The New York Times-produced The Daily sits atop Podtrac’s monthly ranker of most listened-to podcasts for December for a 51st consecutive week, but the appeal of news podcasts faded a bit last month. The true crime series Morbid jumped two spots to No. 2, giving the Wondery show its highest finish since its shows began being measured by Podtrac. The NBC News series Dateline NBC held third place while NPR’s morning news podcast Up First slid from second place to fourth last month. The NPR News Now podcast remained at No. 5.
There was little change in the remainder of the top ten. Barstool Sports-produced Pardon My Take moved up one spot to ninth place, with a similar advance for Exactly Right Media’s My Favorite Murder.
The Dan Bongino Show had the biggest tumble last month, falling five spots and out of the top ten to finish at No. 14.
NPR’s Planet Money had the biggest jump. It rose nine to finish at No. 18. That pushed Vox Media’s daily show Today, Explained out of the top 20 as the podcast continues to see some of the biggest month-to-month swings of any top 20 series measured by Podtrac.
NPR had the most shows on Podtrac’s list of top 20 shows for November. It had five make the grade. Wondery had two. No other publisher had more than one.
Overall, Podtrac says the average unique monthly listeners in the U.S. for the top 20 publishers decline nine percent between November and December due to lower holiday listening. Total global downloads declined 11% month-to-month. Both were up from a year earlier, however.