Pedro Pina, vice president of YouTube EMEA, told Wednesday’s session of industry event MIP London at The Savoy hotel that the podcast is “one of the most successful, I think it’s the number one podcast in this country, and we have a great partnership on YouTube”.
The podcast also had episodes broadcast on Channel 4 before the 2024 UK general election, and has picked up the political podcast of the year award at the Political Podcast Awards and the podcast champion gong at the British Podcast Awards.
Speaking about the move towards YouTube hosting Channel 4 content, including full episodes of TV shows, Mr Pina said they provide “extra reach in this country, and extra reach outside”, that “would not be monetised”.
Mr Pina said “there’s a lot of misconceptions about YouTube, there’s a lot of fears associated to what YouTube represents”, and the Google video hosting platform has “no interest whatsoever in producing our own content”.
A YouTube boss has said that the low production values of the live version of The Rest Is Politics podcast are not of concern to audiences who are OK watching something that looks like a “high school” TV show.
