The Daily Wire continues to dominate the conversation when it comes to conservative talk podcasts. The quarterly analysis by TheRighting finds The Daily Wire has six of the top 20 conservative podcasts based on subscriber numbers in the Castbox app. The Ben Shapiro Show remains the podcast with the most subscribers, while The Matt Walsh Show had the most growth versus a year ago.
TheRighting says The Ben Shapiro Show added the most new subscribers since the end of 2023, padding its lead as the conservative podcast with the most subscribers. The show gained 13,322 subscribers in the first quarter, far more than any other conservative podcast. It ended 2024’s first quarter with more than half a million subscribers on the Castbox platform. Daily Wire’s The Jordan Peterson Podcast ranked second, with 415,506.
The other Daily Wire programs included in the top 20 were No. 10 The Matt Walsh Show (53,470 subscribers), No. 14 The Michael Knowles Show (35,895), No. 16 Morning Wire (33,716) and No. 17 The Andrew Klavan Show (33,157).
For the third consecutive quarter, The Matt Walsh Show was the fastest-growing conservative podcast during the first quarter based on an analysis from TheRighting. Its subscribers nearly doubled from a year ago, jumping 96%.
“The 2022 June release of Matt Walsh’s controversial anti-trans documentary ‘What Is a Woman?’ drove interest and subscriptions to his podcast,” said Howard Polskin, President of TheRighting. “That helped make his daily program the fastest-growing podcast of 2023. Unless there’s dramatic subscriber growth later in the year, I would expect his large year-over-year increases to diminish substantially in the third and fourth quarters.”
The Megyn Kelly Show had the second-biggest year-to-year growth, with her subscriber numbers climbing 52% during the first quarter. “The Megyn Kelly Show is the buzziest right-wing podcast. It’s always making news,” Polskin said.
Candace Owens saw a 17% increase in her subscriber numbers. She recently split with The Daily Wire, so the coming quarter will show how Owens performs as an indie producer.
TheRighting’s report is based on data that is updated daily from the podcast app Castbox, which according to the podcast-hosting platform Buzzsprout represents less than two percent of all podcasts that Buzzsprout serves. While it only offers a small slice of the podcast market overall, TheRighting says it provides a snapshot of the market for conservative podcast voices. It also points out that no other leading podcast app, besides Castbox, makes its data publicly available.