Michelle Obama's 'IMO' podcast with brother fails to take off despite launching with great fanfare
WASHINGTON, DC: Michelle Obama failed to live up to the expectations after her podcast with her brother Craig Robinson failed to rule the charts after launching with great fanfare.
Earlier in March, the former first lady launched her new podcast, titled ‘IMO (In My Opinion) with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson’, where the siblings interview special guests and discuss current affairs.
However, as revealed by the Daily Mail, Obama’s latest foray into the podcast space has not been met with particular success, as 'IMO' ranked just 34th on Spotify and 19th on Apple Podcast.
Michelle Obama’s podcast met with dismal ratings in month of its debut
As reported by the outlet, Spotify’s recent statistics reveal that Michelle Obama’s podcast secured the position of the 34th most listened-to show on Spotify.
While her podcast has been left languishing at the bottom of the chart, other podcasts like ‘The Ezra Klein Show with the New York Times’ and ‘The Determined Society with Shawn French’ have been gaining good numbers.
In the case of Apple Podcast, it did slightly better, as the podcast found itself ranked 19th. Nevertheless, it is still behind podcasts like ‘The Mel Robbins Podcast’, ‘Good Hang with Amy Poehler’, ‘Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce’, and ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’.
According to the Daily Mail, the ranking of Amy Poehler’s podcast is particularly significant as it was launched just a month before 'IMO' on February 10, but found itself on the top of the ladder with the ranks second on Apple Podcasts and third on Spotify.
On the launch date, 'IMO' released two episodes, with the first titled ‘You Should Start a Podcast with Your Sibling’ and the second being ‘Some Friendships Need to Go’, with actress Issa Rae as the guest.
The sibling duo had a slow start to their podcast, with the first episode clocking just above 50,000 views upon dropping.
Obama’s YouTube channel, where her podcast is also aired, at present boasts a subscriber count of 67.4K followers.
The second episode featured executive producer and actress Issa Rae, and was titled, 'Some Friendships Need to Go'.
Since then, the siblings also hosted several celebrities including Seth Rogen and his wife Lauren, psychology professor Dr Laurie Santos, Keke Palmer, and podcaster Jay Shetty.
Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s marriage explored
The dismal news about the humanitarian’s podcast came amid mounting speculations about the 61-year-old’s marriage with former president Barack Obama being on the rocks, after the Nobel Prize winner attended former president Jimmy Carter’s state funeral solo.
He was also spotted alone at President Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony in January.
In the inaugural episode of her podcast, the mother-of-two revealed that she would not have beeen able to get through the eight years of Barack’s presidency had it not been for her brother.
While she was previously skeptical of supporting her husband to support in his bid for the presidential office, it was her brother who convinced her to support Barack.
“Being married to the president of the United States [is a] thing that that none of us kind of banked on,” shared Obama, and noted, “We knew Barack was smart and ambitious, but, you know…”
The former president, on the other hand, recently shared that he was in a “deep deficit” with his wife during a recent interview with Hamilton College president Steven Tepper.
Referencing his three-plus-decade-old marriage, the former president shared that while he'd mostly been working on the second half of his memoir, he'd been forgetting to have “fun” with his wife.
Barack said, “This is like 50 term papers. I mean, it just goes on forever,” before adding, “I'm hoping to get to the finish line on that.”
The Democrat added, “Beyond that, look, I was in a deep deficit with my wife, so I have been trying to dig myself out of that hole by doing occasionally fun things.”
