tell me they've been mulling this decision since they gave CMBC a brand refresh at the beginning of this year. They waited a bit to tell their partners at Vox Media — which handled sales and distribution for CMBC and helped its ad revenue more than double through deals with brands like Pure Leaf Iced Tea — and even aligned the switch with the end of their contract, just to give that team an opportunity not to renew the deal. But Vox Media was on board with the plan.
“Ashley and Claire have built this incredible, devoted community that, like us, is ultimately bought in on the two of them and shows up for them wherever they go,” Vox Media podcast business VP Lillian Xu told me in a statement. “We’ve loved working with them and witnessing that connection firsthand. Good Noticings is such a natural evolution for them — they’re taking the wit and sharp takes we all tune in for and expanding it to a broader cultural conversation. Beyond great shows, we’re invested in working with smart, creative people like Ashley and Claire and want to be part of their journey as they evolve.”
Reorg! Patreon and a Pod
Whenever a creator ends a popular project, they risk upsetting their audience, who could decide to seek their entertainment from other sources. But Parker and Hamilton — who first met performing open mic nights in the Brooklyn comedy scene in their 20s — are confident they won’t repeat the experience they had when they wrapped Hold On One Second We’re Talking About Britney Spears. For the last two years they’ve been releasing regular bonus pods for their subscribers on Patreon, where they share more off-the-cuff conversations about the week in pop culture news. (Memberships cost either $5 or $10 per month.) They started to have more fun making those shows than they did on their CMBC, and audiences were responding positively too.
“We used to finish the Patreon [pods] and we would say, ‘Someday this could be the podcast.’ And then all of a sudden we were like, ‘Wait, why isn’t it? Who are we waiting for to give us permission to do that?’” says Hamilton.
Adds Parker, “We’ve decided to take the thing we were giving people for money [single episodes are $3 a pop] and give it to them for free — very benevolently.”
Ending CMBC is also giving them an opportunity to invest in different parts of their community, like the book club they’ll offer to their subscribers. Beginning around November, they’ll be hosting quarterly in-person meetings and online live chats as part of that program. “That’s something people have been clamoring for, and we spent a while trying out different ways to make it happen,” says Parker. “It’s really hard to bring the intimacy of a book club to an international podcast, but I think we’ve finally settled on what will work best, and we’re really excited to delve into it with our new chapter.”
I’ve written a lot recently about how the podcast industry has evolved over the last few years, and I’m always interested in how those macro changes impact how creators do their jobs. Some creators respond by adapting, others by quitting altogether.
Related:
Parker and Hamilton are taking the road less traveled, ending the show that no longer serves them so they can follow their passions to a new opportunity. (And of course they’ll be releasing full video episodes too.)
Keep reading for more from my exclusive conversation with Parker and Hamilton (lightly edited and condensed for clarity), which offers a lot of valuable takeaways for anyone working in creator media, including:
How they knew they were ready for a new show — and the funny aha moment that helped them see it
How their differences help them make strategic decisions
Why anything less than 100 percent passion about a creative project is reason enough to make a change
How they prepared to walk away from Vox, if they had to
Their cure for a scarcity mindset and the fear of waking up one day with no audience
How deep research makes their off-the-cuff chemistry even stronger
What they’ve learned about building, keeping and trusting their following
How they balance data and industry best practices with their instincts
The rest of this column is for paid subscribers to Like & Subscribe, a standalone newsletter dedicated to the creator economy from Ankler Media. Click here or on the button below to access the full story.
Interested in a group sub for your team or company? Click here.