Vice President Kamala Harris sat down for a wide-ranging interview Tuesday in Detroit with popular radio host Charlamagne tha God, further deepening her push to reach potential voters in a more relaxed environment.
Tuesday’s hour-long, town hall-style interview with Charlamagne, The Breakfast Club co-host, served as an attempt to counteract weakening support from Black voters. Harris pushed back on claims that she was disconnected from the Black community, warned of another Donald Trump term, outlined new proposals, and called the November election “a margin-of-error race.”
It originally aired on iHeartRadio stations and was uploaded to The Breakfast Club podcast.
The Harris campaign has been working to drum up support from new audiences, putting an increasing importance on popular podcasts and shows. They’ve made it clear: This is the year of the podcast campaign. In the past few weeks, Harris appeared on the extremely popular Call Her Daddy podcast and All the Smoke, which is hosted by former NBA stars Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes. Her vice presidential pick, Tim Walz, also went on the Smartless show.
“I need to earn every vote, which is why I’m here having this candid conversation with you and your listeners,” Harris told Charlamagne.
The Harris campaign has reportedly also been in conversations with top podcast The Joe Rogan Experience for a sit-down interview, though nothing has been confirmed yet. Rogan’s show had 14.5 million followers in March, with the bulk of those being male and under 35 years old. (Spotify wrote in a press release in February: “JRE remains podcasting’s king, consistently ranking as the most-listened-to podcast globally and our users have ranked the show as Spotify’s Wrapped top podcast each year since 2020.”)
Whether or not the Harris campaign’s strategy works in their favor, it’s clear that streamers are the winner of this media blitz.
Spotify, specifically, had been heavily investing in podcasts on the platform since 2019. The company was initially focused on spending billions for the rights to podcast exclusivity, with some of the biggest deals made with Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy and The Joe Rogan Experience, as well as studio acquisitions and new tech.
Earlier this year, Spotify changed direction and gave up the exclusivity rights to its two top shows, meaning they can stream on other platforms. (It also still has the exclusive rights to the video version of Call Her Daddy.)
That isn’t necessarily a bad thing for Spotify, however. The company still has the ability to grow ad dollars on the shows. It could benefit more from those ad sales than getting users to download Spotify. According to an eMarketer forecast, U.S. podcast ad spend is projected to surpass $2 billion by the end of 2024.
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