How Ezra Klein’s YouTube Makeover Points to Podcasting’s TV Future

Earlier this month, The New York Times hired a full-time director of photography—primarily for podcasts. It might sound like a surprising move for a podcast, unless you’ve clocked what’s been happening at The Ezra Klein Show. Klein, once a disembodied voice, is now a bona fide millennial onscreen hottie, staring straight into the camera and engaging a new kind of audience. The message is clear, and in this case, the medium really is the message: Podcasts aren’t just going visual; they’re becoming television. And YouTube is the network where it’s all happening.

This phenomenon is playing out across the news media. The Atlantic just rolled out a YouTube podcast hosted by writer David Frum. Shows from upstarts like MeidasTouch, The Bulwark, Crooked Media, and The Free Press are already fixtures on the platform. When political reporter Tara Palmeri exited Puck last month, she set up shop on YouTube. Former TV news stars, from Megyn Kelly to Tucker Carlson, Jim Acosta, and Chris Cillizza are there too. So is Chuck Todd, who is planning to grow a podcast and video network. Even Michelle Obama launched a “video podcast” and YouTube channel in March.

YouTube, which just turned 20, has surpassed Spotify and Apple to become the top podcast platform, commanding over 1 billion hours of average daily watch time on TVs, according to the company. In fact, YouTube is now the most-watched service in America, outpacing both Netflix and Prime Video. As YouTube CEO Neal Mohan recently put it, “For more and more people, watching TV means watching YouTube.” And it’s not just reshaping entertainment—it’s transforming politics too. Presidential campaigns have always mirrored the dominant medium of their moment: FDR had radio, JFK mastered television, and 2024 was dubbed the “podcast election.” Donald Trump reached voters—especially young male ones—through shows like The Joe Rogan Experience and This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von, while Kamala Harris made a campaign stop on Call Her Daddy.

That shift caught the attention of Ezra Klein Show supervising editor Claire Gordon. Last summer, she and Klein came across an NBC poll showing just how much news sources influence voter behavior. Americans who relied on legacy media leaned toward Joe Biden, while YouTube viewers skewed in favor of Trump. “What’s happening on YouTube? What’s the news environment like [there]?” she recalls them asking themselves. “It felt like we were ceding an audience,” Gordon tells me. “There’s a big conversation happening there, and we should be part of it.”

Gordon, who joined The New York Times in 2023, had previously served as showrunner for Netflix’s Explained, a Vox Media show cocreated by Klein, and was a producer on Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. She first turned to the Times’ video studio to film Klein’s podcast. Inside a cavernous set, they experimented with three- and five-camera setups, prime-time lighting, and a full crew of producers and fact-checkers just off camera. But something felt off. The high-gloss look clashed with the show’s core appeal: vulnerability and depth.

“Ultimately, what we’re shooting now is in one of the podcast studios, where it just feels very intimate,” Gordon says. “It’s easier to forget about the cameras. And [for Ezra, who wants] to produce the best conversation, the space where we shoot [needs] to be conducive to that.”

Still cut for audio-first, the show now speaks a new syntax—one shaped by a postpandemic media landscape. With studios closed and meetings streamed from bedrooms, audiences got used to seeing CEOs, experts, and hosts in raw, imperfect spaces. TikTok took off. Personality replaced polish. Viewers didn’t just accept this new visual vernacular—they craved it.

That desire for authenticity reflects a deeper cultural shift. “Younger audiences have a huge distrust of not just media institutions—but any institution,” Liz Kelly Nelson, founder of Project C, a platform that supports journalists in the creator economy, told me recently. “They build trust by seeing their sources as human beings.”

Kelly Nelson, former vice president of audio at Vox, when The Ezra Klein Show was an audio-only podcast (and where I also worked as an audio producer), has evolved with the medium. Her focus now is on how Gen Z and Gen Alpha consume news—and she believes they won’t simply adopt traditional media habits as they age.

“So then what are the things that we need to do, to not try to change the direction that things are going, but at least add some of the layers that make journalism rigorous, that make our credibility shine through?” she asks. “So when my [14-year-old] son looks at a news reader or Ezra Klein on TikTok and sees things—that may be subconscious, but they are signals—that this is credible journalism. And then he sees Andrew Tate, and he knows that’s not right.”

That push for credibility and authenticity in the new media landscape is something Mediaite founder, owner, and publisher Dan Abrams is also watching closely—and capitalizing on. His company recently announced a strategic expansion into YouTube-first content, partnering with a slate of broadcast stars to build individual channels under the Mediaite umbrella.

“It is television,” Abrams declares. “Anyone who still thinks of YouTube as something for your phone or computer isn’t paying attention.” By 2028, he predicts, Mediaite (and likely others) will stream live election coverage directly to YouTube, just like any major outlet.

For Abrams, the shift is cultural as much as technological. “I think it’s the perfect storm,” says Abrams, who has served as a legal analyst for ABC and NBC and as a host for networks such as MSNBC, A&E, and NewsNation. “The dying relevance of classic television—cable and broadcast—in conjunction with the explosion of social media, where individuals can create their own brands, with YouTube at the intersection of the two.”

Abrams—whose own podcast now runs on both SiriusXM and YouTube—is blunt: Success on YouTube requires a different playbook from traditional broadcast. “You’ve gotta have a point of view,” he says. “There’s gotta be a reason for people to come to you—and that’s why political moderation is tougher than political extremism, which tends to work better.”

The revolution may not be televised, but it’s certainly being podcasted, uploaded, and queued up on YouTube. Impact here isn’t about raw numbers. “Television can be passive—people flipping through, keeping it on in the background. The best of YouTube is people who are engaged,” Abrams says.

Likes, comments, and shares drive the algorithm, fueling reach and growth. That’s a big reason podcasts made the leap from headphones to screens.

For years, podcasts spread by word of mouth—one AirPod at a time. Loyal, niche, and hard to scale. But with video in the mix, YouTube’s algorithm kicks things into high gear.

“You grow [podcasts] organically over time and write your headlines in a way that just speaks to [the relationship with] your audience,” says showrunner Gordon. But on an algorithmic platform, the rules change. “Recently, if you have ‘Trump’ or ‘Elon Musk’ in your headline on YouTube, it’s just gonna do better in the algorithm.”

While that dynamic can drive growth, Gordon doesn’t pretend it’s without cost. “I can absolutely see why the rise of algorithms has led to a rise in more rage-bait-y or just more emotional and provocative and polarizing types of content—because that gets more engagement.”

Gordon, now something of a podcast-TV-YouTube hybrid producer, suspects that as more people watch on their TVs, podcast videos will only become more polished, more sophisticated, more…television.

This marks a shift from podcasting’s original DNA: a scrappy, lo-fi format, free of lighting rigs and glam squads.

While Gordon insists Klein has no plans to become a prime-time-style TV host, and she still values audio-only podcasts, her prediction is clear: “You’re gonna see more and more things maturing into a thing that ultimately, back to my original theory, everything eventually becomes television.”

Ben Davis, senior partner and cohead of digital at WME, is banking on it. “What even is a podcast anymore? What’s a YouTube series? What’s a TV show?” Davis half-joked on a recent call. To him, YouTube hits like Hot Ones (which also has a podcast feed) or Amy Poehler’s new podcast, Good Hang, (which also exists on YouTube) have a lot in common with classic late-night television.

And that’s exactly the point.

WME, repping some of the world’s biggest talent, is urging major streamers to license YouTube-first podcasts behind their paywalls.

“All of them are just in the audience business, and this is actually a really low-cost way to get a highly engaged audience,” Davis says. “Even the highest-paid podcasters in the world are still cheap relative to TV budgets, and they come with built-in audiences.”

To Davis, the model is familiar: “In the way that news was low-cost content in the cable bundle—whether it’s ESPN or CNN—there are versions of that here.” He sees a clear opportunity in the arbitrage created by low-cost programming.

“Take Peacock,” Davis said. “Why are people leaving Peacock to watch shows about your shows? Why not license The Toast…or Giggly Squad onto your service? For every platform there will be a different strategy.”

The life cycle has completed itself: Video killed the radio star. The radio star became a podcaster, the podcaster launched a YouTube channel, and YouTube became television. Now streaming platforms have become cable bundles again.

Everything has changed—yet everything’s the same. As Davis puts it: “I call it the show business now—two separate words. It’s about shows.”