Military Veteran Podcasting is on the Rise in US

The number of US veteran-produced podcasts – and those that include veterans as part of the cast or editing team – are on the rise, according to a recent study by LukkyGo Productions.

This is a guest article by LukkyGo Productions, which produces The HappyGoLukky Podcast.

Military Veterans Take to Podcasts

According to the study, it is estimated that as many as 7% of US-based podcasts involve US military veterans with growth expected to reach 9% in 2020.

While this would naturally reflect the relative percentage of veterans in the US population, the vast majority of veterans involved in podcasting are part of the post 9/11 cohort of veterans, which represent just 1 percent of the population as a whole. Further results of the survey indicate that while a number of these podcasts focus on military issues, more than 70% have no correlation to military life or experience, coveringing a wide range of categories and genres.

Insights into Military Podcasts

While these results may be surprising, LukkyGo Productions presented a number of theories as to why this level of participation and diversity exists along with recommendations for improving visibility and access to the podcasts themselves. Daniel Nichols, an OIF veteran and the lead researcher on this project offered these insights about why this number will continue to grow in 2020: 

“I was amazed to find while serving that military members have a fantastic range of creativity and skill. I think people often view veterans as either in need of help or one dimensional, where in reality we are a highly motivated and skilled group of people that continues to work, serve and create in our own communities and a wide variety of professions and industries. The growing percentage of podcasts produced by US veterans is just one example. We hope that by performing this initial research and creating a list of these podcasts, more veteran creators will identify themselves and listeners will be encouraged to support veteran produced shows with subscribes, likes, and positive reviews.”

Nichols noted that while various informal lists have been created to highlight small groups of podcasts run by military veterans, there have been no concerted efforts to date to identify the extent to which veterans and active duty military participate in podcast creation and production. In fact, a key challenge for the study was finding a way to identify veteran creators that were not explicitly marketed as such. Ultimately survey instruments were used to sample podcasts along with a uniquely designed machine learning tool that was able to analyze audio content as a means of identifying the military experience of show hosts and producers. 

Inside the Study

While technological solutions played a central part in the initial study, the study concluded that the best means of tracking veteran participation in podcast media creation is through self-identification, which is why the team selected the Podchaser platform as their tool of choice to publish initial and ongoing lists. Nichols concluded that, “Podchaser’s ability to individually identify podcast creators and link those creators to not only the shows they produce, but to individual episodes across many podcasts offers a unique and powerful opportunity unlike any other service or platform in the market.” 

Nichols hopes to continue helping the growing audience of podcast listeners to find and support military veteran-connected podcasts and episodes.

Get Involved

Military veteran creators interested in learning more or having their podcast listed for free can contact HappyGoLukky via twitter @lukkygo to provide feedback and ideas for the list, or to gain more information about joining the Cast Junkie Discord community to interact more directly with many other independent creators.

US Veteran Podcasts on Podchaser

People can view an initial list of military produced podcast on Podchaser: Top Podcasts By US Military Veterans