Podcasting in a Pandemic
In December 2019, Island Crime’s Laura Palmer spoke with a man whose daughter was missing. They met at his home for an interview—something that would be impossible just a few months later.
The interviewee lived alone and his wife had recently died. The first thing Palmer noticed was that he had tidied for her arrival—she could smell the cleaning products. His house was decorated for Christmas, although he lived alone. “It’s just this totally tragic scene,” Palmer says. “I would not be able to describe his world in that way if I wasn’t there.”
Capturing moments like this is just one of the things that has been missing from podcasting since the spring of 2020.
COVID has changed how many things run, including podcasts. For podcast hosts and producers, this has meant that distanced-recordings, Zoom interviews, the complete revamping of shows, and the creation of home studios have become commonplace.
Listeners have also had to attune their ears to the new normal of stilted conversations, dodgy internet connections, and non-studio recordings. On the other hand, podcasters have had to reimagine their entire production cycles. With these changes to audio storytelling having been around for over a year, it makes you wonder if any of the changes made during the pandemic have long term staying power.
How much of podcasting will be forever changed and how much will zip back to normal as soon as possible?
To better understand podcasts during and after COVID, I spoke to podcasters across Canada, from hosts of CBC shows to independent producers. Their experiences were as wide ranging as the genres of show they make, but they all agreed on one thing: the last 15 months have been an adjustment.
The first few months of the pandemic saw a shifting listenership. Certain types of podcasts, like news, saw a rise in listeners; others, like true crime or sports, saw a downturn.
Michael Mongiardi, co-founder and chair of Toronto-based collective, The Sonar Network, says shows under his umbrella were affected at the beginning of the pandemic. “We almost immediately saw a bit of a downtick in downloads last March.”
Steve Pratt, co-founder of Pacific Content, also noticed this dip, but says numbers have recovered and even exceeded where they were pre-pandemic. Pratt says listening patterns have also changed. “The morning and afternoon spikes have been replaced by a consistent, all throughout the day listening.”
Meanwhile, Sam Fenn, senior producer and project manager of the documentary podcast Crackdown noticed no major impact on the show’s audience. He credits their monthly release schedule and a “really, really loyal listenership.”
Palmer was hesitant to release the first season of Island Crime, a victim-focused true crime podcast. She was worried an appetite for dark stories might not be there. But after considering the importance of the story and its subject—a missing Vancouver Island woman—she eventually decided that “she mattered and I was going to go ahead with the season anyway.”
But there’s more to podcasting than listenership. Producers have had to deal with the challenges of recording in this new reality. Co-host of CBC’s Inappropriate Questions Elena Hudgins Lyle had to record the show underneath their comforter in the dead heat of summer before eventually creating an impromptu studio out of wood and moving blankets.
The more conversational, in-studio shows, like the ones at The Sonar Network or Inappropriate Questions, had to adapt to the energy lost when people aren’t all in the same room. Meanwhile, audio documentaries like Crackdown and Island Crime had to completely change how they do things. Both shows had to figure out workarounds to effectively tell their stories. Lengthy on-location interviews were just not possible during the pandemic.
For season two of Island Crime, Palmer had to drastically rethink production. In-person interviews became masked, private meetings happened in carefully sanitized cars with windows rolled down, and lots of tape was recorded outdoors. Palmer had to adapt her plans in response to changing protocols on Vancouver Island. She jumped over every hurdle, as she didn’t want to lose the face-to-face interactions that she feels makes interviews great, especially when it comes to such sensitive material.
But finding a place that was quiet enough for a recorded conversation led to some incongruous situations.
“I was interviewing a former drug dealer,” Palmer says. “I needed a space that was quiet and outside. So we’re in a park with people going by with their kids and dogs and we’re having this really weighty, deep conversation. Never in a million years would I imagine myself in that circumstance.” Before COVID, Palmer would have conducted sensitive interviews like this in a more private and safe setting, but she’s recently had to forgo that luxury.
Online conversations proved difficult as well. “One of the major frustrations we’ve had is how difficult it is to have a deep conversation over Zoom,” Fenn says. This is especially so when dealing with organizations that may not be familiar with teleconference softwares. “A lot of fucking irritating technical problems always happen,” he says.
While all these shows had to transition their typical production processes, CBC’s Pop Chat was forged in the flames of the pandemic. Hosted by Elamin Abdelmahmoud, the show released its first episode in September 2020.
Pop Chat features panelists and guests from around the world, so virtual conversations and reactions to the present reality were part of the show’s formula. “We’ve baked the pandemic and what it means to make things together—when we’re not together—into the show,” Abdelmahmoud says. Because Pop Chat has only existed during the pandemic, there is no frame of reference for what the show will look like under ‘normal’ circumstances.
Abdelmahmoud does a lot of ‘vibe management’ to mitigate potential awkwardness.
“You’ve got to manage the vibes, manage the warmth, and manage the quality of conversation when you’re not in the same room,” he says. “If you take that atmosphere seriously, you should end up with a pretty good result.”
Unsurprisingly, some podcasters are fed up with how the pandemic has affected their work.
“I hate working from my house, I hate working from my little laptop, and I just want it to go back to normal,” Fenn says. He also feels unsure how episodes made during the pandemic will stack up in terms of overall quality. “I am really waiting for things to be over in terms of [figuring out] how do I start doing really top notch storytelling again.”
Other hosts have learned habits that could continue to be used in their podcasting. “I think some shows have gotten used to it,” Mongiardi says. “There’s probably several podcasters who are like, ‘This isn’t that bad! I don’t have to pack up all my gear, we can just connect.’ We’ve all been doing this for a year.”
“If it makes it easier for them, and also lightens the load for them, I think that’s great.”
