When my baby boomer brother saw last year on social media that I had launched a podcast, he called me to congratulate me. After a few moments of accolades and verbal high-fives, he paused and asked, “What’s a podcast?” He is not atypical of people from my generation. Podcasts are as foreign as writing HTML code. Podcasts were thought to be the dominion of hipsters and liberals. That’s all changing.
Who knew that a podcast with Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz recapping each day of the impeachment trial would become a hit? It did. Verdict with Ted Cruz rocketed to the top of not only the News category on Apple Podcasts but to the top of the charts for all podcasts on Apple. Do you think it was the 20-somethings with fedoras, beard oil, and mustache wax who put it there?
Not likely. Podcasts are not just for hipsters anymore.
Explaining a podcast to my generation has been a chore, I admit. The origins of the word date back to the advent of the iPod. Shorthand for an iPod broadcast became “podcast,” just like the short term for a web log became “blog.” That still trips some boomers up. I’ve resorted to more relatable terms to penetrate the over-50 crowd.
Audio on demand. It’s like a radio show you get to listen to when you want to.
It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Cruz’s Verdict admittedly, from a broadcaster’s standpoint, could be improved. The audio levels are all over the place, but you can’t argue with success. Content is king.
With Verdict, you get the Ted Cruz I fell for in committee hearings. You get that brilliant barracuda of constitutional law that I supported in the 2016 primaries, not the sterilized televangelist his handlers manufactured for the campaign trail. You get real insight into how the machinery of an impeachment trial works. It’s captivating radio, but it’s a podcast.
Here’s the interesting part about Cruz’s podcast. There simply aren’t enough boomers to have made it No. 1. It has to be bringing in, at least, some of that younger crowd. According to Edison Research, younger demographics still dominate podcast audiences. About 40% of people ages 12-24 are monthly podcast listeners. Same for the coveted 25-54 audience. Only about 17% of people over age 55 listen monthly, but that’s up from 13% last year. All that is to say, it can’t be older listeners who pushed Cruz to the top. Something else is happening.
What’s happening is podcasting is allowing unfettered access to all sorts of knowledge and entertainment. I’ve been a podcast listener since 2006. It wasn’t until last year that I realized the value as a broadcaster. Let’s face it, if you’re a 40-year broadcaster, you kind of look down your nose at a medium where anyone can produce a show.
It was my wife who hatched the idea of my launching a podcast with my millennial son, who had just graduated from college with an English degree. We launched The PodGOATs in January 2019, a non-political, lighthearted history podcast. According to Podbean, one of the world’s largest podcast hosting sites, it finished 2019 as one of the top 10 history podcasts.
That prompted me to launch a podcast more in line with my conservative talk radio show. We just introduced I’m Calling Bovine Scatology, which takes one liberal talking point after another and, well, calls bovine scatology on it. It bolted to No. 32 in Apple Podcasts’ News Commentary category. Ben Shapiro, who appeals more to the millennials, is always near the top in the News category.
The notion that podcasts are just for true crime listeners is no longer the case. That category comes in fifth, according to Edison Research. Most podcast listeners gravitate to comedy, but the news is a strong second.
The really exciting thing about podcasts is they’re not limited by a terrestrial antenna, nor are they encumbered by subscriptions such as satellite radio. Podcasts are free to anyone in the world who has access to the internet. Bovine Scatology hit No. 3 in New Zealand, of all places. The PodGOATs has been near the top of the charts in Malaysia and Nicaragua. Podcasting is the Wild West of broadcasting.
Talk radio should learn to tame this beast to augment its own product. If not, this odd animal may trample all over it.
Conservatives, especially, should be embracing this exciting new world. If conservatives are fed up with the arbiters of information, this is the way around the gatekeepers. Anyone can produce a podcast, and anyone can listen. It is liberty in its purest form.
I’m still learning just how easy it is. One of my radio listeners called and said he’d heard me plug my new podcast, so he thought he’d give it a try. He just said to his phone, “Play the podcast Bovine Scatology,” and it instantly started playing the latest episode on his phone. Try doing that with a radio show.
The ease of use is a game changer, and conservatives should embrace it.
There are over 700,000 podcasts out there. Sure, most of them are garbage, but the beauty of podcasting is the people get to decide what’s garbage and what’s not. Anyone can produce a podcast, and anyone can listen. The cream rises to the top. Cruz is Exhibit A. While everyone was paying attention to the impeachment trial, something earthshaking happened. Podcasting just grew up.
Phil Valentine (@ValentineShow) is an award-winning radio talk show host (and now podcaster). He’s the author of three novels and the non-fiction The Conservative’s Handbook. He broadcasts each weekday afternoon from SuperTalk 99.7FM in Nashville.
