Podtrac has released its ranking of top shows for August among the publishers it measures. It shows one show returned to the top five, and another re-entered the top ten. The top spot however remains unchanged as The New York Times-produced The Daily remained the most listened-to show last month according to Podtrac.
Wondery’s Morbid: A True Crime Podcast, which entered the Podtrac ranking at No. 2 in June, held onto that position for a third consecutive month. It was followed by the NPR morning news podcast Up First, which swapped spots with NPR’s hourly five-minute podcast NPR News Now.
Among the shows losing ground in the top ten was The Daily Wire’s conservative talk The Ben Shapiro Show. After falling from No. 3 to No. 5 in July, it dropped again in August. Shapiro’s podcast slid back to sixth place, trading spots with the NBC News podcast version of Dateline NBC. Another show that lost ground was Exactly Right Media’s My Favorite Murder, which declined for a third month and slid out of the top ten. That allowed Barstool Sports-produced Pardon My Take to return to the top ten.
But it was the on-demand version of the Fox News Radio hourly newscast that had the biggest drop in the top 20. It slid back three spots to No. 15 in August.
Vox Media’s Today, Explained was the big winner once again in August among the top 20. It jumped four spots to No. 17. The Sean Rameswaram and Noel King-hosted show has benefited by a deal announced in April with WNYC Studios that is syndicating the daily news podcast to more than 50 public radio stations.
NPR had the most shows on Podtrac’s list of top 20 shows for August. It had four make the grade. Wondery had two. No other publisher had more than one.