Welcome to the age of the vodcast

The Golden Globes, a champagne- and Ozempic-fuelled celebration of film and television, will feature a new category in its annual ceremony on January 11th. Alongside familiar awards for actors, movies and TV shows will be a gong for best podcast. Podcasting, which began as an audio medium, is turning into something more like TV.

Listeners—or, rather, viewers—have led the charge. For the past couple of years the most popular platform for podcasts in America has been not Spotify or Apple, podcasting’s pioneers, but YouTube, a video giant owned by Google. Three in ten American listeners say they consume podcasts mainly in video form, according to Coleman Insights and Amplifi Media, a pair of research firms. YouTube says on-TV consumption of podcasts nearly doubled in the year to October.

Podcasters are switching on their cameras to chase these audiences. Some 71% of American ones now film video alongside audio, according to Sounds Profitable, which tracks the industry. (The Economist has added video to some of its podcasts, too.) With even basic video a podcast can live on YouTube and be exposed to its nearly 3bn users. Highlights can be clipped and shared on social media. Reaching new audiences has long been tricky for podcasters, who relied on word of mouth. Now, listeners in America say that social media is their main way to find new shows, according to Coleman and Amplifi.

Reaching new audiences is one thing; keeping them is another. Some podcasters report that on YouTube they find plenty of viewers, but less “engagement” (time spent on the platform) than they expected. There is a trade-off, says James Cridland of Podnews, a podcast about podcasts: “YouTube is definitely number one in terms of reach, but…where you earn the money from podcasting is the total time.” Edison Research, a firm of analysts, finds that those consuming podcasts mainly on Spotify (which has also had video since 2020) listen for 48 more minutes per week than those mainly using YouTube. Alastair Ferrans of Spotify says the streamer is “optimising the platform for loyalty and long-term engagement, not one-off use and viral hits”.

As podcasters rush to turn their shows into television, TV companies are rushing to buy them. Hollywood budgets have been reined in; streamers increasingly prize engagement. Cheap, long podcasts are therefore appealing. Netflix, which has deals with companies including Spotify and iHeartMedia, will start showing podcasts in America on January 11th. Fox is also pushing into podcasts, signing a deal in October to bring “Crime Junkie”, a popular series, onto Tubi, its video streamer.

The move to video has treated some genres more kindly than others. “Scripted, narrative podcasts have suffered immensely as YouTube has proliferated,” says Steven Goldstein of Amplifi. Podcasting was once defined by narrative shows made by firms such as Wondery, whose richly reported series like “Dr Death” and “The Spy Who” would be costly to turn into video. Today’s archetypal podcast features a famous person shooting the breeze with their famous pals, which is easy and cheap to film. Most of the nominees for the podcasting Golden Globe are interview shows.

Some audiophiles complain that video has spoiled the listening experience, with looser editing (it is harder to cut every “um” and “ah”) and camera-friendly clip-on microphones that sound worse than big radio mics. To please YouTube’s algorithm, some shows shove the most exciting stuff into the first minute, spoiling the pace of a long podcast. Others worry that would-be podcasters will be deterred by the cost of cameras, lighting rigs and other TV kit. To help, YouTube has developed AI-powered video-creation tools for podcasts.

All this raises the question of what a podcast even is. “There has been a pretty exciting convergence across media in terms of consumers’ expectations of what a video is, what a talk show is, what a podcast is, what an internet video is,” says Mr Ferrans of Spotify. As podcasters turn their episodes into TV-like formats, TV stars such as Tucker Carlson, formerly of Fox News, are putting podcast-like interview shows online. Podcasts and TV are not only competing at the Golden Globes; they are increasingly after the same audience. ■