PODCAST LISTENING REMAINS GENERALLY STRONG IN FOUR-MONTH PODTRAC TRENDS

According to Podtrac’s June ranking of podcast publishers, most are maintaining their audience since the on-set of the Covid-19 pandemic.  In fact, five publishers saw increases in their audience size.

Spark News compared Podtrac’s top publisher charts for June 2020 and February 2020 to determine the impact of the pandemic on podcast listening. 

We think of Podtrac’s metric “Monthly U.S. Audience” as measure of overall circulation, sort of like cumulative weekly listeners, the metric Nielsen uses to determine the size of a radio station’s audience.

In February, the Podtrac chart listed 15 publishers. In June the number of publishers was 20. We compared February and June audience estimates for 14 of the 15 publishers. WarnerMedia was not listed on the February chart.

Five of the 14 publishers (36%) increased their monthly audience at the end of the four-month period. Nine of the publishers (64%) had decreases.

Cumulus/Westwood One had the biggest gain during the period, up 12%. Barstool Sports and iHeartRadio also had significant gains.

Both WNYC Studios and Wondery had a 21% drop in estimated Monthly U.S. Audience in June compared to February. ESPN’s audience was down 18%.

Attention now turns to Nielsen Audio’s June PPM ratings that will be available this week. In April and May, estimated weekly listeners dropped by as much as 60% after the pandemic took hold.