I’ve spent most of my working life producing radio commercials. You might expect me to say this, given my job, but when hosts read out ads on their own podcasts, I find it embarrassing. On commercial radio and television, viewers and listeners have always understood that the ads pay for the programmes and they’re fine with that – on one condition. The ads must be separated from the programmes in a commercial break.
This has always been the unspoken agreement between advertisers and their audiences: a programme might be interrupted but at least it stays honest to itself. Podcast hosts are trashing this time-honoured contract when they read out the ads themselves.
Authoritative people such as Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland on The Rest is History, or Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster on Triggernometry, risk appearing disingenuous and cheap.
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