Behind the scenes with Matt Belloni, Lucas Shaw and Craig Horlbeck on Hollywood’s must-listen podcast, The Town

It was the definition of a back-handed compliment. When Jimmy Kimmel sat down with Matt Belloni and Lucas Shaw this year during Super Bowl week in Las Vegas to record an episode of the duo’s podcast The Town, he was typically cutting. 

“The atmosphere here is electric,” Kimmel joked sardonically. He turned to the audience gathered at the recording. “I love the idea that you guys came to the Super Bowl in Las Vegas to spend 45 minutes listening to cable bundle talk.”

As always, Belloni didn’t miss a beat. “It is the sexiest cable bundle talk in town, though,” he retorted.

In the past two years, The Town, a podcast Belloni created as a complement to his dishy Puck newsletter What I’m Hearing, has become a must-listen across Hollywood.

The Monday edition of the show, co-hosted by Bloomberg’s managing editor Lucas Shaw, is particularly entertaining. 

The two have a palpable chemistry that allows them to banter sharply, roast each other and turn the blowtorch on targets many in the business are too timid to take on. The Town alternates between taking listeners backstage, behind the curtain and into the media room. It's both akin to hanging out with the industry nerds in the corner of the cool party — but it's also, secretly, the cool party.

“Honestly there's a million podcasts that are talking about the other stuff,” Belloni says of his reasons for starting a podcast about the business of Hollywood. “So, why not be the one podcast that isn't?”

The third element to The Town is producer Craig Horlbeck, a podcast-producing gun (and a rising star inside Spotify) who delivers sharp on-air gut and fact checks, sagely weighing into discussions and providing a voice for listeners. He and editor Jesse Lopez help shape the show in crucial ways.

Last year, we profiled Belloni’s rise at The Hollywood Reporter and Puck. This year, I wanted to sit down with Belloni, Shaw and Horlbeck to discuss the show’s meteoric rise inside Hollywood and what makes the group’s on-air dynamic so enjoyable for insiders and outsiders alike.

Here in their own words – lightly edited for space and clarity – Belloni, Shaw and Horlbeck gives us insider look into making The Town podcast.

LinkedIn: Your exchange with Jimmy Kimmel at the Super Bowl this year kind of encapsulates The Town...  

Matt Belloni: Some of the celebrities pay very close attention to the business and I think Kimmel is one who actually does. He just doesn't want to talk about it, which is fine. He's very savvy as a producer, but it's not really his brand to talk about it and the odds of him getting himself in trouble talking about the business are much higher. He knows very well what we are doing and I believe he's a listener and knows we have a niche and we stick to it. We do not do a lot of the stuff that you find on other podcasts specifically because they're on other podcasts. And Kimmel is very on brand to make fun of us for that. But I think he knows exactly what we're doing.

LinkedIn: People can be very thin skinned in the media today and a lot of podcasts are very careful about what they say. But Matt, you're very open in pushing back if you don't agree with a guest or with Lucas, in fact. Lucas, do you feel like you have to be kind of on your eye game when you join the pod? 

Shaw: Matt and I are both confident in our reporting and our opinions. We both talk to a lot of people and I think we both feel like we have a pretty good sense of what's happening in the business. Obviously, there's times that we don't know because we're not inside these companies and we're hearing from particular lenses. But I don't think either one of us would say that we sort of lack confidence in our assertions or opinions. But I also do feel like I need to come with my A-game.  

Belloni: I’m someone who's always ready for a discussion or debate. And we're also OK to be wrong. I think the authenticity of discussing these issues in a granular way requires you to be forthcoming when you are wrong and when you miss something and the audience actually respects you more if you acknowledge that.

Shaw: Matt's willingness to go there creates space for me and for others because look, I'm a little less flexible in being able to express certain opinions. It's very different just by virtue of where I work (as a Managing Editor at Bloomberg News). This podcast already pushes the limits of what I think Bloomberg is super comfortable with me saying, but Matt is willing to express opinions and get into certain more gossipy subjects that are harder for me... But it also allows me space to probably go a little farther than I otherwise would.

Belloni: The model I first thought about with Lucas for this was Pod Save America, with the dynamic between Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. Jon has much more of the gossipy side and Tommy is the polls and data guy and more of a numbers resource. But the two of them together, they're dynamic. So I thought, who is that for entertainment? And right now, Lucas is by far the number one reporter editor in the space. So having him as a person to bounce stuff off of for me made perfect sense.

LinkedIn: How does the town feel about The Town?

Belloni: I'm actually interested to hear what Lucas says about this, but I'll say that it is not just within the industry, I get emails from Sweden and Australia and all over the world, people just interested in this stuff. I also get texts and emails from people in the business that are listening and care very much about, like a one-off statement that I didn't even remember making that someone will say, 'this came up in our staff meeting this morning'. And I'll be like, ‘wait, what did I say?’ Another way I found people were listening was getting recognized by my voice. It's the strangest thing. I mean in industry-specific places. It happened the other day, I was playing tennis and this guy heard me and came over and was like, ‘oh, I love your podcast.’

Shaw: I get a little bit less of the random international listeners. But certainly within the industry, it is clear a lot of people listen. When I call sources, often their assistants will say, ‘you know, just a second, I wanna let you know how much I like the show.’ So it’s a lot of young people or at other times I will get texts from executives. On a personal level, I think that has helped expose my writing to some of the people who maybe aren't reading Bloomberg. My newsletter has a big following, but it overlaps with a demographic that probably doesn't listen to the podcast. And the podcast overlaps with some people who maybe aren't reading entertainment coverage on Bloomberg. 

Belloni: I find that young people, especially the assistant junior executive class, the up and coming writer and the actors are listening.

Shaw: Bloomberg is a financial services brand. So I hate to use a media industry term but like a 'top of the funnel' type product where we bring in this big audience that is interested in the subject matter and then they can explore further via our writing. And I do know, I have like random friends who listen to the show who don't work in entertainment.

Belloni: College friends of mine who are like, you know, a firefighter in Northern California who listens and I'm just like, ok, cool. Like, you're interested in the Comcast earnings? I think they see it as a window into what's really going on in Hollywood. Because we are doing so much independent reporting, there's at least the perception that they're gonna get more from us than they would from your everyday entertainment podcast.

LinkedIn: One of the selling points of The Town is its brevity. Most episodes are around 30 minutes long. 

Producer Craig Horlbeck: It’s one of the number one things people say to me they like about the show. We always knew that we wanted it to be short. We do it three times a week and we wanted to do something that people could listen to on their commute. A lot of podcasts are too long… So we make an effort to limit chit-chat. We save any casual conversation towards the end when Matt and I do that ‘Call Sheet’ segment. Brevity is a huge part and the show is heavily edited. Oftentimes we tape for up to 40 minutes and we cut and tighten to make it the most conversational 30 minute package we can deliver.

Belloni: When Bill Simmons and I were discussing starting the show, I suggested once a week and maybe an hour or so. And he said ‘no, do it shorter, 20 to 30 minutes, multiple times a week’. Bill described it as there now being two different kinds of podcasts. There is ‘the hang’ and then there's the ‘get in and get out show’ and — it was probably an insult — but he said, ‘you're not a hang’. I would say we try to inject the hang sensibility a little bit. But his point was, people are gonna listen to you because they want an information moment. Not because they want to live vicariously through a glamorous life. The same reason a lot of people listen to Up First or The Daily or Today Explained in the morning, people who work in the entertainment business listen to The Town in the morning.

I heard this conversation back when I was running The Hollywood Reporter. When The Daily was first becoming huge, we said, what's The Daily for Hollywood? We didn't do it at Hollywood Reporter because it was too logistically difficult. We didn't have the infrastructure. 

LinkedIn: A lot of podcasts are scripted, is The Town?

Belloni: The actual conversation is not scripted at all. I make some notes if there's a quote from an earnings call or on a topic that matters to us but I don't, you know, script our topics at all or our conversations. 

Craig: Certain guests, we will prep them a little bit with questions and topics. But, especially with Matt and Lucas, they're so comfortable with one another and they're doing their own reporting over the weekend. So usually that free flowing conversation feels what we want anyway. So none of it is prewritten.

LinkedIn: Matt, your newsletter was obviously key in launching Puck, I’m curious now if The Town has become a bigger focus than you thought it would? 

Belloni: Yes. It's definitely more of my week than we initially envisioned. It’s crept up only because with the audience that we've grown, the ambition of the show has grown. If you listen to the first episode, it's really just me talking and I'll have a guest on and there's not a lot of prep or even ambition. Now we're going after bigger guests, we're trying to cover topics that others have not covered. We have fewer people that just come on and talk about an article they wrote for whatever publication. Now it's like, oh, we'll have a study that we are examining, that hasn't been reported on or very minimally reported on. We try to get more executives, too. 

Horlbeck: I would say there's more emphasis on building kind of a programming schedule, like a yearly one around the show. It used to just be, we were kind of getting whoever we could get. Now we've organized our year around the biggest events in Hollywood and tried to create our own tentpole IP for the show itself where, you know, Lucas and Matt will do a box office draft at the beginning of every year and we have these power rankings drafts and gimmicks and returning guests. We have kind of our roster, like if something big happens in a certain area, we know this is our ‘go to’ person. Chemistry and audience expectation are the two biggest metrics for success in a podcast. That’s why I'm not surprised that Matt and Lucas's episodes are consistently among the most listened to.

People think the key to success in podcasting is the biggest names possible, get the biggest guest you can. I don't think that's the key for longterm success. That might get you a spike in audience for one episode, but that's not why people come back to pods. They have to like the host and the dynamic and the things that recur. 

Shaw: We went to dinner with Matt and a few executives and Bill Simmons was there. At the end of the dinner, we were talking and I asked Bill why he didn't do interviews as much anymore. He said because people don't listen to them as much. 

Craig: Matt and Lucas usually are the most listened to because people expect it. They know what they're getting on Monday morning and they're excited about it rather than taking a risk with a new guest. 

LinkedIn: How much has the podcast industry trend of video and live events impacted The Town?

Craig: It's undeniable that video podcasting is definitely the way of the future and the numbers bear it out. More people watch podcasts on YouTube than anywhere right now. Like, putting washing and clothes on or just watching on a second tab on your phone or on your computer or whatever.  The live show element is also something that I think we're experimenting with. It's really fun. It's great to see people come out and get to put their social relationship with these hosts in person.

Belloni: We just did our first one in Hollywood. It was a little bit weird, right? You kind of meet people for the first time who are such diehard fans of the show. I've met people who said that they got into the business because they love the show and it made them excited. I've talked to one assistant at a company who said, ‘I listened to your show and it's giving me career advice and guiding me on how I operate in the office’. We don't make the show with that younger audience in mind — and maybe we should a little bit more. We talk more towards the decision maker class and try to explain and discuss things at that level. Maybe that's why it resonates with younger workers? 

LinkedIn: Craig, how do you decide when to weigh in on the show?

Craig: I try to act a little bit as the avatar for the general audience. If something that is being discussed that most people aren't going to understand, I will hop in to make sure that Matt or Lucas can back up for a second and kind of describe something in plain English a little bit. I'm not shy to ask a question. So I kind of just let it come to me and chime in. Matt has been very gracious and let me kind of butt in from them.

Lucas: My friends are convinced Matt has a huge crush on Craig.

Belloni: Oh, interesting. (Laughs) That would be a very interesting dynamic. Although if that were true, why would I talk about Ana de Armas and Craig as much as I do.

LinkedIn: Streaming has been the top industry topic on the show since it started. Matt, I am curious, do you think people are tolerating ads now on streaming? Wasn’t the whole appeal of streaming that we didn't have to watch ads anymore?

Belloni: Most people don't care enough. Most people just wanna watch their show.

And they like free or less expensive subscriptions and if it means tolerating some ads, they're gonna do it.  It’s become a question of how can I pay the least to see this show that I might like?

LinkedIn: Another big Town topic is artificial intelligence. How does The Town feel about AI? 

Belloni: I haven't decided whether I'm doom and gloom or a futurist here on the AI subject… Probably somewhere in the middle, but we've had voices on the show on both sides, people who say the sky is falling and we're all going to be consumed by the machines and then we had a guest on last week talking about the benefits of AI for choosing which movies to make and how the studios are actually already doing this with the technology. I don't think anyone really knows how it will play out.

Shaw: We're very early into the consumer and business adoption of AI and very early in a lot of these models. It certainly seems to have a greater business potential than some of the other recent technological fads, for lack of a better word. There is just so much money going into it, it's hard to see it failing. I don't know what the long term impact is on the entertainment business. I couldn't say that with certainty and I don't even think the people who work in it really can, either.