Want To Build Your Podcast Audience? Maybe Try… Public Radio?

If you’re looking to expand your podcast audience, maybe consider… public radio?

Vox.com’s podcast “Today, Explained” generally reaches a younger audience through digital platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts. The podcast, first launched in 2018, started being distributed via NPR stations across the country in 2022. It now reaches more than 1 million listeners on public radio across 159 stations.

It’s a nice way to tap into a fresh audience who may not have otherwise discovered Vox and its growing stable of podcasts—not that that can be easily or definitively tracked.

“What we found is that it’s been amazing for our brand awareness, and for instance, for us to book guests, which really helps us to be on the radio, because we just have a much broader reach,” Miranda Kennedy, executive producer for “Today, Explained,” told AMO. “For just knowing who [hosts] Noel [King] and Sean [Rameswaram] are, for knowing the name of the show… public radio is a huge part of that.”

And it’s not just the number of people tuning in. NPR reaches an older demographic, something King knows just by the number of emails she has gotten since the radio broadcasts began.

“Podcast listeners do tend to be younger, right? And so they don’t communicate in the same way. They don’t dig up your email address and then send you, you know, 900 words on what they think about the latest episode,” King told AMO.

But older listeners do.

A New Podcast, Going Ad-Free, Social Video

“Today, Explained,” published every weekday, is number 11 with the biggest unique U.S. monthly audience listeners for March, according to Podtrac. It’s now a multi-platform news brand that includes a newsletter, and is evolving.

A new podcast, “Explain it to me,” recently started being published on Sundays, answering listener questions. “Today, Explained” is also newly available without ads for Vox members at a rate of $5 a month or $50 for the first year (then $60). And, finally, they are doing strategic social videos. For example, Rameswaram interviewed Senator Chris Van Hollen, who was in El Salvador meeting with Abrego Garcia, who was deported by accident.

“We’re trying to do video where it really makes sense, and it gives something new and shiny for viewers, rather than just the full show,” Kennedy said.

King previously hosted “Morning Edition” on NPR. To her, the podcast fits in well with radio and distinguishes itself because it’s high quality with a bit of a sense of humor.

“It’s a very sound rich show, which is something that public radio listeners really love,” King said. “They also appreciate that ‘Today, Explained’ is not just telling them what the news is, it’s giving them context for why things are happening.”

King said that while “Morning Edition” is a “great” and “iconic” show, it’s confined to a few minutes and fast news cycles, which can be overwhelming.

“‘Today, Explained’ meets our listeners where they are by inviting them in and holding their attention with authentic conversations that are informative and respectful of the listener’s time,” Todd Witter, radio program director at Oregon Public Broadcasting, said. “It’s also a program that brings a unique approach to what it packages as ‘news’ and allows the listener to discover something new, to better understand a topic, or to gain a perspective they hadn’t before considered.”

Not that the show is without its critics; some have found it is overly humorous at inappropriate times—tone deaf, perhaps—and that it is either too left-leaning or, more recently, too right-leaning.

That’s not hurting its popularity.

Today, the primary revenue stream for the show is advertising, and Vox.com is investing and growing subscriptions and finding other revenue sources.

“What we’ve been experimenting with over the last few years is, how can we continue to bring the show to new audiences through new distribution channels, and then how are there other revenue streams that we can unlock based on this foundation that we’ve built with this really strong podcast,” Ray Chao, general manager for audio and digital video at Vox, said. “A lot of the things that we’re talking about here are, I would say, extensions of or additional distribution channels or ways to grow revenue and audience.”