Can a Podcast Save the U.Okay.? Crooked Media Takes on British Politics

Crooked’s journey throughout the Atlantic is the newest instance of the corporate’s progress because the first episode of “Pod Save America” landed in podcast feeds in January 2017. The present presently averages 12 million month-to-month downloads and YouTube streams, in response to Crooked. And the community at giant has began 30 podcasts since its inception, with 17 lively podcasts on its roster.

Many of these podcasts have prolonged past the realm of straight political commentary into well being (“America Dissected”), tradition (“Keep It”) and scripted comedy (“Edith!”). This is along with the corporate’s foray into tv, its dwell exhibits and a muscular merchandise providing.

“Pod Save the U.K.” enters a British media panorama wherein political podcasts are more and more well-liked. “The Rest is Politics,” fronted by the previous Labour communications director Alastair Campbell and the previous Conservative lawmaker Rory Stewart, often sits on the prime of British podcast charts. As does “Novara Live,” a podcast from left-wing media group Novara Media, and “The News Agents,” a each day podcast hosted by three former BBC journalists.

The success of different political news sources in Britain comes, partially, from “a growing dissatisfaction with the way news is reported by established organizations,” stated Adam Shepherd, the editor of PodPod, a British podcasting trade publication. “There’s a lot of people that feel, rightly or wrongly, that there’s an increasing amount of organizational bias that goes into news publication, that there are areas of news reporting that are being underserved.”

Against this backdrop, what ambitions do the hosts have for the present? Khan stated that she hoped to supply a unique perspective. “I was just like looking at politics podcasts and with the exception of Novara, when you look at all the artwork, it’s pretty much exclusively men, close to, a few women, and not really that many brown faces,” she stated.

For Kumar, “I think it will be nice for the people around me that I have a weekly outlet for my news-based grievances,” he stated.

“I’m hoping this will have a net beneficial effect on my interpersonal relationships,” he added.