Not too long ago, the word "radio" meant something very particular: The turn of a knob to music stations cycling through the latest hits, or a Howard Stern/Rush Limbaugh-type spouting off, or an NPR member station, staidly delivering the news interspersed with occasional oddities like the musings of a horse born to be wind but trapped in his stable.
That all changed 10 years ago with the launch of Serial, which hit #1 on the iTunes charts even before it launched and stayed there for months. Serial was a force whose effects are still being felt in both our culture in general and the audio industry in particular, spawning a thousand memes, about as many podcasts, and at least one TV show.
Many true crime-oriented media companies either sprang up in the wake of Serial or, for those that already existed, looked in the mirror one day and found they were in fact the geese laying the proverbial golden eggs. But traditional media companies, and particularly public radio stations, wanted in on the action too.
True crime as a genre is very opportunistic when it comes to new media forms, leveraging its potential to capture audiences across different platforms, ensuring its growth and evolution.
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