Podcast networks: Syndicating production culture

Abstract

This chapter investigates the much overlooked aspect of podcast networks in contemporary US podcast production culture. Emerging networks bring together individual podcasts and their producers under one organisation and make possible several inter-podcast practices. Based on interviews with executives of three newly formed podcast networks (The Heard, Radiotopiaand Relay FM), their production cultures are reviewed in light of commodification models for cultural products. The chapter shows how, within the cultures of the podcast networks, the formation of these conglomerations is predominantly motivated by the advantages provided in terms of overcoming gatekeeping mechanisms, exploiting niche and longtail audiences, the exchange of social capital, and discoverability. As such, these motivations highlight a tension between podcasting’s promise of disruption and the mainstream/commercial logic that reigns over podcasting production culture.