The next big trend in podcasting – video

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It’s now become a cliche to observe that the US had a “podcast election” this year. Appearances on highly popular, right-coded shows hosted by Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman and others are credited with helping Donald Trump get closer to the decisive win he achieved last week.

Reports show that YouTube dominated election night in the US, with traditional broadcast and cable channels steadily losing viewers and cultural relevance.

The rise of video podcasting is a trend that spans far outside US politics, though. In the UK, the New Statesman was surprised to see long-form interviews take off on YouTube. In Ukraine, the country’s biggest digital news outlet Ukrayinska Pravda built a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers, largely on the back of talk shows and video interviews.

Highly-produced limited-run podcast documentaries are losing out to chat shows, and the definition of a podcast increasingly includes a video version.

To the surprise of many media leaders, vast audiences do enjoy watching a couple of people talking into microphones on YouTube. As David Tvrdon once wrote for The Fix, your newsroom probably needs a YouTube specialist.