Edison Research has just released their Top 25 shows for Q3 2023 from Edison Podcast Metrics. This follows their initial Top 25 for Q2 2023, released last September.
| Rank | Podcast | Producer | Up/Down |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Joe Rogan Experience | Joe Rogan | – |
| 2 | The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett | The Diary of a CEO | – |
| 3 | That Peter Crouch Podcast | Tall or Nothing | Up 2 |
| 4 | Sh**ged Married Annoyed | Chris & Rosie Ramsey | – |
| 5 | The Rest Is Politics | Goalhanger Podcasts | Up 1 |
| 6 | Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster | Plosive Productions | Down 3 |
| 7 | The News Agents | Global | Up 5 |
| 8 | Saving Grace | The Fellas Studios | Up 9 |
| 9 | The Therapy Crouch | Tall or Nothing | – |
| 10 | Parenting Hell | Keep It Light/Spotify Studios | Up 5 |
| 11 | No Such Thing as A Fish | No Such Thing as A Fish | Down 4 |
| 12 | ShxtsNGigs | ShxtsNGigs | New Entry |
| 13 | Help I Sexted My Boss | Audio Always | New Entry |
| 14 | NewlyWeds | JamPot Productions | Up 2 |
| 15 | Stuff You Should KNow | iHeartPodcasts | Up 5 |
| 16 | The Infinite Monkey Cage | BBC | Down 3 |
| 17 | The Rest is History | Goalhanger Podcasts | Down 6 |
| 18 | Newscast | BBC | Down 10 |
| 19 | You’re Dead to Me | BBC | – |
| 20 | The Fellas | The Fellas Studio | Up 2 |
| 21 | The Louis Theroux Podcast | Spotify Studios | New Entry |
| 22 | The Archers | BBC | New Entry |
| 23 | Impaulsive with Logan Paul | Logan Paul | Up 2 |
| 24 | Crime Junkie | audiochuck | New Entry |
| 25 | Growing Paynes | The Fellas Studios | New Entry |
I’ve added a column above showing those who’ve moved up and down the chart since last time out.
The top two titles are unchanged, while That Peter Crouch Podcast has moved up a couple of spots to #3. As before, there’s a very healthy number of UK titles in this list. Joe Rogan may still reign in Britain as well as America, but most of the rest of the table comes from this side of the pond, with comedians/comedy titles holding their own quite a lot.
What I would note that is once we get beyond the top six, things do start moving around quite a bit. Last time around The Daily was at #10, but has now dropped out of the Top 25 altogether. Newscast too has fallen from #8 to #18, while The News Agents climbs 5 places to #7.
There are a bunch of “New Entries” this quarter, including ShxtsNGigs, Help I Sexted My Boss, The Louis Theroux Podcast, and, er, The Archers. Thinking about The Archers as a new entry is interesting, but I did reference last time that it was a curious omission in comparison with the BBC’s own data release (The BBC has released it’s Top 10 Podcasts of 2023, with only Newscast crossing over. But the BBC differentiates between what are essentially podcast originals – shows that weren’t made originally for radio – and those that are radio shows also made available as podcasts. The list referenced only includes the former).
ShxtsNGigs is a title that has been around for years, but I confess that I didn’t know. Their showing here isn’t surprising when I notice that they’re currently well on their way to selling out the O2 Arena in London for a live show in May!
New entries mean that a few titles have fallen out of the chart: Kermode & Mayo’s Take, Uncanny, Money Box, Desert Island Discs, Happy Place and The Daily, the latter’s fall being notably precipitous. It’s worth remembering that not all titles are published all year round. Uncanny, for example, was basically not publishing new episodes in Q3 2023 (although the others, from what I can tell, were).
All of which suggests to me that once you reach somewhere around #10 on this chart, things get very tight, and whether a podcast is inside or outside the top 25 is going to be dependent on who gets surveyed. To be clear, I’ve not seen the full data, so this is my hypothesis, but the sheer number of podcast titles around leads me to think that this is the case.
Edison Podcast Metrics us based on data collected continuously during the third quarter of 2023, interviewing 2,326 weekly podcast consumers aged 15+. Participants indicated which podcasts they listened to in the past week along with a variety of demographic, psychographic, and purchase-behaviour information.
Before Christmas, Edison released the Top 50 US Podcasts for Q3. There are only a handful of titles that crossover – all American: The Joe Rogan Experience (#1 US/#1 UK), Crime Junkie (#1 US, #24 UK), Stuff You Should Know (#9 US/#15 UK) and Impaulsive with Logan Paul (#16 US, #23 UK). No UK titles make it into the Top 50 US podcasts at all!