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Comment by username223 | Hacker News Reader

This seems to be one of a spate of recent articles, e.g. [1]. For a skeptical take, see Marco Arment [2]. Then again, he could just be expressing sour grapes because people with actual skill, money, and time are invading his turf.

FWIW, I have listened to a lot of NPR via podcast for many years, and see a podcast-only version of it as a natural step. At this point, the amateur "three nerds and a microphone" stuff is background noise for when I can't sleep.

[1] http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/whats-behind-th...

[2] http://www.marco.org/2014/11/16/why-podcasts-are-suddenly-ba...

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I don't detect any sour grapes. The only part of the narrative he has a problem with is the supposed slump with 2010 being the dark ages of podcasting which somehow needed saving from decline. As slow steady rise isn't dramatic, so a troubled history for podcasting is invented to make it more interesting, which is bull.

"the supposed slump with 2010 being the dark ages of podcasting which somehow needed saving from decline"

The inability of any coherent narrative to form is evidence of a really big market. If its too big for any individual to see all of it, it must be pretty big.

For me 2010 is the early boom years of history podcasting. Mike Duncan's "The History of Rome" which was really the history of the roman empire not some sort of municipal thing. 2010 was a great year in podcasting, hardly a "slump".

Edited to add, from memory, in 2010 the Wormwood mystery-horror series was in its 3rd year, Lowell's solar clipper sci fi series had just finished its 4th installment with the 5th on the way, and I remember heavy self advertisement on the TWIT network about the new studio that would open in a couple months... for a dead media it was pretty exciting at the time.

It's strange to me that Marco left out Radiotopia's VERY successful latest kickstarter fundraiser, and generally the incredibly high quality content coming out of that program.

And, just weeks before Serial became a breakout hit, the Infinite Guest network launched.

These are both huge leaps forward in providing actual networks for podcasters, publicly funded, and NOT primarily underwritten by a broadcast show.

Current radio has both talk shows (AM talk radio) and produced content (NPR). Both very popular. No reason they can't both exist in the podcast area. And a popular radio talk show isn't really much more professional than "three nerds and a microphone." At least the podcast has an editing pass.

If you listen to hearstartup.com you'll find Marco investing in Gimlet Media which is all about creating a lot more podcasts like Serial so he's very much in favor of the format.

I only recently started listening to Startup, and haven't caught up with it. It's interesting to see Marco moving from the "creating a podcast" game to the "investing in podcasting" one.

Pretty sure that Marco is investing in Blumberg himself though. He says that in the episode interviews.

"Then again, he could just be expressing sour grapes because people with actual skill, money, and time are invading his turf."

Uh, what? That's pretty disrespectful. ATP is one of the best produced and most popular tech podcasts out there today.

As a follower of "Hypercritical," I listened for the Siracusa for awhile, but the meandering chit-chat and interminable sponsor reads eventually soured me on ATP. Maybe I would listen if I had an hour commute to and from work every day, and needed more background noise.

Me, I love the chit chat. The dynamic of ATP is perfect. I haven't found another chat-type podcast that I can stand listening to every week.

As for the ads, I'm glad my podcast app maps fast-forward to 45 second skip!

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