The Brutal Truth About Podcast Growth Nobody Wants to Hear with Tom Webster

Summary

Podcast Summary: Right About Now – "The Brutal Truth About Podcast Growth Nobody Wants to Hear"

Host: Ryan Alford (Radcast Network)
Guest: Tom Webster (Co-founder, Sounds Profitable; Author, "The Audience is Listening")
Date: January 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this punchy and unsparing episode, Ryan Alford is joined by Tom Webster—dubbed "podcasting’s uncle" and a pillar in podcast research—to shatter myths about podcast growth. They unravel the misconceptions around promotion, audience entitlement, and the necessity of ruthless editing. Webster preaches that real podcast growth isn't about flashier marketing but about structure, flow, and a deep understanding of your actual listener. This is the hard-nosed truth for doers who want results, not soundbites.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. State of the Podcasting Industry

Growth & Mainstream Status

• Podcasting has become a mainstream media activity—over 50% of Americans have listened monthly, and 37% listen weekly.
  [03:33-03:53, Tom Webster]

Resilience Amid Ad-Supported Media Woes

• Industry faced a "rough year," as did most ad-supported media, but top shows "continue to sell out" and monetization opportunities are growing.
• "Podcasting is not on the way down. That is true, yes."
  [04:36-04:39, Tom Webster]

Misconceptions and Negative Press

• Persistent skepticism from digital media outlets writing about podcasting’s supposed decline, even as their own platforms falter.
  • "I'm like, well, how are you doing? Because I know we are growing."
    [04:52-05:12, Tom Webster]

2. Audience Entitlement & Understanding

Not Entitled to an Audience

• “You are entitled to make the show you want, make your art... But you're not entitled to an audience. You don't deserve an audience. You have no right to an audience.”
  [06:19-06:38, Tom Webster]

Demand for Better Listener Engagement

• Most hosts ask the wrong questions of their audience and must get specific, actionable feedback.
• Asking “What do you think of my podcast?” is useless. Ask better questions, be ready for honest feedback.
  [06:40-07:03, Tom Webster]

3. Roles, Personas, and Authenticity

Morning Show Trope and Clarity of Roles

• The "Dick, the Dork, and the Deer" analogy for show dynamics: clarity of role helps the audience connect.
• “It does require some thought about who's listening, why they're listening, and is the voice of that person represented well on the show.”
  [02:27 & 07:18-07:31, Tom Webster]

Defining Goals for Hosts

• Clearly defining “roles and goals” for show hosts helps maintain clarity and connection.
• “Roles and goals, roles and goals. Every goal of every speaker on the show.”
  [07:48-07:54, Ryan Alford]

4. Ruthless Editing Is Essential

Three Levels of Editing

• Level 0: No editing, disguised as "authenticity"—a crutch and a failing.
• Level 1: Basic hygiene (removing coughs, pauses)—minimum requirement.
• Level 2: Editing for flow, restructuring interviews for narrative and audience engagement.
• “It is the most neglected thing in podcasting and that is editing.”
  [08:10, Tom Webster]
• “I'm authentic and I edit and I'm authentic and I rehearse... what is authentic to me is doing a good job.”
  [08:18-08:31, Tom Webster]

The Power of a Full Transcript

• Print out entire transcripts, mark changes with a red pen—“an outstanding step you can do to access the next level.”
  [09:32-09:54, Tom Webster]

5. Building Audience & Marketing Wisely

Local-to-National Growth Model

• Personal anecdotes about resisting premature large-scale marketing spend; success typically starts word-of-mouth and local before going national.
• “If you just try to eat the whole elephant at once, you're likely to do marketing that is not particularly precise.”
  [10:28-10:38, Tom Webster]

Syndication Lessons

• Example: Rush Limbaugh started local, spread through syndication and strategic exposure. [10:28-10:51, Tom Webster]

6. Trends & Resources from Sounds Profitable

Industry Research & Resources

• Sounds Profitable acts as the podcast industry’s trade organization, publishing research, resources, and newsletters.
  [10:58-11:29, Tom Webster]

Emerging Role of Video in Podcasting

• Video has been part of podcasting since the beginning, but is now more important—Webster is researching this shift intensively.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On audience entitlement:
  “You're not entitled to an audience. You don't deserve an audience. You have no right to an audience.”
  (06:22, Tom Webster)

• On authenticity vs. quality:
  “I'm authentic and I edit and I'm authentic and I rehearse... what is authentic to me is doing a good job when I'm on stage. It's not authentic to me to struggle.”
  (08:18-08:29, Tom Webster)

• On podcast industry health:
  “Podcasting is not on the way down. That is true, yes.”
  (04:39, Tom Webster)

• On role clarity:
  “It does require some thought about who's listening, why they're listening, and is the voice of that person represented well on the show.”
  (07:29, Tom Webster)

• On ruthless editing:
  “Editing for flow is super important... whatever was coming up on the show next answered the question that was in the audience, the next question that was in the audience's head.”
  (08:40-09:02, Tom Webster)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:27 – The “Dick, the Dork, and the Deer” show persona model
• 03:33 – U.S. podcasting goes fully mainstream, current state analysis
• 04:36 – "Podcasting is not on the way down" myth debunked
• 06:19 – The reality of audience entitlement
• 07:18 – Importance of defined show roles
• 08:10 – The three levels of editing and the myth of authenticity
• 09:32 – Editing via full episode transcript
• 10:28 – Lessons on local growth and marketing
• 10:58 – Introduction to Sounds Profitable’s resources
• 11:29 – Thoughts on video’s expanding role in podcasting

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Where to Find More

• Tom Webster’s book: audienceslisteningbook.com or on Amazon/Audible
• Sounds Profitable: soundsprofitable.com
• Ryan Alford: ryanisright.com

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Tone & Takeaways

Frank, practical, and eager to root out “LinkedIn fluff,” this episode offers a reality check for podcasters. Webster’s blend of research-backed insights and decades of experience provides a sobering yet inspiring roadmap: Know your audience, clarify your roles, edit mercilessly for flow and listener value, and scale sensibly—from local roots outward.

The “brutal truth” is that podcasting is thriving, but lazy content, unclear structure, and “authenticity” as an excuse for no editing won’t cut it. If you want real show growth, do the work.

Transcript

[Ryan Alford]

Ever wonder why 90% of podcasts plateau before they hit the big leagues? Today we're hacking the growth code with podcasting's Uncle Tom Webster, who reveals why the secret to a million dollar audience isn't more promotion. It's the ruthless art of editing for flow and talking to a singular fleshed out human. Get ready to stop chasing vanity cliques and start building a high impact show that actually moves the needle. It starts right about now.

[Tom Webster]

There's an old radio trope for morning shows called the Dick, the Dork and the Deer. A great morning show typically has at least those three Personas on the show. The person who says the awful thing, the person who really represents the actual audience, who makes that other person look bad or whatever. And then the sort of deer in the headlights kind of male or female that says sort of the innocent thing or the naive thing. And all of that kind of works in a stew. I'm not suggesting that your podcast needs a jerk, but it does require some thought about who's listening, why they're listening, and is the voice of that person represented well on the show.

[Narrator]

This is Right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month, taking the BS out of business for over 6 years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.

[Ryan Alford]

What's up, guys? Welcome to Right About Now. It's always fascinating when you feel like you kind of know someone. At least you know their profession and what they're good at and all those things. Then you actually get them on the show. We've got Tom Webster. He's the author of the Audience is Listening A Little Guide to Building a Big Podcast, and he's a co founder of Sounds Profitable, one of our partners and someone I can't recommend enough. What's up, Tom?

[Tom Webster]

Ryan, it's good to be here.

[Ryan Alford]

Can I call you the godfather of audio?

[Tom Webster]

No, more like podcasting's uncle or something.

[Ryan Alford]

There you go, it's friendly.

[Tom Webster]

Uncle.

[Ryan Alford]

How long you been in audio?

[Tom Webster]

I have been in audio for 30 years and I've always been a media researcher. I started my career in radio and TV and more sort of traditional broadcast media about 19 years ago. I started doing a little bit of work in podcasting. Not that there were any clients for that kind of work, but we just added it into our annual surveys and things like that. And I've been plugging away at it ever since. I Love it. I love the storytelling aspects. I love spoken word audio, period. It's really been a wonderful career over the last certainly 19 of those 30 years trying to make podcasting as big as I think it can be.

[Ryan Alford]

The proliferation of the smartphone and everything that it can do and the functionality and all the apps right at your fingertips, that's not new either, but I do think it certainly helped. Right?

[Tom Webster]

Yeah. And we've had this sort of interesting lab doing research into other countries for years. I used to work on audio survey called the Infinite Dial, which has actually been in production since 1998. I worked on it for about 18 years. And besides the sort of main Infinite Dial, we also did one in Canada. And Canada for years lagged behind the US by a fair amount. And the reason for it was very related to what you're talking about. It was how draconian the cellular BR broadband charges were in Canada. They were usurious. That's a good one for you. When the telecom companies were sort of forced to change and adapt to having more all you can eat plans or at least reasonably priced podcast consumption skyrocketed in one year because people no longer had to worry about who's paying for all this data.

[Ryan Alford]

What's your view? We're building talking with Tom Webster, author of the Audience Is Listening. Tom is. We're sort of building to talk specifically about the book. What's the state of the state here of podcasting? Maybe that question, maybe even through the lens you've been tracking these things with the studies you guys are doing. It sounds profitable and all that, but maybe give the audience kind of a lay of the land of the industry.

[Tom Webster]

This year the majority of Americans have listened to a podcast at least monthly. It's the first time we've really been able to say that, although we've been flirting with it for a couple of years. It's a fully mainstream activity. It's about 37% of Americans, 18 + listen weekly. It's as much a part of American mainstream media consumption as the audience every year has grown. It's never shot up like a rocket ship. It hasn't done that kind of hockey stick growth that online video did and YouTube initially did, but it plugs along. The industry itself had a bit of a down year last year, but any ad supported media did last year. A rough year for ad supported media. And there was a lot of. Right. Sizing is I believe the term that is unfortunate, but that's really turned around. Sales are good right now. Certainly the top shows continue to Sell out. There's enormous opportunity, even without growing a single audience member, to continue to monetize the incredibly long, long, long tail of podcasting, which is 99% of it, or there's still some friction, I think, in monetizing that we continue to grow partners. That sounds profitable. We really function as the trade organization for the industry. And there's increased interest in multiple layers.

[Ryan Alford]

Podcasting is not on the way down.

[Tom Webster]

True or f. Podcasting is not on the way down.

[Ryan Alford]

Podcasting is not on the way down. Is that true or false?

[Tom Webster]

That is true, yes. Podcasting is not on the way down. That is true, yes.

[Ryan Alford]

I don't know that I hear them. People don't like, but it's sort of the whispers maybe a little bit. Podcasting is plateaued a little. It's got nowhere to go but down. That's the whispers I hear occasionally.

[Tom Webster]

That really bugs me, and I acknowledge that because I hear it all the time. Where I often see it is in online articles from different public online publications that seem to delight in any bad news related to podcasting so that they can write about them in their own increasingly failing digital media. That's the thing. I'm like, well, how are you doing? Because I know we are growing. There's always been a weird skepticism about podcasting just because of how it started in a lot of ways. It started as another version of pirate radio, a group of malcontents doing little shows about all kinds of stuff. And maybe it developed that kind of a reputation, but that's not the case now. It's a fully mainstream activity. It is growing. It is one of the two fastest growing advertising supported industries, that's for sure. There's so much more potential. Branded podcasts is something that you're involved with. Those are huge and getting bigger, and we're being able to count them better. We have a project to do that. Is there a cap on podcasting? Sure, there's a cap on everything, but we're not there yet.

[Ryan Alford]

I talked to someone the other day. We're making this analogy with marketing and saying, if I can sing really good, you want to amplify it. People want to hear it louder. But, man, if you sing like shit, are you turning the amplifier on? Hell, no. So we don't need to amplify something that's not working. I think it's hard to look in the mirror for some podcast people, and those are the hard questions. Everything we're talking about is the hard exercise, and hard might not even be the right word. It's just the right thing to do, but requires a different level of thinking and planning. That's where people maybe get off the rails. You can't just create the show for you.

[Tom Webster]

You know, that's the thing. Like, you are entitled to make the show you want, make your art. I would never crush your dreams. But you're not entitled to an audience. You don't deserve an audience. You have no right to an audience. And if you are focused on making the show you want to make, then that's an entirely different thing than making the show that the audience wants to hear. And I hear people sometimes be disrespectful of an audience, so they don't even know what they like until show it to them and all this other stuff. And that's not true. You can ask better questions. People ask really terrible questions anytime I'm talking to somebody and they've attempted to talk to their listeners. If you ask people a question like, what do you think of my podcast? You're going to get an answer back. I don't know. It's interesting, it's funny. I like it. That's useless. That's not going to help you do anything. That's not going to help you improve it. So you just. You need to ask better questions and you need to be ready to hear those answers.

[Ryan Alford]

We've gone through this exercise on our show. We get it perfect on some of our new stuff. Three people that are on it. But we have this discussion. I listen to shows and it's not clear. You've got the two guys or two girls or what. And there's no differentiation between the clarity of Abbott and Costello.

[Tom Webster]

Yeah, there's an old radio trope for morning shows called the Dick, the Dork and the Deer. A great morning show typically has at least those three Personas on the show. The person who says the awful thing, the person who really represents the actual audience, who makes that other person look bad or whatever. And then the sort of deer in the headlights kind of male or female that says sort of the innocent thing or the naive thing. And all of that kind of works in a stew. I'm not suggesting that your podcast needs a jerk, but it does require some thought about who's listening, why they're listening, and is the V voice of that person represented well on the show?

[Ryan Alford]

Roles and goals, Roles and goals. Every goals of every speaker on the show. Talking with Tom Wester, author of the Audience of Listener the Audience is Listening and co founder of Sounds Profitable. Tom Once you've got roles, you've got goals for all the hosts. You've done the look in the mirror while also talking to your audience. Where do we go next to get the audience continuing to listen to me?

[Tom Webster]

It is the most neglected thing in podcasting and that is editing. And there's sort of three levels of editing. Level zero is I don't do any editing. And I support that with the crutch of I'm authentic. Well, I'll tell you something, I'm authentic and I edit and I'm authentic and I rehearse and I'm authentic. Because what is authentic to me is doing a good job when I'm on stage. It's not authentic to me to struggle. I do the work of rehearsal. I do the work. I may not script everything, but I certainly script transitions and things like that. I want to do a really good job. That's authentic to me, not doing any editing under the guise of authenticity. Don't love that. The next level of editing is sort of hygiene level editing where you take out coughs and awkward pauses and things like that. And at a minimum you should be doing that. But the next level of the game is editing for flow. And if you're in an interview and something comes up late in the interview that actually would have been better to have come up earlier, you can do that. You're not broadcasting a live show unless you are editing for flow is super important. Alex Bloomberg is really, really good at this. In the shows that he has produced and he worked for years on Planet Money, then was a co founder of Gimlet and Startup and Startup was a great podcast. The way that those shows were edited and constructed were whatever was coming up on the show next answered the question that was in the audience, the next question that was in the audience's head. Even if the interview wasn't structured that way, the way it was produced was structured that way. And so there was an arc to it. It wasn't just sort of a random whatever that's not appropriate for everything, but it could make a lot of things better. And one of the things that I always advise people to do is get the best human created transcript of a recent show that you can. There's a number of services that do that. Leave nothing out, be unsmaaring, get every and ah. And there are services that will do that and get the whole thing printed out and sit down with it with a red PE and tell me you wouldn't change some things. And that's a really outstanding step you can do to access the next level.

[Ryan Alford]

Of this I created like an outdoor board campaign for my show to do locally all around. I never ran it. This show's doing well. I've almost probably gone national, but need to go. I just never was like, all right, do I spend that money? Like, we could have spent it. We had the money, but it was just like, I just kind of paused. I usually don't second guess myself. I usually definitely just to go do it. But I've literally still have like the billboard playing off number one in xyz. Born in Greenville, but born and produced here in Greenville of playing off national show now, but born and raised right here.

[Tom Webster]

I love that. And we've talked about some syndicated personalities. Rush Limbaugh didn't start out as Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh was a night jock at a station in Pittsburgh or whatever and then moved to Sacramento and like he was a local jock and it was friend told a friend or whatever. And that's how we started to spread. That's how it always starts to spread. And if you just try to eat the whole elephant at once, you're likely to do marketing that is not particularly precise or articulate.

[Ryan Alford]

Tom, tell me anything you want to mention that you're doing with Sounds Profitable is your latest stuff or things coming up with that platform.

[Tom Webster]

Sounds Profitable is a partner driven organization. We function really as the trade organization for the podcast industry. And as a part of that we produce a lot of resources, a lot of free research that we make available on our site. We put out a weekly insights newsletter and a daily podcast industry news newsletter. We're constantly putting out resources. All of that is@sounds profitable.com. i've been lately doing a lot of writing about the role of video. Video was part of podcasting from the very, very beginning, but maybe never more so than now. And what video really does, and that's just been really a fascinating inquiry. I think that's what I've about lately.

[Ryan Alford]

This saying, got to eat your own dog food. We got to do it ourselves. And if you're out there and you're listening, you're thinking about podcasting. It's still on the way up big time. It changed my life. It's impactful in so many ways. And we have people like Tom and Sounds Profitable to thank for propping up the industry and taking it to the places that are going. Tom, how do we find the audience.

[Tom Webster]

Is listening audiences listening book dot com. You can also find it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and there's an audiobook of course on Audible. You can find it there.

[Ryan Alford]

Tom, thank you so much for coming on today.

[Tom Webster]

Thank you, Ryan. You've been a great host and I really enjoyed this.

[Ryan Alford]

Hey guys, Ryan is right.com you'll find all the highlight clips as well as links to Tom's book. Sounds profitable and everything going on in the industry. We'll put some links to some of their great the greatest hits of their decks. Tom's are always writing some thorough research. If you're a brand out there, it's time to get off the bus and get on to the podcast train because that's where the most trusted advertisers are and the medium is growing. Appreciate you for making us number one. We'll see you next time on RIGHT about now.

[Narrator]

This has been Right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast network production. Visit ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.