WTOP is doing something most news/talk stations still won’t try, and it’s about time someone did. On Monday, the Washington, D.C. all-news station laid out its plans for Top News Podcast, a feed that will update 12 to 14 times per day with 20-minute rundowns running from 6 AM to 7 PM. WTOP is also building video versions of the show for digital platforms, which means the same content will live on audio apps, YouTube, and social feeds simultaneously.
Director of News and Programming Julia Ziegler called it a natural evolution for the brand. “This new podcast represents a natural evolution of the WTOP brand,” she said. “It meets news consumers where they are — on more platforms than ever before — allowing us to grow our audience and develop new revenue streams.”
That phrase gets used constantly in this industry: meet listeners where they are. Executives say it in strategy memos, on earnings calls, and in trade interviews like this one. But there are two problems buried inside that sentence, and WTOP just showed everyone else how to fix both of them.
Consumers, Not Listeners
The first problem is the word “listeners.” That framing is outdated. These are news consumers, and they’re largely platform agnostic. They don’t care whether they’re getting their information through a car radio, a podcast app, a YouTube video, or a headline on their phone. They just want the news, they want it fast, and they want it on whatever platform or app they’re using at that exact moment.
If you’re running a news operation and you actually want to meet consumers where they are, you need more than one lane. You need an audio strategy, a long-form video strategy, a short-form video strategy, and a written strategy. Anything less isn’t meeting anyone anywhere. It’s just hoping people still find you the old way.
WTOP clearly understands this. The station isn’t treating Top News Podcast as a side project bolted onto its broadcast signal. It’s building a standalone product with its own release cadence, its own producers, and its own video component. That’s a real strategy, not a talking point.
Follow-Through Is the Real Test
The second problem is one I’ve raised before: we talk a good game about on-demand audio, but the format has consistently failed to back it up. Plenty of stations still upload episodes hours after a show ends. Some still leave traffic and weather segments in podcast feeds, content that means nothing to someone listening on Tuesday afternoon. Those choices tell the audience something, whether stations mean them to or not. They signal that podcasting is an afterthought rather than a priority.
And when something isn’t a priority for the brand, it won’t become one for the audience either. Consumers can tell the difference between a product that’s been thoughtfully built and one that’s been dumped online to check a box. WTOP is doing the former. The station is hiring two additional producers specifically for this show, which is a real investment, not a press release dressed up as one.
That’s what separates Top News Podcast from so many “we have a podcast too” efforts across the format. WTOP isn’t just repackaging its broadcast signal and calling it done. It’s building something native to the platform, updated throughout the day, and formatted for how people actually consume video and audio now.
Radio doesn’t have to disappear from that equation. It can still be a platform, and for many stations, it can still be the most important one. But it can’t be the only one anymore, and WTOP is proving that in real time.
Other news/talk operators should be paying close attention here, because this is what commitment looks like. It’s not a single podcast feed with stale audio and old traffic reports. It’s a dedicated show, staffed appropriately, distributed across formats that consumers actually use. If WTOP’s approach works the way it should, expect other major-market news stations to start asking why they haven’t done the same thing already.
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing daily news stories, features, and opinion columns. He joined Barrett Media in 2022 after a decade leading several radio brands in several formats, as well as a 5-year stint working in local television. In addition to his work with Barrett Media, he is a radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.