Why Video is More Challenging for Podcasts – Episode 112

[MUSIC IN – GHOSTHOOD FEATURING SARA AZRIEL “LET’S GO” BEGINS]

MARY: Video, how do you feel about it for your podcast? In the industry itself, though, there’s a lot of talk of videos. Because video podcasts are growing, but only because the big platforms are pushing it. Celebrities want their face to be seen, and they are growing media companies, empires, moving away from that corporate structure, that traditional talk show, to create their own talk show in the form of podcasts and video. 

So here I’m wondering, well, video podcasts isn’t new, we’ve had blogs, and then those blogs became vlogs, and now we have podcasts, which is now video podcasts. So in a way, it doesn’t matter what you call it, having a visual component of your podcast could definitely be a good thing. And that’s coming from an audio first former radio person. But yeah, having video means much more than just recording the video portion of the interview. 

Another reason for the big push on video, Apple podcasts, their latest video support, HLS video. It’s new technology and it is changing the way the industry thinks about video, thus pushing more for it. But it doesn’t mean you have to throw yourself on this bandwagon to be a successful podcaster, especially if you’re a woman. 

In today’s episode, we’ll touch on why video can support or even hinder your podcast and help you choose if video is right for your show. Because we don’t have to follow the masses and audio and video can be two separate things, no matter what the tech bros are telling us.

This is episode 112 on the Podcaster’s Guide to a Visible Voice.

<< WOMAN SINGS: So so so so let’s go >>

So how are you feeling about video these days?

[INTRO MUSIC FADES AND ENDS]

I think in the podcasting industry, people have big feelings, you know, whether that is somebody from the audio first camp, the video camp, age difference, really it can be all different perspectives about video. And I’ve actually been talking to newbie podcasters too, who recently didn’t even realize that you could do an audio only podcast. Now that is a real shift in the industry because of video. It’s the YouTube factor. They thought that video was the only way to go because that’s the way they’ve been consuming podcasts. It’s a stark difference from when the industry first started. 

And I’ve been seeing the switch toward video in the last year or so, like heavy, heavy usage of podcasts going on to video platforms. Video has been creeping into the forefront of the industry and people are wondering, well, okay, if YouTube is now doing podcasts, then that must be what a podcast is. Just like that newbie podcaster I was talking to. 

And then on top of all of this recently, late March 2026, so only like a week before I recorded this, Apple Podcasts finally released in their Apple Podcasts audio only app, released HLS video support. This is only for iOS 26.4 and newer, calling it a quote, “new video podcast experience on Apple Podcasts”. So Apple Podcasts is essentially telling the world podcasts aren’t just an audio medium anymore, and that is a big deal. 

As of this recording, this is still very, very new. So, not all hosting platforms are supporting this new Apple podcast technology. And yet I know it’s another pivotal moment for our little industry. It’s changing the way people are going to consume your show. Like it or not, video is that component. Much like the way when Apple Podcasts first came out as a standalone app in 2012, it changed podcasting. And you know what, actually, Apple has always supported podcasts. In 2005, when the app didn’t even exist yet, they just had itunes. That was so long ago, they had a press release that said, quote, apple takes podcasting mainstream. So it only makes me wonder, will Apple Podcasts now take video podcasting mainstream, but mainstream on a different level. 

But personally, whenever I hear video podcasts, I do cringe a little. My heart does ache when I think about video and podcasting. On one side in my heart, this podcasting medium was meant to be easier to start, right? It’s that lower friction to entry point. You can easily share audio stories, voices in a very intimate way that no video can do because of the visual distractions, right? And it’s a smaller file, can easily transfer from one device over the Internet to another device. And yet my practical brain kicks in. For most people who are hard of hearing, video helps you have some lip reading. You can also pull captions on YouTube, things like that. Transcripts on podcasts are still a thing, but it’s harder to figure out sometimes, right? Not every app has transcripts, it’s changing. The industry is changing thanks to Apple for one aspect, it’s being used more and more in other apps too, but it’s still not quite there yet. 

And then I have a third side of me, the anti-social media core of me is screaming that you then have to navigate YouTube and all its ads, the algorithm, you have to be put together to create a video. And then you’re distracted because you got the video and not just the audio and you’re recording this. And all these things are [SIGH] hurting my brain, right? It’s that logical side of me is just saying video is a lot more work. Clearly my brain is screaming at me that audio is the way to go. 

Okay, then I have another side of my brain, so many things. On the other hand, I love it when things evolve. Humans evolve, we learn, we grow, we all learn and shift. So technology is no different. It’s just that technology can change and shift at such an exponential rate so much faster. So why am I irked, so irked over video podcasts as being a thing? 

[CALM PIANO MUSIC IN]

Now, in the last episode I had Emma Krebs on and we touched on this towards the end of the episode. Women in podcasting. We could have kept going. And this is something I’ve thought about since I was a little kid. Okay, not women in podcasting specific, but women in media. Women as the face of media, right? Choosing me, that little kid to go to radio school versus going the TV route or going into movies, which, for the record, was in my high school career questionnaire that I did. Radio was a third option. TV was a second option. And like, movie producer was number one, right? It’s like the hierarchy of media. You got movies, TV and radio. 

So even as a late teen, all my red flags went off when I saw those top three career options. There’s no way a short Canadian, Chinese looking girl is going to make it in Hollywood. That was my first reaction when I saw that list. I am not a TV movie type. How can I go into TV and movies? That’s no way to make a living. No, no, no. My brain kept screaming at me, but I was like, wait a minute. Number three, radio. I didn’t know you could do that as a job. Radio, I can do that. I listen to the radio all the time. I loved listening to the radio host and the music they were playing while I was in high school academic classes and not paying attention to the teacher, I was like, wait, I can do this as a career. And I didn’t know it then, but I know more now. It’s because I didn’t want the visual part because A, a woman, B, person of colour, and C, at that time, Canadian, right? It was like, no, if you want to be Hollywood, you got to be American. American, Hollywood. 

So all of these things were going to hinder me in this very, very visual space. And you got to remember this was in the mid to late 90s for me. Okay, today in 2026, you know what? It hasn’t really changed that much in my mind. I mean, it has, things are changing, but it’s so, so slow and only because things like the MeToo movement, movies like Crazy Rich Asians, which came out in 2018, all Asian cast for the first time. Schitt’s Creek, a Canadian show that came in 2015, that the US networks, there was a network and Netflix picked it up. But many other things are still shifting, but we still have so much more work to do. 

This means that video is still less viable for women on so many levels, including that representation which I just touched on, but also tech and policing of women’s bodies and looks so much that you gotta think about how much video is going to impact you mentally, physically, and your podcast. 

[MUSIC FADES AND ENDS]

Much like that little teenage girl within me, I know that women get more judgment than men over their looks. What little girl has been brought up to like the colour pink, that they’re told that they have to wear their hair a certain way or they have to do certain tasks because a man told you to? They’re stereotypes that women will definitely have a harder time to deal with when video is involved. Not just from the male gaze, but from women as well. 

I remember my local television station in Vancouver, Global BC, their six o’ clock newscast for a whole week, I believe it was. All the anchors decided that they were going to do a test that all the men and women were going to wear the same outfit for a whole week. I believe that was the test. And the amount of judgment that the women got versus the men was astounding. It was just what our society does. We’ve been conditioned for generations to compete with one another and to defend our own choices by putting down others to meet some aspirational standard that truly shouldn’t be standard. 

You know, women are meant to look and present a certain way while men can get away with it. And we’re not trying to poo poo on men here. It’s just what I’m seeing and what I’ve seen in the past and what I am still currently seeing. It’s just another layer of this mental capacity that comes when you want to do video with your podcast. You know, that idea of what are you going to wear? You can’t wear the same outfit multiple times in the same videos back to back. Okay, I also have to plan to wash my hair before the recording, so make sure my hair is washed. And I know that I have a recording the next day. You also gotta have time to. Okay, if my recording is at 11am Then I have to make sure that I gotta do my hair and quote, unquote,” look presentable” before that recording, you know? 

And this is all stuff even before, we haven’t even gotten to the recording yet. When you are recording you got to think about yet again that hair. How do I look? Okay, there’s this visual aspect, I have to talk about the visual things because I also have to think about my audio only listeners. They won’t see the things that we are seeing in video as we’re doing this recording. There’s so many things that you have to think about layer upon layer. Goes for men or women in that respect for the visual versus audio side.

But going back to us women realizing, okay, we gotta do our hair, we gotta do our makeup, we gotta look a certain way, put on a certain outfit, that sort of stuff. Men aren’t brought up to do as much, you know, at least in a way where women are told differently than men, right? Like, women are told you either look good or you fail. And it’s not even you gotta look good to succeed too. It’s like you just gotta look good period or you fail. It’s all that undertone that we get. We then are heightened in our own insecurities and feel like we’re never good enough. It doesn’t matter what we do. That self judgment of we’re never gonna be good enough to compete reigns in our heads. And it gets easier to judge others because it makes us feel like we’ve got the power. 

So no wonder many women give up and don’t even bother to put themselves on this judgmental wheel whether they are being judged by men or women. It’s too harsh. It’s easier to just not do it. And I’m not saying this is what all women do or feel, but I bet they all have felt this feeling in one form or another. And as I was saying earlier, you feel like things are changing. There are snippets in time where it feels like perspectives are changing, that society is moving forward, that we can come together no matter what gender and work together, right? It feels like we can do this. 

Yet in a recent study from March of 2026 out of Great Britain, King’s College London, their Global Institute for Women’s Leadership put out the survey and almost a third of Gen Z men agree with this quote, “A wife should always obey her husband”. That’s 31% of Gen Z men. 29% of millennial men agree with that. And 21% of Gen X men agree with that statement. Which means the younger generation agrees more than any other generation. 

Similar percentages roll out when asked “A woman should not appear too independent or self-sufficient”. I would argue we probably feel like we are independent and self-sufficient when we are recording our videos. What’s the percentage of that one for Gen Z men? 24% agree, while 22% of millennial men agree with that statement. And 16% of Gen X men. Again, the younger generation is agreeing more about this gender divide. 

The idea of gender norms is not going away anytime soon as you see with this younger generation survey. A little backwards from what I thought was happening in the world, right? My little perception here is wrong. And so that is all very heavy to think about. For me I still feel like that little teenage girl, when I was reading all of that, it’s like, what, okay, you’re telling me to do this now, so I have to agree with you? You know that little girl told to look pretty, behave, don’t cause a fuss, serve tea to my friends and family when they show up, right? Like that’s what my dad said to me. 

You know, and then my mom has those gender expectations too growing up, making sure that I knew how to do household chores so that one day I will marry the man, have his kids serve my husband. Even as I say that I’m like my face is cringing and it’s making me angry because it’s no wonder I totally rebelled. And to this day I am still only common law with my partner. I say husband sometimes because it’s just easier again, it’s just easier than to make that fight with someone. And we’ve got a 10 year old daughter at this point, I’m like she’s 10, still don’t want to get married, no way. [LAUGHTER] 

It’s just that my brain is telling me I refuse to play these roles that are expected of me. So I’m refusing to play the video role in some aspects, right? Yet in my mind, you know, I can’t walk away from all of it because I know video will land me square in that judgment of those perceived notions. Video has this mental layer for me that tells me that I need to look a certain way to act a certain part. I had a long road to embracing my heart voice through radio. And although I’ve done a lot of work around seeing myself on video, you know, because everyone’s got a device these days, there’s so many pictures that we take, videos that we can take as well. Yet I know it’s not a place for me to showcase my work. 

It’s probably from that recent study, right? The quote, “a woman should not appear too independent or self-sufficient”, from that survey. That’s probably what it is for me. It’s not a place for me to showcase the work that I do. And yeah, I can change that. I can start doing video, but why? And we’ll get to that a little later. Because video isn’t just all of the gender stuff. It’s not only this mental barrier, but also like, the creation and the tech. The tech as well. 

[JOYFUL INTRIGUING MUSIC IN]

On a lighter note, [BREATHE OUT] let’s take a breather there. Although the barrier to entry for video tech is also easier these days. As I said, everyone’s got a device in their pocket. You know, cameras are everywhere. We can easily record online. But most people don’t understand that lighting and framing really plays a key role in creating a video that will be engaging and that people will want to watch time and time again. We are watching video podcasts that are essentially a video chat. We’re tired of watching another Zoom call. You know, if we’ve been in Zoom calls all day, why am I spending my free time watching one as entertainment for learning, for what have you? It gets a little tiresome. 

So if you plan to do a video podcast, it needs to have the foundation of a good setup. And we haven’t even talked about editing. You know, that takes a lot of time editing video podcasts. And I think this is because we compare ourselves to what we see, right? I was talking about like, the celebrities at the top of the episode. Take a look at the video podcasts you might already be watching on YouTube. The top video podcasts have highly edited shows that are very, very produced, meaning there’s multiple camera angles, there’s lots of expensive lighting, there are editing between the shots. There’s a whole set. Like there’s a built set for this, just like a TV show would. 

And just like a TV show, there’s a team behind the show that can do all of this video takes a lot more resources to do properly and the time to edit the bandwidth or  the story for these larger video files, the prep to set it all up, the mental capacity to show up and think about the visual aspect versus just recording for audio. You are essentially creating your own talk show, right? And don’t tell me that Oprah or Jimmy Kimmel does this all on their own. So you need to have the support to do this all to make it worth it. I’m not saying that you can’t, but is it going to be worth it for the time, money, and energy that you are going to put into video. 

And more support means you could look at funding. Sure, right? People are selling ads on their podcast, people are looking at grants. But honestly, funding is hard to come by too. Especially if you’re looking at something like a grant. There’s the time to find the funding, do the research, write the grant, apply for it, follow up, spending it as per the grant details. And in Canada, at least where I am, there aren’t a lot of avenues for funding audio or video. There’s a few more video podcasts, but audio stories in general. Podcasting in general, could be similar in your country. Suffice to say, there’s a lot of barriers to overcome when you add video to your plate. 

[MUSIC FADES AND ENDS]

Okay, this isn’t all doom and gloom. So what do you do in a video filled world of podcasting right now? Because it’s not going to go away. And I feel like that’s why people are like, okay, we need to do video. It’s not going away. This is what the algorithm is pushing. This is what we need to do. Let’s take a step back. I want you to figure out what job you want your video to do first. 

I was chatting with a podcaster I work with last year and this was like early last year too. And she wanted to shift her social media strategy to video because that’s where the algorithm was going. And I said, I’m hesitant until you tell me what job you want it to do. What’s the whole point? Because I know it won’t drive new listeners. That’s not going to be the main job. Sure, it may get a few new downloads, but that’s not the main job of social media and video on that platform. So what do you want to be representative of you, of the podcast, when it comes to your video strategy? 

Video is great if you want to have awareness for your podcast. It’s also great to hold conversations, an extension of your episodes, right? But it won’t prompt most of those people to go and listen to the episode. Some will. Podcast listeners will. Those hardcore listeners will go, ooh, I’m gonna load up my phone, find my app, find the show, hit play. But the majority of social media users won’t. As long as podcasters understand that and don’t expect video to turn into more downloads, it becomes a nice bonus when it does.

So if you want to try video, I say, yeah, do it, go for it. Don’t let any of those things I talked about earlier hinder you. Try it for social clips. Share that conversation for that awareness, but don’t think throwing your Zoom call on YouTube will actually do much for your show. 

[ENERGETIC RHYTHMIC MUSIC IN]

Ooh, that was a big soapbox. I had notes down and I went a full soapbox. I want to hear from you, though. What’s your soapbox on this? You can record a voice note, email it to me, or go to my website, VisibleVoicePodcast.com, leave a voicemail there. Or if you just need to rant it out over email, that is great as well. VisibleVoicePodcast@gmail.com how is video affecting your podcast production? Is it? Or are you like me and you’re just like, I just don’t want to play the game, at least for the visual side. Where are you on that spectrum of video podcasting? Let me know. I’d love to hear it. 

On the next episode, we’re gonna get back to hearing about podcaster journeys because especially for newbie podcasters, when you are new to the game, it’s so great to hear how somebody else has started so that you know what, we’re walking alongside you. You’re gonna have the same challenges or similar challenges that other podcasters have. So we’re gonna get back to podcaster journeys, how they got started, why they wanted to start their podcast, and what it all means today. After making many, many episodes, we’ll get to a new first time podcaster story on the next episode.

[ENERGETIC RHYTHMIC MUSIC ENDS // OUTRO MUSIC IN – SHOW CLOSE]

<< GHOSTHOOD FEATURING SARA AZRIEL “LET’S GO” BEGINS >>

MARY: Thank you so much for listening to the Podcaster’s Guide to a Visible Voice. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d love it if you shared it with a podcasting friend. And to reveal more voicing and podcasting tips, click on over to visiblevoicepodcast.com.

<< WOMAN SINGS: Let’s go >>

[MUSIC ENDS]