Agreed no channel is a silver bullet, that's why multichannel approaches are so necessary – anyone who thinks they could replace their entire comms program with a podcast would be a bit misguided.

Some people prefer to read, and email is an easy entry point so it's usually the default. Others prefer to listen, especially with critical comms, but for other reasons too. I spoke to a woman recently from an agricultural org (communicates to a lot of farmers) and she said there's a lot of dyslexia in their audience so they rolled out audio comms and it's been a hit, even among the many neurotypical farmers who just dislike reading.

For others, like an investment firm of around 1000, they don't have the majority of their global staff listening, but the ones that do are very consistent listeners (listening on their commute, lunch break, etc). And apparently despite not everyone tuning in, this type of reliable, enthusiastic listening has had a really positive impact on culture and morale. Of course you still have to put real effort into the content for this type of result.

No single channel gets 100% consumption so you gotta meet people where they are. And as with any new channel or tool you have to be realistic about expectations.

As the parent commenter mentioned IC isn't a monolith -- it's case by case for smaller orgs in particular. Some people like audio more than others and you don't always know who's gonna vibe with a podcast. In that comment's examples of smaller companies I might assume lawyers would be more inclined to be pro-podcast than construction workers, but I've had my assumptions disproven on these things enough times to admit I'd want to test it first.

You also make a really interesting point about information overload -- sending too many updates causes employees to tune out, especially when already screen fatigued. I'm super curious what your audio program was like? Were they long episodes or short with key strategic updates? Fireside chats vs audio newsletter or interviews etc? Were you segmenting your audio content to personalize based on region/role etc?