Adobe Stock In 2018, when podcasting exploded, it was such an exciting time. Everybody wanted to be Serial, and it felt like there were so many opportunities. But I think the people who were starting these companies (i.e. entertainment companies) didn’t really understand the medium or journalism. And unfortunately around 2023 that bubble burst. Since then, I’ve faced two layoffs at major companies, even after producing several high-performing series for them.
I think there was a fundamental misunderstanding around what it really takes to produce in-depth journalism. And it went from feeling like a huge opportunity to a place where you really have to be an influencer, or a famous person to get a show.
Narrative podcasts can cost $300,000 on the low end and $600,000 on the high end. You’ve got the host, reporter, fact checker, sound designer, composer, executive producer, senior producer, junior producers. You’ve got the art department. And I think one of the challenges is you are creating a new podcast feed from scratch, and so you have to spend a lot of money driving an audience there to drive listenership. And that’s a lot of money for an unclear return on investment, especially because advertisers get afraid about being close to something that is political or controversial.
In the last year, with the folding of Wondery into Audible, downsizing at Spotify and The Ringer, and the closure of Pineapple Studios, we’ve seen the narrative podcast industry shrink even further. We’re seeing this shift to celebrity driven interview shows and “video podcasts” that really just feel like YouTube talk shows. I don’t really even understand why they call them podcasts.
In one of my prior jobs, I was the showrunner and lead writer of two series, one of which received industry-wide recognition. I was grinding out investigations at an astonishing rate, and I was working 60 hours a week, and then they laid us all off. Then they announced that a big television actor would be getting a podcast. And it was like, “Oh OK.” And then there was another podcast from a model and an actress, which made their priorities clear.
These shows are much cheaper to produce, and with something like SmartLess, the whole shtick is two of the three of them don’t even know who they’re talking to, you don’t even have to put time and money into research. More celebrities are going on them to promote their projects, but these hosts are not interviewers. They’re not journalists. They’re interviewing people they know and they’re friendly. You’re not getting any critical questions out of those interviews, and I think it hurts journalism overall, because why would celebrities want to go to another outlet or show where the host would be critical?
I’ve been in media and journalism long enough to remember the pivot to video that digital brands did years ago. Everybody really rushed into that space, and then it didn’t work out. And it seems like the same thing is happening in the podcast industry. There’s some celebrity podcasts that are fantastic, but these people are also celebrities and at some point they may want to return to their full-time acting gig. And so I have a feeling that there’s going to be a lot of investment in these celebrity shows, and then eventually these celebrities will move on, and the podcast companies will be left holding the bag.
But, as I look at it now, there are not a lot of companies doing narrative podcasting at all. If they are doing it, it doesn’t seem like they’re taking on as many new projects and they’re only taking things that are already significantly developed. That means, as an independent creator, you can only develop a show if you’re independently wealthy, or if you do it on a timeline that takes five times longer, which also means your topic has to be evergreen.
After my first layoff, I got a great news tip, and gave myself six months to develop a podcast on my own using my severance and savings. It was a risk, because at the end of six months, I would either have a podcast deal, or I’d be out of money. Thankfully, the show took off and they’re now considering it for optioning. So that’s great, but I spent six months developing it, and it was a real hard six months. And, because I already blew through my savings doing that, I can’t do it again.
People that have been in the industry for a very long time tell me that it’s important to own my own IP, to start a Substack, to post on social media and create my own brand in order to pitch myself. But if I’m writing a Substack regularly and TikToking regularly and reporting on my own and producing podcast episodes, that is a full-time job. And I’m the first person in my family to graduate from college. I have people in my family who rely on public assistance. I am not an independently wealthy creator, so I need to have another full-time freelance gig to pay my rent before I get that next big job. So it puts someone like me at a strategic disadvantage, and it comes back to these questions of privilege and who has the ability to do a podcast.
One thing there does seem to be an appetite for is true crime, but a lot of the stories are about women being murdered or raped, and true crime is not providing context or analysis to questions like, why does domestic violence happen? Why does rape happen? What are the power structures at play that allow these kinds of crimes to be committed? It’s just kind of horror porn, in a way. And many times it’s not even original journalism.
I still want to stay in this industry, because I love it, and I do have some prospects on the horizon, but I don’t know what it’s going to look like in a year or five years. A lot of my former colleagues are leaving podcasting, because the jobs just aren’t really there. I have multiple friends who are going to get their MFAs, going into teaching, and even leaning back into written journalism, which has also been going through its own consolidation. But even then it’s hard to get publications to consider podcasters as journalists.
I think that eventually there will be a swing back. I don’t think it’ll be back to where it was in, like 2018 and 2019, but I think it will come back somewhat. I just worry that in the interim, we’ll miss out on needed perspectives, have fewer deeply reported stories and nowhere for journalists to go.
This story appeared in the April 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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