“THE UNEXPLAINABLE DISAPPEARANCE OF MARS PATEL” WINS A PEABODY & KIDS LISTEN RELEASES INITIAL SURVEY RESULTS
Data shows kids are listening and loving podcasts, using them as launchpads for creativity.
April 25 — “The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel” has been awarded a Peabody Award in the Radio/Podcast category. It is the first podcast produced for a young audience to receive the honor and is only the second podcast to receive the prestigious award, after “Serial” in 2014.
Kids Listen is a grassroots advocacy organization of advocates for high-quality audio for children and is proud to have Chris Tarry, co-creator of Mars Patel and Chief Production Officer at GenZ, as a member. Says Tarry, “Kids Listen gives a cohesive voice to kids podcasting and the importance of quality audio programming for young listeners. We were interested in joining Kids Listen because of the amazing talent of its membership, and the incredible ways everyone involved is pushing to redefine what kids audio can be.”
Kids Listen has become a home to the best kids podcasts in production. Its mission is to build community, advocate for the growth of the medium, and create standards and ethics.
Mars Patel’s Peabody win highlights that there is great content for an audience of listeners who have been neglected by traditional radio and podcasts. To learn about this neglected audience, Kids Listen surveyed over 400 families who are already listening to kids podcasts.What the organization found is that kids are highly engaged with audio content, and they listen in a fundamentally different way than adults.
In its inaugural survey, Kids Listen learned that roughly 80 percent of families surveyed said their kids listen to a single episode multiple times. Nearly 20 percent of respondents reported that their kids listen to a single episode more than 10 times. It’s a similar habit to re-reading a favorite book, or re-watching a favorite movie. Audio is no exception to kids’ established media consumption behaviors.
Nearly 75 percent of families surveyed said that after listening, kids start discussions related to the podcast they just heard. They also commonly quote or re-enact part of the episode (58 percent of respondents), tell others about what they learned from the podcast (56 percent of respondents), ask to listen to the episode again (54 percent of respondents) , and request more information about what they learned (52 percent of respondents).
Kids Listen also found that younger audiences are frequent consumers of podcasts. Half of families surveyed said their kids listen to at least one podcast each week. A third of kids listen to a podcast every day.
More initial findings from the Kids Listen inaugural survey will be released in late spring 2017.
Contact:
Lindsay Patterson, co-chair, creator producer of Tumble
Polly Hall, co-chair, creator and producer of Ear Snacks
info@kidslisten.org
