Breaking Up A No-Hitter

What constitutes a hit?

The answer might be different if you're talking about podcasts or if you're talking about radio. Maybe the two can learn from each other.

Last year, a Bloomberg article lamented the lack of a new podcast hit for years, and at Podcast Movement Evolutions in Los Angeles this week, Chartable countered that impression with its own figures, claiming hat 22% of its top 200 podcasts were launched in the past two years. Game, set, match, huh?

Not unless you define "hit" as just "successful." And that leads us to thinking about how we define "hit," in podcasting and in radio.

There's no formal benchmark to determine whether a podcast or radio show is a "hit." It's a term of art, not science. The kind of "hit" I think we're missing, what we haven't seen in podcasting since "Serial," is the kind of show that even people who don't consider themselves podcast fans are talking about, the kind of cultural event that comes up in casual conversation. "Hey, you gotta hear this." Nobody's saying that about the currently popular podcasts. They have their fans, they have loyal and, in many cases, large followings, but they haven't passed over from their fandoms to the general consciousness. Ask someone who isn't into podcasts what "Crime Junkie" or "Up First" are and you'll get blank stares. Ask anyone what "Serial" or "The Joe Rogan Experience" are and they'll know enough about it to have an opinion, even if they never actually listened to those shows. That's what a real "hit" is. And there hasn't been a podcast to cross over like that since, well. "Serial." There are indeed great successes, on the podcast scale, at least, which have debuted in the last couple of years, but I still have to explain what "Smartless" is to people who aren't deeply into, um, "Smartless." It's a hit on some level, but it's not "Serial."

Podcasting isn't the only medium looking for that kind of grand slam. Streaming video is built on that kind of thing. They're always searching for the next "Stranger Things." Streamers are so in need of hits that when "Tiger King" became huge, we subsequently got a dramatic show ABOUT the show. There hasn't been a TV show to truly permeate the culture like "Tiger King" since "Tiger King." "Inventing Anna" isn't on everyone's lips right now. And, of course, the movie industry wants "Spider Man" and "The Batman" more than it wants "CODA" or "Drive My Car," no matter how good or relatively successful the latter are. In an era when every medium is increasingly answerable to investors, and that includes podcasting and radio, moderate success isn't enough and mere profitability isn't the goal; they want smashes, grand slams, massive wins. It's all about superheroes and franchises. On that scale, no, we haven't seen anything like that on the audio side in a few years now. (Side note: I dare someone to make a movie called "A Batman" about some other guy who goes by the name "Batman." Like, Murray Batman, a retired accountant in Boca Raton. I would go see that. Come to think of it, I can probably see that any time I want at any deli in Palm Beach County. Early bird specials!)

Which brings us to radio. The difficulty for podcasting in generating hits is even harder for radio, because radio success is built on personalities, not continuing stories like, say, "Serial" or true crime shows. There are exceptions on both sides, but for the most part, radio needs stars to drive success beyond being a basic jukebox, and many hit podcasts are driven by the content first and personalities second. Radio's biggest hits were mostly driven by the hosts' personalities, even when the shows themselves fit a formula (like, say, the Morning Zoo or with political talk). And that makes it hard to come up with something that transcends the medium to become part of the zeitgeist. Who was the last radio personality to break out of the medium to be a household word? You could say "Howard" or "Rush" to a non-listener (okay, "Hannity," too, but he has TV as well) and everybody knows who you mean. We haven't seen that in a while, and while there are successful radio shows right now, there isn't a "new Stern" or "new Limbaugh" quite yet.

That's the challenge. If we're looking for a hit, something that breaks free of the constraints of the medium to become part of the common cultural language, we -- podcasting and radio alike -- have some work to do. For podcasting, it's a matter of finding a new category, a new story to tell, that catches fire. For radio, it's finding undeniable, unstoppable creative talent. For both, it's finding that show or host that makes even non-listeners pay attention. It's getting to the "you gotta hear this" moment. Moderate or even strong success is nice, even great, but we need our Spider-Man.

Maybe he's you.

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Even the biggest hit shows need material. And they can find it at All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics show prep page, where stuff to talk about on the radio or your podcast is just a click or two away. Find it by clicking here, and you can also follow the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics and find every story individually linked to the appropriate item.

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Coupla things here. First, thanks to Fred Jacobs for the kind words in his Friday blog post at the Jacobs Media site; go read it for some insights on how hard it is to make commercially successful podcasts (his column has some similar themes to this one, in the "great minds think alike" manner, though it's from a different angle. And, yeah, I started this one before I saw that one, and he had no way to know what I was writing, so there you go). Also, register here to see the All Access Audio Summit April 20-21 and my series of chats with interesting people about the future of spoken word radio, and see the agenda right here. Finally, Go 'Nova in the Elite Eight. You had to know I wouldn't let that go by without a mention.

Perry Michael Simon
Senior Vice President/Editor-in-Chief and News-Talk-Sports-Podcasting Editor
AllAccess.com
psimon@allaccess.com
Twitter @pmsimon