The quarterly Media Monitors Podcast Listener survey shows a turnaround for The Joe Rogan Experience. The show appeared to lose listeners after its Spotify deal to become a podcast exclusive earlier this year when Media Monitors said the New York Times’ news show The Daily nearly overtook Rogan at the top. But it seems Rogan has regained much of the ground he had lost. “It appears his listenership has returned to levels last seen in Q4 2020,” says Media Monitors, which says Rogan once again had the top-ranked series.
Audiochuck’s Crime Junkie was third, followed by This American Life. It was followed by Exactly Right’s My Favorite Murder which moved into the top five after being ranked No. 7 in the previous survey.
The highest-ranking debuts were iHeart’s Drama Queens, which entered the chart at No. 11, and Audioboom’s Dark History, which debuted at No. 22.
The fiction podcast Welcome to Night Vale (No. 6) also saw what Media Monitors says was a surge in popularity in the latest survey even though the series has been around since 2012. That could be due to a crossover episode in which they featured hosts and content from 23 other popular podcasts, wrapped up into the Night Vale universe – 11 of which are also in the top 200 this quarter.
The quarterly Media Monitors Podcast Listener survey shows, overall, iHeartMedia and NPR had the most shows in its ranking of the top 200 shows. It reports iHeart had 17 shows that made the cut, an increase from the dozen it had in March. Media Monitors says iHeart benefited from a mix of new releases like Drama Queens (No. 11) and The Office Deep Dive (No. 170) as well as new seasons for existing shows such as The Ron Burgundy Podcast (No. 46).
The survey found that NPR had 12 podcasts in the top 200, the same as during the first quarter. It included Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! (No. 53), and Throughline (No. 81).
Spotify-owned Parcast Network also had a strong quarter primarily due to their slate of True Crime podcasts including Medical Murders (No. 138), Unsolved Murders: True Crime Stories (No. 58) and International Infamy with Ashley Flowers (No. 194). Media Monitors says both Parcast and the New York Times had six podcasts among its rankings.
Comedy remains the most popular genre of podcasting in the latest report with 53 of the top 200 coming from that category. Society & Culture ranked second with 35, followed by News with 33. The bigger story is probably the return of True Crime, which after taking a hit during the pandemic’s early months, has bounced back in 2021 and was the fourth-biggest. In the latest Media Monitors Podcast Listener survey True Crime had 31 shows in the top 200. Sports rounded out the top five genres with 13.
The Media Monitors survey was fielded between June 14 and 30. Participants aged 18 and older were screened on whether they had listened to a podcast in the last seven days, then asked to list the podcast titles. Participants were encouraged to consult their podcast app of choice during the survey. Media Monitors says those unassisted responses were then individually matched back to unique RSS feeds which were polled to collect information about genre and publisher.