City Cast is 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 Nashville.
So are we living up to our values? How diverse is our podcast guest pool, really?
Since we launched City Cast Nashville in the spring, we’ve been asking each of our City Cast Nashville podcast guests a few questions about their gender identity, racial/ethnic identity, and neighborhood. More than 90% of guests have responded. The following data encompass a total of 70 responding guests who’ve appeared on the podcast from when we launched in June until Oct. 31, 2024. (We did not count City Cast Nashville staffers who appeared on the podcast.)
We then used census data to compare our podcast guests to the broader city and metro population. This helps us see how well we’re reflecting the community we’re serving. Since City Cast Nashville has only been going for six months, this is a sparse amount of data, and we don’t want to make too many sweeping conclusions based on it.
City Cast Nashville guests look a lot like the city and metro area as a whole. We had a higher percentage of Asian-American guests than the city and metro area, and a lower percentage of Hispanic guests. Almost every city in the City Cast network has a lower percentage of Hispanic guests than you’d expect given the local population.
We also asked about gender identity. A 61% majority of our guests identified as female, and 39% identified as male.
