A new report from the Reuters Institute shows the rapidly changing nature of news podcasts, with publishers pivoting to video as a response to audience demand and new platform features.
The report, based on a mixture of audience research and interviews with media managers, suggests this is an uneven shift, with some publishers creating multimodal versions of all their shows and others converting only chat formats to video and keeping narrative shows as audio-only productions.
Qualitative research shows that video podcasting audiences mostly overlap with audio ones, suggesting the same people access them in different contexts. But video is also reaching new audiences with different expectations, and this creates dilemmas for publishers in terms of distribution and monetisation.
While big titles (New York Times, The Economist and Die Zeit) are launching audio-only subscriptions, podcast-focused companies such as Chora Media and Goalhanger are adopting a “flywheel” approach, making money with events, merchandise, and bonus content to overcome resistance to pay.
These are some of the findings from The Changing shape and new economics of news podcasting, a report authored by Nic Newman, published by the Reuters Institute.
The report provides a valuable snapshot at a momentous time for the news industry, with audio podcasts being transformed into video ones, personality-driven chat shows squeezing out more traditional narrative series, and business models changing, with some shows going behind paywalls. It explores how audiences feel about these changes and how publishers are responding to them.
The report draws on qualitative audience research conducted in the U.S., the U.K. and Norway. It is also based on interviews with leading news publishers such as the New York Times, the Guardian, The Economist, Schibsted, Bonnier and Die Zeit, as well as podcast-first companies Goalhanger and Chora Media.
The report is available for download here.
