In early August, news broke that Wondery, a major production company for true crime podcasts, laid off 110 employees, with its parent company Amazon moving any survivors of the purge over to Audible. That came in the aftermath of Spotify briefly purchasing Gimlet Media, another heavyweight of crime podcasting, only to torch it to the ground a few years after it didn’t meet profit expectations. Taken together, these shake-ups recently caused media commentator Mathew Belloni at Puck to argue that “heavily produced narrative podcasts aren’t a great business.” Bloomberg reporter Ashley Carman echoed that sentiment, declaring “this marks the end of the ‘Serial’ era in podcasting.”

Those remarks were made by solid journalists, but taken at face value they suggest the public’s tastes are rapidly changing — to the point where there’s less appetite for doggedly researched, deeply reported audio journeys into eye-opening true stories with emotional resonance.

As someone working as a newspaper crime reporter, and who recently finished a personally-consuming, spiritually taxing crime-based podcast series, the feedback I’m getting suggests that nothing is further from the truth: It’s not that listeners are walking away from mesmerizing stories about the bleaker parts of the human experience, it’s that their interest is fading in what greedy corporations have done to a podcast genre they don’t understand.

Here’s what the game has become: Fire-up a narrative podcast. Start losing yourself in its spell. Then, literally four minutes later, pry yourself out of its effects for a spate of intrusive ads. Now, attempt to dive back in. Now, make sure to get back out. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.

Powerful, long-form storytelling hasn’t lost its appeal, but listeners are tired of investing their focus in what is supposed to be an immersive experience only for it to be constantly interrupted by annoying, completely unrelated product pitches. And that ‘every four-minute’ figure? I’m not making it up. Use a stop-watch on the latest episode of Wondery’s “American Scandal” and see how fast its story stomps its brakes.

Want to skip those ads? No problem. Just toss another monthly subscription onto that pile you’re already struggling to pay for as part of supporting the creatives, publications and institutions that mean something to you. Intrigued by the first few episodes of a new podcast series? Cool, now give us $60 for a membership if you want to hear the rest sometime before the Messiah returns.

True crime podcasts started as an intimate audio path of discovery; but corporate ownership has all but nullified that.

And this has happened right as the quality of narrative crime podcasts have plummeted. Once companies like Amazon and Spotify went on buying sprees, and smaller production companies began mimicking their tactics, the overall content output had to ramp up. Overnight, a genre that had previously focused on truly remarkable unsolved murders or genuine legal travesties was suddenly spitting out eight-part series on any cold case a random reporter knew about (and, let’s be honest, some of these print journalists have voices that were never meant to be near microphones). In the state where I work, California, there are roughly 20,000 cold cases on the books. Are all of those supposed to be podcasts now? These questions don’t seem to weigh on Silicon Valley, where the culture that brought us “move fast and break things” has been feeding the content beast by throwing any manner of bizarre, first-hand account at the wall — then tracing what parts of fecal stain stuck best.

This wasn’t how true crime podcasts first grabbed the nation’s attention.

Revenue generation is fine, but today’s gluttony is fatal

The initial documentary series that merged the art of investigation with the craft of audio storytelling was Season 1 of ‘Serial.’ Back in 2014, this was an all-access odyssey that listeners could take in the privacy of their cars, their homes or their workout settings, then discuss at the proverbial water cooler with anyone else on the same path. Produced by WBEZ, a public radio station in Chicago, “Serial” clearly wasn’t engineered as a major profit-seeking venture at the time. The podcast did have one sponsor, Mailchimp, which was supporting Sarah Koenig as she fought to get at the truth of an imprisoned man’s guilt or innocence: The scrutiny that “Serial” brought to Adnan Syed’s case eventually led to him being released from prison.

Right off the bat, this podcast was about purpose over profit. There were real-world stakes around it. That’s why it connected with so many people.

“S Town,” which is arguably the most poignant and heart-rending podcasts ever made, also wasn’t forged with the aim of racking up lucrative advertising contracts. Similar to “Serial,” it was created in association with public radio. For years, listeners could take its trek into the midnight hour of one man’s mind without hearing any advertisements at all. This was a moment when, up north, Canada’s version of public radio was supporting David Ridgen to produce “Someone Knows Something,” an absorbing investigative podcast that kept the humanity of crime victims and their families at its forefront.

Such achievements are what drummed up loyalty in the genre in the first place, and they were largely born from the phenomenon of listener-supported public radio.

In the next few years, newer, smaller production companies seemed to intuitively know there were pitfalls to breaking a listener’s mental transportation. When the crime podcast “To Live and Die in LA” was produced by Tenderfoot TV and Cadence13, its major sponsor was Ring Doorbell Cameras, which was thematically adjacent to the story it was telling. “To Live and Die in LA” is a riveting, visceral rollercoaster, and while its audience probably didn’t want any interruptions in its ups and downs, taking a break to discuss home security at least made sense on some level. The bottom line is that no one can make in-depth, impactful journalism without some kind of revenue to support it, and the sponsorship that Tenderfoot TV used in that case was one of the more thoughtful ways to proceed.

Fast-forward to our current dilemma of hearing ads every four minutes. Big corporations obviously don’t see this as a problem because America’s broader consumption of podcasts is strong and constantly growing. Some studies suggest that incessant ad breaks don’t bother listeners too much when it comes to talk show-style podcasts, which are the majority of podcasts. That mirrors life (a little): You’re following a conversation. Something interrupts that conversation. The conversation resumes. Whether those ads are being read by one’s favorite host, or just popping in like a car alarm or some jack-hammer in the distance, having our conversations interrupted is part of our everyday existence. Yet believing the same holds true with narrative crime podcasts misses the entire point of what people love, or once loved, about the genre. What we’re not used to in our everyday lives is being asked to dwell on brutal violence, tragic loss or the impotence of our justice system — and process those numbing realities through hearing the actual voices of people harmed by them — and have these meditations suddenly shoulder-shook by blaring ads for MeUndies, Squarespace or Chumba online casino.

True crime podcasts started as something unique, as personal portals to the harsher, colder places — as audio gangplanks reaching towards the antimatter of American comfort.

Now they’ve mostly been perverted into an all-too-American exercise in sleight-of-hand.

Scott Thomas Anderson is the writer and producer of the true crime podcast series ‘Trace of the Devastation,’ the sixth episode of which was just released in August.