By MATEUS FERREIRA/Staff Writer
Amid the tumult of Trump’s victory speech on the night of the 2024 presidential election, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship Dana White—a key figure in Trump’s campaign—stepped onto the stage to express gratitude to those who had contributed to his win. However, his thanks did not go to the usual roster of donors and political allies, but to podcasters.
“I want to thank some people real quick: The Nelk Boys, Adin Ross, Theo Von, Bussin’ With The Boys, and, last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan,” said White.
The candidates’ sudden pivot to podcasts in their campaign strategies is hard to ignore. In the months leading up to the 2016 and 2020 elections, Trump only appeared on one podcast show each year, according to Podchaser. In 2024, Trump appeared on twenty podcasts, and the Vice President appeared on eight.
“2024 will be remembered as the Podcast Election,” Steve Johnston, the former COO of FlexPoint Media, said on X. “Not because podcasts are new (they’re not), but because 2024 was the first time presidential nominees and their running mates leveraged them in a meaningful way.”
How did they use podcasts?
The candidate’s primary strategy was to use podcasts to reach certain demographics precisely. The New York Times noted that they were zeroing in on the tiny, undivided slivers of the electorate.
Kamala’s most viewed podcast appearance was on “Call Her Daddy,” hosted by Alex Cooper. Her target demographic was clear. According to NPR, 70% of listeners are women, 93% are under 45, and 48% are Democrats. On the show she leaned heavily on the subject of abortion.
Elena Moore, an NPR reporter, believes that Harris’ appearance on the podcast was made precisely to bag more votes from college-age women, specifically in the South.
“So in my opinion, it was less about anything she said on that show and more just the fact that she was literally on ‘Call Her Daddy’ and that it’s got an audience,” Moore explained on the NPR Politics Podcast. “It’s going to pop up on the phones of young college students in Georgia in North Carolina.”
She also appeared on “All the Smoke” hosted by former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. According to the New Yorker, this was a bid to reach young black men.
Likewise, Trump’s team clearly had a target demographic in mind regarding the podcasts he went on. Dana White is behind Trump’s sit-downs. Brady Brickner Wood in the New Yorker has described White as an “alpha-male mentor to young men obsessed with fighting, women, and luxury vehicles.”
“Trump, meanwhile, has appeared on several seemingly apolitical yet right-wing-coded shows that have given him the opportunity to communicate directly to a young, terminally online, male audience,” Wood said in his article.
He is talking about podcasts like the Joe Rogan Experience, which is the most famous podcast in the world. According to Yougov.com, 56% of viewers are 18-34, and 81% are male. Polls reveal that Joe Rogan listeners are also more likely to be lower-income, single, and distrust traditional media. The show has 11 million listeners per episode and is the most extended podcast with over 2000 episodes, according to Scott Gallaway, a professor of marketing at NYU.
The rest of Trump’s podcasts have similar hosts and audiences. According to Forbes and the New Yorker, he went on “Full Send,” hosted by the Nelk Boys, a group that became famous for vlogs and prank videos, “Flagrant,” hosted by comedian Andrew Schulz, “Impaulsive,” co-hosted by Jake Paul a former YouTuber star, turned wrestler, and “Bussin with the Boys” hosted by former NFL players. He also was on a live stream with Adin Ross, who, during the stream, gifted Trump a cyber truck and a Rolex, which, according to the New York Times, is a potential violation of campaign finances.
“The message Trump has for young men is very simple — you have been wronged by the Biden/ Harris administration because their economy is imposing too many taxes on you, you’re not making as much money as you were before the pandemic,” Anil Cacodcar, student chair of the Harvard Public Opinion Project, said to NBC. “And he used the podcasts to set out this policy vision.”
Mara Liasson, a senior national correspondent at NPR, said that there is a growing gap between young men and women, with the former becoming more conservative while the latter more progressive.
“Well, you know, in a very deeply divided, evenly divided country, it’s no surprise that the culture is divided and the media is divided. And that’s why you see Trump go on all these bro-y (ph), white-guy shows,” she remarked. “That’s a really big, important part of our culture right now. And that’s why you see Kamala Harris going on shows where there are a lot of women and young women watching.”
Did the Podcasts work?
Edison Research, a global leader in quantitative and qualitative research, found that the now-president-elect went on twenty podcasts. In an average week, Trump reached 23.5 million Americans, while Kamala reached only 6.4 million. Even if Trump had never appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, his reach would still have far outstripped Kamala’s. Trump and Harris got the same amount of views through a single podcast episode as multiple prime-time cable appearances.
“The weekly reach of many of America’s biggest podcasts outstrips that of many cable TV networks and individual television shows,” the research groups said on its website “It is fair to expect that this rapidly growing channel will continue to be used in any national conversations or media strategies. “
According to NBC, Trump succeeded in getting more voters under 30 than any Republican candidate since 2016. Trump beat Kamala among young white men without college degrees by 56% to 40%.
Will podcasts continue to be influential?
According to an Edison report, the number of podcasts published worldwide and podcast listeners worldwide has increased rapidly over the past years. With an 8.7% increase since last year, over half a billion people are expected to have listened to podcasts by the end of 2024. An Edison report said 100 million Americans listen to at least one podcast per week, up 31% from last year. 18% more people are listening to podcasts in 2024 than they did eight years ago.
A quarter of internet users and 62% of U.S. citizens have listened to podcasts. Almost half of all Americans listen to a podcast each month. The worldwide podcasting industry is worth $30.03 billion and will likely be worth 131.13 billion in 2030.
AI is poised to make podcasts boom. AI-driven podcasting is reaching 45 million Americans monthly. AI-powered podcasts have grown by 500% in the last two years, and AI-enabled podcasts will be worth $3 billion in 2024. A survey of pod-bean found that 40% of podcasters use AI to improve their podcasts.
Edison reports that many say that podcasts are even more trustworthy than other forms of media. Listeners consider podcast hosts 86% more reliable and 89% more authentic than influencers. People are 4-to-16% more attentive when listening to podcasts than when watching TV or streaming music.
How have young adults transformed traditional media?
This sudden shift in political strategy and media has been done to fit the habits of young adults. 47% of Gen Zers listened to podcasts in the past month, according to EMarketer. ⅔ of 18 to 29-year-olds listened to podcasts this last year. Almost half of the same demographic listens to podcasts multiple times a week. According to Banklinko, Millennials, and Gen Z make up 61.6% of US podcast listeners. Roland Marks, from the National Security Institute, believes podcasts’ newfound power comes from college-age adults.
“We’re also witnessing a coming-of-age generation of Digital Natives — a generation for whom the old media simply does not exist in their lives. As a college professor, I see this firsthand,” he explained. “Ask a group of Millennials and Gen Z’ers about radio and cable TV and you might as well talk to them about churning their butter and rolling up their car windows.”
He notes that podcasts draw people in because they can dispense heavy information intimately and conversationally, something Gen Z is far more interested in. This new shift brought on by young people has overturned the media dynamic in the US.
He explains that “pod-gods like Joe Rogan, Alex Cooper, Charlie Kirk, are exercising the same—if not more—influence over the public than traditional media. He argues that the millions of views from podcasts translate to millions of votes.
“A warning to the wise for those in the third decade of 21st Century American politics: to paraphrase another 20th-century thinker — it’s the podcast, stupid,“ Marks continued.
Ashley Mann, a public relations and communications professional, claims people’s perceptions of public relations must be reset. To her the very foundations of public relations are being overturned. Legacy Media, like studios, advertising agencies, radio broadcasting, and television, are being replaced with “hosts who offer long-form, unfiltered conversations that resonate deeply with specific audiences.”
She also names TikTok, Substack, Instagram, and micro-influencers, which Gen Z mainly uses, as champions of the new media landscape. She argues that podcasts’ new political affiliation is changing mainstream media and journalism.
“For communications professionals, the message is clear – if you’re still prioritizing legacy media over podcasts and newsletters, you’re fighting yesterday’s battle. The future of influence lies in authentic, targeted conversations, not polished sound bites,” Mann wrote on LinkedIn.
Jen Cohen Crompton, a digital marketer, PR, and marketing strategist, fears that this new push to podcasts instead of traditional media will result in a “wild west of information sharing.”
“It’s really sad that anyone with a microphone or laptop who can convince enough people to believe them gets to be a ‘trusted source’ of information,” she said in response to Mann. “I am unsure where we go from here, but we must at least talk about the issue rather than just going around it.”
We asked Brent Yergensen, a department chair and associate of communication at UT, who got his Ph.D at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, what he thought about the issue.
“I think the election simply tapped into our new preferred form of mass media: podcasts that cater to our own interests. In this case, podcasts probably work as echo chambers where people want to be told over and over the same things that they already believe. Thus, podcasts became sites for heroism of the preferred candidates and simultaneous vilification sites for the other candidate. It contributes to political polarization.”
He believes the power shift away from legacy media depends on the generation. The younger generation is more dedicated to podcasts, but the shift is still there.
“I think the larger issue isn’t misinformation or echo chambers, but that we’re choosing to be our reality. We then end up siloed into our own special interests and we cannot see outside of our own niche cultures of interest.”