How Friends Grew Their Viewership (and How You Can, Too)
I'm a huge FRIENDS fan like, watch the whole series multiple times in a year. I watch every Thanksgiving episode on Thanksgiving. But did you know that FRIENDS did something in Season 1 to grow their viewership 25%? Season 1 Episode 16 was called the one with 2 parts, part 1. And it was the first of a crossover event with 2 other NBC shows. And today, I wanna tell you how you can use that same technique to grow your podcast.
Welcome to Podcast Workflows, where you get daily tips to improve your process, grow your show, and maybe even make some money. Each week, I also do a daily dive into the process of the world's most successful podcasters and reveal their tools, processes, and systems to help you simplify the production of your own show and reclaim hours in your day. You can improve your own podcast production process by seeing how the pros do it.
I'm your host, Joe Casapona. And today, I'm gonna tell you what FRIENDS has to do with growing your podcast.
Before landing the role of Phoebe on FRIENDS, Lisa Kudrow was a waitress named Ursula on NBC's hit show Mad About You, also set in New York City.
The show FRIENDS wrote them as twin sisters and Ursula was introduced to the FRIENDS audience in Episode 16 when Joey, another friend on the show, starts dating her. Helen Hunt and Lesley Kinzel, who played the main characters on Mad About You also make an appearance mistaking Phoebe for Ursula as the central perk, a common hangout for the friends, but it doesn't stop there.
At the end of Episode 16, Rachel falls and hurts her ankle. Episode 17, the one with 2 parts, Part 2 opens with her and Monica at the hospital where they meet 2 young doctors played by George Clooney and Noah Weil, the stars of NBC's ER. The results of that crossover event, the most viewed episode before that arc was 26,000,000 views, and guest starred Morgan Fairchild as Chandler's mom. After that crossover event, the average viewership was 29.8 million views per episode.
So what can podcasters learn from this? To get in front of other people's audiences. The FRIENDS team knew that pulling in Mad About You and ER would bring the fans as well. After all, they were similar shows. The daily lives of young people in big cities at a similar time on the same network.
You can replicate this strategy in 2 ways: by going on other people's podcasts as a guest and by doing podcast swaps where you and another podcast plug each other's shows. I did each of these in 2022 and grew my own show from 33,000 monthly downloads to 72,000 monthly downloads in a span of 10 months. Not bad. Right? Now it's your turn. I want you to think of 2 to 3 podcasts that you can work with on a podcast swap. Do the swap and let me know the results. You can write in at joe@cassabona.org.
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Thanks so much for listening. And until next time. I can't wait to see what you make.
Hey. Before you go, I want to tell you about a free resource I have called My Podcast Process Templates. They are a set of Notion documents that give you a full podcast planner, a show planner, and even some AI prompts to help you get the creative juices flowing. You obviously want to improve your podcast workflows and save time, and these templates will give you a basis for all of your other processes. Through my Notion and Airtable templates, I am able to automate a number of things as well as stay organized so that I am using my podcasting time more efficiently.
If you wanna get your hands on these templates completely for free, you can head over to [podcastworkflows.com/templates]. That's [podcastworkflows.com/templates] to get your free podcast process templates, today.
