Meta-podcasts are coming for the news, not the podcast industry

Although Google has arguably cornered the podcast market through YouTube already, by employing AI, the company may be making it even harder for competitors to catch up. In October 2024, MIDiA covered the development of NotebookLM and its ability to disrupt the informational and educational podcast space. Just three months later, Google announced an experimental product called Daily Listen. 

Google’s Daily Listen generates a five minute episode breaking down topics populated by a user’s Google Discover and Google Search behaviour. Think of it like a bespoke, auto-generated version of The New York Times’ The Headlines podcast that not only translates readers’ news consumption into an on-the-go audio blog but does so in a hyper-personalised way. 

While these meta-podcasts may serve the same function that some shorter, informational podcasts serve, it is hard to imagine this format posing a threat to a podcasting industry that continues to benefit from multi-hour long episodes. If anything, meta-podcasts pose yet another threat to journalism.

Google is not alone in bridging text- and audio-based formats in the pursuit of more digestible information consumption. Startup Concise Cast effectively does the same as Daily Listen while also providing a bulleted email summary of up to five of a listener’s favourite podcasts, informational or otherwise. The difference is Concise Cast pulls its information from podcasts itself, whereas Daily Listen pulls its information – and especially news-based information – from the internet, much like a blog would.

The difficulty with scaling meta-podcasts as an alternative to podcasts as we know them is that listeners tend to enjoy the long-form podcast listening experience. While there will certainly be some segment of information seekers who will find the meta-podcast beneficial enough to replace some of their podcast consumption, the format is missing two vital reasons listeners turn to podcasts: entertainment and the parasocial relationships they form with the hosts. Without those two fundamental ingredients, meta-podcasts will likely only serve as supplements, and not replacements, to traditional podcasts.

The same cannot be said for how internet users consume the news. Between work and family, many news consumers do not have time to read much more than headlines and ledes when catching up on current events. Replace that process with a lean-back experience that frees users up to get ready for the workday or do chores, and you have a technology that has the capability to disrupt news reporting yet again. 

Of course, in order to generate meta-podcasts, there must be source material – be it news, blogs, or other podcasts. As such, rather than shying away from the format, journalists and legacy media companies must consider how to leverage meta-podcasts to make sure their reporting is in listeners’ personalised audio feeds and inboxes. News podcasts might want to consider how meta-podcasts could also act as a source of discovery.