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Podcast Listening Trends

Podcast Listening Trends

Released Thursday, 14th December 2023
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Podcast Listening Trends

Podcast Listening Trends

Podcast Listening Trends

Podcast Listening Trends

Thursday, 14th December 2023
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Episode Transcript

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0:00

- You know, it's, it's really interesting that podcasting has taken up that space in people's lives.

0:06

You know, it used to be, had to be sit, sit down in front

0:09

of the TV at six o'clock to watch the news, you know, <laugh>.

0:12

- Yeah. So this, this Pew article says

0:14

that there's a 41% reporting

0:17

that they get podcast news consumption, you know,

0:21

in their day-to-Day Lives. That is a very significant number.

0:25

That is a big increase, and that is specifically from Americans using

0:29

podcasts as a news source. So about 41%. That is, that's wild to me.

0:35

- You're listening to Podcasts Insider, hosted by Mike Dell,

0:39

Todd Cochrane, and Mackenzie Bennett from the Blueberry

0:41

team, bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips

0:45

and tricks to help you start, grow and thrive through podcasting.

0:49

All with the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting.

0:52

Welcome. Let's dive in. - I'm Mackenzie Bennett, marketing specialist

0:58

at Blueberry Podcasting. - And I'm Mike Dell, the VP

1:01

of Customer Relations here at Blueberry.

1:04

- Today, we're taking a look at how people are moving

1:07

to podcasting to get their daily news.

1:14

I think one of the things that, um, we've seen change

1:19

so much in the past couple years, and then on top of being home

1:25

and differing social media platforms, is how

1:30

we all get our news on our own specific

1:32

way every single day. - Yeah, for sure. I've definitely moved away from the, what,

1:39

what people call the mainstream, you know, TV news

1:43

or news. Is there such thing as newspapers anymore? Anyway, <laugh>

1:47

- Few and far between <laugh> - Yeah. Newspaper websites. Yeah, I know that.

1:52

But yeah, I've moved away from a lot of that.

1:55

And I listen to podcast news, you know,

1:58

daily news on podcasts. I've got several of them that I listen to most days,

2:04

and that's enough. I, I just, you know, if you watch

2:10

the evening news, say NBC News, you know, and I,

2:14

and I like Lester Holt, and, you know, if I'm gonna

2:17

watch somebody, he's good enough. But the thing is, is they find the most negative thing

2:25

to talk about and just beat it to death.

2:29

And I'm in the, in the big world of it, you know,

2:33

we talked about it in another show about, you know,

2:35

people getting burned out on true crime content.

2:39

Well, same thing, you know, uh, news <laugh>,

2:43

you get burned out on it, you know? Yeah. You pull things over and over again,

2:46

and it's always, you know, it bleeds,

2:48

it leads that kind of thing. And a lot of the podcasts that I listen to

2:54

take it in way smaller chunks, you know, instead

2:58

of listening or watching to a half hour newscast

3:01

or worse, yes. Getting on a cable news channel of any sort,

3:06

and just watching that stuff constantly,

3:09

it'll drive you nuts. So having a 15 minute newscast in the morning is awesome.

3:15

- I think your sentiment is how everyone else feels as well.

3:19

That's why we all, we have all curated

3:22

how we get our own news on a regular basis,

3:26

because the traditional models are, feel,

3:31

feel a bit outdated. It, you know, it works on a 24 hour news cycle.

3:37

And whether you're getting that from, like global coverage,

3:41

local coverage, whatever it is, none

3:45

of us are gonna be completely happy with what is available out there, which is why we end up going on

3:50

a multitude of different platforms platform.

3:54

But we're talking about it today because podcasting has become very, very popular

4:01

for people to get their news on a regular basis,

4:03

moving away from tv, newspapers, radio, that type of stuff,

4:08

and really seeing a big uptick in people getting it from

4:13

podcasting and a few others.

4:16

- You, you brought up an article from Pew Research

4:19

that has a lot of interesting information about

4:22

how that's all working. You know, one of the things in here, one of the charts

4:26

that I'm looking at now says, you know, American's listen

4:29

to podcasts to learn for entertainment

4:31

and fill time while doing other things,

4:34

but they also do it for news.

4:37

And a lot of people, you know, get their current events from podcasting and current events.

4:41

Just another name for news. And it's really interesting how people

4:47

perceive news podcasts or podcasts in general, looking at this chart, 87% say

4:54

that the podcast news, you know, that they listen to

4:58

is 81st, 87% mostly accurate <laugh>.

5:02

- Yeah. - And only 11% inaccurate.

5:06

- Right. - You know, whether they trust the news or not.

5:09

And, you know, there's just a lot of stuff. We'll have a link to this article

5:13

'cause it, it, it's worth going through. But, you know, it's, it's really interesting

5:18

that podcasting has taken up that space in people's lives.

5:23

You know, it used to be, had to be sit, sit down in front

5:26

of the TV at six o'clock to watch the news, you know, <laugh>.

5:29

- Yeah. So this, this Pew article says

5:32

that there's a 41% reporting

5:34

that they get podcast news consumption, you know,

5:38

in their day-to-Day lives. That is a very significant number. That is a big increase.

5:43

And that is specifically from Americans using

5:46

podcasts as a news source. So about 41%. That is, that's wild to me.

5:52

I mean, I participate in it, but it's just crazy to see that number written down

5:58

of here's what we've evolved, evolved into for it.

6:07

- One of the things that they, they mentioned in here too is, you know, with as divided

6:12

as the country seems to be, and then we're talking about us again,

6:17

and I guess it's probably worldwide as well, but there's always a political lean

6:24

that people look for.

6:27

And I'm really not that way.

6:29

What I like is, you know,

6:31

of course I have my own political opinions and Mackenzie has basically the opposite ones,

6:36

which is cool, you know, whatever, it works.

6:38

But what I'm saying is I don't necessarily

6:43

listen to something because it says what I want.

6:46

What I want is somebody to read the news. What happened?

6:49

I don't, I don't want them to tell me what I should think about

6:52

what happened. Just tell me what happened. - You know, I was listening to an episode

6:56

of The Daily from the New York Times, uh,

7:00

just a couple days ago. And while I was listening to the episode, I was like,

7:04

that I think has been factually proven wrong.

7:08

This episode is two days old. I was like, that's now been changed.

7:12

so-and-So like, that seems to also be

7:16

not relevant anymore. And the entire time I was just like, okay,

7:20

I'm gonna continue listening to this episode. I was like, I'm gonna listen to it just

7:24

to continue getting this opinion from, you know, this,

7:28

this quote unquote expert that is on here. I'm like, however, like this is just, it seems

7:35

wrong, but I'm still gonna listen to it just

7:38

to get that perspective. But I think also, like part of this big increase

7:46

of listening to this pod like podcast as your news is

7:49

because younger people are doing, like younger

7:53

audiences are changing to this, as opposed to

7:57

the quote unquote traditional mediums that we've had.

8:00

- Yeah. My, you know, my folks are still glued

8:03

to the TV at six o'clock at night and watch the news

8:06

and read a newspaper and, and, and all that stuff,

8:09

but that's because that's what they know. - Yeah. I turned on the local news someday last week.

8:15

Like, I just, I turned on the TV and it was on Fox

8:19

and from when I was watching the Ohio State Michigan game,

8:23

<laugh>, and I just kept it on like,

8:25

in the background and kinda walked away. And then I was like, oh my God,

8:28

this is our local news channel here in Columbus.

8:31

And this is kind of just funny,

8:34

like the entire time I was like, oh, this just feels like a joke.

8:38

- <laugh>, I I mention a lot that I've worked in broadcasting

8:41

and I remember working for the, the TV station that I worked

8:45

for, and every single story they ran on

8:49

that deuce cast every night that I knew anything about

8:54

personally, not from the news.

8:58

They got some minor factual thing wrong about it.

9:03

I'm into aviation and almost every story you read about a

9:07

plane crash, there's something factually wrong about it.

9:11

That's fine. You know, things change.

9:13

You know, like if somebody reports a story, they're,

9:15

they're trying to get it out first, so they may not get the facts.

9:19

And same thing with podcasts. Uh, you know, if I'm doing a podcast about something

9:24

currently going on, well, it might be completely different

9:29

three weeks later or two days later. Or,

9:32

- I mean, I, you know, that was part of my problem the other day, listening to the Daily,

9:35

it was literally two days old and it was already, it was already wrong.

9:39

- Right. That just happens, you know, more facts come out,

9:43

more things come out, or, or conversely, people spin things the way they want to.

9:48

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and, you know, the,

9:51

the quote unquote facts change.

9:54

And that's, you know, that's just the nature of the beast.

9:58

But what, what's, what's nice about getting it in podcast

10:01

form is like, I, I subscribe to one that, that I,

10:04

that comes out twice a day and it's a little, you know, one,

10:08

the first one in the mornings, 15 minutes in the afternoon,

10:11

ones like five minutes just updating what's going

10:14

on, reading headlines. Okay. And I don't listen to every one of those.

10:20

'cause I know if I don't listen to it today, tomorrow,

10:24

whatever they said, yesterday's probably going

10:26

to be outdated <laugh>. But I still get it via podcasting.

10:31

And there's a lot of other, you know, social media, a lot

10:35

of people, you know, Facebook, Twitter, or X

10:38

or whatever it's called now, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, all

10:43

that stuff, you know, there's, you know, and you pick

10:47

and choose what platform you want to get stuff from.

10:50

I know you and Todd both, uh, use TikTok somewhat for that.

10:54

- Yeah. It's, it, that's actually one of the articles

10:58

that we wanted to bring up is that TikTok for news has

11:03

exploded in the past couple of years.

11:05

The, in 20 20, 20 2%

11:09

of TikTok users reported getting news from the app,

11:12

but that has surged to 43% as of 2023.

11:16

- That's crazy. Yeah. And, and you know, I don't even have the app, uh, so,

11:21

you know, I do it on other PLA platforms,

11:24

but that, that's the other, other beauty of this is we can all do what we want to do.

11:30

The one problem that could come from that is nobody has a

11:34

point of reference that's the same.

11:37

- Yeah. That's when we were talking about this

11:40

before recording, I was like, I do,

11:43

I am getting a significant amount of my news from TikTok,

11:46

but it's like, okay, I might be hearing about it on here,

11:49

but then I have to keep scrolling to see if I'm getting repeat videos saying the same thing,

11:55

and then I'm gonna cross reference and go Google it.

11:58

I'm gonna go look it up on Twitter, I'm gonna go look it up on a news site.

12:02

I like, I am constantly double checking

12:06

the information that I am getting. I am getting it generally first from TikTok,

12:12

but then it's just go everywhere else to confirm.

12:16

- Right. You know, with me, local news, I get most

12:20

of my local news from Facebook, sadly.

12:23

- Yeah. - The reason is, you know, our, our 9 1 1 service has, uh, you know, has a

12:30

Facebook page and they'll post when there's something going on.

12:33

And then later on I might go

12:36

to a local news website, you know, like one

12:39

of the TV station's website to read the whole article about what happened.

12:44

Or the news stations also on Facebook have, you know,

12:47

they'll post stories and, and usually I'll look at them, you know, most

12:52

of the time I won't turn on the TV and watch them

12:55

and you know, but I always double check everything too.

12:57

Two, three times, you know, you, you, because you can't really believe a single source.

13:04

- Absolutely. No <laugh> No, definitely not.

13:07

That's not an option. - Right. And, you know, and then, you know,

13:10

with all the Politicy stuff, you know, one person might spin it one way

13:14

and another person might spin it the other way and the truth is somewhere in the middle.

13:17

- Yeah. So I think personally what I do is

13:21

I will hear about it on some type of social platform

13:26

and then where podcasting comes in, I might like try

13:30

to listen to a more long form discussion

13:34

or, you know, journal journalistic look into it so

13:38

that I can get a full grasp of something. But in terms of getting, you know, up

13:44

to date immediate right now, I don't know

13:46

how podcasting is gonna be able to really take over that portion of it.

13:51

I think podcasting is gonna be for the discussion

13:53

of whatever is happening on the news and not ne like, not like the reporting of it.

13:58

- Some do pretty good with that, you know, like the daily,

14:02

you know, regardless of some of the opinion stuff,

14:05

the Daily usually is pretty up to date on the day that they put it out.

14:10

There's other, other shows out there.

14:12

A lot of, a lot of the big news networks, I think CBS

14:15

and Fox and a couple others put out

14:19

hourly podcasts. If you haven't run into one

14:23

of those, it's kinda interesting. They, they put out an episode that's only like five minutes

14:29

and then at top of the next hour they take that out

14:32

of the feed and put another one in there. So whenever you open up your app,

14:35

you get the latest and greatest. So that's about as close to real time

14:40

as you're gonna get Yeah. For the podcast. - Yeah, I think so.

14:52

Some of this other data is telling us that nearly 25% get their news from YouTube, Instagram,

14:58

TikTok, and X, you know, Twitter.

15:01

And then 80% of serious xms

15:05

listeners specify they want quote unquote unbiased

15:09

and factual information from news podcasts, which yeah,

15:13

we're all gonna be looking for that. - It's hard to find - <laugh>. Yeah.

15:16

They all, they said that 51% of news listeners say

15:19

that podcasts are authentic and trustworthy.

15:23

Similar to what people were saying from that Pew research.

15:26

This just in general, people do trust podcasts to give them

15:31

news information that they can trust. And then the serious data found that

15:37

the 51% say that they're looking, that they trust podcasts drops down to 6%

15:43

for cable television and 2% for social media.

15:48

- Yeah, for sure. So, you know, and social media, you, you know, <laugh> some

15:53

of that stuff is, uh, is very biased in both directions.

15:58

You know, if I'm, I'm looking at Twitter or X

16:02

and some news story comes up, I always look at the source

16:06

who tweeted it or who posted it,

16:10

and on top of that, you know, what did they link to?

16:13

Then I can sort of decide whether or not that's trustworthy

16:17

or not, and then I can go research it myself, like you were saying.

16:21

And, and you know, I, I'm sure it works the same way

16:24

with all the different platforms. So I think people in general are getting

16:29

smarter when it comes to that.

16:32

You know, I, I, I think that's actually a good trend.

16:35

And of course, you know, being that podcasting is involved,

16:38

I'm, I'm, I'm happy about that. <laugh>.

16:40

- I think it's a, it's a little bit of, you know,

16:45

I think people are getting better at it, but then I also see a little bit of Gen Z just going along

16:52

with it without realizing like, maybe I should check this <laugh>.

16:55

Yeah, totally. Um, theres a little bit like in the similar

17:00

to the vein of like, they don't know how

17:02

to troubleshoot on like a computer or an iPad

17:05

because they're just used to things like working, you know,

17:10

there, there needs to be a little bit of initiative there

17:13

to be like, oh, okay, that's what I heard. That's what everyone around me is talking about. Sure.

17:17

- You know, and not everybody, - Should I continue? - Yeah. Not everybody in the different

17:21

generations are, are the same. You know, I'm, I'm Gen X

17:25

and uh, you know, I think I'm probably a little more up

17:30

to date on the tech than, than the average in my age group.

17:35

And same with you. You know, millennials aren't known for <laugh>, aren't known

17:40

for their tech prowess unless they're coding

17:43

or something, you know, and we all help each

17:45

other out. That's all good. - We're gonna link to all of these articles

17:50

that we've been discussing, but overall, this is just going to continue to grow.

17:56

So if you are doing a news podcast of your own, you know,

18:00

take into consideration how you're getting this out,

18:03

how quickly you're doing it, what type of way you wanna go.

18:06

Do you wanna go like up to daily? Here's the headline, or do you wanna go really in depth?

18:12

What do you wanna make yourself known for with your new show?

18:16

- For sure. And you know, like I said, I think the trend is good.

18:19

'cause I think you're gonna get a more broad spectrum

18:22

of opinions and, and information, information, you know,

18:27

from all these sources. You know, social media is evil in some ways,

18:31

but you know, in some ways they're, it's very, uh, you know,

18:35

it's very informative and things, you know, you, you can get stuff really quick

18:39

by watching, you know, Facebook or Twitter or,

18:42

or whatever, quicker than the,

18:44

than the news channels will get it. - Yep. Social feeds are not going anywhere. Yeah.

18:49

It just depends on what platform you're on. Well, along that note, I think that's all.

18:55

- Yep. And then note, let's, uh, let's bug outta here and we'll see you next week.

18:59

- Thanks everyone. - Thanks for joining us.

19:02

Come back next week and in the meantime, head

19:05

to podcast insider.com for more information to subscribe,

19:09

share, and read our show notes. Check out the latest suite of services

19:13

and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast.

19:17

Visit blueberry.com. That's blueberry without the ease

19:21

because we can't afford the ease.

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