YouTube podcast consumption: 700 million hours on TV

• Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman reports a new number from YouTube’s Steve McLendon, in a paid article: People watched 700 million hours of YouTube Podcasts on TV in October. It’s claimed that this is “nearly double the amount of time a year ago”, and it’s “the new late-night TV”. (In YouTube, a podcast is called a podcast if it’s marked as such by the creator).

  • It’s a big number, so let’s put it in context: in February this year, YouTube claimed over 1 billion hours of YouTube content is streamed on TVs every day (a figure from December 2024). 700 million hours a month means podcasts represent, at most, 2.3% of all TV streaming on YouTube. (Podcasts are 20% of all ad-funded audio).
  • In the first half of 2025, Squid Game season 2 was globally watched for 840 million hours on Netflix - that’s 140 million hours a month, or “a fifth of all YouTube TV streaming of podcasting”.
  • As for being the new late-night TV? Kimmel, Colbert, Fallon and The Daily Show in total attracted an average of 6.7 million viewers on broadcast TV in 2024, with 621 new episodes. That works out as 173 million hours each month (we’re assuming that viewers stay for half an hour). But YouTube’s 700 million is global at all hours of the day and night, and late night’s 173 million is just the US.

• Acast has acquired German content producer Wake Word Studios. The company will be rebranded Acast Creative Studios. The company makes fifty shows with more than two million monthly listens; and a media planning platform, Podius, which will continue to be run independently.

• iHeartMedia has extended its relationship with Charlamagne The God, the host of Power 105's breakfast show in New York, and the popular The Breakfast Club podcast. (Just as well - the show’s part of the Netflix/iHeart deal).

• Bauer Media’s digital audio advertising network audioXi now allows advertisers to buy in-app audio advertising with Audiomob.

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• Buzzsprout podcasters will get access to “Playback 2025” in early January - the company’s review of the year. The company suggests you grab the iOS app or Android app so you’re ready.

• The entire contents of Spotify (as of July this year) have been downloaded and analysed by Anna’s Archive, an anonymous group. (Archive link). Our link to their blog post (which doesn’t contain links to any audio) contains overall metadata analysis of the songs on the service; and also suggests that the group has an incomplete database of five million podcasts, and 54 million episodes, from Spotify. (The metadata, only, is available for download via torrent currently.)

• The Podcast Index’s Dave Jones is concerned about the amount of AI slop entering the index. In a recent episode of Podcasting 2.0, he says there are already 10,000 AI feeds - flooding into the index and costing it real money.

• Apple’s giving everyone iOS 26.2 and macOS 26.2 as soon as they can, by the looks of things: it contains a number of urgent security fixes. You also get Apple’s nice new automated chapters in the Podcasts app. What’s not to like? You should upgrade as soon as you can.

What’s next: 2026 in podcasting

In 2025… I was really inspired by the success cases of long-standing shows gaining new traction and reaching new audiences, and an entire generation of new podcast creators all across the world finding meaningful success. In 2026… diversification becomes the standard. I strongly believe the authenticity and loyalty that have shaped podcasting are the perfect foundation for business models across advertising, subscriptions, events, and distribution models at a scale that we haven’t seen before. - Roman Wasenmüller, Spotify

• Hear more in the Podnews Weekly Review

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