Candace Owens Seizes the Mic: We Talk Kimmel, Kirk, Media
As her pod tops Rogan and empire grows, she shares her playbook for building an indie platform (controversy and conspiracies included)
This is a preview of Like & Subscribe, my standalone Ankler Media newsletter on the creator economy. I wrote about YouTube’s new AI-powered podcast tools, the Gen Alpha stars shaking up podcasting, the wild world of TikTok Live and Hollywood agencies battling over top creators. Email me at natalie@theankler.com
On Sept. 17, seven days after Charlie Kirk was killed, Candace Owens, a onetime Vogue intern, sat down at her desk and launched into a 72-minute screed about the evidence that led officials to arrest the man charged with Kirk’s murder. “The text messages that were released yesterday in the indictment of Tyler Robinson make perfect sense if you don’t think about them at all,” the firebrand said in the opening moments of the episode — titled “Who Ordered The Hit On Charlie Kirk?” — that she’d later post in the feed for her podcast Candace.
By the next day, the video version of the episode had amassed millions of views on YouTube (it’s up to 4.3 million today), and Candace had passed The Joe Rogan Experience on Apple’s podcast charts for the first time on its way to becoming the No. 3 podcast in the country. (As of publication, Candace is now No. 7 and JRE is No. 3.)
Political podcasters — who rose to new prominence during last year’s presidential election — have taken center stage once again in the wake of Kirk’s assassination, attracting big audiences and moving up the charts even as podcast voices on both sides of the political spectrum express fear over their safety. While left-leaning online pundits have seized on Democrats’ frustrations with legacy news outlets’ acquiescence to the Trump administration’s crackdown on free speech — as detailed on Sunday by Semafor — it’s a group of conservative voices who’ve captured the lion’s share of the attention in recent days and are completely reshaping the hierarchy of online political influence.
In addition to Candace, which has remained consistently among the top 10 on Apple Podcasts for the past week, The Charlie Kirk Show also has seen a phenomenal rise, jumping into the top spot for that app in the days since he was shot as a rotating group of guest hosts — including Vice President JD Vance, Glenn Beck, Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly — pay tribute to his legacy. Kelly’s and Carlson’s podcasts have also popped in the rankings on both Apple and Spotify.
“It’s something that’s been happening slowly, and this event only catalyzes it,” Owens, 36, tells me when I call her up to ask about the surging interest in political commentary from voices you can’t find on Fox News or CNN. “It’s just distrust in the mainstream media, and that’s in large part due to the mainstream media model of lying, gaslighting, smearing. It doesn’t work anymore.”
Owens launched Candace in June 2024, having parted ways that March with The Daily Wire after sparring with co-founder Ben Shapiro over her views on the war in Gaza and her embrace of what the Anti-Defamation League has characterized as “antisemitic tropes and anti-Israel rhetoric.” Among many examples cited by the ADL were these remarks from an Aug. 14 podcast with Tristan Tate (the British-American manosphere influencer who along with his brother Andrew Tate is facing trial in Romania on charges including rape and human trafficking). Said the ADL: “Owens… claimed that Judaism was a ‘pedophile-centric religion that believes in demons...[and] child sacrifice...’ She added that she is ‘waking people up to the fact that pedophiles are in power.’” Likewise, Owens has generated rebukes in other corners for her pointed disapproval of Black Lives Matter and Covid vaccines, and defense of what many would call police overreach.
Owens certainly knows how to generate controversy and it’s become a growth strategy (more on that below).
And whether you love her or loathe her, research backs up the growth that Owens has seen for her show in the past year. When podcasts first surged in popularity, audiences were overwhelmingly liberal, says Gabriel Soto, senior director of research at podcast market research firm Edison. But over the past five years, listeners with conservative political leanings have flocked as podcasting has become more widespread and more pundits marginalized by mainstream media have gone independent. “The face of the consumer has changed,” Soto says. “Along with that, you do see an increase in popularity of conservative shows.”
Soto tells me that The Charlie Kirk Show broke into Edison’s top 50 podcasts list at the end of last year, and he expects the company’s next quarterly report will show a further boost for partisan podcasts. “It can be interesting to see what type of demographic changes these flashpoints can have on an audience,” he says of Kirk’s death.
For my newsletter today, I talked to Owens about how she’s building an independent media business with content that meets the current moment and leverages the growing appetite from audiences across the political spectrum for her brand of commentary: unfiltered perspective on politics, in a style that often shocks and horrifies detractors often to her delight, and pop culture and lifestyle issues.
Read my full column over at Like & Subscribe to learn:
Why right-leaning podcasters have seen audiences soar, plus details of the demos listening in now
What’s driving the surprise liberal craving for “matcha and… Candace Owens for 19 hours”
What Owens says about the lawsuit against her from French Prime Minister Emanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte
How she leans into non-political topics to broaden her brand
How Kirk’s death has supercharged her platform — and what’s complicating her engagement with his legacy
Why she broke ranks with many on the right after Disney’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel: “I can beat him in the free markets”
The strategy to monetize: sponsors to subscriptions to a fitness app
Why Owens sees “more risk” in aligning with corporate media than going solo
The rest of this column is for paid subscribers to Like & Subscribe, a standalone newsletter dedicated to the creator economy from Ankler Media. Click here or on the button below to access the full story.
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You do not, in fact, need to do profiles on avowed fascists and peddlers of conspiracy theory! This post is making me reconsider my Ankler subscription, sadly.
I don’t find anything innovative with people like Owens. They resort to the playground taunts and antics.
Her takes are just to get reaction.
She has no solutions. Wind blows west to east she changes her views to fit that narrative.
Of course the black girl going 180 on issues black people from my neck of the woods would deem worthy gets the hits. It’s algorithm friendly and these kinds of people to be blunt are algorithm ho’s.
They are pimped -willingly to appease this formula. They aren’t doing anything I can’t do. I’m just not willing. I don’t see what makes the likes of Candace Owens worth breaking down? Algorithm says jump she says how high?
She is a one trick pony. And so what she’s got a lot of money. So do drug dealers and like those people if the money is on the line she will sell her family down the river. She’s already trying to pivot, I’m not buying it.