Podcasting Hasn't Produced A New Hit in Years (bloomberg.com) 109
An anonymous reader shares a report: Dawn Ostroff wants to find more hits. The chief content officer of Spotify is upset that her company isn't producing enough new popular podcasts, and has been putting pressure on her in-house studios to deliver. I've now heard the same message from every corner of the Spotify universe, though no one wanted to talk about it on the record. It's hard for new shows to find an audience. Every new show has a smaller audience than its predecessors. This is not specific to Spotify. Executives at studios large and small echoed the sentiment. While the overall audience for podcasting expands, the audience for individual new shows is shrinking across the board. None of the 10 most popular podcasts in the U.S. last year debuted in the last couple years, according to Edison Research. They are an average of more than 7 years old, and three of the top five are more than a decade old. ("The Joe Rogan Experience," "This American Life" and "Stuff You Should Know.") Only a few podcasts in the top 50 ("SmartLess," "The Michelle Obama Podcast," "Frenemies") are less than two years old. And none of them are in the top 25. This trend vexes executives and producers across the podcasting industry, who worry they are wasting a lot of money on new shows. Spotify, Amazon, SiriusXM, iHeartMedia and outside investors have plowed billions of dollars into production companies. Spotify has spent more than anyone, paying about $500 million for three studios. Where is all this money going if these companies aren't producing new hits?
ok (Score:2)
This trend vexes executives and producers across the podcasting industry, who worry they are wasting a lot of money on new shows.
OK, may they lose all that money.
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I think the phrase "podcasting industry" itself is indicative of a problem.
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Yeah, I don't like the concept of an industry with capital that controls who has access to making podcasts.
Party Girl (Score:2)
Re: podcasts are still a thing? ew. (Score:2)
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Wait... people listen to Rogan? I always figured that was just bots. Interesting.
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I watch podcasts like J Rogan's, but *listen*? No way in hell.
BTW if you do not know who Joe Rogan is, without doubt he is probably one of the smartest people on the planet. He is an ex UFC/MMA fighter and now a comedian. Just google "Joe Rogan Experience" - he used to publish it on youtube, many old episodes are still there, now he is mostly on Spotify.
His "pod casts" cover everything from strange physics, sports, history, medicine, drugs use/abuse etc. He is so well prepared for his casts (which vary from
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It's 2022. How is this ancient technology still a thing, and WHY are companies wasting all that money on it?!? Greed sure makes people stupid and stupid shit.
What are you talking about. Do you even know what one is? I listen to podcasts almost every day while I drive.
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It's 2022. How is this ancient technology still a thing, and WHY are companies wasting all that money on it?!? Greed sure makes people stupid and stupid shit.
What are you talking about. Do you even know what one is? I listen to podcasts almost every day while I drive.
Driving? I remember that. That was back when you did work in one place and did sleep in a different place. And if you were lucky, you might see actual people that you could talk to.
Where do I listen to podcasts? (Score:3)
In my car during commutes. Which I haven't done in about 2 years? My audiobook consumption is way down too.
But besides the whole pandemic issue. There is a fatal flaw in podcasting. Podcasting doesn't collect user data to be sold for market research. The multiple revenue incomes that a simple blog or YouTube channel have completely blow podcasting out of the water.
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Why wouldn't it? Most podcasts come through some kind of app. Either phone or other dedicated device. e.g., firestick/Roku/etc.
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But not a centrally controlled app. You might use your Roku. I use Downcast. That person uses Apple's app. And that one over there, the guy with the gray beard and the worn-out Linux t-shirt, he just downloads the RSS feeds directly and wgets the podcasts.
Some apps may collect user data. Some may not. In any case, they probably don't share with each other. Servers keep track of
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Agreed. My podcast viewing has went down significantly while my YouTube channel viewing has went up. I could not watch videos while driving, but now that isn't a restriction when I'm killing some time.
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yeah this (i'd mod up if i had points) - my podcast listening is null because i'm not driving.
on the other hand, watching 10-min youtube videos (because nobody is around me to make me feel guilty about doing it in the office) is up considerably. i'm spending the same time with 'fluff', just spread out through the day and not as a slave to a commute. things are different.
Surprise surprise (Score:2)
Media trends come, media trends go. Meanwhile the young are putting their best stuff on Tiktok and YouTube.
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I thought their best 'stuff' was on OnlyFans.
Podcast listeners want that parasocial experience (Score:3)
My wife is a big podcast fan, listens to Doughboys and other comedy podcasts. I get the impression that podcasting is not about people "listening to shows." It is about "hanging out with your friends." People who currently listen to podcasts don't want new shows. The only way to get people into new shows is to get new people into listening to podcasts. You won't sell new shows to current podcast listeners because it's not "their friends" who are doing the show. People are not fans of podcasting. They are fans of the particular people who give them that parasocial feeling of being part of a friend-group. Going to a new podcast would be like trying to make friends with a bunch of strangers. Why try when your current group of "friends" gives you what you need?
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I imagine certain types of TV show are like podcasts, but others are very different. Late night comedy for example. If you regularly watch the Late Show, you're unlikely to hop to the new fad. The big late night shows are all old... some of them *very* old.
Streamers, podcasters, YouTubers, all talk a lot about "building a community."
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Almost all my podcasts have been radio shows that I am time shifting. Only a couple exceptions that I can think of and I didn't keep up with them for very long.
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Curious, what sorts of radio shows? Like old timey radio-plays type of thing? God that sounds way more interesting than "stand up comedians review fast food restaurants" but don't tell my wife I said that.
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This American Life, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Radio Lab, stuff like that. The ones on NPR where the angry listeners complain about frivolity on Car Talk and why can't there be super serious shows about car repair without laughter :-)
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In addition, many over the air radio shows bundle the day's show into a podcast. I download a few California talk shows daily.
They used to be free of ads, but most break the broadcast with ads these days so "30 sec skip," repeat, repeat.
Shout out to "joelisanerd" who has maintained the best iOS podcast player for a decade that costs a few bucks, single purchase, no subscription fees. I can tell it's been a labor of love for the guy.
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The specifics may be newish, but the process isn't (Score:2)
People have only so much time they can devote to this kind of thing. In an exploding market, there's not enough hours in the day to sample all of the podcasts they might find more or less interesting. Over time, Sturgeon's Law, which states "90% of everything is shit", will ensure that most of the newer podcasts shuffle off this mortal coil, while the best ones gradually build an audience and thrive, perhaps even pushing some of the older ones aside.
This is the Way, and it is good.
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Sturgeon's Law, which states "90% of everything is shit"
That figure seems optimistically low.
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Sturgeon did most of his writing in the 50s and 60s. It was an optimistic time.
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People have only so much time they can devote to this kind of thing. In an exploding market, there's not enough hours in the day to sample all of the podcasts they might find more or less interesting.
I have 3 weekly podcasts on my auto-download list - I can only consistently get through within the week only 1 of those. These executives are idiots if they think people will just dedicate time to each new podcast just because they added them.
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I'm similar. Even one I really like winds up getting backlogged, or I don't get all the way through and wind up discarding an unfinished episode when the next comes along.
You *build* and audience, stupid (Score:2)
What is it with these executives that believe that a humongous audience will suddently *poof* appear??
Oh, that's right - they expect immediate revenues for their real customers: the shareholders.
Re:You *build* >an< audience, stupid (Score:2)
You *build* and audience, stupid
Yeah, stupid is as stupid does :) Now where's my morning coffee??
Take a look at TV (Score:4, Interesting)
if you look at the top 100 series of the 2020-2021, and the year they debuted, you only see 1 show that was released in the last two years. Maybe if you want to rate successful shows, don't make the metric require them to be in the top 10 of all shows. That is usually going to be dominated by long running shows which have built a large viewing audience over time.
1. Sunday Night Football (2006)
2. Thursday Night Football (2006)
3. Monday Night Football (1970)
4. This is Us (2016)
5. The Masked Singer (2015)
6. Grey's Anatomy (2005)
7. Equalizer (2021)
8. 9-1-1 (2018)
9. The Bachelorette (2003)
10. The Bachelor (2002)
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Even my [literal] boomer father-in-law recently cut the cord. It was rather amusing having him show my wife and I a whole bunch of outdoors-ing videos on YouTube after we returned from a backpacking trip, most of which we had already seen since we watched them before we went. It was all new to him, though, and he was really enthusiastic about it.
Cable and broadcast television have produced a few gems over the years but the most watched content has always been watered down mindless entertainment. In the earl
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We sometimes watch a comedy TV show during dinner. We are hard-pressed to find anything new to watch. Tons of shows with 1 to 2 seasons total or crap with crude humor. I'm seriously considering cutting the cord soon and stick with a few streaming channels.
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Jesus... It's like some one made a list of my least favorite things to watch.
I haven't had cable in well over a decade now so it stands to reason I'd be a bit out of touch (plus I'm over 40) but there isn't even a single item on that least I'd even have any interest at all in exploring
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and another thing ... (Score:2)
Uh, wow. I've watched literally none of those. I think there is another issue too though. You can only listen to 1 thing at a time. Podcasts are some of the longest format content there is.
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Good grief - Grey's Anatomy is still on? My wife loves medical shows, and even she stopped watching that years ago.
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The problem is, "good" often takes time to develop. If I make a show, the first season will be rough - all the writers, actors and production crew take time to come together and storylines need to evolve a bit - what looked like it was compelling might turn out to be really boring, and thus you need to pivot.
So "good" doesn't start immediately in most cases - you attract a small audience curious to see what's going on, and they might help you build a following. Or other times is you accidentally run across
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1. Sunday Night Football (2006)
2. Thursday Night Football (2006)
3. Monday Night Football (1970)
4. This is Us (2016)
5. The Masked Singer (2015)
6. Grey's Anatomy (2005)
7. Equalizer (2021)
8. 9-1-1 (2018)
9. The Bachelorette (2003)
10. The Bachelor (2002)
Based on this list it is no wonder we're all getting dumber.
USPS Podcast: Mailin' it! (Score:2)
This is not a joke. It's a real thing. It is sure to be a hit!
Re: USPS Podcast: Mailin' it! (Score:2)
Blame Exclusives (Score:2)
In the beginning, anyone could listen to any podcast on any app they wanted. Now companies like Spotify have tried to build a walled garden around exclusive titles. Part of the appeal of podcasts was the universality; being able to talk around the water cooler about which podcasts you were listening to. Now the experience is fractured and siloed (like video streaming, except a lot fewer people are willing to shell out a monthly fee for it, much less multiple fees). And it certainly doesn't help that many
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The worst part about Spotify podcasts (and I already pay for the family plan, so that doesn't bother me) is that they put them in the regular app with no separate queue, so switching between the two items is a huge pain in the ass, and you're guaranteed to lose your place in one or more them. With my music on Spotify and my podcasts on PocketCasts, no problem at all. End result? I don't listen to any Spotify exclusive podcasts at all. Could be fixed. They don't care.
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companies like Spotify have tried to build a walled garden around exclusive titles
This is part of it for me. There is no way I'm paying for an exclusive service to gain access to an audio recording. I might pay for a specific podcast itself if I had reason, and so far only one has tempted me to do it but I'm going directly to the person creating the podcast rather than an aggregator/publisher like Spotify.
The other major reason is that I have limited content I want to hear. Most of the podcasts are not interesting to me.
Personally, I want to hear the news from various viewpoints, so w
Most podcasts are bad. (Score:2, Interesting)
Most podcasts are just boring (or even irritating) wittering with less than half the run time of useful or interesting content. It gets quite fatiguing listening to many podcasts hoping to find a good one. Eventually it is easier to give up and stick to what you know (in my case youtube and reading) and forget the whole thing entirely.
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Yep.
About 6 months ago I got a new car, with Android Auto (sux) and I was going to change my life with podcasts!
Half of them have a 5 minute advertising intro.
Half of them (which can overlap) go with the NPR 'we are so smart and smug' format.
Not too much left, and too difficult to find something good.
No Agenda (Score:2)
The Best Podcast in the Universe: https://www.noagendashow.net/ [noagendashow.net]
Does podcasting need hits to succeed? (Score:2)
It seems to me that there are tons of podcasts that appeal to many different audiences. Do we need hits, though, for the effort to be considered successful?
The barrier to entry to create and publish a podcast has never been lower. Software and audio tools are cheaper and better than before. Perhaps instead of producing podcasts, might it be worthwhile instead to help individuals create their own and fill them ads in exchange for a cut of the revenue?
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Yeah, this appears to be the wrong approach.
At issue should not be whether Spotify has a single podcast has a large audience, but rather if Spotify has the largest share of the total global podcasting audience. They should not invest in the podcast production, the content creators can do that on their own. Instead they should focus on making it easy for podcasters to upload and promote their content to the larger existing Spotify audience. Then it's just a matter of sharing the advertising revenue, which Sp
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Going a bit further, Spotify could help content creators by creating turn-key features that enable things like subscriptions and pay-wall content (pulling revenue from Patreon), selling merch (pulling revenue from lots of ecommerce sites), and video versions of the podcast (pulling revenue from YouTube, Twitch, etc.).
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Going a bit further, Spotify could help content creators by creating ... pay-wall content (pulling revenue from Patreon)
Thankfully most content creators recognize that walled gardens and exclusivity will decrease their pool, not increase it. Spotify and others that are pushing for exclusive deals and seeking either a hit-driven model or an "collect all the brands" model are mindlessly ignoring the most useful elements.
The executives want to be what media companies were a century ago. They want to be the exclusive owners of a large silo with everything under their them, the only source for everyone where they control all gat
i could care less about spotifys podcasts (Score:3)
i'd pay extra to get rid of the podcast element of spotify
i'm about ready to cancel my paid subscription because their UI is absolutely terrible
I've seen speculation that why spotify is so heavy on podcasts, is that they don't have to pay music royalties on podcasts
Spotify is a terrible platform for podcasts (Score:3)
It was mentioned that the problem is wider spread than Spotify... but it's worth repeating, it's a terrible platform for podcasts. People don't listen to Podcasts they way they do music. One of my favourite podcasts went Spotify exclusive and as a result it's so inconvenient to listen to I've basically stopped following it (despite the fact I pay for Spotify).
As to the wider "problem", podcasts are a different and far more personal medium than other media. Hosts build their podcasts by building a relationship with their listeners, and that's a slow but fairly steady process. And since there's not a particularly natural way to promote new podcasts so a great one has trouble finding a new audience.
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and as a result it's so inconvenient to listen to I've basically stopped following it (despite the fact I pay for Spotify).
As a matter of interest why? I don't do podcasts, but how is that any more difficult (or how is selecting a podcast any different) than listening to music, something which Spotify has infamously made more convenient than before?
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and as a result it's so inconvenient to listen to I've basically stopped following it (despite the fact I pay for Spotify).
As a matter of interest why? I don't do podcasts, but how is that any more difficult (or how is selecting a podcast any different) than listening to music, something which Spotify has infamously made more convenient than before?
When I'm listening to music I'm usually working. I start playing an artist or genre I'm interested in at the moment and then l let it wander until I feel like a change.
When I listen to podcasts I'm exercising or driving. I generally don't choose a specific podcast as much as automatically start playing through the list of content my Podcast app auto-downloaded.
Why I found Spotify unusable specifically:
- They apparently don't have an auto-down feature for podcasts
- If I skipped the dead air at the end of an
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Interesting thanks for the info. Yeah I can see how especially that last point would be frustrating. Kind of defeats the purpose of the podcast feed... Never considered that Spotify doesn't cater for changing content.
Actually I have a far bigger complaint which is why I didn't even get into podcasts even when I was driving. I can't easily find podcasts in my language. The discovery algorithm says "you live in country X, fuck you you're getting only language X in your search results".
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Fundamentally I think people listen to music in one of two modes. Either "I want to hear X", or "I want interesting background noise", Spotify does this well.
I don't think Podcasts work the same way. For myself at least it's like "these are my favourite shows, when I start listening start with new episodes from my most favourite and work down", ideally without intervention because I'm about to start driving/running and don't want to fiddle with my phone.
Either way it's about the publisher more than the spec
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I agree with qantaman but to articulate why is more difficult.
The UI for podcasts is terrible.
Having podcasts and music mixed together doesn’t work.
They either need a seperate app, or like two tabs/modes to seperate them.
Finding new podcasts on Spotify is a crap shoot and difficult. Seeing what you have played is difficult. No filtering system for interests, or feedback system.
I much prefer pod bean in that respect.
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Finding new podcasts on Spotify is a crap shoot and difficult.
Thanks. While reflecting on qantaman's reply I remembered why I don't listen to Podcasts on Spotify: I can't find podcasts in a language I prefer. I live in a country with an official language other than English and I'm not fluent enough in the language that I can passively listen to it (i.e. I still translate the language in my head on the fly which makes for some horrible background listening). Search results per interest almost exclusively show up in non-english for me :-/
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I think segmentation is part of it. I used to get podcasts via RSS and pretty much all of them were available that way. Now there are Pandora podcasts, Spotify podcasts, etc. I use Apple Podcasts and so if I can't listen to it there I'm not going to listen to it. I started listening to a great podcast in the summer of 2020 that moved to Spotify and I don't listen to it any more.
I am a dedicated Pandora Premium member, and still I won't listen to podcasts on that platform.
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Same. I use an old version of BeyondPod (pre-buyout) so there are zero Spotify podcasts on my list. I listen to the occasional Rogan but that's an exception and maybe once a month I'll catch up on a few of those. It's also manual labor to tag the episodes for download - work which I've been outsourcing to a podcatcher literally since I bought a FireWire iPod.
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Agree totally. I'm still old school podcatcher (currently using Pocket Casts)/RSS, and refuse to patronize any podcast that doesn't publish an RSS url.
So many reasons for this... (Score:2)
There are so many Podcasts out there now that are just feel like clones of Planet Money or This American Life with extra advertising attached to them.
Now that I'm no longer commuting to work every day, I'm not going to waste my time listening to them.
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Now that I'm no longer commuting to work every day, I'm not going to waste my time listening to them.
And when I do have to commute to work, I mostly just listen to old reruns of Car Talk or Wait Wait anyway.
What Dawn Ostroff needs (Score:2)
Is to convince Trump to make a podcast.
It may not be a "hit" in the conventional sense of the word, but it'll sure draw in the listeners, if nothing else for the lols.
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Would be hard to find advertisers for it
Oversaturated, IMO (Score:2)
The problem I have with podcasts are they typically take up an hour or more of your time for each episode you want to listen to. Even a couple of my good friends have done a "tech" type podcast for years and I haven't listened to more than 2 or 3 episodes they've made. (I was even a guest on one episode and it still didn't really motivate me to listen to them more.)
I find that unlike listening to music, you can't just play these in the background while concentrating on other things, or you miss the point of
I would like an option to hide podcasts (Score:1)
It's a pretty minor nuisance, but I don't know why executives would be so surprised that people aren't listening to content they don't want. Isn't the whole job of their platform to give users content that they *do* want? Why do they keep blindly shovin
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Wish I could upvote you. Podcasts are like web3 -- a pointless invention that people want to make money on but nearly all of them will fail.
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Who cares? (Score:2)
Why does a podcast need to be a hit? If a show finds a niche audience and makes enough money via Patreon or selling merch to make it worthwhile to the creators, then everyone is happy. Why should we care that it's not enough to satisfy Spotify or I <3 Radio or whatever? That's the point of podcasts: they're distributed and anyone can make one for a fairly small investment.
Maybe just a limited market (Score:2)
The other problem with podcasts is it's just one person as a talking head. It's not news, it's not informative, it's just an opinion piece on a subject. Except unlike most newscast talking heads like Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olbermann; while each requires their own taste, at l
This: it's a zero-sum game (Score:2)
There's only so many hours in a week, and only so many people who'll listen to spoken-word content.
Any new podcast in a saturated market can only cannibalize a not-really-growable user base.
I listen like a fiend, but don't really have time for more than I listen, and there's PLENTY of content out there for my interests now. I can't imagine what would draw my attention anew.
There's certainly nothing out there - even in my current rotation - that would get me to pay for Spotify or Stitcher.
It's kind of like t
It's the content (or lack thereof) (Score:1)
Most podcasts take the form of a bunch of people at a table, each by a mic, who talk about ... stuff. It's unscripted. Unplanned. Shoot from the hip. And, unsurprisingly, it's also very boring. Contrast that to Rogan, who runs a podcast I despise, but who at least has a producer plan set ups to surprise his guest with something about them or their past they'd rather not talk about. To create tension or conflict. Better, think of This American Life, which follows documentary radio format. A subject is chosen
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Some podcasts are more like radioshows where it's fairly tightly scripted or at least scheduled, while others are more of the traditional podcasat discussion of a topic. For the former to work, you basically need good producers to do all the research, scheduling, and editing, plus all the extra stuff like getting music/sound clips when appropriate. For the latter, you really need to have interesting/charismatic hosts that have opinions of knowledge people want to listen to. The production cost is much lo
The Packet Pushers (Score:2)
If there was a set of 4 comic shows that were must listen, those would be Joe Rogan scale podcast ratings. Commedians have their hard core fans on a short leash are clearing more dollars from the podcast room under the stairs than touring 200 nights a year.
I
Spotify completely misunderstood podcasts (Score:2)
To me podcasts serve a completely different purpose than a hit TV show. This seems like a major screw up by Spotify management to me. They completely misunderstood what podcasts were, who made them, and for whom. I think they just thought, hey it's like radio but on your phone and we can sell ads. While I do listen to a lot of podcasts, I don't listen to most of them regularly like how people binge on a hit TV show.
I listen to a couple of dozen podcasts off and on, some regularly, and they are all mostly
Who cares? (Score:2)
It's PODCASTS -- by definition a useless form of media. I don't listen to podcasts and I certainly could not give a rat's ass whether Spotify makes money on them. If the creators and/or Spotify want to waste money promoting this, it's their problem.
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Maybe there's just a lot of people like me (Score:2)
Maybe there's just a lot of people like me who strongly dislike audio only media that isn't music. Despite being a bit of a news junky I've never liked talk radio and despite lots of recommendations I've never found a podcast I've ever had any interest in following.
The written word is just so much more efficient than audio in terms of time spent consuming and if that won't work then give me video, otherwise the sound of their voices I just find distracting and annoying.
Grumpy Old Geeks (Score:2)
I think the Slashdot audience would like the Grumpy Old Geeks podcast. Highly recommended! Geeks unite!
Not associated with them in any way, just a fan of the podcast. Give it a try! :-)
I don't know what they are expecting? (Score:2)
Content creation is pretty expansive and plays to several types of audiences.
We can all point to hit shows like Game of Thrones or others, but podcasts in general don't have broad appeal.
Personally I like some that are rather unique. Behind the Bastards and Worst Year Ever are two of my favorites that tend to cater to my dark sense of humor. Then there are ones like the Social Engineering Podcast which caters to my professional life.
I listened to Al Franken Podcast for a bit, but then shifted over to some
Um... Duh? (Score:2)
Seriously all the podcasts I listen to are now just video shows now. Usually just with talking heads but they wouldn't show up as podcasts no matter how well you do. I can let him play in my car and just ignore the video. It's pretty easy to control YouTube with voice these days.
I predict the return of (Score:1)
Audio books.
They're great. And, think of all the"classics" without copyright just waiting to be reproduced.
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Audio books. They're great. And, think of all the"classics" without copyright just waiting to be reproduced.
This could introduce a whole new set of copyright issues.
An Audiobook is a Sound Recording [sidebarsaturdays.com]
From a copyright perspective, an audiobook is a sound recording—a work that results from “fixing” a series of spoken, musical, or other sounds. “Fixed” means that the sounds are embodied in a recording. Generally, copyright protection extends to two elements in a sound recording: (1) the contribution of the performers whose performance is captured; and (2) the contribution of the person responsible for capturing and processing the sounds to make the final recording (the producer).
The owners of the copyrights in a sound recording are the performers and the producers. If you hire someone to be the voice of your audiobook, that person owns the rights in his performance. If the audiobook is not recorded and produced by you, the individuals or entities who engineered and produced the audiobook own that element of the sound recording copyright.
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Does not change the fact that you can use a text book which's copyright is expired and make an audio book from it.
And the nice thing is:
You and I can make an audiobook each, from the same text book, and neither you or me are violating each others copy rights.
Leave podcasts alone (Score:1)
Spotify and their ilk trying to chase a new revenue stream from the work of others can go pound sand.
They should leave podcasts alone, and stop trying to apply their MBA-school metrics for "creating" the next big thing that will make them tons of money.
It's bad enough that Spotify will take an advertisement-free podcast and ruin it by adding advertisements to it for their free-tier subscribers.
So many problems with this metric (Score:2)
There are so many issues with podcasts it is not surprising that there are no new podcasts in the leader boards...
1. Finding out about new podcasts
There is little to be found in the advertising of podcasts; they are either referenced by a podcast you are already listening to, found by dumb luck in a podcast aggregator, word of mouth, or you actually go looking for it. By reference only really happens if the other podcast is on the same network (TWiT network will talk about other TWiT network podcasts). Aggr
They created a glut (Score:2)
There is simply too much content and programming being produced. The MBAs have everyone convinced that audience growth just happens, don't worry about cutting the same pie into more and more slices.
The media landscape is different now than 20 years ago. Now, at least 90% of the population will consider anything to be noise.
Media executives have focus-grouped, personalized, and targeted their way into minimal audience for a plethora of mediocre productions rather than waiting for a few quality programs to
Who cares ibf big business misses out ? (Score:1)
welcome to the algorithm controlled market. enjoy (Score:2)
life in the podiverse (Score:1)
I don't Podcast (Score:1)
The problem (Score:2)
The problem with podcasts is that there is no time limit applied to the blowhards who like to hear themselves talk. Most listeners don't have the patience to listen to these logorrhea sufferers for hours on end. There's only one Joe Rogan, and only truck drivers have the time to listen to all three hours.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, if it's worth talking about, it's worth writing down. Freakonomics did this - they turned some of the topics from their podcast into several books.