Is Canadian podcasting stuck in a death cycle?
How does Canadian Podcasting escape its vicious cycle?
I’ve always preferred to be optimistic about the Canadian podcasting industry. Though this newsletter stemmed from a place of frustration, I’ve felt a need to celebrate the good and the low-hanging opportunities for growth, rather than dwell on some of the harsher realities. I don’t love to complain.
Given the state of the world, in 2025 I’ve been feeling pretty zealous about highlighting the many strengths of our ecosystem. But as the year has progressed I’ve found myself confronted with one of the harshest of realities that I can’t get past: Canadian podcasting might be stuck in the same death spiral as all of our other forms of homegrown media and arts.
Canadians just aren’t consuming Canadian content - or at least enough of it. And this problem isn’t necessarily one we can solve with a Bill. There’s a cultural shift that needs to happen in Canadian audiences that can’t be force-fed - it needs abundance.
Too small to support - but why?
Over the last couple years, I’ve found myself in the privileged position where podcast advertising networks have come to me to find Canadian podcasts to work with - to advertise on. They want to break out into the Canadian podcast market and target Canadian audiences in particular, but they’re still using the same age-old measurement of 10,000 downloads a month as their starting place.
For so many reasons this is backwards; downloads are dying, and small audiences are often highly engaged anyway, etc, etc, etc. But especially in Canada, 10K per month is a difficult ask for the majority of our podcasters, which means many quality shows are being overlooked for revenue streams.
At first I thought it was due to our population size, but now I think it’s something else all together: a vicious cycle.
Enter my death spiral theory.
This year I decided to take up reading again, and instead of reading fun fantasy novels and mystery thrillers like my brain truly needed, I went all-in on non-fiction literature about community building, abolition, communication, and anarchy. One book in particular probably changed my life forever. I renewed it over and over again until the library told me I couldn’t anymore.
In it was the visual representation of, essentially, “The Death Spiral of Community”, showing how paradigms of humanity and their oppositions, like play vs. work, abundance vs. scarcity, fear vs. faith, can either make a community expand and grow stronger, or implode on itself. Very a propos!
Yes, that’s a skull and cross bones in the center.
In the many conversations I’m having with Canadian podcasting community members, I can’t help but see something similar happening in our very own ecosystem, but rather than a death spiral, it’s more of a vicious cycle. And it goes like this:
This cycle can be read clockwise as “so” statements or counterclockwise as “because” statements:
American media is saturating Canadian audiences because there is a lack of Canadian options.
There is a lack of Canadian podcasts because there is a lack of resources to support them.
There is a lack of resources to support Canadian podcasts because Canadian podcasts aren’t taken seriously in Canadian culture.
Canadian podcasts aren’t taken seriously in Canada because we are oversaturated in American content.
OR
American media is saturating Canadian audiences so Canadian podcasts aren’t often taken seriously.
Canadian podcasts aren’t taken seriously sothere is a lack of resources in Canada that can create and sustain Canadian podcasts.
There is a lack of resources for Canadian podcasters so there are fewer Canadian podcasts for audiences to fall in love with.
There is a lack of Canadian podcasts so Canadian audiences are saturated with American media.
Given that this is a cycle, it means it’ll just keep going and going and going until something changes, be it a cultural shift in preference toward Canadian content (which could already be happening thanks to our neighbors to the south), or maybe more grant funding for Canadian podcasts which results is more options for Canadians to fall in love with (which we already have an open letter addressing). Probably both.
In my opinion, more resources equals higher audience numbers for Canadian podcasts, and more demand for them in general. This could shift the vicious cycle into a spiral of abundance. But also, maybe its time for advertisers need to update their barrier to entry for everyone’s sake?
Of course, my Libra-justice-brain is feeling a sense of urgency and responsibility around this. I have a spreadsheet full of ideas and intitiaves that Pod the North is ready and willing to take on, and no time or resources myself to do it. Hense the freeze state mentioned at the top of this issue.
That’s why I’d LOVE to hear from you, whether its an email or a comment! Tell me your thoughts on the vicious cycle, what you need for your podcast to thrive, and what you’d love to see from Pod the North. Pretty please?