True crime is more than blood and tears. And Megan Marcus, VP of Podcast Editorial at Paramount, is encouraging advertisers to look deeper at the genre. Speaking at Advertising Week-New York, Marcus told marketers last week that while she recognizes that many brands are skittish about true crime shows like their hit 48 Hours podcast, the format is a great a way to connect with listeners.
“There’s sometimes some trepidation around true crime, and I’m going to push back on that,” said Marcus, who oversees the full creative slate for CBS News, CBS Studios and MTV Entertainment. “This kind of storytelling is not just murder. Yes, that is oftentimes what starts it. But it’s often actually something larger and says a lot about us as a society.” And Marcus said that most true crime storytelling goes “far deeper” than just the whodunit at the surface. “These are really stories that speak to who we are as human beings,” she said.
True crime has proven to be a winner, at least with listeners, for Paramount. Podtrac says it was the ninth-largest publisher in September among those it measures, with 6.1 million unique listeners and 22.8 million total downloads.
One of the biggest hits for the company has been the CBS News podcast Blood is Thicker: The Hargan Family Killings. The series led to a 985% increase in subscribers of the 48 Hours+ channel on Apple Podcasts and a six-figure revenue increase as Americans couldn’t get enough of the headline-grabbing story about a 2017 murder in an upscale community outside of Washington.
Host Peter Van Sant says the story was ready-made for a podcast, with not only police audio but recordings from a phone call to a bank in which one of the daughters allegedly tried to impersonate her mother while trying to get a $400,000 loan sent to her bank account. “It’s got just about everything into the depths of the evil side of the human psyche,” he said during a panel discussion last week.
Driving much of the Paramount success has been the expansion of the “48 Hours” franchise into audio. Overall, average monthly downloads of the 48 Hours podcast increased 116% from 2022 to 2023, while all CBS News podcasts — which include the 48 Hours podcast — increased 59%.
Erin Moriarty, a correspondent on “48 Hours” and host of the companion true crime podcast My Life of Crime, says despite being on television for three decades, podcast storytelling is appealing since it allows for much more in-depth storytelling.
“When I’m on TV, you kind of have to take my word when I’ll say a police officer helped someone along and change their testimony. But in a podcast, there’s time — and you hear the police officer. So you get a look at a case that we just can’t do at 48 Hours,” Moriarty said.
Breaking Down Journalist Walls
Several years ago, few network television news stars would consider hosting a podcast. Today, that has changed, with it becoming nearly a standard side gig for what they do on TV. Moriarity, who has been working on “48 Hours” since 1990, says podcasting has also changed how she views journalism.
“When I first started as a journalist, I always kind of thought our job was to be right behind your shoulder saying, look over there. That’s what’s going on there. I always thought we would just be supposed to be that voice, and that is what podcasting is,” she said. “It is really the voice, because there are no pictures. You have to form them in your head. And hopefully we are just that voice just telling you, look over there – that happened.”
Van Sant, a “48 Hours” correspondent since 1998, agreed, calling it a “much more intimate” medium than TV. “People get a greater sense of who I am, as a person and as a journalist, and I’m not broadcasting at you in a podcast — I’m communicating to you,” he said.
Anne-Marie Green, anchor for CBS News Streaming Network and host of the 48 Hours Post Mortem podcast, said it also works to build trust with listeners.
“You’re not going to trust us unless you sort of know us, know where we’re coming from — and you can do that with podcasting in a way that you can’t do with other mediums, particularly when you have a very short time to get the information out,” Green said.
Yet not all CBS News podcasts come from the 48 Hours team. Dometi Pongo hosted a six-episode limited series titled Candyman: The True Story Behind the Bathroom Mirror Murder, which revisited the story of a 1987 Chicago murder that was also the subject of a film. Pongo thinks that with social media knocking down “the wall” between journalists and consumers, people want to hear what they think about the stories they’re telling. “Those things make it so exciting,” he said.
NCIS-48 Hours Mashup
Based on the success of its true crime lineup, it is no surprise to see Paramount doubling down on the format in the coming months. Going forward, Marcus says Paramount has more true crime lined up, including Van Sant’s follow-up to Blood Is Thicker. The new season will focus on a murder story that shook up a tranquil Northwest coastal community.
Another CBS News correspondent, Natalie Morales, will also lead a special series that is being co-produced with the long-running television series “NCIS” that will examine some of the real stories that inspired the plotlines on the fictional series.
The six-episode 48 Hours: NCIS launches Oct. 29 and will be a joint production of CBS News and CBS Studios.
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