I mean this lovingly, and I totally understand that Waypoint is trying different things to see what works in a volatile media climate that requires an enormous amount of ingenuity and persistence on the part of anyone trying to carve out a niche for themselves, but: I would sell some toes to see their analytics for how these Jane Austen podcasts are performing, or to be a fly on the wall for meetings about the direction and aim of these podcasts, because it seems like a very odd turn to me and I have to assume that there is some story on the back end that we aren't privy to
It makes some sense to me that they'd be surprisingly good at retaining dedicated Waypoint listeners—I feel like the sort of people who are committed in their appreciation of Austin and Rob's podcasting identity & general critical lens would probably listen to those two guys podcast the phone book—but it seems like it'd be a real tough sell for someone who is on Waypoint.com for the 1st-through-10th time looking for gaming news and criticism
it feels like there's been so much identity-shifting and so much experimenting on the part of Waypoint, Kotaku, Polygon, RPS, Giant Bomb, yadda yadda, over the past year—I'm sure that if the content of their analytics reports and brand-strategy meetings were ever put together, there'd be a fascinating story there about modern readership and the trajectory of games criticism. it's sad that all that information is probably never going to be put together, at least for those of us without a press badge of our own