Is Podcasting NOT Diverse??!!
USC’s Annenberg School Deep Dives on Pod Demographics
Subscriber Jim sends us a study from USC’s Annenberg School on podcaster demographics. It’s interesting, even if the study was written up by people whose worldview might not be.
A lot to unpack from this new report from USC’s Annenberg School (led by Mrs. Bob Iger): https://aii.annenberg.usc.edu/data-stories/podcasting
The first is it feels like an artifact of a different time, pre-COVID, when such reports were standard-issue fare for either outside groups to shame companies and industries or for said companies and industries to self-flagellate while performing the proper do-better incantations.
The second is the presentation of the study, which implicitly sets up women and people of color as “missing” from the podcast industry, a la the way we saw workforce diversity figures teed up in the Obama era.
So many questions fall out of this all. Just a few:
In an industry with no barriers to entry at all - you don’t need employment/platforming/green-lighting by any authority or conglomerate - is it fair to compare podcasts with broadcast TV, radio, etc? This seems like as pure an open-market economy as you’ll find.
Do the audiences corresponding to the “missing” demographics care? Do they want podcasts for the information they’re consuming? Are they consuming podcasts in numbers commensurate with the host/guest distribution, or more in line with genpop?
If we assume it’s the latter case from the question above, and there are these latent markets sitting unaddressed for [insert your demographic here], why haven’t they been filled?
What is the “right” number of any demographic in podcasting, or in any field for that matter, and why?
After the paywall, I shall reveal what should be the exact correct demographics of podcasting. Just kidding, but we will delve into conclusions drawn from the Annenberg School’s study of Spotify’s 100 most popular podcasts of 2024. I’ll admit that the results surprised me.