Triton Digital’s latest U.S. Podcast Report: NPR leads; hourly publishing; radio groups

Triton Digital has released its latest 4-week U.S. Podcast Report, this one covering the May 11 through June 7 span.

The Triton reports include two top 100 podcast rankers (one for show downloads, and one for show audience sizes), and two top-15 network rankers for downloads and audiences.

NPR is the leading publisher for the period, according to both downloads and weekly users. (See the downloads list below.) Stitcher takes the #2 spot in users, and the Entercom network cluster (which includes Cadence13 and Pineapple Street Studios) take the second rung in downloads. It’s worth remembering that iHeartRadio (currently #1 in the monthly Podtra ranker) is not in Triton’s report.

Triton’s report provides visibility to commercial radio podcast publishing. In the top 15 networks for downloads, we see Entercom, Cumulus Media, Bonneville International, Beasley Media Group, and Salem Communications. (Also Canada’s public radio, CBC/Radio Canada.) These entities are probably not measured by Podtrac, which is a native podcast company, while Triton has been in the streaming measurement business for many years and has served radio clients in addition to podcasting. (Podtrac’s May chart of top publishers does include Cumulus/Westwood One, FOX News Radio, and ESPN.)

Looking at Triton’s top 100 podcasts by download, NPR has six of the top 10, and 10 of the top 20. the top podcast, NPR News Now, shows 671 episodes during the four-week measure period. That computes out to 24 shows a day for 28 days — it’s an hourly podcast. That’s an unusual advantage when measuring downloads, and takes considerable resources — both in production and distribution — to accomplish. Looking down the list, we see #14, Fox News Radio Newscast, also with 671 shows; same strategy. Those aere the only two poddcasts with that production schedule in the top 100. The Jim Batchelor Show, from Audioboom, produced 417 episodes during the four-week period.

The report is freely available HERE.

 

 

Brad Hill