Podcast Popularity Divided Fairly Evenly Across Political Spectrum

September 19, 2023, New York, NY — An analysis by TheRighting into the popularity of all News and Political podcasts has revealed a fairly even split across the political spectrum among subscribers to the most popular programs.  TheRighting examined the publicly available subscriber totals on the Castbox platform for dozens of the top News and Political podcasts.  Eighteen of the top 40 podcasts were identified by TheRighting as overtly right leaning.  The remaining 22 were mainstream or progressive.  The analysis was conducted after reviewing Castbox data on September 1.

While TheRighting has monitored the popularity of right wing news and political podcasts for the past two years, until today it has never compared how subscription numbers for those right wing programs compared to mainstream and progressive podcasts. 

“After studying the results of TheRighting’s findings, it’s clear that the popularity of right wing podcasts are driven by outspoken personalities like Ben Shapiro, Megyn Kelly, Dan Bongino and Matt Walsh,” said Howard Polskin, President, TheRighting. “In contrast, the mainstream and progressive podcasts with the most subscribers were most characterized by the enduring strength of a particular media brand like The New York Times, the BBC or NPR.” 

The New  York Times podcast “The Daily” ranked as the most popular program in the News and Politics categories with almost 1.4 million subscribers.  It was followed by the BBC’s Global News Podcast with more than 675,000 subscribers. The Daily Wire’s “The Ben Shapiro Show” landed in third place and took honors as the most popular right wing podcast with 558,705 subscribers. 

The Daily Wire ranked as the publisher with the most podcasts (five) in TheRighting’s top 40, followed by Crooked Media (four). 

“Not only do podcast listeners have a remarkably wide variety of choices from all sides of the political universe, but TheRighting’s analysis reveals a healthy mix of popular shows from legacy media companies as well as rising podcast powerhouses,” said Polskin.

Notable podcasts not in TheRighting’s top 40

A random sampling of News & Politics podcasts across the political spectrum.  Source: Castbox

·      “Meet the Press” (27,388 subscribers)

·      “Prosecuting Donald Trump” (20,449).  Featuring prosecutors Andrew Weissman and Mary McCord

·      “The Problem with Jon Stewart” (20,181)

·      “The One with Greg Gutfeld “(15,959)

·      “Bannon’s War Room” (15,636)

·      “Al Franken Podcast” (9,648)

·      “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” (3,324)

·      “The Warning with Steve Schmidt” (344)

·      “The Jenna Ellis Show” (207)

Methodology

This report is based on data that is updated daily from the podcast app Castbox, which is the sixth most popular app on the podcast-hosting platform Buzzsprout.   Castbox represents 2.0 % of all podcasts that Buzzsprout serves. No other leading podcast app besides Castbox makes its data available. TheRighting’s top 40 News and Politics chart only listed programs that have had new podcasts available on the Castbox platform since January 1, 2023.  If producers feel any show has been omitted from this list, please contact therighting@therighting.com.

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