WASHINGTON — Sen. Ted Cruz’s media empire is catching up to his political career, as he turns a weekly podcast begun at the start of Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial into a thrice-weekly operation bankrolled by iHeartMedia.
That’s “a big damn deal,” the Texas Republican told listeners in the final installment of "Verdict with Ted Cruz" as an independent production. “IHeartRadio is a monster. It’s got 850 stations across the country.”
iHeart is the No. 1 syndicator of U.S. radio programming, reaching 245 million people each month. Cruz’s show joins a conservative stable that includes Sean Hannity, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, Glenn Beck and Jesse Kelly. Rachel Maddow is among the liberal podcast hosts carried by iHeart.
“iHeart is the network that worked and built with Rush Limbaugh and helped him build into the greatest ever,” Cruz noted.
"Verdict," now 2-1/2 years old, is the 14th most popular political podcast on Apple Podcasts, according to Chartable.com, and the 49th largest news podcast.
Cruz aides and iHeart executives didn’t provide details of the deal, including how much Cruz will be paid for rights to the podcast, which is available on the popular iHeartRadio app.
For Cruz, elected in 2012 and 2018, the hourlong show has been a way to promote his agenda, comment on the week’s events, snipe at Democrats and play pundit. Two weeks ago, for instance, he opined that there’s no way President Joe Biden will seek reelection.
“We’ve had over 50 million downloads of this podcast. And every single week, we beat 'CNN This Morning,'” Cruz said. “With iHeart stepping in to distribute and promote, the reach is going to be that much broader. That’s really exciting. Because this was always about really equipping our listeners, if you’re going to battle to save the country, if you’re going to take on the cultural Marxists [and…] the socialists and the people coming at everything that built America, you need the tools, you need the information.”
The show has also let him maintain a high profile ahead of the 2022 midterms and, possibly, a second run for the White House.
Cruz was runner-up to Trump for the 2016 GOP nomination.
Tripling the number of shows would ensure a national audience heading into the 2024 contest, though it will also compete for the time he devotes to Senate work and campaign travel.
Cruz taped Friday’s show from Las Vegas on day seven of a 17-day pre-midterms bus tour that began with a rally near Houston for a congressional candidate. He’s since campaigned in New Mexico and Arizona, with stops planned in Utah, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Michigan and Wisconsin, mostly focused on Senate contests.
The podcast started as a late night post mortem discussion after Day 1 of Trump’s first Senate trial.
Friday’s show was the 145th episode, and the final show for longtime co-host Michael Knowles, who told listeners that his own syndication arrangement through The Daily Wire precluded him working for iHeart.
“iHeart has a gigantic network. iHeart can fund the whole thing — fund production, dump a whole bunch of money into marketing. This is incredible. It will make this show sustainable, not just for the next few months going into the midterms, but for the next years,” Knowles said. “It’s been an amazing ride. We took it to number one of all the podcasts. Ted Cruz became a bigger podcaster than Joe Rogan and stayed there for a pretty decent period of time.”
Cruz’s new co-host will be Ben Ferguson, another conservative talk show host.
“People want to go around the mainstream media, to the people they trust,” Ferguson said, joining the latest show as a guest.
Citing “out of control” crime, high inflation and other woes, he added, “These are a palette of issues that if we can hear from the senator more often, it’s going to change more hearts and minds.”
The senator has not reported income related to the podcast on his annual financial disclosure forms.
The most recent filing, from mid-August, shows a $1.1 million book advance in January from Regnery Publishing, a conservative book publisher.
That advance covers two books and is payable in four installments.
Cruz’s book “Justice Corrupted: How the Left Weaponized Our Legal System” is due out this month.
Regnery agreed in March 2020 to pay Cruz a $400,000 advance for the book, “One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History,” published in September 2020.
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