What Does Adaptation Mean for the Podcast Industry?

Why so many podcasts are being turned into movies, books, and TV shows, and how these transformations impact fans and creators

I have a confession: I have tried SO HARD to get into Welcome to Night Vale. My friends love it, it’s an OG of the modern audio drama era, and so I have tried. I have tried a lot — listening from the beginning, listening to episodes most liked by others I know. I could hear that it was a well-made show with a richly complex world and characters, but it just wasn’t the right thing for my ears.

Then, when I saw the most recent Welcome to Night Vale novel, It Devours, on the library shelf, I decided to give this other version of the story a chance–and I, dare I say, devoured it. I found I could engage with and understand the world of Night Vale better in this different form: (unsurprisingly) the writing that springs from this well-developed universe formed by talented creators is excellent, and in print, the humor is paced perfectly for me.

Welcome to Night Vale isn’t the only media-transposed story that started in podcastlandia and expanded beyond. The Bright Sessions’s novel adaptations are in the works, HBO has been tapping into the comedian/commentary podcasters the likes of 2 Dope Queens, Pod Save America, and My Dad Wrote a Porno, and while Gimlet Media’s first foray into optioning the first season of Startup quickly sunsetted as the ABC Family show, Alex, Inc., it was only a momentary stumble as they formalized Gimlet Pictures, bringing their podcast intellectual property turned TV/movie pipeline in-house.

The rise of podcast adaptations signals that podcasts are ready for prime time, ready for a broader world that is only now starting to explore the wealth of creativity possible in audio form. The quickly forming world of podcast adaptations establishes another rung for podcasters aspiring to new levels of professional craftpersonship and a clearer pathway toward financial sustainability for podcasters everywhere.

Part of the success of podcasts is as a testing ground for new ideas. By extension, podcasts can also demonstrate ripe intellectual property, based on the audience that’s shown up for the work already. Your podcast is a hit? Great! To a marketing team, knowing there’s a ready audience is a promising first step to gauging the public’s acceptance of these new ideas: if an audience likes it enough to listen to it, maybe they’ll watch it, or read it, too? One could look at all the previously unheard narratives, new approaches to fiction and nonfiction storytelling, deeply developed characters, rich investigative work, and intensive background research present in podcasts, and think, “This is distilled creativity! We should do as much with this as possible. #sixseasonsandamovie”

But first there is something to contend with: the engaged (and sometimes enraged) podcast fan base, the people who loved it first.

Fans of all media fear adaptation. There’s a small nagging feeling either tucked in the back of our minds or publicly shared on social media, a whisper of “this thing I like will be ruined when it crosses into TV/podcast/movie/book/live musical production.” Consider the increasingly prevalent example of DC and Marvel movies and TV shows: are long-time comic book fans irked by these creations, or do they love them? Perhaps a little bit of both.

There’s another tension, too, between the most loyal fans and the new audiences. This, however, is a wonderful sort of dilemma. The diehard fans are part of what encourages a creative project along through its fits, starts, and rises. Their support over time means more and more fans can begin to appreciate something that is now more established and developed — a late-blooming relationship that can only be made possible by early adopters. Is it better to address those who loved it first, or those whose love took longer? Both are valid, and that’s a reason why adaptations are a tense area of creative exploration.

Not all things should be adapted into all forms, nor should success be defined by the complete pervasiveness of a single story across all entertainment outlets. A story might be best suited to one particular format or another, and in the end, it is the humans who create, and then adapt, a podcast that will make or break its success — both in the original medium and in its adaptations. So with this in mind, consider this: Why are so many podcast creators receiving so many adaptation opportunities as a result of making their shows?

First, the barrier to entry for making a podcast is relatively low compared to other forms of media. Podcasting is an endeavor that can be done solo, and at a rather low cost, and the publishing process is fully entwined with the creator. If you get over your mental hurdles of starting a new thing, the possibilities of making are limited primarily by your time, talent, and imagination.

A lower barrier to entry means more voices that are usually disenfranchised by the existing systems can flourish, and to me, this is a big part of why podcasts will continue to be snapped up for cross-media adaptations. The talented women, people of color, non-English speaking, etc. folks producing awesome things are demonstrating, at a low cost to the industry, that there is a measurable hunger for content that appeals to more audiences than traditional media is currently serving — and there’s money there, too. And while the mechanisms by which podcasts are discovered, technologically and humanly, vary in quality and selection (that’s a discussion for another day) and it’s a real challenge for small/independent shows to be found and heard, it’s also true that anyone can make anything and it could be heard by anyone — and that is a benefit for creators.

Second, it takes a high level of commitment to make a podcast. If someone can show creative consistency, that is something to buy into. In the startup world, the parallel is that you don’t invest in a specific business/business idea, you invest in the people behind it because you know they are going to be what weathers and adjusts to the landscape as it changes. Concepts are fleeting, and people are the driving force of new and different work in the long run. (What this means for a podcaster who is managing a show, and a visual adaptation of their work, and a novel and and and and, requires a different conversation about what we can realistically expect from the people whose work we love.)

Now that we’re thinking about why investing in podcast creators is a smart move, we must also ponder what it means for podcast creators to end up with more opportunities as a result of making their show. Adaptations, in this context, funnel an influx of money toward a previously low-paying creation, money that ultimately sustains that creator and hopefully enable future creative projects as well. Not to get too Pollyanna-ish here, but this is important: when a podcaster has their show costs and living expenses covered, that provides creative freedom for them to pursue the next thing without the same kind of financial constraints dictating their time or work. In that scenario, a person who makes creative work can fully support themselves by what drives them. Their next project might be another podcast, or a film, or a graphic novel…whatever the medium, hopping on the adaptation train means finding new ways to expand their creativity.

There’s a lot in store for a podcaster expanding beyond their RSS feed, including rapid and rampant experimentation, constant gauging of audience interest, and building and sustaining a community while building and sustaining themselves as creators. And for everyone in between: having more low-cost, globally accessible forms of creative expression–currently represented by podcasts, which are able to ride this wave for longer because of the increased interest in the audio medium as a whole–is better for the world of entertainment at large.

This piece was inspired by a conversation with Wil Williams, a podcast critic and reviewer who writes the excellent Wil Williams Reviews newsletter. Subscribe, and don’t forget to hit reply on their messages.

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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