What Will Kill Podcasting?

It’s probably not what you think

Photo: avdyachenko/Getty Images

The New York Times posted an article last week entitled “Have We Hit Peak Podcast?” For the record, though, I got a brief quote in the article, and I don’t think we have. I just think producing a quality, audience-focused podcast is hard. But podcasting as we know it is very much alive and well.

Still, the article did get me thinking — what could kill podcasting?

I have a thought.

First, here are a couple of things that people say will kill podcasting that will not kill podcasting. The first surfaced in this interview I did a few months back on KPCC, one of L.A.’s two NPR affiliates, shortly after Spotify’s purchases of Gimlet and Anchor, and right on the heels of the Luminary announcement. With so much money being plowed into the medium, I was asked if the arrival of “big money” podcasting would squelch the voices of independent podcasters and oft-unheard voices whose stories may be crowded out by better-funded, better-marketed content. And will that not “kill” the egalitarian spirit of the Pod?

My glib answer was, “Of course not.” Those voices will only be silenced if they, themselves, stop podcasting, right? Anyone can podcast. Anyone can listen to a podcast. That’s kind of the deal with podcasting. As a medium with an almost nonexistent barrier to entry, it’s one of the best ways for the less heard to be heard. Silence is a choice, not a thing caused by “Big Podcasting.”

Here’s what I didn’t say, though. No one has a right to an audience. Though your cause be just and your hearts be pure, you don’t get handed an audience. Not one single pair of earballs.

No one has a right to an audience.

And thus, podcasting simply becomes like every other medium known to humankind. No blogger has the right to an audience, either. Wilkie Collins out-Dickensed Charles Dickens and wrote the first detective story before Poe. But we read Dickens and Poe today, not Collins. Dickens had his own magazine. Go figure.

So, while I agree that it is difficult for some of the voices that may have been ignored or even silenced by other media to be heard in podcasting, the only thing that will kill podcasting is if those…