# Podcasts Overtake Radio; Snapchat Launches Creator Awards

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-02-26

## Transcript

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A new study showing us that Americans now listen to podcasts more than talk radio.
I'm Imran Shake, and your Thursday, Daily Crunch.
It starts right now.
Snapchat announced on Wednesday that it's hosting its first ever awards show on March 21st.
Now, the social media giant says the award show called The Snappies, by the way, is designed to celebrate the creators' shaping culture on Snapchat.
That's what they say.
Creators will receive awards like Spotlight MVP, Best Storyteller, and Breakout Creator of the Year, alongside awards across fashion, beauty, sports, music, food, and games.
Additional categories include collaboration, comedy, and cultural impact.
No word yet on a Night Rider TV series appreciation award.
Now, Snapchat is just the latest social media platform to launch awards for creators.
You see, Snapchat's awards are more in line with TikToks, as it will also host a traditional award show where the winners will be revealed live at the event.
The company says the show will bring together creators, industry leaders, and special guests.
And one of those special guests is DJ Collid, who will be receiving Snapchat's Lifetime Achievement Award.
It's been a long time coming for DJ Collid, if you ask me.
Now, by launching awards, Snapchat and its rivals are positioning themselves as more than just social media apps and as notable players in the entertainment industry.
The Snapties will be hosted by Mr.
Fake Howard Stern and fantastic Donald Trump impressionist, comedian, and creator, Matt Friend, and will take place at Snap's Santa Monica headquarters.
Snapchat says it'll release more details, including lists of nominees in the coming weeks.
AI chatbots.
According to a report published on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center, they've become embedded in the lives of American teenagers.
You see, while the most common uses of AI among this demographic are to search for information, that's at 57%, and get help with schoolwork, that's at a whopping 54%.
Teens are also using AI to fill roles that would typically be occupied by friends or family.
Sixteen percent of US teens say they use AI for casual conversation, while twelve percent use AI chatbots for emotional support or advice.
Some teens may find solace in talking to chatbots, but mental health professionals they're wary.
General purpose tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok are not designed for such uses.
And in the most extreme cases, these chatbots they can have life-threatening psychological effects.
We are social creatures, and there's certainly a challenge that these systems can be isolating.
That's from Dr.
Nick Haber, a Stanford professor researching the therapeutic potentials of LLMs, as told to TechCrunch recently.
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Podcasts have officially overtaken AM FM Talk Radio, RIP Car Talk Guys, as the more popular medium for spoken word audio in the good old US of A, according to Edison Research's Share of Ear survey.
Now the researchers have tracked these stats over the last decade.
And almost always the percentage of time people spent listening to podcasts increased, while their time with spoken radio broadcasts.
You can see where this is going, decreased.
But for the first time this year, podcasts eclipsed spoken word radio with 40% of listening time as opposed to 39% for radio.
But perhaps that speaks more to the durability of good old fashioned radio than the merits of podcasting.
So we checked with Edison to see if these stats include video podcasting.
I don't know.
Maybe it's, and yeah, they do.
But the need to clariflix is inking deals with iHeartMedia and Barstool Sports left and right to bring prevalence of video podcasts hosted on platforms like Spotify and YouTube, which marks another key trendy version of the daytime talk show.
It's not a bad investment.
According to YouTube, people watch them on TV.
YouTube said that viewers watched 700 million hours of podcasts each month in 2025 on living room devices, like TVs, up from 400 million the previous year.
That's almost double.
But the popularity of video podcasts, it doesn't seem to be detracting from audio first podcast listening either.
Triton Digital's U.S.
Podcast Report for 2025, yes, that's how deep we're digging here, showed that 80% of consumers over 18 years of age tune into both audio and video podcasts.
13% only listen to audio, while 7% only watch video.
Listener preferences also appear to vary greatly depending on a podcast's genre, with podcasts about topics like music, sports, comedy, and news skewing more popular on video.
Genres like science, history, arts, fiction, and true crime are more often consumed via audio.
Glaringly, Triton Digital's U.S.
Podcast Report didn't break down to the subgenre of 1980s TV shows based on talking robot cars.
Edison's findings show a similar trend in the role of video and podcasting.
You see, 85% of weekly U.S.
podcast listeners above the age of 13 consume podcasts with any sort of video component, up to 7% from the Halcyon days of 2023.
The research also showed that there are an estimated one hundred fifteen million weekly podcast listeners in the U.S., with only five percent of listeners reporting that they watch podcasts but don't listen to them.
Gang, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Amanda Silberling, Aisha Mullock, and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
We'll see you here tomorrow, same tech time, same crunch channel.
And until then, find us at TechCrunch.com.
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