Podcasting’s Pivot to VIDEO

Thanks to the NYC Radio listserv for posting a much needed debate last week following this article from The Guardian about Podcasting's pivot to video, which has now being given its own analysis, much as the think-pieces media once gave to the audio first format in the earlier days of audio-on-demand.

Pivoting to video has essentially turned much of everything into "content" without thought about the intent and constraints of the audio and radio medium.

Most of the focus is on getting it done and slapped-up to beat the algorithm and keep "top of mind," versus taking care with production. It's about domination and not diversity.

It's about getting traction for a 30 second clip from a longer interview with a click-bait headline versus earning a listener who will sit and hear you out like the radio hosts and DJs who could be a good hang for an hour or so.

And video has certainly made my last decade (wow) working in the same field (a huge WOW, since I've jumped jobs across so many disciplines) harder to sustain as last year was the hardest for myself and nearly most of us in the space being displaced by AI. Video means pricing my small business out of producing anything with visuals and lighting and cameras, although I have that stuff, and having other people on staff means less one-person production skilled editing shops that seldom outsource work because there is no path to scale-up.

The production skillsets are entirely different with visual thinking and auditory thinking audio is in service of narrative not the other way around.

Working in audio has been more a labor of love than making a living—I swear I didn't set out to be another starving artist—yet my ascetism has made me think that the pivot to video is another cynical way for the hardware industry to be a "picks and shovel" business selling equipment to us creators. Selling us another microphone or plugin we don't need and have to invest in learning to use, when we should be focusing on our specific crafts.

I mean, bad analogy here, but did Miles have to learn the drums too as a trumpet player?

I've made due with a very limited cost of operation in my short 5 year run as an actual business that sprouted from a podcast, but licenses, software, plugins, ongoing training, web domains for such little revenue means the reason the podcast medium became so loved is because there was space for OUR VOICES not the well-moneyed, elite, and celebrities (who by the way, last time I checked, HAVE ACCESS to larger platforms than we do).

And while I done some production for these folks, I don't sense the longer term commitment to the medium aside from people like Maron—who wisely got out of the game last year—aside from trying to get cast in their next role or land funding for their next project.

I think audio first. I usually say "I hear you" versus "I see you."

I'm not sure if that is because my glasses prescription made me be audio first or if it is ingrained into how I process the world, audio-visual thinking, not visual-audio thinking.

In fact, I'm one of those people that replay snippets of conversations in my head years later (for better or worse with a history of lifelong, self-critical inner monologues of past actions) which is while I'm better suited to editing audio than video, as the visual takes on other factors and dimensions, and the visual and audio mediums haver never crossed over in my professional work.

And although over the years I paint on canvas, draw, and shoot photography, I will never consider myself an artist first. My BS is just not that good and I would never survive my first "crit" if I were ever brave enough to attend formal art school.

While the expense of making video productions has dropped, I respect the craft of visual storytellers too much to think that podcasts have any business entering their sacred space of storytelling. And I hope that visual craftspeople consider audio in a similar way.

As Nick Messitte commented on the listserv thread, while perhaps raining on another optimists' parade, "that the pivot to video is a bid to sidestep unions, and spend less money for television talk shows...Call a TV show a podcast, and you no longer have to deal with unions."

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/dec/27/podcasts-rush-to-video-turning-them-into-dreadful-listens