@NEETzsche @mk What that sounds like to me is the chasing of monetization.
There will only be a handful of demonstrably successful (in terms of money) podcasts, and people in it for the money will imitate those.
I'd bet that "in the past" people were not making the kahntent purely for the almighty dollar, much like early websites, but as it became evident that you could make money off of it, it attracted profit-seekers. You can probably draw similar parallels to early versus modern youtube.