Podcasting From Across the Pond
How British podcasters are forging their own path in a US-led industry
It was only once I arrived at The British Podcast Awards back in May, that I realised I hadn’t listened to most of the nominated shows.
“Have you heard George’s podcast?” people kept saying.
I didn’t have a clue who this ‘George’ was and most certainly hadn’t heard his podcast.
Eventually, I gathered this wasn’t actually a question, rather the name of the breakout hit of the night.
Have You Heard George’s Podcast? took home five gold awards, including Best Fiction, Best Arts and Culture and Podcast of the Year. Since then, it’s been commissioned for a second season by BBC Sounds in a tent-pole deal including exclusive box-set streaming and cross-network broadcasts. Yet I — a self-identified podcast super-fan — had never even heard of his genre-bending, award-sweeping show.
The reality is, my podcast diet is made-up of overwhelmingly American shows, in part because I think of North American producers as the pioneers of the medium with whom British creators are scrambling to catch up with. Even after you ignore questions of scale (US big, UK small), it’s a widely accepted belief that Britain is behind — in terms of market development, adoption, and perhaps most damningly, craft.
But, things are changing. At pace. The barriers that created the gap are coming down and British creators are finding new ways to get shows made and reach bigger audiences. So, that leads us to the question of how far behind North America is British podcasting — and in what ways are UK producers forging their own path?
National Broadcasting: From Blocking to Bolstering
Central to any discussion of if, or why, the UK is trailing the US is the role of the BBC.
A monolithic national broadcaster, especially one that employs over 20,000 people, will always be less agile, and often more tonally conservative, than independent productions. This is something that was recognised as soon as people started asking questions about why UK were behind. Back in 2016, Nick Quah asked, “Is the BBC’s power to blame for the U.K. podcasting scene’s underdevelopment?” In 2015, Miranda Sawyer pinpointed their lazy approach, merely packaging up their existing broadcast content, and calling it a podcast, as a reason why the UK just wasn’t competing.
American creators have also commented on how the operational model of the BBC could impact the quality of the shows they produce — especially when it comes to more ambitious, journalistic efforts. “In terms of the budgeting, workflow, and culture, if you work on a story, at the BBC, you have to create a story out of it,” Brian Reed of S-Town fame told the Guardian in 2017. “But at This American Life, it’s built into our budget and culture to kill half the things we start.” This aggressive model just doesn’t fly with taxpayer money footing the bill for everything that ends up on the cutting room floor.
However, things are changing both within the BBC and with the arrival of new distribution models as the market matures — and becomes more global.
Since the launch of BBC Sounds in 2018, podcasts have become a central part of their offering rather than an afterthought used to give broadcast content a second life. The app, which allows the user to listen to all audio from across the BBC in one place, puts podcasts on parity with radio and music, demonstrating a new commitment to this medium.
Under the leadership of Jason Phipps, they have also commissioned more standalone podcasts, including innovative, experimental content like the Forest 404 which drops three complementary episodes each week: a sci-fi narrative, a non-fiction talk relating to the themes of the episode and an experimental soundscape.
Crucially, these efforts are available across podcast hosting platforms — not ring-fenced on their own app, as some previous on-demand content has been. These shows also explicitly play to podcast strengths: After is a great example of a show that takes full advantage of flexibility of podcast formats and release schedules, as well as the trademark intimacy of their storytelling. The show, in which survivor and blogger speaks to other victims of sexual abuse, is divided in two parts, “Then” and “Now.” This allows listeners to opt out of the harrowing details of assault and legal battles and skip forward to the section which focuses on advice and healing.
In terms of commissioning, there is the promise of even bigger things to come. At the start of June, BBC Sounds put a call out asking for ‘blockbuster’ podcast proposals that are thematically similar to the likes of Black Panther and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The brief suggests a budget of £150,000+ for the production.
Beyond the BBC
Alongside this more ambitious approach by the BBC, the opportunities for British content creators are expanding with more national and global companies stepping in the podcasting ring, as well as ever-improving monetisation opportunities for independent shows with companies like Acast, A Million Ads and Audioboom offering up hosting and ad services. Brits are also growing and establishing their own podcast networks Radiotopia-style — such as Radio Stakanov, Muddy Knees Media and Shoutout Network.
There are now more options than ever for British creators to find a platform for their work, and get paid for it. “A lot of independent creators are now weighing their options when they get approached by the BBC to tell their stories through Sounds,” said Lily Ames, the founder of UK Audio Network, a listserve and community for audio professionals, “And some are even considering passing on the offer in pursuit of something bigger.” Key to this is the arrival of global players like Audible, Luminary and Spotify who are acquiring and commissioning their own content. Spotify for example, have acquired established shows like Three Shots of Tequila as well as commissioning limited series such as Giant from the likes of football magazine, Mundial.
We are also seeing more collaboration between producers and podcast networks working on both sides of the Atlantic. “It was British producers who helped launch [The New York Times’] The Daily (the timezones worked in our favour there),” said Matt Hill, co-founder of the British Podcast Awards “and many BBC-trained producers have gone on to work for Maximum Fun, Gimlet and Radiotopia amongst many others.”
Production house Chalk and Blade have also confirmed they are producing at least three shows with North American partners. Solvable, a collaboration between The Rockefeller Foundation and Pushkin Industries, and Making a Killing, a Luminary exclusive also made for Pushkin, have already been released with another show with chef Tamar Adler slated for release on the paywalled platform later in the year.
Lost In Translation?
So whilst some of the factors that have constrained British podcast creators in the past are disappearing and new opportunities arising, the most serious complaint remains unaddressed: are UK podcasts just not as good as their US counterparts? One of the most common criticisms is that the qualities that make the superstar shows — your This American Life’s, Reply All’s and Serials — successful, just don’t translate.
There have been some solid contributions — from Death in Ice Valley to Case Notes — but British podcasters have yet to master the intimate, long-form, narrative style which really put podcasts on the map and, perhaps most crucially, made podcasts commercially viable. With the acquisition of Parcast by Spotify, the selling of shows like Dirty John to TV networks and the continued, pervasive success of Serial, true crime and serialised non-fiction have been central to rapid market maturity.
However, in other genres, British shows have already started to make a mark. Podcasting isn’t impeded by the same national licensing and distribution concerns as other media. As Matt Hill put it, “It’s strange to have a national boundary around a medium with no borders.” This freedom provides opportunity — already exploited by some international hits like My Dad Wrote A Porno (MDWAP) which has toured internationally and just aired an HBO special — for truly global success for British shows in other markets.
Aside from the mega-hit that is MDWAP, The Beef and Dairy Network has a sizable US following, with 48% of listeners in the US, 30% UK and 22% rest of the world. Benjamin Partridge, the show’s producer and host, credits earning a place on the US network Maximum Fun as “instrumental in making the show financially sustainable.” There have also been breakout British hits in the audio drama space — namely Wooden Overcoats and The Magnus Archives, which as of December 2018, made “$4,328 per month from 802 patrons, a sum that easily rivals even major players in US podcasting.”
The importance of talented production base we have in the UK — which is shaped heavily by the training and opportunities offered by the BBC — can’t be overlooked as we look to expand listenership at home and abroad. “I think there’s a great tradition of comedy, experimental/sound-rich production and journalistic rigour,” said Lily. This was demonstrated by the range of shows — as well as the 150% increase in entries — seen at this years British Podcast Awards. The mix of nominees showed a tantalising split between independents, including those on podcast networks, productions from established media houses, as well as the BBC, “We saw the recognition of some truly inventive and uniquely British podcasts. Namely, Have You Heard George’s Podcast?, Dear Joan and Jericha, The Receipts and Multi Story.”
With the industry still in its infancy, both in the UK and the US, there is a lot untrodden ground and space for British podcasters to go beyond competent contributions to current trends of audio craft and storytelling. By drawing on our roots in radio, strong audio drama traditions and proven exportable comedy stylings — British podcasting has a lot to offer in genres which haven’t yet been as successfully monetised, marketed and scaled.
The Bello Collective is a publication + newsletter about podcasts and the audio industry. Our goal is to bring together writers, journalists, and other voices who share a passion for the world of audio storytelling.
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