Podcast Listening Trends - PCI 375

Speaker 0 00:00:00 You know, it's, it's really interesting that podcasting has taken up that space in people's lives. You know, it used to be, had to be sit, sit down in front of the TV at six o'clock to watch the news, you know, .

Speaker 1 00:00:12 Yeah. So this, this Pew article says that there's a 41% reporting that they get podcast news consumption, you know, in their day-to-Day Lives. That is a very significant number. That is a big increase, and that is specifically from Americans using podcasts as a news source. So about 41%. That is, that's wild to me.

Speaker 3 00:00:35 You're listening to Podcasts Insider, hosted by Mike Dell, Todd Cochrane, and Mackenzie Bennett from the Blueberry team, bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow and thrive through podcasting. All with the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in.

Speaker 1 00:00:56 I'm Mackenzie Bennett, marketing specialist at Blueberry Podcasting.

Speaker 0 00:00:59 And I'm Mike Dell, the VP of Customer Relations here at Blueberry.

Speaker 1 00:01:04 Today, we're taking a look at how people are moving to podcasting to get their daily news. I think one of the things that, um, we've seen change so much in the past couple years, and then on top of being home and differing social media platforms, is how we all get our news on our own specific way every single day.

Speaker 0 00:01:35 Yeah, for sure. I've definitely moved away from the, what, what people call the mainstream, you know, TV news or news. Is there such thing as newspapers anymore? Anyway,

Speaker 1 00:01:47 Few and far between

Speaker 0 00:01:49 Yeah. Newspaper websites. Yeah, I know that. But yeah, I've moved away from a lot of that. And I listen to podcast news, you know, daily news on podcasts. I've got several of them that I listen to most days, and that's enough. I, I just, you know, if you watch the evening news, say NBC News, you know, and I, and I like Lester Holt, and, you know, if I'm gonna watch somebody, he's good enough. But the thing is, is they find the most negative thing to talk about and just beat it to death. And I'm in the, in the big world of it, you know, we talked about it in another show about, you know, people getting burned out on true crime content. Well, same thing, you know, uh, news , you get burned out on it, you know? Yeah. You pull things over and over again, and it's always, you know, it bleeds, it leads that kind of thing. And a lot of the podcasts that I listen to take it in way smaller chunks, you know, instead of listening or watching to a half hour newscast or worse, yes. Getting on a cable news channel of any sort, and just watching that stuff constantly, it'll drive you nuts. So having a 15 minute newscast in the morning is awesome.

Speaker 1 00:03:15 I think your sentiment is how everyone else feels as well. That's why we all, we have all curated how we get our own news on a regular basis, because the traditional models are, feel, feel a bit outdated. It, you know, it works on a 24 hour news cycle. And whether you're getting that from, like global coverage, local coverage, whatever it is, none of us are gonna be completely happy with what is available out there, which is why we end up going on a multitude of different platforms platform. But we're talking about it today because podcasting has become very, very popular for people to get their news on a regular basis, moving away from tv, newspapers, radio, that type of stuff, and really seeing a big uptick in people getting it from podcasting and a few others.

Speaker 0 00:04:16 You, you brought up an article from Pew Research that has a lot of interesting information about how that's all working. You know, one of the things in here, one of the charts that I'm looking at now says, you know, American's listen to podcasts to learn for entertainment and fill time while doing other things, but they also do it for news. And a lot of people, you know, get their current events from podcasting and current events. Just another name for news. And it's really interesting how people perceive news podcasts or podcasts in general, looking at this chart, 87% say that the podcast news, you know, that they listen to is 81st, 87% mostly accurate .

Speaker 1 00:05:02 Yeah.

Speaker 0 00:05:03 And only 11% inaccurate.

Speaker 1 00:05:06 Right.

Speaker 0 00:05:07 You know, whether they trust the news or not. And, you know, there's just a lot of stuff. We'll have a link to this article 'cause it, it, it's worth going through. But, you know, it's, it's really interesting that podcasting has taken up that space in people's lives. You know, it used to be, had to be sit, sit down in front of the TV at six o'clock to watch the news, you know, .

Speaker 1 00:05:29 Yeah. So this, this Pew article says that there's a 41% reporting that they get podcast news consumption, you know, in their day-to-Day lives. That is a very significant number. That is a big increase. And that is specifically from Americans using podcasts as a news source. So about 41%. That is, that's wild to me. I mean, I participate in it, but it's just crazy to see that number written down of here's what we've evolved, evolved into for it.

Speaker 0 00:06:07 One of the things that they, they mentioned in here too is, you know, with as divided as the country seems to be, and then we're talking about us again, and I guess it's probably worldwide as well, but there's always a political lean that people look for. And I'm really not that way. What I like is, you know, of course I have my own political opinions and Mackenzie has basically the opposite ones, which is cool, you know, whatever, it works. But what I'm saying is I don't necessarily listen to something because it says what I want. What I want is somebody to read the news. What happened? I don't, I don't want them to tell me what I should think about what happened. Just tell me what happened.

Speaker 1 00:06:54 You know, I was listening to an episode of The Daily from the New York Times, uh, just a couple days ago. And while I was listening to the episode, I was like, that I think has been factually proven wrong. This episode is two days old. I was like, that's now been changed. so-and-So like, that seems to also be not relevant anymore. And the entire time I was just like, okay, I'm gonna continue listening to this episode. I was like, I'm gonna listen to it just to continue getting this opinion from, you know, this, this quote unquote expert that is on here. I'm like, however, like this is just, it seems wrong, but I'm still gonna listen to it just to get that perspective. But I think also, like part of this big increase of listening to this pod like podcast as your news is because younger people are doing, like younger audiences are changing to this, as opposed to the quote unquote traditional mediums that we've had.

Speaker 0 00:08:00 Yeah. My, you know, my folks are still glued to the TV at six o'clock at night and watch the news and read a newspaper and, and, and all that stuff, but that's because that's what they know.

Speaker 1 00:08:12 Yeah. I turned on the local news someday last week. Like, I just, I turned on the TV and it was on Fox and from when I was watching the Ohio State Michigan game, , and I just kept it on like, in the background and kinda walked away. And then I was like, oh my God, this is our local news channel here in Columbus. And this is kind of just funny, like the entire time I was like, oh, this just feels like a joke.

Speaker 0 00:08:38 , I I mention a lot that I've worked in broadcasting and I remember working for the, the TV station that I worked for, and every single story they ran on that deuce cast every night that I knew anything about personally, not from the news. They got some minor factual thing wrong about it. I'm into aviation and almost every story you read about a plane crash, there's something factually wrong about it. That's fine. You know, things change. You know, like if somebody reports a story, they're, they're trying to get it out first, so they may not get the facts. And same thing with podcasts. Uh, you know, if I'm doing a podcast about something currently going on, well, it might be completely different three weeks later or two days later. Or,

Speaker 1 00:09:32 I mean, I, you know, that was part of my problem the other day, listening to the Daily, it was literally two days old and it was already, it was already wrong.

Speaker 0 00:09:39 Right. That just happens, you know, more facts come out, more things come out, or, or conversely, people spin things the way they want to. Mm-Hmm. and, you know, the, the quote unquote facts change. And that's, you know, that's just the nature of the beast. But what, what's, what's nice about getting it in podcast form is like, I, I subscribe to one that, that I, that comes out twice a day and it's a little, you know, one, the first one in the mornings, 15 minutes in the afternoon, ones like five minutes just updating what's going on, reading headlines. Okay. And I don't listen to every one of those. 'cause I know if I don't listen to it today, tomorrow, whatever they said, yesterday's probably going to be outdated . But I still get it via podcasting. And there's a lot of other, you know, social media, a lot of people, you know, Facebook, Twitter, or X or whatever it's called now, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, all that stuff, you know, there's, you know, and you pick and choose what platform you want to get stuff from. I know you and Todd both, uh, use TikTok somewhat for that.

Speaker 1 00:10:54 Yeah. It's, it, that's actually one of the articles that we wanted to bring up is that TikTok for news has exploded in the past couple of years. The, in 20 20, 20 2% of TikTok users reported getting news from the app, but that has surged to 43% as of 2023.

Speaker 0 00:11:16 That's crazy. Yeah. And, and you know, I don't even have the app, uh, so, you know, I do it on other PLA platforms, but that, that's the other, other beauty of this is we can all do what we want to do. The one problem that could come from that is nobody has a point of reference that's the same.

Speaker 1 00:11:37 Yeah. That's when we were talking about this before recording, I was like, I do, I am getting a significant amount of my news from TikTok, but it's like, okay, I might be hearing about it on here, but then I have to keep scrolling to see if I'm getting repeat videos saying the same thing, and then I'm gonna cross reference and go Google it. I'm gonna go look it up on Twitter, I'm gonna go look it up on a news site. I like, I am constantly double checking the information that I am getting. I am getting it generally first from TikTok, but then it's just go everywhere else to confirm.

Speaker 0 00:12:16 Right. You know, with me, local news, I get most of my local news from Facebook, sadly.

Speaker 1 00:12:23 Yeah.

Speaker 0 00:12:24 The reason is, you know, our, our 9 1 1 service has, uh, you know, has a Facebook page and they'll post when there's something going on. And then later on I might go to a local news website, you know, like one of the TV station's website to read the whole article about what happened. Or the news stations also on Facebook have, you know, they'll post stories and, and usually I'll look at them, you know, most of the time I won't turn on the TV and watch them and you know, but I always double check everything too. Two, three times, you know, you, you, because you can't really believe a single source.

Speaker 1 00:13:04 Absolutely. No No, definitely not. That's not an option.

Speaker 0 00:13:09 Right. And, you know, and then, you know, with all the Politicy stuff, you know, one person might spin it one way and another person might spin it the other way and the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Speaker 1 00:13:17 Yeah. So I think personally what I do is I will hear about it on some type of social platform and then where podcasting comes in, I might like try to listen to a more long form discussion or, you know, journal journalistic look into it so that I can get a full grasp of something. But in terms of getting, you know, up to date immediate right now, I don't know how podcasting is gonna be able to really take over that portion of it. I think podcasting is gonna be for the discussion of whatever is happening on the news and not ne like, not like the reporting of it.

Speaker 0 00:13:58 Some do pretty good with that, you know, like the daily, you know, regardless of some of the opinion stuff, the Daily usually is pretty up to date on the day that they put it out. There's other, other shows out there. A lot of, a lot of the big news networks, I think CBS and Fox and a couple others put out hourly podcasts. If you haven't run into one of those, it's kinda interesting. They, they put out an episode that's only like five minutes and then at top of the next hour they take that out of the feed and put another one in there. So whenever you open up your app, you get the latest and greatest. So that's about as close to real time as you're gonna get Yeah. For the podcast.

Speaker 1 00:14:43 Yeah, I think so. Some of this other data is telling us that nearly 25% get their news from YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and X, you know, Twitter. And then 80% of serious xms listeners specify they want quote unquote unbiased and factual information from news podcasts, which yeah, we're all gonna be looking for that.

Speaker 0 00:15:15 It's hard to find

Speaker 1 00:15:16 . Yeah. They all, they said that 51% of news listeners say that podcasts are authentic and trustworthy. Similar to what people were saying from that Pew research. This just in general, people do trust podcasts to give them news information that they can trust. And then the serious data found that the 51% say that they're looking, that they trust podcasts drops down to 6% for cable television and 2% for social media.

Speaker 0 00:15:48 Yeah, for sure. So, you know, and social media, you, you know, some of that stuff is, uh, is very biased in both directions. You know, if I'm, I'm looking at Twitter or X and some news story comes up, I always look at the source who tweeted it or who posted it, and on top of that, you know, what did they link to? Then I can sort of decide whether or not that's trustworthy or not, and then I can go research it myself, like you were saying. And, and you know, I, I'm sure it works the same way with all the different platforms. So I think people in general are getting smarter when it comes to that. You know, I, I, I think that's actually a good trend. And of course, you know, being that podcasting is involved, I'm, I'm, I'm happy about that. .

Speaker 1 00:16:40 I think it's a, it's a little bit of, you know, I think people are getting better at it, but then I also see a little bit of Gen Z just going along with it without realizing like, maybe I should check this . Yeah, totally. Um, theres a little bit like in the similar to the vein of like, they don't know how to troubleshoot on like a computer or an iPad because they're just used to things like working, you know, there, there needs to be a little bit of initiative there to be like, oh, okay, that's what I heard. That's what everyone around me is talking about. Sure.

Speaker 0 00:17:17 You know, and not everybody,

Speaker 1 00:17:18 Should I continue?

Speaker 0 00:17:19 Yeah. Not everybody in the different generations are, are the same. You know, I'm, I'm Gen X and uh, you know, I think I'm probably a little more up to date on the tech than, than the average in my age group. And same with you. You know, millennials aren't known for , aren't known for their tech prowess unless they're coding or something, you know, and we all help each other out. That's all good.

Speaker 1 00:17:47 We're gonna link to all of these articles that we've been discussing, but overall, this is just going to continue to grow. So if you are doing a news podcast of your own, you know, take into consideration how you're getting this out, how quickly you're doing it, what type of way you wanna go. Do you wanna go like up to daily? Here's the headline, or do you wanna go really in depth? What do you wanna make yourself known for with your new show?

Speaker 0 00:18:16 For sure. And you know, like I said, I think the trend is good. 'cause I think you're gonna get a more broad spectrum of opinions and, and information, information, you know, from all these sources. You know, social media is evil in some ways, but you know, in some ways they're, it's very, uh, you know, it's very informative and things, you know, you, you can get stuff really quick by watching, you know, Facebook or Twitter or, or whatever, quicker than the, than the news channels will get it.

Speaker 1 00:18:46 Yep. Social feeds are not going anywhere. Yeah. It just depends on what platform you're on. Well, along that note, I think that's all.

Speaker 0 00:18:55 Yep. And then note, let's, uh, let's bug outta here and we'll see you next week.

Speaker 1 00:18:59 Thanks everyone.

Speaker 3 00:19:00 Thanks for joining us. Come back next week and in the meantime, head to podcast insider.com for more information to subscribe, share, and read our show notes. Check out the latest suite of services and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast. Visit blueberry.com. That's blueberry without the ease because we can't afford the ease.