Podcasting done differently: Yle's Viki and Kopi show
With the Viki & Köpi Show, Yle has found an innovative way to capture a young, predominantly male audience while building an active community around two of their most popular radio hosts.
From radio to rogan
The Viki & Köpi Show is a live video podcast that is broadcasted on Yle Areena, the Finnish public broadcaster's VOD platform. Viki and Köpi transitioned from hosting a morning show on the youth radio station YleX to presenting a three-times-a-week, two-hour livestream that accumulates over 3 million viewing hours annually. While Yle Areena remains the primary platform, selected content is also shared on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, allowing new audiences to discover and connect with the show. However, these clips are not monetized on these platforms.
Inspired by the Joe Rogan-style of video podcasting, the show is set in a TV studio designed to look like an old-fashioned meeting room. A small crew, consisting of a producer, a director and a camera operator, produces the show. While there are occasional guests, the focus remains primarily on the hosts' interactions.
In addition to creating engaging content, the show places a significant emphasis on community building. For example, there is an active WhatsApp community that participates in the broadcast and communicates with the hosts during the livestream. Moreover, there is an exclusive community site with 600 members who provide input and feedback. Each season concludes with a large event where fans can experience a live taping of the show, further strengthening the connection between the audience and the hosts.
With more than 100 episodes produced annually, the Viki & Köpi Show also serves as a platform for internal experimentation, such as with generative AI. Yle experimented with AI to create a 20-hour AI-powered podcast by feeding previous episodes to ChatGPT, which then generated dialogue on various topics. This text was processed through ElevenLabs API, a software that creates voice clones, resulting in 30 hours of dialogue generated in about six hours. The AI-generated version of the show, while presenting a 'softer' take, received positive feedback. This project demonstrated the capabilities of AI in creative fields and highlighted its current limitations, offering valuable insights into what AI can achieve today and what challenges still remain.
Overall, the Viki & Köpi Show is essentially ‘a radio show with a picture’, but its cross-platform promotion and highly active listener community have successfully transitioned the Viki & Köpi Show from classic radio to a contemporary VOD platform.
