Podcast

A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and downloaded by users,See Wikipedia's "podcast" page for more information. theoretically to be played on an iPod (hence the name), though they can be played on any device that supports MP3 files. Initially intended as a term for internet radio broadcasts,Everything You Need to Know About the History of Podcasts. (offline, archived 10 Dec 2019) podcasting has expanded as a medium from beyond commentary on topics to pure entertainment with the rise of scripted podcasts such as Welcome to Night Vale and podcasts made strictly for entertainment, such as most content by the McElroy Brothers. 
Fans have been podcasting in one way or another since either the late 1990s, with the example of Radio Free Cybertron, or the early 2000s, depending on how one chooses to define "podcast".
== Fannish Podcasting ==
Fans jumped on the podcasting bandwagon after it became popular in the mid 2000s, finding it an easy way to discuss fannish interests with like-minded people. Fannish podcasts can contain news, meta/commentary, interviews, readings of fanfiction, or some combination of these. Like any other fanwork, a podcast can be centered around a single fandom, such as Electronic Voice Phenomena (Supernatural) and Snapecast (Harry Potter), or it can be multifandom, such as /report. They can even be about the nature of fandom itself, like Fansplaining.
=== Example Fannish Podcasts ===
*Be The Serpent
*Dispatch: A 9-1-1 Podcast
*Fandom Cracked
*Fandom, Fan Fiction and Fun
*Fandom, Fanfic & Fangirls
*The Fanthropologists
*Genre TV for All
*The Let Me Tell You About Homestuck Podcast
*Not Now, I'm Reading
*Slashcast
*This Week In Fandom History
*Women Up
*Xena: Warrior Podcast
== Podcast Fandoms ==
Non-fannish podcasts can also develop fandoms in their own right, and such fandoms have become increasingly popular since the 2013 explosion of Welcome to Night Vale fans and fanworks. Canons that become podcast fandoms tend to take one of three forms: audio dramas that convey scripted fictional stories, like Welcome to Night Vale; actual-play podcasts that use tabletop roleplaying games to tell unscripted fictional stories, like Critical Role; and non-fiction podcasts that develop RPF fandoms, like Pod Save America. Audio dramas and actual-play podcasts can, of course, also develop their own RPF fandoms, though these tend to be less common.
=== Example Podcast Fandoms ===
*The Adventure Zone
*Critical Role
*Friends at the Table
*The Magnus Archives
*My Brother, My Brother and Me
*My Favorite Murder
*Not Another D&D Podcast
*Pod Save America
*The Penumbra Podcast
*Welcome to Night Vale
*Wolf 359
== Official Podcasts ==
Straddling the between source text and fan production, some television shows have begun creating official podcasts to comment on the show's story and production. Popular shows from HBO are particularly likely to get this treatment.
=== Example Official Podcasts ===
*The Good Place: The Podcast
*Shogun Podcast
*The Official Game of Thrones Podcast
==History==
=== 1999 ===
* Radio Free Cybertron begins airing; it is a weekly Transformers podcast that predates the creation of the term "podcast" by several years.
=== 2007 ===
* Buffy Between the Lines, a fan created serialized audio drama set between seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, begins.
=== 2013 ===
* Welcome to Night Vale, which began in 2012, sees a rapid gain in listenership and becomes the first big podcast fandom.
==See also==
*List of Harry Potter Podcasts
*List of X-Files Podcasts
*Podfic
==References==
Category:Audio