The Scoop
One of the most popular podcasts in the US is hoping to grow its Spanish-speaking audience in the US.
Semafor has learned that on July 21, Dateline will launch Dateline en Español, a podcast adaptation of Telemundo’s Spanish-language episodes of Dateline.
The show plans to drop episodes twice a week every Thursday and Friday, though for the first several weeks the podcast will release episodes daily.
It’s a further expansion of the Dateline brand in Spanish. In February, NBC announced that it would air fully translated Spanish-language Dateline episodes hosted by Noticias Telemundo anchor Julio Vaqueiro.
Max’s view
The Dateline en Español podcast is simply an audio version of a televised program, an extremely low-lift way of potentially expanding the brand. But it signals NBCUniversal’s broader intentions.
Amid the broader restructuring of media driven by the transition from traditional linear television to streaming, many broadcast news organizations have struggled to define what their programs mean in a world in which fewer people are watching live television every day.
Dateline is one of the few traditional news programs that has managed to transition seamlessly from the old format into the new one, driven largely by our continuing fascination with lurid crimes.
When NBC anchor Lester Holt announced that he was stepping down as the host of NBC Nightly News, he noted that he was staying aboard at Dateline NBC and expanding his role on that show. In 2022, the company launched an entire free ad-supported streaming channel around the brand; NBC’s PR team told Semafor that the channel has been growing.
The Dateline spinoff also acknowledges both the large Spanish-language audience in the US, and the growing interest among US companies in Spanish-language podcasts. Despite the downturn in streaming production deals, Hispanic media startup Sonoro has found some success developing telenovela podcasts and optioning the shows to Netflix and other streamers. iHeartMedia added the Spanish-language podcast production company Radio Ambulante Studios to its Spanish-language network last year.