When we launched City Cast in 2021, we committed to tracking–and publishing–demographic information about our podcast guests. Diversity is a core City Cast value, and accountability is another. We want to have podcast guests who are diverse in race and ethnicity, gender, economic background, and geography. Tracking and publicizing guest demographics is a way to hold us accountable for representing the diversity of Madison.
So are we living up to our values? How diverse is our podcast guest pool, really?
We ask each of our City Cast Madison podcast guests a few questions about their gender identity, racial/ethnic identity, and neighborhood. About 95% of guests responded in 2023. The following data encompass a total of 119 responding guests who collectively made 137 podcast appearances from Nov. 1, 2022 through Nov. 9, 2023. (We did not count City Cast Madison staffers who appeared on the podcast.)
We then used census data to compare our podcast guests to the broader city population. This helps us see how well we’re reflecting the community we’re serving.
Race/ethnicity of City Cast Madison podcast guests vs. the Madison city/metro population.
As you can see in the chart, City Cast Madison’s guests broadly mirrored the population. Madison is more than 70% white, and 73% of our guests were white. We also had a higher percentage of Black guests than you’d expect based on the local population, and a slightly lower percentage of Asian-American guests than you’d expect.
The gender identity of City Cast Madison podcast guests.
We also asked about gender identity. A majority of 56% of our guests identified as male, and 43% identified as female. About 2% identified as non-binary.
