'We don't want to give up now': could coronavirus weaken the podcast industry?
Fearne Cotton recently interviewed Ricky Gervais for her mental healththemed podcast, Happy Place. The conversation was going well enough, until Cotton mentioned that she was recording under her duvet. Gervais remarked it must be “very comfortable” to be in bed. “It’s not at all, actually,” Cotton replied. “But hey, weird times.”
Happy Place isn’t the only podcast having to adapt to the era of physical distancing. The lockdown has given the booming podcast industry something of a jolt. Those who want to survive the pandemic (the alternative is dreaded “podfade”, the term for when podcasts peter out) are having to adjust at breakneck speed. Podcasters are recording in cars, in pillow forts, in cupboards, and stocks of microphones are faltering, even on giant stockists such as Amazon.
Meanwhile, listeners’ habits have shifted. Before the lockdown, many of us got our podcast fix while we were travelling to work. Commutes have been all but wiped out, replaced for many with a quick stagger from bed to chair, and so spikes in morning listening have disappeared. The kinds of podcasts we crave has also changed: many listeners have lost their appetite for true crime, possibly because everything already feels so gloomy.
Shows that derived their charm from hosts riffing off one another in a studio are having to rethink their formats. There are technological limitations, too. When podcasts first emerged in the mid-00s, they were recorded in the main by nerds using basic equipment. Now, many blockbusters series are being cobbled together in bedrooms, kitchens and attics, marking a return of sorts to podcasting’s earthy origins.
It’s a necessary shift, but it does have its challenges. Andrew Hunter Murray, co-host of the QI-adjacent trivia show No Such Thing As a Fish, admits it is harder to be funny on a podcast recorded via Zoom. “Jokes take a fraction longer,” he laments. However, the team remain committed to making it work. “Because we’ve been doing it for six years, we do know how to pass the ball between us,” he says. “So we feel quite fortunate. And because we’ve never missed a week, we don’t want to give up now.”
Shows about Covid-19 have unsurprisingly mushroomed in recent weeks. According to the podcast company Acast, it hosted more than 1,400 episodes about the virus between the end of January and the end of March. Some podcasts are specifically about the pandemic, such as the BBC’s Coronavirus Newscast. Others are existing science, health and politics shows that are focusing their energies on the current situation.
But plenty of podcasts are deliberately steering away from coronavirus. “We’ve stayed pretty far from any major discussion of the virus,” says Hunter Murray. “We want to preserve the podcast as a space where you can go to listen to four dorks talk about stuff they’ve found out.”
While news podcasts are doing well, comedy shows are thriving, too, according to Acast, which registered a 24% rise in their popularity last month. It seems listeners sequestered at home are turning to podcasts to fill social deficits in their lives. After all, one of the pleasures of the medium has always been its intimacy; listening can feel like sitting in on a conversation between friends. Podcasters are being flooded with messages from fans who are grateful that the pandemic hasn’t stoppered the flow of reassuring chatter. And many podcasters themselves feel that their shows are becoming something of a lifeline.
Stevie Martin, co-host of Nobody Panic, a “guidebook to being a fully functioning adult without screaming all the time”, tells me that recording her weekly advice podcast has been a way of coping with the stress of the pandemic. “I know people who have passed away from coronavirus,” she says. “The podcast has definitely helped keep me going.” Martin and her fellow presenter Tessa Coates have had to stop themselves from droning on about how ecstatic they are to be talking to one another after days of minimal socialising. They’ve also had to invest in better equipment, following a hairy episode in which Coates recorded herself in an echoey stairwell.
The constraints of remote podcasting are forcing shows to find new ways of engaging with their listeners. Nobody Panic hosted its first virtual pub quiz last month. Other podcasts are braving new platforms, particularly Instagram, Twitch, Facebook and YouTube.
For some shows, though, the pandemic has proved disastrous. I polled members of a popular podcasters’ support group on Facebook to find out how they were faring. One hundred and twenty-six respondents reported that their listening figures had fallen since the lockdown, 86 said they were more or less the same, while 81 claimed their podcast was being listened to more. Analysis by the podcast data company Podtrac suggests that after a dip in listeners during early weeks of the lockdown, figures are now stabilising.
While companies such as Spotify and Acast insist that listener figures are growing, many shows are simply struggling to sustain interest and momentum. Parenting podcasts are trickier to schedule in, now that people’s kids are around all the time. And sports podcasts seem to be particularly suffering.
Chris Miller co-hosts the niche but beloved Tottenham Hotspur show the Extra Inch. “Before the lockdown, the podcast was reliant on analysing Spurs matches,” he says. With football cancelled, the podcast has lost half its monthly downloads. Yet Miller and his co-hosts are still churning out episodes, discussing everything from players’ season performances to the club’s reaction to the pandemic. “Spurs tried to do the dirty on lower paid staff,” Miller explains. “We vehemently disagreed with that and it got quite political.”
Meanwhile, lockdown seems to have nudged many aspiring podcasters into finally launching their own shows, not to everyone’s delight. A tweet by the Derry Girls actor Nicola Coughlan last month offered fair warning. “I know this time of self-isolation is hard and scary for people,” Coughlan wrote, “but however bad you are feeling, please, please don’t consider starting your own podcast.”
In the final week of March, Acast reported a record number of episodes released. “People are publishing content more regularly,” confirms Ross Adams, CEO of Acast. “And more people are trying out podcasting – we’ve seen a release of new shows by 50% in the last month.” Underworked celebrities, predictably, have thrown themselves on to the bandwagon: Scrubs stars Zach Braff and Donald Faison are reliving the TV show with a popular new weekly podcast, Fake Doctors, Real Friends.
But problems are massing on the horizon. Podcasts are something of a bellwether for the economy – when the going’s good, companies have more money to spend on adverts. With a possible depression looming, podcasts that depend on sponsorship could have a choppy time. Yet many podcasts have already turned to their own listeners for financial support, via platforms such as Patreon. If advertising crashes, it seems likely that more podcasts will explore subscription models to survive.
For some, the pandemic has simply put plans on hold. The historian Greg Jenner has decided to pause the production of his BBC podcast, You’re Dead to Me, until they are able to return to a studio. “We’re really proud of it and didn’t want to make it if it wasn’t going to be as good,” he tells me. Now Jenner is making an educational podcast from home.
Even so, there is room for optimism. The bond between shows and listeners
seems to have strengthened. Podcasters may not be key workers, but they