WHAT PODCASTS DID NEXT
These aren’t your nanna’s radio serials
The popular medium just keeps getting better and better.
Podcasts are expanding and evolving – they’re learning how to capture our fickle attention spans without the special effects and big budgets of cult TV shows and blockbuster movies. More than 70 per cent of Australians are familiar with the word podcast, and in the past month, around 17 per cent of us will have listened to one. For a medium that really only took off in 2014, these numbers are compelling.
In what is perhaps the biggest leap forward for the steadily growing world of audio, in the coming year we’ll see a greater overlap between podcasts and Hollywood. Already, Gimlet Media’s hit Startup has been adapted into TV sitcom Alex, Inc, starring and directed by Scrubs alum Zach Braff. Spooky, supernatural podcast Lore has also made the jump to TV (with stellar approval ratings, no less). Offscreen, fiction podcasts are starting to draw big names. Homecoming, for example, is a conspiracy thriller starring Catherine Keener, David Schwimmer and Oscar Isaac, which now has two seasons under its belt and has been eyed for TV adaptation. “If 2017 was the year Hollywood was awakened to leverage podcast formats, then 2018 is the year podcasts will benefit from the intellectual property exchange,” says Corey Layton from Whooshkaa, an Australian podcast hosting platform.
Hinting at a new and exciting medium for the lucrative world of comics, Wolverine: The Long Night is coming soon from Marvel. It’s a 10-episode podcast serial starring the charismatic bad-boy of mutants, Wolverine (voiced by The Hobbit star Richard Armitage). “Expect to see more blockbuster franchises like Wolverine diving into the podcast pool with a wave of scripted fiction, building hype in the lead-up to a film’s release,” says Layton. In the same way we hungrily devoured podcasts dedicated to cult shows like Game Of Thrones, Westworld and Stranger Things, the new wave of podcasts will pull us even further into the fictional worlds we love to watch on-screen. “We’ll see TV drama subplot storylines released, interlinking with weekly air dates,” Layton adds.
Until now, the shortfall of the medium has been the inability for users to deep-dive into the abyss of episodes available – simply because the technology can’t keep up with the proliferation of content. But last December, Apple purchased Pop Up Archive – a start-up that built a search function tool for podcasts – hinting that the tech giant might be looking to create something similar for itself.
Voice-to-text transcription technology is improving, too, so in the not-too-distant future, you’ll be able to search based on your mood, interests and needs, instead of just subscribing to that show your work wife told you about. And the best part? There’s never been a better time for the uninitiated to get amongst it. The craft is young, the creators are daring and the possibilities are endless (and until someone starts a podcast where Tom Hardy recaps Rupaul’s Drag Race, we haven’t reached the pinnacle yet).