podcasting

Twice a year we step back and look at the overall digital trends in public media. When we last looked at websites, in the fall of 2016, we saw that station sites were under performing the growth we saw in other local news sites. More recently we see that station sites are experiencing some growth while other local news sites decline, but none of them are seeing the tremendous growth experienced by NPR.org. 

Last week was our monthly analytics webinar, where we gather together the top insights across the system on both audience and engagement. 

As you might expect, election coverage was a big focus for the system this month, and we broke down  audience consumption of election coverage, as well as its impact on retention rate. And the results are significant: politics and election coverage had more than double the one-week retention rate of the previous 12 weeks. 

In the early days, Slate’s podcasts amounted to Andy Bowers reading web articles into a mic. Podcasting has come a long way and has seen its share of experiments. Slate's podcasts, in particular, now have a unique sound that fans love. Their popular podcasts include Political Gabfest, Culture Gabfest, Hang Up and Listen, The Audio Book Club, and many others. 

I reached out to Andy to talk about innovation in digital audio because the sound of Slate's success is so different from what I hear from traditional public broadcasters. Much of the public radio podcasting space consists of repurposed broadcasts. But if you take a listen to some of the other successful podcasters, you too will hear a difference in sound. There is room on the internet for all varieties. 

Andy Bowers outlined the extraordinary development of Slate's Podcasts in our innovations in digital audio webinar. 

 99% Invisible, the radio program about design and architecture, has not only developed a growing listener base for the audio, but has a considerable following online for the program's visual experience.

We interviewed 99% Invisible host and producer Roman Mars about the challenge of visualizing sound in a webinar on February 14.

Join us this week as we kick off our new weekly webinar series. 

This Thursday, February 7:   The Podcast is Dead. Long Live the Podcast! The podcast is experiencing a renaissance.  Slate has been exceptional in this field, developing a large and loyal following.  Andy Bowers, Executive Producer of Slate Podcast, will explain how he developed the right sound for Slate's podcasts. 

The Wall Street Journal’s report that Apple’s upcoming iOS 6 software release will include a standalone podcast app for all iPhone users is another shot across the bow when it comes to live radio listening, but it’s potentially a boon to public radio stations that produce great podcasts. Update on June 26, 2012: the app is now available in the Apps Store.