People in Wales unlikely to listen to Welsh podcasts, report finds

Dewi Williams

A new report has found that the majority of people in Scotland and Northern Ireland are listening to podcasts based in their nations while Welsh people are not.

Ofcom’s annual Media Nations report shows that none of the 10 most popular podcasts in Wales are based in Wales or focus on Welsh affairs, despite podcast listening growing rapidly and the country having a flourishing Welsh-language podcast sector.

In contrast, Northern Ireland’s top 10 include three home-grown podcasts while Scotland’s top 10 includes one with another narrowly missing out.

Scotland’s top 10 sees Scottish football podcast The Open Goal Football Show appear at fifth, and BBC Radio Scotland’s Scotcast ranked 14th in terms of listeners reached, just missing out on the top 10.

In Northern Ireland’s top 10, Shane Todd’s comedy podcast Tea With Me is ranked second, while The Bomb Squad Podcast and the Give MyHead Podcast both feature on the list.

At the top of every nation’s list is The Joe Rogan Experience, which is widely considered as the biggest podcast in the world, while The Rest is Politics, The Rest is History and The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett all appear on each list too.

Podcasting in Wales

Podcast listening is growing in Wales, but Welsh-produced shows have yet to break into the mainstream. While the number of adults listening to podcasts in Wales is up from 14% four years ago, the number still remains lower than any other UK nation, with 23% listening to podcasts each week.

Some high-profile Welsh podcasts include the BBC’s Walescast, Scrum V and Feast of Football shows, as well as independent pods like journalist Will Hayward’s For Wales See Wales and Elis James and Mike Bubbins’ Socially Distant Sports Bar. None of these feature on Wales’ top 10 list however.

Aled Jones, founder of Y Pod, a platform for Welsh-language podcasts, said: “There appears to be few podcasts that focus on Welsh affairs. I think this is reflective of the media sector in Wales with only a few organisations having the capacity and ability to create podcasts that focus on Welsh affairs.

“We’re competing in an international market to reach the ears of listeners. With over 4 million podcasts on Apple Podcasts alone it is difficult to find podcasts that aren’t heavily promoted within the platform or on Social Media.

“Podcasts take some time to gain traction and build an audience, I’m hoping that podcasts made in Wales focusing on Welsh affairs will begin to reach new audiences and ears.”

Welsh-language shows

The picture is more positive for Welsh-language podcasts. Ofcom identified some 228 Welsh-medium podcasts, with Vaughan Roderick and Richard Wyn Jones’ political show Gwleidydda and S4C’s Pod Sgorio examples of success in this area.

They lead the way when compared with the Celtic languages of the other UK nations, with the communications regulator identifying 129 podcasts in Irish or Ulster Scots, while Gaelic podcasts proved far fewer in numbers with only 13 titles identified.

“There are now over 350 podcasts in the Welsh language. The sector has seen a large growth in the number of podcasts produced”,  Jones added.

“Y Pod is a Welsh language podcast platform created due to the fact that it’s not possible to filter by language on the major podcast platforms.

“It has provided a platform that enables listeners to browse and find podcasts in the Welsh language easily and has been a big part in the growth of the number of podcasts produced in Welsh.

“There are a number of high quality podcasts made in Wales and created in the Welsh language. I’m optimistic that we’ll see a podcast made and produced in Wales and focussing on Welsh issues in the top 10 soon.”

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