Podcasting at awards shows

The Golden Globes handed out their first-ever Best Podcast award, a bizarre inclusion for an awards show about film and television. I previously wrote about this category and its suspicious, potentially payola marketing scheme, but in the end, the Globes picked the least offensive person to win their inaugural award, as Amy Poehler took home the trophy for Good Hang with Amy Poehler.

I like Amy Poehler just fine, she seems like one of the least bothersome celebrities out there, and I genuinely love Parks & Rec, one of my go-to comfort shows. Of the nominees, I mind Poehler winning the least, and I like that the clip they played for her nomination announcement was about how she got into podcasting because she was tired of seeing men “do the bare minimum”. I appreciate that podcasting is a male-dominated space but the Globes handed their pod prize to a chipper woman who loves talking about work.

Almost every podcast nominated is hosted by a celebrity or otherwise extremely successful person, including Good Hang; Armchair Expert with host Dax Shepard; Call Her Daddy with Alex Cooper; The Mel Robbins Podcast; and SmartLess, hosted by famous friends Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett. The only exception is NPR’s Up First.

All my other issues with this category aside, all I could think about was Chris Gethard’s recent appearance on the podcast Good One, in which comedians usually talk about writing jokes. This time, though, Gethard was talking specifically and in depth about how the middle class of comedy has disappeared, in no small part thanks to the corporatization of podcasting. (Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.)

Gigging comedians used to be able to make decent livings between their gigs, commercial work, and guest spots on TV shows. Chris Gethard’s career was defined by this as from the early 2000s, he banked small roles in films and guest spots on TV shows before his own TV show, The Chris Gethard Show, which started as a public access show, got picked up on cable for three seasons. (The episode “One Man’s Trash” is an absolute comedy classic.) Now, however, Chris Gethard is working a day job after 20 years in the entertainment industry, because he lost his SAG health insurance and he has a family to support. This is a guy who by every metric is considered successful—regular appearances in film and TV, commercial work, selling scripts, creating his own show, comedy tours, the whole nine yards, and in his 40s, he has a day job.

I’m not saying cry a river for Chris Gethard, I’m saying listen to this man when he tells you it is impossible to make a decent living—just decent, not spectacular—in comedy because as with so many other industries, the middle class is gone. And the corporatization of podcasting has a lot to do with that, as acting gigs paid less and less and residuals dried up in the 2010s, many comics turned to podcasting to supplement their income. Some are still going strong, such as the comedy/film podcast How Did This Get Made, featuring Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, and Jason Mantzoukas. But it’s like if you didn’t get in under the wire, no later than the mid-2010s, you can no longer break through podcasting enough to make a decent living. Celebrities and corporations have ruined it. For the record, Good Hang is underwritten by f-cking SPOTIFY.

Gethard also brings up another salient point about the corporate overhaul of podcasting. What was once a scrappy industry in which podcasters could produce their show out of their garage with minimal equipment now usually involves a high-production video element. (Bless Marc Maron for never pivoting to video.) As Gethard points out, though, this is basically just providing non-union labor to streamers that are buying up video podcasts, such as Prime Video carrying New Heights, or Netflix making a deal to stream shows from popular platforms like The Ringer, iHeart, Spotify, and Barstool. This provides Netflix with almost three dozen talk shows—which is what a video podcast basically is—for which they do not have to pay union rates. It’s a way around union contracts, devaluing the industry even further! What the f-ck are we even doing here?!

And it’s not just podcasting, the Best Performance in Stand-Up Comedy category was also full of celebrities who are very rich, including Kevin Hart, who has a nine-figure net worth. Meanwhile the best stand-up specials of 2025 include self-produced specials on which comedians probably lost money to release directly to fans on platforms like YouTube, such as Beth Stelling’s Landlord Special and Ali Saddiq’s My Two Sons.

There are exceptions, such as Marc Maron’s Panicked on HBO/Max, but generally, the best comedy is being put out directly by comedians to their fans. The best stand-up special in recent memory is Connor O’Malley’s Stand Up Solutions, which is a genre-bending performance that actually feels fresh and different in a crowded landscape. But is Connor O’Malley anywhere near these awards shows? No, of course not. (Though it would spectacularly funny if he was.)

I listen to ten podcasts regularly, none of which are hosted by famous people. I will check in on a few more, such as Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, depending on the guest. But Chris Gethard’s many excellent points about the devaluation of art and artistic industry has prompted me to vow no more video podcasts. That’s non-union talk show sh-t, it’s impossible to believe that the hosts who do it wouldn’t be aware, especially if they’re rich and don’t actually need the money.

But I’m afraid that things will continue to get worse before the current system inevitably crashes. And it WILL crash, because eventually people are going to want fresh, different, weird sh-t like The Chris Gethard Show and Stand Up Solutions.

The comedy landscape is shaped by cycles of boom and bust, we’re living through a bust right now. What emerges from it will undoubtedly be funny and interesting. I just hope it’s not too late for genuinely talented people like Chris Gethard to find a way back in.