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When OpenAI acquired the tech podcast TBPN this week, it wasn't conscionable buying a show; it was buying a message.
The determination laid bare a strategy that Silicon Valley has been perfecting for years: ditch the tech-sceptics of the accepted press, and physique your ain media.
TBPN is successful galore ways a tribute to mainstream news, with co-hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays, some from the task superior world, presenting a three-hour amusement regular from a workplace successful Los Angeles that resembles a concern oregon sports programme connected a cablegram quality network.
But Coogan and Hays importune they are not journalists, adjacent if they enactment up interviews with cardinal figures successful the manufacture who connection insightful entree to the Silicon Valley world.
The show, similar a full ecosystem of podcasts and media orbiting Silicon Valley today, operates successful a satellite wherever the benefits of tech for nine request nary explaining, and tech enthusiasm runs deep.
Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of AGI Deployment, said the acquisition was driven by a request for "constructive speech astir the changes AI creates," and said TBPN would support its editorial independence.
The amusement and its squad present autumn nether the work of OpenAI's nationalist affairs main Chris Lehane, a seasoned Washington lobbyist who made his sanction handling scandals for the Clinton administration.
"You could work this arsenic OpenAI needing assistance translating complexity to decision-makers. You could besides work it arsenic buying favorable communicative positioning during a play of aggravated scrutiny. Probably both," said Monica Kahn, CEO of marque advisory Creator Revolution.
"They're buying the furniture wherever mentation happens," she added connected LinkedIn.
The transaction follows a question spearheaded by Elon Musk and task capitalist Marc Andreessen successful which the astir almighty figures successful tech are circumventing mainstream quality media to debar an constitution they picture arsenic anti-tech oregon left-wing.
The roster of shows wherever Silicon Valley's elite present similar to marque quality constitutes a parallel media ecosystem.
Andreessen Horowitz has invested heavy to physique its ain media empire, putting retired podcasts to showcase its portfolio of tech investments and propulsion a profoundly pro-tech docket without confrontation.
Lex Fridman's podcast draws millions of viewers oregon listeners and has attracted tech luminaries including Musk, Zuckerberg, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for two-to-three-hour discussions ranging from concern to the personal.
The unabashedly right-wing All-In Podcast has featured the apical CEOs, arsenic good arsenic executives intimately linked to the Trump medication who debar the mainstream quality sum they spot arsenic unsympathetic.
Zuckerberg utilized a three-hour January 2025 quality connected Joe Rogan's podcast to support Meta's rollback of contented moderation.
Whether bypassing the quality media volition really payment tech's origin remains an unfastened question.
"I deliberation the TBPN woody is simply a mistake," said erstwhile BuzzFeed newsman Alex Kantrowitz of the Big Technology Podcast. "Under the OpenAI umbrella, the web loses credibility and everything it says volition beryllium seen arsenic OpenAI marketing."
The deeper problem, Kantrowitz argued, is 1 of reach.
While OpenAI whitethorn beryllium looking to reshape nationalist sentiment astatine a infinitesimal erstwhile AI is polling poorly successful the United States, TBPN's audience, similar connected different Silicon Valley-made podcasts, is already a converted one.
