Nieman Lab.
Predictions for
Journalism, 2025.
During the podcasting gold rush of the 2010s, the industry saw an injection of capital into its middle class: the creators who did this work professionally but who weren’t multimillionaires, those whose success was modest, not explosive. The podcast middle class is a range of shows operating in the $100,000 to $500,000 budget range, which have audiences that are large enough to sell ads against but aren’t generally topping charts or breaking the internet. During this time, craft was a priority and teams of producers, editors, and engineers collaborated on work that experimented with the medium.
It’s important to resist the urge to be too nostalgic. This era was as much a cynical land grab from businesses importing Silicon Valley brain-rot priorities to a fledgling media space as it was a halcyon time for expansion and experimentation. These middle-class shows were seen as viable investments, in part, because they cultivated IP for potential licensing deals. Everyone wanted their own Serial, their own Missing Richard Simmons, their own Dr. Death, and hundreds of jobs were created for producers in that pursuit.
The audio industry has consolidated in recent years, and it’s harder than ever to fund these middle class shows. Platforms like YouTube and Spotify are incentivizing creators to incorporate video into their podcasts, a move that will likely result in more shows with lower production value, and budget dollars going toward video production rather than robust editorial teams.
Taking a chance on ambitious shows with moderate budgets will become less common. With deals like Wondery’s $100 million New Heights distribution deal and SiriusXM’s $125 million deal for Call Her Daddy setting precedents, the biggest networks will continue to stoke the fires of the shows with the largest audiences. These shows will continue to network-hop, eating up increasingly lucrative deals while podcasts from household names will be bootstrapped or produced at a loss by creators with increasingly precarious positions in the industry.
The most optimistic read on this is that the big shows — the one percenters — will entice advertisers to buy spots across networks, a trickle-down economics for the podcast middle class. But has that prosperity ever actually trickled downstream? More likely: The Rogans and Coopers of the world will float in their opulent pools while the rest of us fight for greedy sips of what’s left.
Alex Sujong Laughlin is supervising producer and co-owner of Defector Media.
During the podcasting gold rush of the 2010s, the industry saw an injection of capital into its middle class: the creators who did this work professionally but who weren’t multimillionaires, those whose success was modest, not explosive. The podcast middle class is a range of shows operating in the $100,000 to $500,000 budget range, which have audiences that are large enough to sell ads against but aren’t generally topping charts or breaking the internet. During this time, craft was a priority and teams of producers, editors, and engineers collaborated on work that experimented with the medium.
It’s important to resist the urge to be too nostalgic. This era was as much a cynical land grab from businesses importing Silicon Valley brain-rot priorities to a fledgling media space as it was a halcyon time for expansion and experimentation. These middle-class shows were seen as viable investments, in part, because they cultivated IP for potential licensing deals. Everyone wanted their own Serial, their own Missing Richard Simmons, their own Dr. Death, and hundreds of jobs were created for producers in that pursuit.
The audio industry has consolidated in recent years, and it’s harder than ever to fund these middle class shows. Platforms like YouTube and Spotify are incentivizing creators to incorporate video into their podcasts, a move that will likely result in more shows with lower production value, and budget dollars going toward video production rather than robust editorial teams.
Taking a chance on ambitious shows with moderate budgets will become less common. With deals like Wondery’s $100 million New Heights distribution deal and SiriusXM’s $125 million deal for Call Her Daddy setting precedents, the biggest networks will continue to stoke the fires of the shows with the largest audiences. These shows will continue to network-hop, eating up increasingly lucrative deals while podcasts from household names will be bootstrapped or produced at a loss by creators with increasingly precarious positions in the industry.
The most optimistic read on this is that the big shows — the one percenters — will entice advertisers to buy spots across networks, a trickle-down economics for the podcast middle class. But has that prosperity ever actually trickled downstream? More likely: The Rogans and Coopers of the world will float in their opulent pools while the rest of us fight for greedy sips of what’s left.
Alex Sujong Laughlin is supervising producer and co-owner of Defector Media.
