Some Things Change

I don't know what to think right now.

I mean, okay, I just spent the week at Podcast Movement, and on the surface, not much has changed. There was a good crowd (although I think the nail polish convention that moved into the hotel as we wrapped things up has more people), there was no shortage of enthusiastic folks talking up the medium, there were the same rosy projections of gold at the end of the rainbow, which is, apparently, in 2021 or 2022...

Something wasn't quite right. I don't know what it was, but it felt a little off. In fact, it felt like (CUE OMINOUS MUSIC)... a radio convention.

That might be a reaction to so many radio people having discovered podcasting and the convention. Or it might be the way some panels and presentations are starting to have that we've-been-here-before feel, with an undercurrent of that feeling you get when you don't really know what's coming next but you're praying it comes soon, whatever it brings. I can't really tell what's giving me that reaction, but I know I wasn't the only one who noticed it. The overwhelming earnestness -- that's a word, isn't it? -- of the podcast attendees, combined with the opportunism of folks here to latch onto what might be a gold mine someday, or to climb into what seems like a convenient lifeboat while their previous business is listing in the water, gave me an uneasy feeling. (And the lack of representation from some categories -- where are all the comedy podcasts? Why was there little about political podcasts in a politically-charged era? -- was striking.)

But that might just be me. Surely, the business continues to show great promise, and there IS significant revenue growth. Still, a lot of the attendees seemed focused on the possibility, the necessity, really, of turning their podcasts into revenue generators, to make a living off podcasting so that they don't have to do something else to pay the rent. The frustration is faintly palpable, more than in past years, but it's there. And there's the resentment of people who have been in the podcasting business a long time (I plead guilty!) that a stampede of self-appointed experts is now roaming the china shop. (I heard a lot of contradictory advice here. One expert tells you to make shows based on what people want to hear, another tells you to do the show YOU want and the audience will find you. Or do a show nobody wants and you don't want to do, I guess.) Some of this has been around for the entire time that the convention's been in existence. Some of it seems a little more up front. And a lot of it is surely the growing pains of an industry founded on the idea that there are no rules; at some point, in order for it to be a real business, real business rules are going to come into play. So here we are.

Make no mistake, podcasting is growing, and there are things happening on a demographic level that could push it into full-fledged mainstream media territory (significantly, as Rob Walch of Libsyn noted in his annual myth-debunking presentation, an increase in female podcasters doing new shows may be a leading indicator of major audience growth). Podcasting is, for the top 1% or 2% of podcasts, a contender for big advertising revenue. And there is a massive opportunity in branded content done well, strong content matched with the right sponsor, and scripted drama, which is one category radio abandoned that people really, really like. The future is bright.

The future is also limited. Anyone can do a podcast, many do, but the percentage of those podcasts which will become financially viable -- the percentage that will be a real business -- is and will likely always be small. There will be huge successes, and there will be hundreds of thousands of shows that don't make money and putter along and, for many of them, peter out after a few episodes. That's been the way of the podcasting business since it began, it's how things are now, and it's likely how it's going to be.

Which is okay, and it means that the industry may always be a two-track business, one the democratic, anyone-can-do-it level that never generates a lot of money for its participants, and another the big-time, lots-of-downloads track. The people on the first track want there to be an answer for how to make it to the money track, but there is no answer. The shows that succeed are mostly very good, and so are some that don't make it. The difference? It's complicated. For some shows, it's timing -- they came along at the right time. For some, it's marketing. For some, it's affiliation with a network or other shows. For some, it's a celebrity host, or a unique topic, or a non-unique topic that suddenly gets red hot (hello, true crime!), or pure luck. There are lots of how-tos for producing and posting podcasts, but none will tell you how to make it a success, because it hasn't worked like that. It's not radio, where you can just "play the hits" (even in talk radio) and adjust your clock for the PPM and use imaging and production and win. It's also not a matter of throwing money around; those big-bucks investments in podcasting that you've read about are interesting, but for a business which can easily be replicated and in which success has no formula, it's an old-school business method that's likely to fail. On the other hand, what DOES work? Your guess is as good as any.

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It was good to see many of you at Podcast Movement, and thanks to my fellow "Celebrities in Podcasting" panelists and to Audioboom and Coleman Insights for letting me be part of the panel and not having me physically removed from the room. Next up is the Radio Show in Dallas in August. The convention thing never ends.

Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
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