The Podcasting Minefield
Mike Leitao ~ 02/03/2024
As best said by The Buggles back in 1979, video killed the radio star. The message is pretty straightforward for anyone with a brain. Video, which at the time was mostly a boom in television and movies was becoming the new de facto mainstream form of entertainment compared to the past where radios had dominated for quite some time. Eventually, television shows and movies became YouTube and other social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok, but they were still videos. Now, as we continue to progress throughout the 2020s, it looks like there is a new killer on the loose ready to dethrone videos as the new major form of entertainment. That new media killer is podcasts. Over the last fourish years, mainly starting during the COVID era, podcasts have seen a major boom in popularity and the amount of people who are doing them. Now, I am all for both free speech and people deciding to do things they find enjoyable, but my stance on podcasts is quite firm. Podcasting equipment is clearly too cheap, because the amount of people making them is insane, and almost all of them make me wish we were able to mute people in real life.
Podcast’s attempts to overtake video are not fully like video overtaking the radio. When video overtook, almost everyone changed the way they indulge in media. With the rise of podcasts, people have certainly changed, but video is still alive and well. Although less people are watching cable television or going to movies, at home streaming still remains vastly popular and alternative forms of media like YouTube still have thousands of videos being uploaded and watched every single day. The rise of the podcast is something different, most people are adding podcasts to their repertoire of entertainment platforms as opposed to having podcasts replace current items. The podcast boom came in two waves for two separate reasons, free time and work function. During COVID, so much shit was shut down that new forms of media were not being pumped out at the same rate as before. Like most things around the world, they slowed down. Podcasts were able to fill the void, as all you need for a podcast is a phone that can record audio and a voice and you can release as many podcast episodes as you can speak into existence. Because of this, people who were sitting around bored decided to start sharing their opinions or thoughts with everyone through podcasts, and those same bored people would then listen to other people’s podcasts. Then when the world started returning to normal and people started working again, many people realized that podcasts can be a nice option to have during the workday. Just pop that true crime podcast on and grind away at your desk job as you hear all about a bunch of gruesome murders. They gave people a switch up from just listening to music and could also help people learn new things or new topics. Now I know I just made podcasts sound great there, and that is because there are honestly some great ones out there. I myself have listened to a few on Spotify while working throughout the day (shoutout to both Conspiracy Theories and The History of Egypt) and I very much enjoyed them. Similar to most things in life, the issue does not lie in all podcasts but just some, or in podcasts case a shit ton.
Like I already said, I am happy people have beliefs and want to share them. Everyone should be able to share what they believe in. But holy shit, come people really need someone in their life to tell them to shut up. The bad podcasts fall into two categories in my mind, this person shouldn’t have a podcast or there are already a million of these out there. Starting with the fact that there are already a million of these out there, I think we all know what I mean. Similar to most media outlets, there are really only a finite amount of topics to be covered and eventually there will be overlap. The difference between something like TV and podcasts though is that to get a television show produced on a topic is very hard, you need writers, actors, a film study, someone to agree to broadcast it. But for podcasts all you need is half a brain and you can talk about anything out there. There are a lot of bad opinions out there (just cause I said everyone can legally and rightfully speak their minds doesn’t mean they should). If you spent 10 minutes looking for sports podcasts you would probably find around 300 that all cover the same topics and in all honesty, probably only have about 3 unique opinions between them. When there is so much noise in a space, it typically just makes it all seem bad which is a shame for the good podcasts that actually deserve a listen cause at the end of the day there is so much shit out there that unless you get a recommendation from a friend or family you are basically playing minesweeper and 98% of the board are bombs.
The other type of dogshit podcast is the person that shouldn’t have a podcast. This section can also be broken out into two subsections. One of them is the person whose opinions are actually so abysmal, that everything out of their mouth makes you wonder how that person has even made it that far in life. These are the type of people who will tell you fruit is actually something that causes cancer or left handed people are actually alien spies planning on collecting humans for an international zoo. These are the type of people who when you have to actually talk to them, you question if it is possible to have an IQ in the negatives. The other subsection are the people who simply have no business being in this form of media. The classic joke is the “bro let’s start a podcast” and it cuts to two guys sitting at a table with a phone having nothing to talk about and any time they bring up a topic it’s not discussions it’s just them saying “bet” or “definitely”. There is no shame in not having what it takes to podcast, to do it effectively you need to be able to explain items in detail while making it sound interesting and have a lot of different topics to cover while also having a decent amount of improv throughout a recording session. But as I have already mentioned, the fact that essentially anyone can do a podcast and there are so many celebrities doing it now (and most of those are also very shit for all the reasons I mentioned) that fans of these people want to do them to be just like them.
As always, I am not just a complainer but I come with solutions too. The simplest fix is this: Make it so, to do a podcast you actually need to have real equipment like a good mic and ideally some type of editing software. Then for anyone who wants to start a podcast, make them do their first 3 episodes renting the equipment to see if they are any good at it or if listening to them makes you want to shoot yourself. Assuming they suck, and believe me they will suck 99% of the time, they are forever blacklisted from buying podcast equipment. And if you think that will start a podcast equipment black market, I don’t care, that sounds like a job for those true crime people so they can get some more content to produce, and that sounds like another win for me. You are welcome, America.
