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 Houston.
So are we living up to our values? How diverse is our podcast guest pool, really?
This is the third year of data we have about City Cast Houston’s guests. (Here’s our report for last year.) We ask each of our City Cast Las Houston podcast guests a few questions about their gender identity, racial/ethnic identity, and neighborhood. About 95% of guests responded in 2024. The following data encompass a total of 104 responding guests who appeared on the podcast between Nov. 1, 2023 and Oct. 31, 2024. (We did not count City Cast Houston staffers who appeared on the podcast.)
We then used census data to compare our podcast guests to the broader city population. This helps us see how well we’re reflecting the community we’re serving.
City Cast Houston had a higher percentage of white and Asian-American guests than the city and metro area, and about the same percentage of Black guests as the community. City Cast Houston had about a third of the Hispanic guests you’d expect based on Houston’s population, up slightly from 2023.
We also asked about gender identity. A 51% majority of our guests identified as female, with 49% identifying as male. This is a big shift from 2023, when 65% of City Cast Houston guests identified as male.
