“This was the podcast election.”

In five words Bobby Goodlatte, co-founder of Miami-based Form Capital, captured an essential truth about a shift in the media landscape. 

It’s one that matters for politicians as much as business executives, PR and IR professionals and the media since it marks a change in the communications landscape.

Goodlatte tweeted the observation on X, along with this analysis: 

“Every time media shifts, politics changes. 

Nixon v Kennedy: Television defined the election 

Trump v Kamala: Podcasts. 

She should have gone on Rogan. It might not have tipped it, but you have to play the game on the field.”

I doubt going on Joe Rogan’s podcast at the 11th hour would have mattered to the Harris campaign, but Goodlatte’s larger point holds: “You have to play the game on the field.”

And podcasts have emerged as the new Polo Grounds. 

I read a Bloomberg article in May that argued that CEOs from Altman to Musk to Zuckerberg were opting to go on podcasts such as the one hosted by Lex Fridman to avoid the media.

Bloomberg wrote: “The tech industry has in recent years sought more ways to “go direct” — that is, to get talking points out into the world without having to deal with traditional media, which some view as adversarial and unfairly critical.”

I think that misunderstands the dynamic. The motivation isn’t mainly to duck “hard questions.” It’s because the podcasts offer a) huge audiences b) longer formats i.e. hours vs minutes and c) they aren’t asked about random topics that happen to be in the news that day. 

Financial television interviews may be prestigious, but they are probably less productive than big podcasts. On TV, the CEOs have barely any time to tell their story. Fridman and Rogan give them three hours. 

If you don’t spend a lot of time online, it’s worth noting most podcasts these days are filmed. The video clips are distributed on social media, providing additional exposure. Podcasts are also ad supported without the paywalls that increasingly limit the reach of the mainstream. 

Brian Armstrong, CEO and co-founder of Coinbase, made a similar observation about the value of long-form podcasts in this election. He tweeted: 

“This seems like the first election where new media has fully flipped traditional media. Long form podcasts, X/social, prediction markets etc deciding this election. Also holding traditional media accountable. Happened gradually then suddenly.”

That’s probably an overstatement. The traditional media still dominates. But the new media can’t be ignored.

It’s not fair to say Harris didn’t play the game.

She did the Howard Stern show and offered Joe Rogan a one-hour time slot provided he traveled to her.

He insisted that she come to his studio in Austin and do an entire three-hour show.

In the end, no agreement was reached, and time ran out.