<\/p>\n
In 2018, when podcasting exploded, it was such an exciting time. Everybody wanted to be\u00a0Serial<\/em>, and it felt like there were so many opportunities. But I think the people who were starting these companies (i.e. entertainment companies) didn\u2019t really understand the medium or journalism. And unfortunately around 2023 that bubble burst. Since then, I\u2019ve faced two layoffs at major companies, even after producing several high-performing series for them.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n Narrative podcasts can cost $300,000 on the low end and $600,000 on the high end. You\u2019ve got the host, reporter, fact checker, sound designer, composer, executive producer, senior producer, junior producers. You\u2019ve 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n In the last year, with the folding of Wondery into Audible, downsizing at Spotify and The Ringer, and the closure of Pineapple Studios, we\u2019ve seen the narrative podcast industry shrink even further. We\u2019re seeing this shift to celebrity driven interview shows and \u201cvideo podcasts\u201d that really just feel like YouTube talk shows. I don\u2019t really even understand why they call them podcasts.<\/p>\n 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, \u201cOh OK.\u201d And then there was another podcast from a model and an actress, which made their priorities clear.<\/p>\n These shows are much cheaper to produce, and with something like\u00a0SmartLess<\/em>, the whole shtick is two of the three of them don\u2019t even know who they\u2019re talking to, you don\u2019t even have to put time and money into research.\u00a0More celebrities are going on them to promote their projects, but these hosts are not interviewers. They\u2019re not journalists. They\u2019re interviewing people they know and they\u2019re friendly. You\u2019re 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?<\/p>\n I\u2019ve 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\u2019t work out. And it seems like the same thing is happening in the podcast industry. There\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019t seem like they\u2019re taking on as many new projects and they\u2019re only taking things that are already significantly developed. That means, as an independent creator, you can only develop a show if you\u2019re independently wealthy, or if you do it on a timeline that takes five times longer, which also means your topic has to be evergreen.<\/p>\n 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\u2019d be out of money. Thankfully, the show took off and they\u2019re now considering it for optioning. So that\u2019s 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\u2019t do it again.<\/p>\n People that have been in the industry for a very long time tell me that it\u2019s 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\u2019m writing a Substack regularly and TikToking regularly and reporting on my own and producing podcast episodes, that is a full-time job. And I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s just kind of horror porn, in a way. And many times it\u2019s not even original journalism.<\/p>\n I still want to stay in this industry, because I love it, and I do have some prospects on the horizon, but I don\u2019t know what it\u2019s going to look like in a year or five years.\u00a0<\/strong>A lot of my former colleagues are leaving podcasting, because the jobs just aren\u2019t really there.\u00a0 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\u2019s hard to get publications to consider podcasters as journalists.<\/p>\n I think that eventually there will be a swing back. I don\u2019t think it\u2019ll 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\u2019ll miss out on needed perspectives, have fewer deeply reported stories and nowhere for journalists to go.<\/p>\n This story appeared in the April 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.\u00a0Click here to subscribe.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2018, when podcasting exploded, it was such an exciting time. Everybody wanted to be\u00a0Serial, and it felt like there were so many opportunities. But I think the people who were starting these companies (i.e. entertainment companies) didn\u2019t really understand the medium or journalism. And unfortunately around 2023 that bubble burst. Since then, I\u2019ve faced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2362806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[459063,23272,459064,361308],"class_list":["post-2362805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment-companies","tag-journalism","tag-major-companies","tag-podcasting"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/I-Created-Hit-Podcasts-Then-the-Bubble-Burst.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2362805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2362805"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2362805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2362807,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2362805\/revisions\/2362807"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2362806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2362805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2362805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2362805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}