THE BBC would “never” invest in young, up-and-coming talent now in the same way it did 10 years ago, a comedian who was on the forefront of the broadcaster’s expansion into podcasting has said.
Speaking to The National Podcast, Jacob Hawley also addressed how the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is losing relevance to young performers who simply cannot afford to do a month’s stint in the city, with people instead turning to creating their own homegrown content for a potentially global audience.
Hawley – who also co-hosts his own podcast Screen Rot, which looks at the weird and wonderful world of viral online trends – spoke to The National Podcast ahead of taking his new comedy show “Fighting Age Man” on tour later this year.
The London-based comic previously made podcasting series with the BBC in the early days of BBC Sounds, but he said the landscape had completely changed in the years since then, with the focus on attracting celebrities rather than new talent.
“Broadcasters, whether that be the BBC or Global or whoever makes podcasts, has had to go, ‘Look, we're competing with big names here, we need big names’,” he said.
“All those years ago, maybe 2018, 2019, when I started my one with BBC Sounds … I met some producers, they messaged me to say, ‘Look, they're making this thing called BBC Sounds, have you got any ideas for podcasts?’ And that was it.
“Nowadays, the idea of them funding a new, early-20s comedian who had 400 followers and had never done anything, and then pumping money into making a podcast that ended up at 12th in the charts, that's insanity now. It would never happen now.
“The market completely changed. I mean, The Guardian's got 15 podcasts, BBC Food has got five podcasts … The market just got completely swamped. I feel incredibly lucky that I got to do what I did at the time.”
Hawley said that the difficulty which young comedians now have getting commissioned is pushing more and more people towards simply doing things themselves and trying to find an audience online, a similar situation to the costs of the Edinburgh Fringe.
“I haven't done a full run at the Fringe since 2022, and I think that took me a year to pay off,” he said.
“Between all the marketing, the PR, all the costs, it was financially crippling for a year. And I had a good time, do you know what I mean?
“I was in a 100-seater venue. I had big management behind me. I was one of the ones who should have done alright.”
However, he said that it “just doesn't make sense” for young performers now.
“I think maybe more important than the access to that festival for performers is the access to an audience,” Hawley said.
“I did full runs at that Fringe in 2018, 2019, and 2022. As it went on, you could look at the audience and go – without sounding disrespectful – it's a lot of grey hairs in this audience, it's a Radio Four crowd, because they can afford it …
“From a kind of business perspective as an act, if your objective is to gain an audience … you can either put all your money into appealing to a very, very small bracket of people ... or you can buy yourself a camera, spend a bit of money learning how the internet works, make clips, go viral, and appeal to the entire country, the entire world.”
He added elsewhere: “I think more than ever, punters are willing to just find stuff [online] and I think it’s been hugely liberating for a lot of comedians.
“There's so many great people making brilliant content that I don't think would have got commissioned, not because it's un-commissionable in terms of quality or even content, but it just takes so long to make anything now.
“Whereas people can get a camera, make something and get it out, so I find it a really fun and great time in comedy.”
Hawley also said that the Fringe should be doing a better job of promoting Scottish acts to its audiences.
“I don't think it ever does enough to champion Scottish acts,” he said. “There is such an incredible community of Scottish comedians at the moment, based in Edinburgh, Glasgow, sometimes further afield, they might even be international acts or British acts who are based in Scotland, who are so good, and you never see them represented when it's awards time.”
He added: “That could be such a benefit of the Fringe, not just hosting others, they could really champion their own.”
You can find out more about Hawley’s tour “Fighting Age Man” on his website, and watch or listen to the full The National Podcast episode on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
