Why bother with podcasts if nobody is listening?

As critics snipe at the popularity of podcasting, podcaster James Cary explores the medium and how we should listen to them.

James Cary

James Cary is a writer of situation comedy for BBC TV (Miranda, Bluestone 42) and Radio (Think the Unthinkable, Hut 33).

Two people sit cross-legged at a low table on which two microphones stand. One press a key on a laptop on the floor.

Photo by Kate Oseen on Unsplash.

During the pandemic, an Australian comedy show, At Home Alone Together on ABC, made a sketch that was widely shared on the internet, especially among podcasters. For those wondering what to do with their time, they had one clear, simple message given with typical Australian honesty: Do not start a f***ing podcast.

I’ve encountered hostility to the idea of podcasts since I started listening to them fifteen years ago, when the main options were This American Life and Kermode and Mayo talking about movies. Both were podcast versions of existing excellent radio programmes.

With every passing year, podcasts have become more popular, a huge boost coming in 2014 with the Serial podcast, which was a spin-off This American Life. People with iPhones were realising what the purple icon was, and they weren’t afraid to use it.

Attention a zero-sum game. If you’re listening to something, you’re not listening to something else. Nobody wants their time wasted.

Many resisted. They didn’t really understand what podcasts were, where they came from, how to find them and what made them different from radio programmes. Merely mentioning podcasts would make people either roll their eyes, or far worse, causing what I would call “Podcast Derangement Syndrome”. We see that, albeit humorously, in the ABC sketch, urging people not to start a podcast.

It’s a fair point. Don’t start a podcast out of boredom. It won’t last more than a few episodes (that’s called ‘podfading’), it won’t be any good and no one will listen as it’s not offering anything substantial or insightful.

We live in an attention economy. Attention a zero-sum game. If you’re listening to something, you’re not listening to something else. Nobody wants their time wasted. Like a book proposal or an article, you need a clear offer to your listener or reader.

For example, my own Sitcom Geeks podcast - which ended this month after 222 episodes over eight years – was all about helping people write better sitcom scripts. Yes, that’s a niche interest, but tens of thousands of people want to write sitcoms.

Many podcasters never identify what they’re offering. They make the mistake of the first crop of bloggers twenty years ago, who started hammering out their error-strewn opinions on everything from politics to dieting. Most of these blogs were read by almost no one, and even the more popular ones didn’t have large numbers. Every medium is the same. Most books don’t sell more than a few dozen copies, particularly self-published ones. Most shows at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe will have an audience in the single digits.

Podcasting is the same. My other podcast, Cooper and Cary Have Words, deals in lightly comic, theological conversation. Now on Episode 157, we have a fairly devoted listenership, but it’s small. I mention it not because I’m a tiresome podcaster who is forever promoting their podcast. Okay, it’s partly that. But I’m going to do the one thing podcasters never do, which is talk about how many people actually listen. And the numbers here might surprise you.

Each episode of Cooper and Cary Have Words is usually downloaded by about 1,100 people within a week of dropping, and then another 1,100 within 90 days. So that 2,200 listeners, creeping up another few hundred over the following month. That’s not many, is it? Even late-night shows on BBC local radio playing outré jazz get more listeners by a factor of ten.

Here’s the next surprise: these figures put Cooper and Cary Have Words into the top 5% of all podcasts in terms of listeners. The 4,500 downloads in the first seven days would put us in the top 1% which again, seems low. The two Seen & Unseen podcasts, Re-enchanting and Seen & Unseen Aloud, are doing well but everyone is dwarfed by the Joe Rogan Experience, which, according to Time Magazine, is experienced by 11 million people.

But here’s the big statistic to keep in mind: 50% of podcast episodes get fewer than 30 downloads in the first week.

This would give some justification, then, for a recent article in The Spectator by Sam Kriss who has the most chronic case of Podcast Derangement Syndrome I’ve encountered for a while. He begins by making curious comments about how podcasts are fake, including real ones, but his point is this: “nobody actually listens to any of them.”

I understand the rage against a phenomenon. The media often confects a craze. When everyone was talking about Game of Thrones, it was fair to point out that this premium show on pay-TV was being watched by a truly tiny number of people. It’s just some of those people were people like TV critics for The Spectator or the BBC.

Kriss then rather undermines his claim that no-one listens by saying “Sometimes people ask me which podcasts I listen to, and when I reply that these days I don’t really listen to any they react as if I’d said I don’t eat food or breathe air.” So, are those people lying about listening to podcasts? The Spectator has several podcasts. Are they a waste of time and money?

“Podcasts are also, objectively, crap. I don’t say this lightly.” I think you do, Sam, but let’s take it at face value. The charge that many podcasts are acts of inane vanity is undoubtedly fair. Many others are well-meaning, but poorly recorded and unfocussed.

This isn’t the 1930s when families might huddle around the wireless and give the BBC their undivided attention.

But let us also remember that an awful lot of broadcast radio is highly disposable, being either inane links between songs on commercial radio, or punditry for the sake of it on talk radio, whether it’s BBC Radio 4 or TalkSport.

There are some good podcasts, thought. What about them, Kriss? He says they’re not worth listening to unless you give them your undivided attention, explaining that if you’re listening to a podcast while doing something else, you’re not really taking in the content. This is not educating yourself, but merely acquiring an illusion of knowledge.

But surely all audio works the same way? We’re listening to the radio or podcasts while we’re cooking, washing up or driving. This isn’t the 1930s when families might huddle around the wireless and give the BBC their undivided attention.

Then comes a sentence which is revealing. Kriss has just told us that podcasts aren’t real, we don’t listen to podcasts anyway, and that we’re lying about it and when we do listen, we’re not learning anything when we do. We’re all idiots. He then writes,

“The people who make podcasts usually have a very dim view of their public.”

Oh, Sam. Thou dost project too much, methinks.

We all like a rant. And we often like reading polemical pieces. We love a Clarkson, a Cowell and a Boycott sounding off. But I wonder if Sam Kriss, an established writer for a well-regarded publication has succumbed to the elitist mindset. It is tempting to disparage the voices of those from the outside who wish to speak, whether or not anyone wishes to listen. Thanks to smartphones and RSS feeds, they can, just as the blogs did two decades ago.

The medium is new but the lesson is old. To whom do we listen? If you look at the life of Jesus it is striking how often he listened to the voices of the excluded, even when his own disciples and henchmen tried to bundle the blind and the embarrassing out of the way. Moreover, those that sought to control the flow of information were, to use theological jargon, ‘the baddies’. We live in age where all kinds of voices can be heard. The question is whether we wish to listen.

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Justice

9 September 2024

4 min read

Grenfell – what should happen now?

Six urgent priorities that should follow the Inquiry

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

A tube train runs on a raised track, in the distance is a tower block wrapped in white material with a green heart on it.

I remember standing at the base of Grenfell Tower on the morning of the 14th June 2017, talking with firefighters, gathering clergy to act as emergency volunteers, praying with evacuees from the surrounding blocks, as the building still smouldered. At the time the question on everyone’s lips was: how could something like this happen in sophisticated twenty-first century Britain?

Now we know.

In one sense the Public Inquiry into the Grenfell tower fire told us nothing new. Few people who have followed the Inquiry over the last six years will have been surprised by its conclusions. What is new is to see the dreadful catalogue of ‘incompetence dishonesty and greed’ laid out in excoriating detail for all to see.

So what should happen now? At least six things must be on the agenda:

Combustible cladding on remaining buildings around the country should be removed as soon as possible. Government estimates suggest there are 4,600 buildings around the country with unsafe cladding. Less than one third of them have had their remediation completed, and work is yet to start on half of them. And, astonishing as it may sound, this is now more than seven years after Grenfell. Cladding that is illegal on new buildings can still remain on existing ones. Developers and owners who are responsible for this state of affairs should be made to pay for the remediation rather than passing those costs on to leaseholders, or delaying remediation for technical and bureaucratic reasons. Institutional resistance to this, as outlined recently by Michael Gove, someone who from my dealing with him on Grenfell, was one of the better politicians to deal with this issue, has to be overcome with urgency.
Prosecution of those who have been identified in the inquiry as bearing responsibility for the fire should also be brought as soon as possible. The police investigation suggests that it will be a number of years before court cases take place. The victims of this tragedy have already had to wait seven long years and now face the prospect of another three or even more years until justice is served. That is too long.
Those named and shamed in the report should examine their own hearts. Some remorse and apology has been evident from some, but not enough. Many still deny responsibility despite seven years of evidence-gathering. This is not a matter of revenge, but an indispensable step towards justice for everyone. Those named have presumably carried a burden of guilt over these past years. The Christian doctrine of repentance, confession and absolution tells us that there is a relief in finally admitting culpability, bearing the penalty, and finally, once all this has happened, receiving a measure of absolution.

We might look back on Grenfell as a turning point in our life together: a fitting memorial for those who tragically died on that terrible night.

The companies involved often have big pockets and the bereaved and survivors are ordinary people without the resources to pay expensive legal fees. The government should set aside a sum of money to enable victims, if they wish, to bring a civil case against those accused in the report. Arguably this should have happened many years before to speed up the process of justice.
A wider debate needs to take place in our society as to how we place love for neighbour at the heart of national life. A libertarian individualism which focusses on personal fulfilment and a view of freedom as doing what we like as long as we don’t harm others, rather than freedom to do the good has led us to this point. What would it mean in company law, for example, for each business or institution to have to explain how it is seeking the genuine welfare of its staff, clients and customers, not as an add on in their ESG agenda, but as the primary purpose of the organisation?
We need a spiritual renewal. Toleration rather than persecution of the neighbour was a good legacy of the Enlightenment, but it is not enough to build a well-functioning society. We are commanded not just to tolerate our neighbours but to love them. And this only be justified if my neighbour has ultimate transcendent value. The new atheism was an act of cultural vandalism, undermining faith in God, an objective basis for each human life, and having nothing to replace it with. As Nick Cave recently put it: “People need meaning. And secular society has not come up with the goods.” This is why religious traditions including Christianity have tended to link love for God to love for neighbour. What that spiritual renewal looks like is hard to tell, and yet we have perhaps seen a stirring of it in recent times.

If something approaching those six things happened, then we might look back on Grenfell as a turning point in our life together: a fitting memorial for those who tragically died on that terrible night.