News makes up about one-fifth (21%) of the most popular episodes on the Apple charts in the United States. We've identified nearly 60 local daily news podcasts across our five countries (see full list in Appendix B), with the majority of these shows launched in the last 18 months. Some of the most popular daily news podcasts in the United States – such as The New York Times' The Daily – attract millions of viewers, while others struggle in an increasingly competitive market.
Which of the following types of podcasts have you listened to in the past month? In the United States, only 16% of catch-up popular podcasts are found, but these include audio versions of cable favorites such as The Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC) and highlights from The Daily Show (Comedy Central). In the United States, only 13 of the top 200 shows (7%) are foreign, half of which are British.
Another great feature of the podcasting scene in the United States is the strength of podcast production companies like Gimlet, Stitcher, and Wondery. These studios produce 26 of the top trending local news shows in the United States (19%) and their shows are widely consumed around the world.
Deep-Dive into Daily News Podcasts
In terms of popularity, it tends to be the longer deep dives that are the biggest hit with consumers – at least in the UK and US. The Podtrac rankings for September 2019 show The Daily as the most popular podcast in the United States, with NPR's Up First, which is a news digest, at number four. Both publications worked with recently acquired start-up Binge Audio to develop their daily news podcasts and quickly settled on the format of one big story, as La Story presenter Pierrick Fay recalls: 'It's the format that in the United States work.
I spent two months listening to what was being done, while we designed our new program.' Le Parisien canceled its audio briefing for Amazon Alexa devices to make way for a deep-dive podcast: "The number one goal was to differ a few stories, with a podcast of daily news that lasts about twenty minutes," . The Economist also decided on a three-story format for The Intelligence, with the aim of showing the global distribution of its correspondents and building awareness for its brand in the United States. In the United States, the most successful news summary program is National Public Radio's Up First.
The same material reaches an audience that is, on average, at least 20 years younger than our broadcast audience with the same hosts.” NPR says the audience for Up First is still much smaller than the morning radio audience, but is in the millions and larger. Last year 50%. The Financial Times has also adopted a news summary approach focused on US business. Someone is finishing, someone is calling, someone is in the middle of an edit, and you can really hone those stories.
These are significant audiences, even if they are not yet on par with the most popular radio news programs in the US. Digital advertising is generally sold on a CPM model (cost per thousand listeners in this case) and podcast CPMs are generally higher than websites and for many forms of video.12 This is partly because professional podcast content is mostly considered 'brand safe'. , it's hard to skip ads, and ad density is still relatively low: 'The user experience for audio is a good deal for everyone. Sponsorship is a popular alternative, where a brand takes all advertising in the podcast for a specified period of time.
All articles are now read by journalists and these options are prominently displayed in the app.
Wider Publisher Strategies: Case Studies
It's interesting to us because it's one of the things that sets our tone," says Times managing director Chris Duncan: "You might not immediately think we have a lot of humor. But in terms of thinking about the podcast series, programming and what the optimal length of a podcast is - all of those things, the audio guys really brought a lot of expertise.” The FT's podcast strategy is focused on reaching new audiences in the US, where the publication is less well-known .
The idea is to make younger and more female audiences more aware of the FT's breadth and scope, in the hope that they. It's about doing less of the right stuff better,' says Renée Kaplan, head of audience and new content strategies. Slate also recently teamed up with The Economist for The Secret History of the Future, but as Editorial Director Gabriel Roth points out, this series can be riskier: "The classic Slate podcast is a model where you take a few hours out of three reporter days once a week.
Podcasting was a "natural fit from a content perspective," Vox's Marty Moe explained in a recent interview.15 "The question was, from a. Apple's podcast directory shows 85 podcasts in the news category alone, including several in a range of different languages Due to the difficulty of building an audience for back-to-back podcast series, the BBC has used its flagship podcast Beyond Today to showcase its best original reporting on big issues.
SR dominates the spoken word landscape in Sweden and has more than 150 news podcasts in Apple's library alone. Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) ABC has around 300 podcasts in Apple's library and 31 in the news category. Radio France (France Inter, France Culture, etc.) Like other broadcasters, Radio France sees podcasting as a way to reach a younger and more diverse audience, but also to refresh and revitalize radio formats: 'The podcast is something that allows you to take editorial risks, to experiment with different types of production,'.
16 Voices of Despair as BBC Gambles Everything in Pursuit of Youth', The Times: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/voices-of-despair- as-bbc-gambles-everything-on-pursuit -of -rini-27zghkl98.
Future Developments and Potential Impact for Publishers
Also in Australia, the three largest advertisers – the Australian Post, the Commonwealth Bank and Telstra (telco) – have started looking at podcasts: “They are all jumping in,” says Robert Loewenthal, CEO of Whooshkaa, which hosts thousands of podcasts and helps in generating revenue. New technology now allows each ad to be dynamically inserted at the time of playback/download and more and more of these ads are being sold programmatically. While advertising numbers are currently high and US publishers are doing well, some are concerned about this changing dynamic: "You know, we've seen what digital advertising has done in every other form of media and where the value accrues to big platforms." says Erik Borenstein of the New York Times.
It's a well-known story that worries publishers: "If they build big ad companies based on publisher audio, I hope they share some of that value back with the publisher," says Borenstein. I think we will see more pure distribution licensing deals for higher quality professional shows,” said Eric Diehn, CEO of Stitcher. In principle, we want to be the only company in Europe for podcasts,” says co-founder Andreas Sachse, who talks about the desire to grow the market across Europe to a much broader audience.
I'd say we're past the beginning, maybe in a way through the middle part of podcasting growing into a mature medium," says Stitcher CEO Erik Diehn. These platform moves are important because they have the potential to push podcasts to a wider audience: "It's essential that we start thinking beyond the trendy bubble audience that we know," says James Cator, head of podcasts, EMEA, at Spotify. . They are experimenting with different lengths of content and will probably expand the service elsewhere.
When you get to a place with voice-controlled audio in cars, radio will still be important, but they're going to get a little more competition," says Whooshkaa's Robert Loewenthal. Both Google and Amazon with their successful voice assistants are likely to be more important audio gateways in this version of the future. We have an existential problem with an uneven playing field between third party platforms and dominant third party platforms wanting to favor and push their own services," said Kieran Clifton, the BBC's director of distribution and business development.
In Australia, the ABC is currently banning content from Spotify and Radio France has pulled its content from Spotify and Majelan: "We would like to better control our distribution, to favor our own media," says Ari de Sousa, Chief of Digital Products. and Marketing at Radio France: "If you cut the connection between us and our audience, it's hard to provide a public service." Beyond these objections, Radio France argues that any company looking to monetize podcasts should pay for the privilege.
Conclusions
In terms of news itself, our research suggests that the US and the UK already have a lot. Podcasting began as a cottage industry, something consumed by a small group of enthusiasts—and it's stayed under the radar for more than a decade. But those days are over and we are in the middle of an era of professionalization that is bringing more money into the industry and raising the bar in terms of quality as well.
In this context, it is possible that some of the magic and the diversity may be lost. In the future, it will still be possible for an individual podcaster to find an audience for something unique, but we'll also likely see more high-quality audio content that people are willing to pay for.
APPENDIX A: LIST OF INTERVIEWEES
APPENDIX B: LIST OF DAILY NEWS PODCASTS
Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Antonis Kalogeropoulos und Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Wie Wähler des Brexit-Referendums die Nachrichten nutzen Richard Fletcher und Meera Selva.
