I just got back from Podcast Movement in Chicago, where I smuggled in a panel with media historian and critic Neil Verma (read about our convo here). Everything at Podcast Movement this year seemed designed to create excitement and anxiety about video. First the news, which is not so new, that more people than ever are finding and consuming media, including podcasts, via YouTube. There was plenty of agonizing over whether this presages the death of audio-first listening, or whether video on Spotify is a scam. And what are we even making anymore? “If it works with your eyes closed, it’s a podcast,” one keynote speaker declared, which is actually not a bad way to put it. The question is who gets to decide “if it works,” and how much they actually care.
I agree with those who say we have to meet audiences where they are. But there’s a difference between accessing stuff on smart TVs and YouTube because it’s visual, or accessing stuff on smart TVs and YouTube because they have become convenient media plumbing systems. I enjoy TV and reels and movies, but I don’t pretend to know how to make them well. I do know that video’s production needs are different than audio’s, especially when you get into the details of editing human speech. If you edit for the ear, you are not editing for the eye — not without extra labor and the skills that go with that. So full pods-as-vids face two editorial strategies: 1) basically no editing (static, as-live mic chats, or a static image over audio) or 2) the creation of an extra, hybrid version for video. See for example, the excellent treatment GBH News has given The Big Dig and Scratch and Win on YouTube. They prioritized the audio version by Ian Coss and his team. Thanks no doubt to being a central node of public television, GBH created something great with skillful use of B-roll and the same TV archives as the podcast. Respect!
There is one other strategy, but it is not an audio strategy. You become a video-first show. That is also OK, but you don’t need to call yourself a podcast anymore. If you think you can have it both ways, and make a show that’s equally great for listeners and viewers, you are fooling yourself.
How do I know? Because US audio producers have lived through this before, in the late 1940s and early 50s, when TV hit network radio like the recently-deployed atom bomb. The advertising market for radio cratered, shows were canceled or remade as TV-only, and the entire broadcasting live-programming audio infrastructure fell apart — all in the course of about five years.
Three things struck me as I read about this blow to US network radio in the early 1950s:
It wasn’t that sudden. Networks had been investing in TV technology for decades, promising yet failing to deliver on “the next big thing” for so long that audio producers basically ignored the threat.
Once those networks had the chance, they used profits from radio (and talent and formats) to turbocharge the quick rise of television.
Massive disruption can sometimes be liberating? But man, people were bitter.
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