Wow, Is It Quiet Out There

Where have all the series gone? I wondered...but then I did the math and made a spreadsheet so I actually know for certain

Each year, for the last three years, I’ve listened to more than fifty narrative series. This is not the entirety of all that is available in my niche—serialized, narrative, compelling, personal and audacious audio storytelling—but it’s what I’ve been able to commit to, and I’ve listened to what I’m drawn to, or curious about.

All of these shows are detailed, itemized and rated in my expanding AirTable database that builds towards my year end Bingey List. But as rolled towards the end of April, I realized I was way off pace. Yes, I had been noticeably distracted away from my regular listening habits and formed new patterns. That combined with my taxes (finally handed off), some other small projects wrapped and another semester of teaching mostly wrapped, I was feeling that I should really strap back in and get all caught up on my listening.

But when I pulled myself together, ripped my glazed eyeballs away from the constant scroll…but I’m afraid I found…not nothing…but quite a bit less than I expected. I also found some things that surprised me, now that I was looking closely, counting, doing basic data entry.

At first I attributed this to a few different reasons

First, the daily news drip. There’s a bead of sweat that rolls down my back when I open the various news apps. This corporeal dread has brought back to those early pandemic morning when I would crawl out of bed and ceremonially lift the blinds to look outside, as if I expected there would be an answer for what was happening in the world on the street outside my house. Instead I saw the same cars, the same trees, the same people walking their dogs. Today feels a bit like then, everyone left inside to figure it out.

And then I thought of more reasons why:

1 - There’s no centralized place to track down narrative series.

2 - It’s not always easy to categorize what is a series and what is series-adjacent…plus we’ve also watched the enfranchisement of various series on major platforms, which is efficient for the network (and maybe listeners), but takes away from the “book spine” feeling of them, since they are stacked.

3 - It’s cumbersome and slow to track down indie creators whose series don’t find their way onto a major platform…and they are hard to find.

4 - It’s hard to know what’s in production, or coming down the pipe, for a later release window…putting aside LinkedIn, where does anyone post mid-production selfies, or some funny quote-from-the-crazy-day-of-production?

5 - Our ‘social media’ presence has largely shifted to a ‘professional media’ presences…after the X-evacuation…which is also to say that it’s not as spontaneous (and often frankly a bit boring).

I could write a long article about each of these. But then I surmised that it was time to stop all conjecture, and moaning, and do my own research. First, I opened a new Google Sheet, opened a bazillion tabs on my browser, and began to fill out the cells. Sans AI, research by the human hand…what had I missed?

Second, and this is an idea I’ll come back to in a later post, but I’m considering building a database that can be a clearing house for narrative series…where data can be collectively collated and shared with others. Is this a crazy idea, or something you might be able to get behind?

Tell me why it’s /not a terrible idea:

Let’s talk about what I found….

I was both surprised and alarmed. There are some big wins, a few notable losses, and a lot of quiet quitting.

For example…Serial Productions has not released anything yet, nor have they announced anything for 2025. Last year they released two series: Season 4: Guantánamo (released end of March, 2024 and announced at On Air Fest in February 2024), and The Good Whale (currently the Apple podcasts app dates that as January 2025, but it was actually released in November 2024). If they plan to keep pace of 2-3 series per year, as they have since 2022, they seem to be moving slowly. The trailers are usually dropped 2-4 weeks before launch, so it’s fairly reasonable to surmise there won’t be much before…June…at the earliest.

Then the thought worried me: if Serial goes extra dark/quiet this year, that sets a very dangerous precedent. That race pace marathon bunny we’ve all been working hard to keep up with for years effects a wide swath of the industry, in many ways.

There are only three studios who have multiple series (average around 5) so far this calendar year…and they are:

Wondery, CBC and Sony Music.

Three or so more have two series: BBC Sounds, Novel and Campside…plus iHeart, which is usually a production partner, not often a solo publisher, so I consider then an ‘or so’ entity.

If we look into the future, based on the only metric I’m able to find about things that will be released in the future (which is the series included as a Tribeca Premier in June), then we can add a couple more to the list: Apple Originals and Radiotopia.

Plus, it’s a good idea to say, for those looking to launch a series soon (without all the anguish of developing it from zero) there appear to be some interesting and exciting series premiering at Tribeca Festival this year that are “back up for grabs” as Jeff Probst has said one million times on Survivor over the last 25 years.

But by far, the biggest trend is: singletons. Most studios have one series released so far this year, which is notable from their previous trend of 2-4 series per year.

Does that mean there’s a very busy fall release schedule ahead of us? Or is one the new normal?

I also saw doubles:

Two different series already that follow the Luigi Mangione trial…and two other ones following the Diddy trial.

None of this is surprising, but that doesn’t make it shocking…but I’m not sure that’s bad

The quiet quitting, all those singleton series, are what really got to me. I see this as a downstream effect that followed from the massive layoff rounds happened throughout 2023 and 2024. What is on the shelf now, in 2025, with a rough work-back schedule of one-to-two years, puts you somewhere in 2023.

Why that long? That’s a general timeline between pitching a show, to actual release of a finished series. This is general and not specific…and certainly doesn’t account for the (sometimes multiple) years worth of effort that a producer does even before they assemble a pitch deck. Nor am I saying that it takes two years to make a narrative series; often with a network, they want the entire series delivered months ahead so they can get all their dozens of signatures and signoffs on the various deliverables and marketing materials.

It’s also important to say that while this feels like a huge down-gearing, I ask myself if this a bad thing. Yes, many jobs have been lost, and that’s difficult. But also yes, many companies were bloated; a lean team can be very creative and efficient.

Given that multiple titles published each year, or even each quarter, from the same studios or publishing entity, sometimes colleagues were competing with colleagues for marketing dollars and listening eyeballs. Could less turn out to be…more?

And then I go back to the idea that in times of quiet, innovation flourishes. Whenever I stop, go quiet, do something different, there’s often new thoughts and new ideas that emerge. It’s not always easy to embrace this time, but it can be fertile ground. I’m going to put a pin in that idea and circle back to it later. This quiet time of my own has fermented some new ideas.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Do you want to see the spreadsheet with this data?

Who is underperforming? Who is keeping pace? Who is punching above their weight? Who wins the prize for most surprising entrant?

In Bingeworthy, I’m happy and proud to share my writing, research and analysis. I’ve been working hard to carve out a niche for more podcast criticism….to help create the pickleball effect for narrative audio.

A HUGE thank you to all of my subscribers…especially those who like and share posts, forward to colleagues and message me directly. It goes a long way!

But like all of us who do research, there’s a lot that goes on behind the curtain. Most of you read this newsletter for free; I want that.

But, this all takes a lot of time and effort.

So I’m trying something a bit different.

If you want to see a detailed analysis, plus the spreadsheet that goes into this article, you can purchase it here, for a one-time fee. This is days of research, and 100 links for to peruse.

This is not on the Substack platform, and does not require a monthly fee. It’s a one time purchase of $15. For that, you detailed analysis, full of insights, and 14 trends that I see inside the data. Plus, you’ll see what I’m listening to now, what’s on my list. This is an insane deal, but consider it an experiment.

Plus, if you want to hire me for more hours to consult further on these trends, projections and future outlook, you can find links to that here too.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

FIVE THINGS ON MY MIND:

1 - Bone Valley, Season 2 is out now…the insane pivot from Season 1 about Leo, and his wrongful conviction, to Season 2, about Jeremy, who confessed to the murder that Leo was convicted of, but the courts of Florida will not believe him.

2 - Peabody Winners and the Pulitzers were announced this week. Congrats on the big wins for In The Dark S2, who pulled the double-double win…which I can only assume has brought about some back-patting for picked up that series and giving it a new home. Thanks to Connie Walker for blazing that double-win trail in 2023.

3 - The Golden Globes will have a podcasting category in 2026! h/t

Mia Lobel

for that one

4 - Have you voted yet?

5 - Maybe you do want my fancy new spreadsheet, afterall…