This is on the media's midweek podcast. I'm Michael O'anger.

Back in November, I reported a piece about the layoffs, show cancellations, and shrinking revenue streams

that have plagued the world of podcasting over the past year and a half.

The Cliff Notes version, ad revenue dried up, shows became too expensive to make,

and one outlet after another closed podcast departments or cut their long-form narrative

shows.

Over the past nine months, things have stabilized a little, I think. But there was a small technical change, an iPhone update rolled out last

September that compounded the problems. The update to the Apple Podcast app also included a tweak to how podcast downloads work.

It's a small change that might mean fewer automatic downloads of a podcast's back catalog.

As a podcast user, you're free to shrug and move on, but for

podcast creators, this has been a big deal. According to data from Podtrack,

overall downloads across the industry were down 15% as of February.

This American Life lost 20% of their downloads.

Some shows at NPR saw a 30% dip. Lower numbers, while a more accurate

reflection of listenership has meant less ad money. Podcast companies, A-Cast,

and Audio Boom lost 77.2 million and $9 million respectively.

To understand how a small change in Apple software sent ripple effects across an entire industry, we're going to revisit a story

from last November about how the podcasting medium became a thing in the first place and the company

at the center of it all.

Producer Molly Rosen has the story.

It's impossible to tell the story of how podcasting came to be without Apple. And about a month ago, the company rolled out a new

operating system.

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