I eat too much fast food. Living 100 metres from a McDonalds means that the “big arches” tend to be my most-frequented chain, and yet it seems every time I pop in, there’s a different sandwich on the menu. Recently, my sodium-and-cholesterol-fueled brain made the connection between McDonald’s product strategy, and something I heard asked a lot this fall as we presented The Canadian Podcast Listener 2024…
“What’s going on with podcasts in French Canada?”
This was hands-down the #1 question we were asked over fifteen different Canadian Podcast Listener presentations this year. Everyone wanted to know the story behind what was one of more unusual reversals of a trend we’ve seen over the past eight years of CPL.
From 2020 to 2023 we saw an encouraging upward trend with this audience. But then the trend broke in 2024, with a 4-point dip in monthly listening.
It’s possible that the dip in reach among French Canadians in 2024 was a blip, and we’ll see a return to trend in 2025. But, assuming it isn’t, our hypothesis is that a lack of fresh new content is the culprit.
A Market with a Unique Appetite for Content
To give our readers outside of Canada some context, 22% of the Canadian population cites French as their first language, with most living in the province of Quebec. Compared proportionally to the US, it’s as if French Canadians comprised the entire populations of California and Texas combined. A minority, but not a small group by any means.
A lack of homegrown content is seen as one of the reasons French Canadians have been slower to get into a habit of podcast listening compared to their English-speaking counterparts. Unlike English-speakers, they don’t benefit in the same way from the massive selection of English podcasts in the US, and despite sharing a language, listen to very few podcasts from France. In fact, Canadian Francophones consumed more than twice as many podcasts from the US last year than from France.
That said, 2023 was a banner year for podcast listening in French Canada, with three three French-language podcasts making it into the national top ten. Two of those each claimed a full fifth or more of all French listeners, making them comparable to Joe Rogan’s popularity in the US.
But in 2024, while they remained the top shows in the market, the reach of those two shows dropped precipitously, and no other podcast moved up to claim that reach. Those big podcasts still exist, and are still reaching a very enviable percentage of French Canadian podcast audiences, but they do not seem to have inspired a critical mass of similar shows to attract the audiences they lose through natural attrition.
You Can’t Only Eat Big Macs or Listen to Just One Podcast
Okay, I alluded to the McDonald’s connection earlier, and here it is: The Big Mac has been around since 1967, and is one of McDonald’s most popular menu items, so why go through the trouble of introducing salads, pizza or the crispy chicken sandwich?
McDonalds knows that new menu items keep patrons coming back. People love the Big Mac, but McDonald’s can’t survive on a single sandwich offering. And every now and then, one of their new sandwiches – like the crispy chicken – proves to be popular enough to be rebranded as a new permanent menu item – the McCrispy.
If you’re an avid podcast listener, I’m sure you can name a few podcasts that have fallen off your regular listening rotation, and you probably found other shows to take their place. Enough people turn to those new shows, and they become hits as well. But what if you couldn’t find anything that filled that craving?
That seems to be what’s happening in the French Canadian market. A few very popular items were getting people in the door, but there weren’t enough choices on the menu yet to keep them there once they felt like trying something different.
Offer Audiences a Full Menu
While this is a bit of a unique example, the situation could apply to other categories or markets. This underlies the wisdom of creating networks of podcasts around one popular show, or around specific genres or topic niches – if a listener wants a change, it’s an easy transition over to one of the other shows in the network, rather than risking them seek out competing podcasts, or in the case of French Canadians, look for entertainment outside of podcasts altogether.
Broadly speaking, podcast publishers need to know that they can’t rely on their one show, or even multiple top-performing shows to satisfy audiences forever. In French Canada right now, there’s an opportunity for whomever can provide something new to listeners needing a change from the Big Macs of the market.
Learn more about The Canadian Podcast Listener and get a free copy of our summary report, with additional profile info on the podcast audience, consumption data, and more.
