CBC Podcasts has launched a new channel on YouTube, making a collection of the public broadcaster’s most popular shows available through the platform.
Audiences can now stream series like Someone Knows Something; Uncover; Run, Hide Repeat; and daily news podcast, Front Burner, among a dozen others, on YouTube. CBC says the channel will continue to grow in the coming months with the addition of video podcasts.
“The launch of CBC Podcasts on YouTube furthers a commitment to making our amazing catalogue of podcast content available to audiences on the platform of their choice,” said Barbara Williams, Executive Vice-President, CBC, in an announcement from the public broadcaster. “CBC now has more than eight million subscribers to our video channels on YouTube and this new audio streaming partnership will expand the reach of our world-class slate of original podcasts, helping us connect with new audiences in Canada and around the globe.”
The move is in line with CBC’s ongoing commitment to meet listeners where they are, timed with the launch of Canadian podcasts in the YouTube Music app, allowing podcasts to be listened to in the background on a locked screen or downloaded for offline listening.
CBC says the new CBC Podcasts channel builds on the success of existing YouTube channels like Q with Tom Power, which since the end of January has moved forward as a digital-first product available in podcast format to listeners at 4 a.m. ET weekday mornings, and re-airing in the show’s regular 10 – 11 a.m. local timeslot on CBC Radio across the country.
Power told a panel at Radiodays North America in June that the move to a more conversational podcast format has resulted in overwhelmingly positive feedback from listeners and a lift with the show’s key 35-49 audience demo.
Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights’ Spring 2023 Podcast Download Report, diving in to the listening habits of weekly podcast consumers in the U.S., found that listeners have embraced YouTube as the number one podcast platform, particularly for podcast discovery. Podcast Download reported listeners spend nearly as much time on YouTube listening to podcasts without visuals as they do while watching, with over six in 10 looking at the screen at least some of the time, even during ads.
“Podcasters have been leveraging YouTube’s reach for quite some time,” said Stephanie Wilson Chapin, YouTube Canada’s Strategic Partner Lead for News. “In fact, a good portion of the more than one billion hours watched per day on YouTube is podcasting content from creators, artists, and others looking to share their unique perspectives. We are very excited about partnering with CBC to continue the growth we’ve seen in this area over the last few years, and look forward to expanding our relationship with them in the future.”
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