Whistle’s New ‘Micro-Vodcast’ Series New York Minute Adds Gotham Flavor to Shortform Social Content

Whistle’s Deshawn Bolden: ‘We’re trying to meet Gen Z where they're at’

Whistle is bringing the flavor of the Big Apple to the social-media scene. The shortform “micro vodcast” series New York Minute debuted last month on Whistle Sports’ various social-media accounts, its quick-edit, graphic-forward format expertly feeding the Gen Z content beast for the digital-first media brand — Gotham-style.

“This was the perfect opportunity for us to dive into the micro-pod space,” says Whistle Director, Social Programming, Deshawn Bolden, the series’ host. “What’s trending, what’s relevant right now — at a time when we have everybody from the average person to your superstar athlete creating their own version of micro podcasts. At Whistle, we’re trying to meet Gen Z where they’re at, and I think this is the perfect recipe.”

Bolden hosts the twice-weekly sports-culture micro vodcast with his brother Deon Bolden and friend Ceaz. The three Bronx natives tackle hot topics in sports culture, providing a New York spin to some popular TikTok-friendly content formats, such as Top 5 lists, blind rankings, trivia, and fantasy drafts.

“When we were reverse-engineering it, we thought, ‘What are the games that we could play? What are the topics that we could touch on?’” says Bolden. “The NBA may be our bread and butter, but New York is the intersection of everything culture. So we touch on topics like the NFL, we touch on Black History, we touch on movies and entertainment, we touch on hip-hop artists, and we touch on iconic women in sports. It’s a little bit of everything for everyone in the most entertaining way possible. Everybody has these conversations, but how do we make this lively? How do we make this engaging?”

The threesome set up a studio and typically shoots 15-30 minutes of straight conversation from which Bolden and a video editor can pluck highlights, tightly trim the discussion, and overlay graphics to produce a neat package. The setup typically comprises four 4K-capable cameras, producing an iso shot on each of the three hosts plus a wide shot.

Why New York? Other than being the hosts’ homes and authentic to them, Bolden feels, NYC sits at a unique cross-section of the media world.

“When I’m listening to music,” he says, “I’m hearing the New York influence. “When I’m seeing athletes on their tunnel walks, I’m seeing a New York influence from New York designers. Everything that I’m seeing has some type of New York footprint on it. I think I notice it because I’m from New York, but, again, I think a lot of people, whether they know it or not, are kind of attracted to the melting pot of New York City.”

Bolden joined the Whistle team in November following nearly four years at Bleacher Report, where he played a role in the social-content–brand House of Highlights. It was there, he says, that he grew an appreciation of the emerging Gen Z audience and developed a creative foundation for editing video for a shortform social-media audience.

“When I got hired [there] in 2020, TikTok was fairly new,” he explains. “I just turned 30 myself in December so I’m not Gen Z, but, when I got into that job, I got a great understanding of creators and influencers in the Gen Z space and the type of content that Gen Z consumers like to watch. Adding more jump cuts may seem unnecessary to the traditional longform viewer, but it goes a long way [in this medium], adding something in the first second or two seconds, because the first five seconds is what’s going to keep a viewer’s retention.”