Jottings of note:
Dave Van Dyke, President/CEO of Bridge Ratings Media Research, eases into the end-of-year season of lists with his Radio Gratitude List: 10 Things Keeping the Industry Alive and Kicking. That nearly sounds apocolyptic to us, but the list is inspiring and uplifting from start to finish. Radio is “perpetually under pressure, he observes, “but contines to thrive in ways that are easy to overlook. Some of those ways are evangelized by Dave as live companionship, immediacy, localism — and he credits streaming with extending radio, not replacing it. Podcasting did not cannibalize radio; it “widened the lane” and brought new creators into audio. A bottom line: “Audiences still like radio.” This inspiring post (which is geting a lot of conversational traffic), and is HERE, and is summarized by the graphic below.
When a report is titled Inequality in Popular Podcasts, you know it might contain reputation damage. The bad news comes from USC Anenberg, in that institution’s Inclusion Initiative. In the study, which claims to be first of its kind, 592 popular podcasts were studied to assess the gender and race/ethnicity of the hosts. (A smaller study focused on guests.) Across the top 100 podcasts, about 64% f hosts were men; 36% women. That imbalance is more lopsided than in other media, the report determines — for example, 50% of the top films had a female lead or co-lead. Television and music also score beter equality metris than podcasting. Women of color are notably under represented in podcast hosting compared to societal numbers: only six percent of the top 100 pofvsdy hosts were women of color in the survey results. More HERE.
November 25, 2025
