Triton Digital has unveiled its 2024 U.S. Podcast Report, and there are some interesting and encouraging data points for the news genre of the industry.
According to figures in the report, 52% of all smart speaker podcast downloads come from the news format. That figure dwarfs the two largest challengers — kids & family at 11% and true crime at 8%. Despite the large number for the news genre, only 2.9 of all podcast downloads happen with smart speakers. A whopping 92% of downloads happen on mobile devices.
Additionally, the data from Triton Digital shows that the news format is the most downloaded genre in 2024, rising from 22% in 2023 to 25% in 2024. 87% of all news podcast downloads are of new episodes. That represents the highest level of any podcast format, with sports being the only other genre over 80%, at 82%.
The Triton Digital 2024 U.S. Podcast Report shows that 56% of news podcast listeners are men. Meanwhile, 18% of the top 150 overall podcasts of 2024 were from the news format, trailing only true crime, which saw a 20% representation overall.
Also, the Bongino Report Early Edition, hosted by Evita Duffy-Alfonso, was named the top debut podcast of the year.
The data compiled by the company comes from its surveys of more than 12,000 monthly U.S. podcast listeners, as well as tracking server log data from Omny Studio and other leading hosting platforms, Sounder and Demos+.
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