Video thrilled the audio stars

Building on strong audio podcast connections with audiences, more and more video is being created by our industry.

by Rob Corbidge

Published: 15:24, 21 May 2026

Niche by slot, cranny by nook, publishers are once again producing an increasing amount of video content. We've been here before for a brief period, maybe 15 years back or more, when video was seen as analogous to broadcasting by some news organisations who then found out it wasn't. Yet the current surge in production is notable, if cautious, and it's developing from a more established base, being that of audio podcasts.

This incremental development promises a much greater chance of success than the original "websites becoming broadcasters" effort. As we've stated, caution is the name of the game, and of course caution in this context means an act taken with greater consideration. That consideration comes from the very success many publishers have enjoyed using a pure audio format for some content, and while video is tempting, it brings its own complications.

It might be useful at this point to try and describe such content. Presently, we use the word "podcast" to describe almost any discrete piece of content whether in audio or video format, yet the word also makes no discernment between a single straight-to-camera piece, a head-to-head or a multi-guest, and/or multi-presenter format, or any other variation of the possibilities you care to formulate. It's all rather inexact, especially when you're try to categorise what works and what doesn't and I would anticipate that terminology changing somewhat in the next few years.

That said, it's what we're saddled with, and so we'll ride with the word "podcasts".

Usefully, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism produced a report this month, The changing shape and new economics of news podcasting, which uses some good, thorough, research drawn from a multi-country user panel. Speaking personally, there's a certain caveat I bear in mind with this report, which is that it seems very referenced against the boardroom worldview of the very established media, and less insightful of what the challenger and start-up media brands are doing, which is a bit unhelpful when it comes to podcasts, where insurgent media thrives. The UK's Goalhanger podcast production giant is of course mentioned because to not do so would be like forgetting Ronaldo in a report on football, and the broad user experiences and conclusions drawn are of course valid - so, to use a podcast term, without further ado, let's get into it. 

The research breaks down podcasts, news podcasts particularly, into three different categories:

• Daily news podcasts -  Briefing and explanation 
• Conversational podcasts -  Accessible current affairs 
• Documentary style podcasts -  Narrative, investigative 

We can all recognise these types, yet even here, the lines are blurred so easily, particularly between the first two. The last type was of course the one that businesses such as Spotify put so much money behind a few years back, only to cease funding the production of such content quite quickly. Such efforts have their place, but they can be tricky to insert into a normal content flow.

Instead of discussing the merits of production formats, I'd like to focus in on a particular line in the Reuters report, when discussing the specialist podcast production companies Goalhanger and Chora:  "What unites both is a growing recognition that value lies less in the individual piece of content and more in the relationship it creates with audiences."

Being a heavy consumer of both video and audio podcasts and looking at this from a news organisation perspective, and also having some awareness of the video failures of the past, the clearest thing to me is that news video has often suffered from its newspaper/website content posture.

Put in the simplest way, that involves talking at people rather than to them.

A simple sentence, but a very complex idea, and one that, like many things in the world of content, you can see how it works only when you see it being done. You can't bottle authenticity.

Yet such specialist podcast creation outfits concentrate on their talent - as do successful individual creators, by default. By being centred on the person or people who make the content relatable, this then builds a relationship with the audience, as what is termed a "parasocial" bond develops. The audience broadly trusts the person telling them the thing. This clearly is achievable for news outfits too, if the requisite amount of humble thinking is applied towards those whose trust you are trying to garner.

In some ways, it's a return to the past, or rather a turn of the wheel. Back in the days of newspaper dominance, readers would understand the character of a particular publication, as the newspaper's content defined that character, with editorial idiosyncrasies and quirks being part of that character. The internet, or at least the current iteration of it, has seen us all become blander, as we compete in less well-defined markets, and negate the distinctiveness of our content  to order to feed the SEO beast.

Seems to me that the podcast game in general - meaning both audio and video - is the opposite of that, being more in the vein of the past, and requires a levelness with the audience that provides authenticity, making fertile ground for the development of parasocial relationships.

There's also another truth in the idea that "every vertical has a different playbook" for podcasts. It's true of other content, so it's again true here. You don't want your "advice for new parents" vlog to come off the same as your "adventure skiing gear" one, although the former is evidently the more testing experience. Yet, as to what tone or style actually works, that requires experimentation in any sector. That, and don't appear too slick. Production values are good but what people are saying matters more.

The beauty of the current podcast landscape is that, for publishers, anything is possible. Whether any of those possibilities finds success is another question, but within the technical boundaries of what can be done, and can be done without vast budgets, then the content part is all to play for. This situation requires organisational flexibility, and favours those who can try many ideas at low cost and are prepared to both sometimes evolve and sometimes abandon, without compromising their brand.