House of Pod: Take Two, Story First

Toward the end of 2021, House of Pod founder Cat Jaffee put out a stark and plaintive message to the Denver podcasting and media center’s supporters: It might have to close its doors. Revenue was flagging, slowed by the changing of the marketplace and the entire world during COVID. It was a harsh reality, considering HoP productions had been doing well; awards were won and word of mouth was strong. Jaffee and company were building a positive reputation in a relatively new landscape.

Now, less than three months later, Jaffee has announced the survival – and ongoing plans to thrive – for House of Pod.

“I’ve learned a lot,” Jaffee says, “and had some very interesting and strange conversations. This process has offered me the opportunity to understand the podcasting industry from the inside even more than I did before. That’s been really helpful.”

The solution? First, HoP has sublet some of its space to Kitcaster, a podcast booking agency, to help cover costs.

“We’ve kept the studio,” says Jaffee, “and we’re keeping super affordable rates for people who have been past members.” But the old ways of HoP doing business are done.

“There’s no longer memberships, there’s no longer key codes, there’s no longer the processes that were in place before – people can book the studio for the day or just hourly,” she says. “We’ll still elevate marginalized voices, tell all those deeply thoughtful stories that need and deserve to be told. We’re just going to focus on fewer of them so that the ones we do take on have the chance to reach an audience. We can put focus on just making great, great content while also being more targeted.”

The new approach, Jaffee says, means that House of Pod isn’t going away; it’s evolving. “And there was an opportunity to not evolve. Somebody put an offer in to buy House of Pod, too. It was a good offer. We could have kept going exactly the way we had been, more or less.”

What the prospective buyers proposed was a commercial-driven podcasting center that would do branding work, and also be open in its “free” time for public use at low cost. “I was like…no,” Jaffee says. “I’ve been constantly encouraging people to believe in themselves and invest in themselves because their ideas are good enough. I had to practice that myself.”

Once Jaffee decided not to sell, she was faced with a new question: “What do I need to do to give myself the creative freedom to go and produce original content – uniquely Colorado stories that are also a method for connecting people? How do I make that happen?” The answer to that, Jaffee says, is how she came to HoP’s new business model.

This move isn’t just about Jaffee’s own creative pursuits; she’s convinced that it’s also about the shows that have been, are being and will be produced with House of Pod.

“We’ve made tons and tons of podcasts,” she says. (Check out this Spotify list of some of the many HoP offerings.) “Sometimes they get press and sometimes they don’t. So much of it has been amazing work. But if you don’t have an established way for people to come and find your best work, it’s almost as if that work didn’t happen.”

Case in point: the podcast LoveSick.

“It was the first month of the pandemic,” Jaffee recalls. “Paul Karolyi [HoP’s then-editorial director] would set people up on blind virtual dates. We’d host people doing an online scavenger hunt at the Frida Kahlo House in Mexico. Things like that. It was hot.”

People loved it: Over 300 people from thirty U.S. states and several other countries had already signed up to participate in the show when it was only a month old.

“But we were doing it on such a small scale,” adds Jaffee. “We couldn’t keep funding it. So it ended after only a few episodes. Fast-forward to last month: A podcast called This Is Dating – the exact same show, exact same premise – is in the New York Times. It was what Paul and I had started, but because we were stretched so thin, personally subsidizing these creative endeavors…we weren’t giving ourselves the opportunity to really benefit from any traction.”

None of this is meant to suggest that House of Pod is ignoring its past and where it all started.

“Even though House of Pod is changing,” Jaffee says, “we’re still in it. We’re still right there doing the work we started out to do. When you sit in the studio, record in it, I almost feel like I can hear all the voices from all these other shows that have been there before me. We can still do all the good work we want to do; we just can’t do all the work there is to do. And in the end, it’s story first.”

For more information on House of Pod, including how to lease your own podcasting space, visit the HoP website.