Are podcasts really that big of a category in the United States? I know celebrity hosted interview shows can do massive numbers, as well as a very small handful of scripted content, but I've noticed a lot of current affairs shows have dropped the audio-only format. More and more shows are recording their podcasts as video-first productions (many streamed live and later archived on YouTube) that have an audio-only option.

Maybe that's just anecdotal to my interests, but it really seems like the prolificness of video content on mobile devices has eaten into that. 10 years ago, when there was a lot of optimism regarding podcasts, that term still referred to downloading clips onto an iPod. Storage on portable devices was extremely limited, so video content had to be chosen wisely. While that's still sort of the case, streaming has made that an obsolete issue for most. 10 years ago, mobile networks and hardware were so primitive that you'd be lucky to be able to stream the lowest res YouTube offers without buffering for ages or devouring a data cap in a moment. There's still value for the people who drive to work or want background noise, but I can see why it's a difficult market to crack.