Posted Feb 11 2022 at 8:06
Can one be a public entertainer, a jack-of-all-trades and a savvy entrepreneur? As he celebrates his 50th birthday on the Folies Bergère stage at the end of April, with an ultimate one-man show, the star host of NRJ wants to be one of those.
Already at the helm of Be Aware Radio and Be Aware Prod, Sébastien Cauet, known as “Cauet”, is embarking on a new adventure, called Podcast Story, to catch the wave of this rapidly expanding media in the United States and which is quivering in France. “I decided, years ago, to put myself where the public goes”, deciphers this workaholic with an overloaded agenda.
Podcast Story offers, on formats of fifteen minutes at most, stories of all kinds, from the life of Rasputin to that of Tom Cruise through miscellaneous facts. Pranks told by great voices, with a precise scenario and a neat sound environment. Goal ? Become the French number one.
Skyrock’s Morning
Sacred bet for this son of workers in a sugar factory, near Saint-Quentin, his hometown. His youth, dented by the early death of his mother, was marked by his passion, very early on, for the radio: he confides in his autobiography (“You’re dressed like everyone else but you look like no one”) to have tinkered with jingles with his tape recorder. From the age of 14, he was on the airwaves of Nouvelle Radio Laon. The death of his father forced him to leave his business school.
His career took off in 1996 when he was offered the morning show of Skyrock. Impossible then to describe in detail the trajectory of this autodidact, rich in crossovers which will lead him to NRJ and Rire & Chansons, where he will relaunch the hearing, at Virgin, Europe 2, Fun Radio, then once more NRJ.
13 million subscribers
All interspersed with television shows, such as “Dance Machine” and “Allô Cauet” on M6, or “La Méthode Cauet” on TF1… but also forays into the cinema, and even a one-man-show humorous. Not to mention intense activity on social networks which earned him 1.8 billion views on YouTube and, in all, a whopping 13 million subscribers.
This infernal rhythm requires tight organization. “He invited me to watch his show. It’s a war machine. I discovered a hyper-professional, very meticulous guy,” says Gilles Lechantre, manager of Cooptalis and investor in Podcast Story alongside the Finorpa fund. Two other associates are in the team, Jean Isnard, formerly of Lagardère Média and Damien Harnist, who moved to Disney. “To be good and to succeed, you have to surround yourself with people stronger than yourself”, sums up Cauet.
The moderator, graying beard, aquamarine gaze, devotes his mornings to the project which takes place between Paris, for podcasts for the general public, and Tourcoing, where he has housed his company’s headquarters in the Plaine Images platform, for the professional world. A way also to reconnect with your region. “I wanted to get out of Parisianism. And I was amazed by the talents from the North,” he says.
The man might have just put his name on this project, but he wants to “get his hands dirty” even in the color of the jackets, the typography and, of course, the editorial choices… If Cauet does not divulge not his business plan, he always emphasizes reinvesting his profits in research and development. “Before, radio formats changed every twenty-five years. Now it’s every three years or less! he said.
His flair has not betrayed him: barely launched, his six-employee start-up is attracting a growing number of listeners, with 10,000 downloads of the application since December. Not to mention the investors. “People who missed the first trick contact us to be on the next one,” he smiles.
