Amazon dismantled Wondery, removing a major brand from the 2010s podcast boom. Taylor Swift's appearance on Travis Kelce's New Heights and the couple's engagement drove mainstream attention and boosted podcast engagement. Pineapple Street's closure, Gimlet Media's shutdown, and 99% Invisible's acquisition mark a broader retreat of ambitious narrative audio-only shows. Video-first talk formats have surged, making podcasting resemble daytime radio or television. Narrative podcasts still exist but largely as rarities, luxury projects by the privileged, or labor-of-love efforts by committed independents. Celebrity-driven content continues to prop up the content business.
Anyway, with the smoke of Pineapple Street's June closure still polluting the air, stories published in the wake of the Wondery news were mostly funereal (" Who Killed the Narrative Podcast?," " Podcasting's Serial Era Ends as Video Takes Over"). Though, really, podcasting has been living in this particular post-apocalypse for a while. It's hard to dispute that ambitious narrative audio-only shows, once the center of the medium, have been
been in retreat since Spotify's closure of Gimlet Media in 2023, if not since SiriusXM's acquisition of 99% Invisible in 2021. In their place, video-first talk formats have triumphed, with podcasting now principally looking more like daytime radio or, for that matter, television. Narrative podcasts are still being made, of course; the tales of all those dead bodies have to go somewhere. But ambitious ones have become rarities, much like long
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