I think the dichotomy is more "curated commercial ecosystem of mass-appeal winners" vs "the full spectrum of human experience and perspectives that requires effort on the part of the listener to find what is worth listening to".

Personally, I prefer the latter. You get out what you put in and the best podcasts (for me) have always been passionate people trying to share things with others. There are definitely some with high production value that I would (and do) miss but they were never sustainable to begin with so nothing truly lost there.

Podcasting will always be able to endure in its most basic form: two people, a mic, and an RSS feed.