• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, April 23, 2025

Leave it to the premium streamer, Netflix, to expand the boundaries of what it considers new and appropriate content for its platform.

But it has been careful to ensure it attaches the word "premium" to it -- with reference to podcasts.

This comes as YouTube has been making an aggressive push to do new style “video” podcasts -- building on the original audio-only podcast form.

A video podcast can have some b-roll footage, logos, motion or static images. Still, much of what exists on YouTube, for example, is a single, static image of a video recording of the podcast hosts and guests.

No doubt, many observers might see this being familiar: Many national cable TV news networks have analysts sitting around and talking about major issues, albeit with a three-camera setup. But there can be lots of graphics and video of a Presidential press conference included, for example.

Perhaps the idea is to find a way to heighten an unpolished, unrehearsed discussion of hosts and guests -- and to make it more engaging and more unscripted.

Netflix believes there can be a difference in its content from what YouTube has to offer. During its recent quarterly earnings phone call, Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive officer of Netflix, said this using the word "premium" when speaking about podcasts.

What will it look like? He didn’t say. I am guessing it would be more than a bunch of talking heads just sitting around and bouncing ideas off one another in a living room setting, or big leather chairs.

Some years ago, Netflix started up other content directed at young entertainment consumers -- video games. The jury is still out in terms of how all that has performed. No doubt it was likely a smart idea to at least take a shot.

Sarandos says it doesn’t stop with video games or video podcasts. He will continue to seek new style content, wherever it leads the company.

Can we expect legacy-TV network owner streamers to get into a similar experimentation mode? Cost-sensitive, hard-pressed media may not have the room where new TV/movie content slippage comes with higher production costs.

A more mature streamer marketplace can come with restraints.