Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC holds #4 with 8.3 million weekly listeners, leveraging a 40% efficiency gain by repurposing 30-year-old TV archives into 30-minute podcast cuts—20% shorter than the average #3 Call Her Daddy episode. A February 2026 edition on a 1999 mob trial drew 2.1 million downloads in 48 hours, proving archival content's pull. Its listener loyalty index of 85% exceeds the top-10 average by 18%, and each episode costs $0.04 per stream to produce—half the expense of #2 Crime Junkie's original episodes. With a 4.1 rating across 12,000 reviews, it stands as the most trusted crime podcast in the top five.