It has been four years since Megyn Kelly left the NBC “Today” show, and it is her arrival on satellite radio a year ago that is likely helping her podcast grow. TheRighting’s analysis of Castbox data shows The Megyn Kelly Show had the biggest growth numbers for any conservative podcast during the third quarter as her show picked up 11,488 subscribers.
“The popularity of Megyn Kelly’s podcast was undoubtedly helped by the September 2021 launch of her program on SiriusXM’s Triumph Channel,” said Howard Polskin, President of TheRighting. “She, Candace Owen and Laura Ingraham were the only women to crack our top 20 list. Conservative podcasting at this point in time seems dominated by men.”
Kelly spent a dozen years at Fox News Channel before moving to NBC News. She exited the network in 2018 after her morning talk show failed to catch on with viewers, and her program was repeatedly the recipient of complaints about what were seen as racially insensitive comments. Kelly then launched her podcast in September 2020 as she formed her own company called Devil May Care Media. She teamed with Red Seat Ventures to produce and manage the show and sell its advertising inventory. Kelly said that what attracted her to podcasting was the freedom of doing and saying what she wants, and not having to follow the orders of network bosses. In July 2021, Kelly struck a deal to take her show to SiriusXM.
TheRighting says the podcast with the second fastest growth during the third quarter was The Daily Wire’s The Matt Walsh Show. It increased its subscribers 56% compared to a year ago. The Daily Wire had five other shows in TheRighting’s top 20, including the top-ranked The Ben Shapiro Show, The Michael Knowles Show (No. 11), The Andrew Klavan Show (No. 12), The Morning Wire (No. 18), and Candace Owens (No. 20).
Blaze Media also continued to perform well with a trio in TheRighting’s ranker – with Louder with Crowder (No. 4), The Rubin Report (No. 6) and The Glenn Beck Program (No. 8) all scoring top 10 positions.
In terms of sheer numbers, TheRighting’s tally shows Shapiro added the most subscribers during third quarter versus a year earlier with 64,309 new followers. That made his show once again the most popular conservative podcast during Q3.
TheRighting says Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast did not make the top 20, but the former advisor to President Trump has been in the headlines and that may be why it added 6,115 subscribers, up 43% for the quarter. That put it at No. 23 during the third quarter with 13,966 Castbox subscribers.
This report is based on data that is updated daily from the podcast app Castbox, which is the sixth most popular app on the podcast-hosting platform Buzzsprout. It provides a snapshot of the market. Castbox represents 1.6% of all podcasts that Buzzsprout serves. No other leading podcast app besides Castbox makes its data available.