2016: Podcasts In Review
With 2016 in the books, it's time to look back at the year of podcasts. I started this blog at the end of February, and so please note that all the stats that follow largely do not include shows released in January and February.
Let's start with the big picture. This year I documented listening to 724 podcast episodes. This does not include the short podcasts Merriam Webster's Word of the Day or The Writer's Almanac, both of which are fantastic but very stable in format and thus quite difficult to critique. The quintuple-weekly podcasts PTI and The Gist are excluded for the same reason (in addition, PTI is essentially just the audio stripped from a TV show and The Gist is so dense it's hard to parse five episodes a week [that's on me, and I fully intend to craft a longer piece on Mike Pesca's brilliant work on the show]).
Now for the network breakdown. Here are my top 10 most listened-to podcast networks in 2016 (with a corresponding episode count for each):
It's not too surprising that NPR leads the way here - the prolific output of Planet Money and Hidden Brain accounts for 80+ episodes, and other favorites like Invisiblia and Code Switch pulled the public radio giant into first place. In the ever-expanding landscape of distribution, I expect this to be a pretty dynamic area in the coming years. As more podcasts providers crop up, will NPR-delivered shows continue to dominate my ears?
Next we have my top ten most listened-to podcasts from 2016:
Panoply (Slate.com) does well here, with the co-hosted review shows Culture Gabfest and HUAL notching spots in the top five. These are always quality shows that occasionally yield returns for the average listener - those not necessarily gripped by the worlds of culture or sports.
Now on to the best of the best. Here are my 25 favorite episodes from 2016 (with links to the original post where you can find a link to the audio):
Gimlet led the way with four of the top 25 episodes, followed by Radiotopia and This American Life (it's own network) with four a piece. I struggled with categorizing TAL - it is a standalone network, but also produces the smash hit Serial. Will Ira Glass take a shot at rolling out more shows, in an environment where Gimlet co-founder and longtime TAL contributor Alex Blumberg seems to have found success?
Rounding out the post, here are the top 10 podcasts sorted by the average position on my weekly ranking list (with the requirement that each show have at least five episodes logged):
The short seasons from Invisibilia and Revisionist History didn't hurt them here - that's what happens when you know your product and churn out gold.
It's been an amazing year for podcasts, and I'm hopeful that 2017 will lead to many exciting additions to this world I've been inhabiting since high school. If nothing else, I'm pretty certain we will be blessed/cursed with a deluge of new content that will be a joy/burden to track and compulsively listen to.
Let's start with the big picture. This year I documented listening to 724 podcast episodes. This does not include the short podcasts Merriam Webster's Word of the Day or The Writer's Almanac, both of which are fantastic but very stable in format and thus quite difficult to critique. The quintuple-weekly podcasts PTI and The Gist are excluded for the same reason (in addition, PTI is essentially just the audio stripped from a TV show and The Gist is so dense it's hard to parse five episodes a week [that's on me, and I fully intend to craft a longer piece on Mike Pesca's brilliant work on the show]).
Now for the network breakdown. Here are my top 10 most listened-to podcast networks in 2016 (with a corresponding episode count for each):
| Network | Episodes |
| NPR | 133 |
| Panoply | 126 |
| Radiotopia | 119 |
| Gimlet | 92 |
| WNYC | 75 |
| Earwolf | 65 |
| Standalone | 24 |
| ESPN | 22 |
| Boing Boing | 18 |
| Buzzfeed | 13 |
It's not too surprising that NPR leads the way here - the prolific output of Planet Money and Hidden Brain accounts for 80+ episodes, and other favorites like Invisiblia and Code Switch pulled the public radio giant into first place. In the ever-expanding landscape of distribution, I expect this to be a pretty dynamic area in the coming years. As more podcasts providers crop up, will NPR-delivered shows continue to dominate my ears?
Next we have my top ten most listened-to podcasts from 2016:
| Show | Episodes |
| Planet Money | 51 |
| Slate's Culture Gabfest | 39 |
| 99% Invisible | 37 |
| Hang Up and Listen | 35 |
| Hidden Brain | 31 |
| On the Media | 31 |
| The Cracked Podcast | 30 |
| Reply All | 26 |
| Code Switch | 23 |
| Song Exploder | 23 |
Panoply (Slate.com) does well here, with the co-hosted review shows Culture Gabfest and HUAL notching spots in the top five. These are always quality shows that occasionally yield returns for the average listener - those not necessarily gripped by the worlds of culture or sports.
Now on to the best of the best. Here are my 25 favorite episodes from 2016 (with links to the original post where you can find a link to the audio):
Gimlet led the way with four of the top 25 episodes, followed by Radiotopia and This American Life (it's own network) with four a piece. I struggled with categorizing TAL - it is a standalone network, but also produces the smash hit Serial. Will Ira Glass take a shot at rolling out more shows, in an environment where Gimlet co-founder and longtime TAL contributor Alex Blumberg seems to have found success?
Rounding out the post, here are the top 10 podcasts sorted by the average position on my weekly ranking list (with the requirement that each show have at least five episodes logged):
| Show | Average Ranking |
| Invisibilia | 3.00 |
| Revisionist History | 3.60 |
| This American Life | 4.54 |
| Homecoming | 5.17 |
| Flash Forward | 6.29 |
| Reply All | 6.61 |
| Love and Radio | 7.12 |
| The Room Where It's Happening | 7.23 |
| Undone | 8.33 |
| Strangers | 9.08 |
The short seasons from Invisibilia and Revisionist History didn't hurt them here - that's what happens when you know your product and churn out gold.
It's been an amazing year for podcasts, and I'm hopeful that 2017 will lead to many exciting additions to this world I've been inhabiting since high school. If nothing else, I'm pretty certain we will be blessed/cursed with a deluge of new content that will be a joy/burden to track and compulsively listen to.
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