>> "But it'll lead to the collapse of podcast publishing".

There's money and there's money.

If one cool website gets money thanks to painful invasive advertising, I call that bad money. I'm paying them using bad money. They've chosen that I deserve that mean to pay them. Not very respectful, but I'm ok with it since I read it.

If on the other they ask me a few bucks to access them, that's good money. They basically do me a favor. The favor to have a choice : is that site so good I'm willing to pay ? 30 years ago, I was spending say 6-7 euros a month to buy magazines, so it was possible to make content interesting enough for me to pay. And it wasn't dark ages, I had some very interesting information (Dr. Dobb's, Edge, Byte...)