While I suspect you're not wrong about either inefficiency in large, well-funded media organziations or the efficiency of Rogan's operation, comparing his podcast to anything but a substantially similar TV show is hardly a fair comparison. Even a relatively low-budget scripted TV series is going to require a cast, writers, props, sets, costumes, hair and makeup, lighting, camera work, craft services, transportation, significantly more editing and postproduction, the list goes on, plus directors and producers and administrative personnel to manage all of this.
And that's exactly the point. It is unfair. TV shows and podcasts are both competing for the same audience, and yet the podcast can do it an order of magnitude cheaper.
> TV shows and podcasts are both competing for the same audience.
If by "audience" you mean "people," sure, but I don't think that's particularly meaninful. I don't think I'm alone in thinking that podcasts and TV shows aren't even kind of comparable or able to replace one another.
Wouldn't "audience" and "people" both just be a proxy for "time" though?
Not really, the time I set aside for shows, podcast, movies and games is all different. I am not going to give up watching slow horses to watch a podcast,
Sure, but for people without abundant time to spend alone then watching a show this evening kind of precludes also ingesting a podcast before tomorrow. It's not like the labour movements around the world have negotiated significantly more free time for the big mass of working humans since Netflix said that sleep is their biggest competitor back in 2017.