Report: Fictional Podcasts Resurrect The Flavor Of Old Time Radio

iTunes #1 Podcast features voice of Gillian Jacobs & Josh Gad

The popular new podcast “Blood Ties” tells the story of siblings Elenore and Michael Richland, who are left to pick up the pieces after their parents’ private plane vanishes en route to a family Christmas vacation in the Caribbean.

The Wall Street Journal reports it’s the kind of character-driven story that would fit right in with the true-crime miniseries typical on Wondery, the independent podcasting network known for cinematically produced, documentary-style shows like “Dirty John,” “Dr. Death” and “Over My Dead Body.” With similar narrative pacing, hyper-realistic sound effects and a topical story line, the podcast jumped to No. 1 on the Apple Podcasts chart when it launched in December and has remained at the top of it since.

But unlike Wondery’s best known tales,“Blood Ties,” which it also produced, isn’t true crime. It isn’t even true. It’s “verging on the precipice of being so believable that you question whether it is real or not,” says actor Josh Gad, who co-stars alongside Gillian Jacobs as Michael and Eleonore Richland, respectively.

Told over the course of six 20-minute episodes, the story unfolds atop a rich auditory backdrop of crashing waves, chirping birds, clinking ice, hissing voice messages and a dramatic score. Listeners eavesdrop as the Richlands make the shocking discovery that their father, a celebrated doctor-turned-entrepreneur, had been hiding a dark, criminal past.

It is the latest in a growing wave of fictional podcasts featuring top-tier talent and compelling, ripped-from-the-headlines narratives, arriving at a time when podcasting advertising revenues are poised to exceed $1 billion for the first time by 2021, according to a recent report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC).

The new fictional offerings hark back to the old days of radio plays, which enraptured listeners before the advent of television.

“I always thought it would have been so cool to live in a different time and a place where you could do a radio play, where you could do something like what Orson Welles did with ‘The War of the Worlds,’ ” the famous 1938 radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’s novel that made some listeners wonder if Martians were really invading Earth, says Mr. Gad.