Chuck Todd launches post-NBC ‘Chuck Toddcast’

Former NBC and MSNBC political director and host Chuck Todd dropped the first episode of his now-independent podcast April 2, 2025.

Before departing NBC News, Todd and the network launched “The Chuck Toddcast” in 2016, and it became very popular thanks to cross-promotion on NBC and MSNBC. 

When Todd exited NBC earlier in 2025, part of his exit deal included retaining rights to the name “The Chuck Toddcast.” After leaving, he announced the podcast would go on hiatus until April 2025.

Old key art and logo from the NBC News days of ‘The Chuck Toddcast.’

With its return, “Chuck Toddcast” got a bold update to its design, including a new logo with a chunky, italic font that emphasizes the host’s name through the use of larger letters. Like many political programs, the show is using a red, white and blue color scheme, often with the left half of the screen in blue and the right in red overlaid on a tightly-cropped view of the U.S. Capitol dome.

The podcast is being heavily marketed as “unscripted” and free of “spin” and is the foundation of what Todd hopes to grow into a larger podcasting network.

In addition to a title card with the logo, there’s also a matching frame with the logo placed in the upper left, presumably to make it more difficult to end up covered by other broadcasters’ lower thirds and bugs if clips are shown on television or other mediums. 

The host segments of the video version appear to be shot with a lower-quality camera, with Todd sitting in front of a TV screen showing a blue and red (although the red skews more orange) view of the Capitol dome. 

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During his host segments, which are a tight one-shot, Todd’s head and body moves around, often throwing off the framing. The tightness of the shot also feels a bit uncomfortable, but it at least does not suffer from the infamous off-kilter framing of video conferencing calls. Todd appears to be using wireless ear buds to deliver audio during these segments.

In the premiere, a sit-down interview with Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman (D) shows the duo seated in front of a fireplace with white mantle decked out with Pennsylvania college pennants. This segment uses a two-camera setup — the two-shot and a one-shot on Fetterman — in what appears to be a higher quality along with at least some lighting gear. The picture looks better than the host segments but still has some definite signs that it’s being done without a full TV setup.

It appears that “Toddcast” was able to carry over the podcast profile pages on some platforms, though the 700-plus NBC-era episodes are no longer listed in most cases. Depending on where you get your podcasts, some platforms have also carried over ratings and select other information from the old version.

On YouTube, however, the podcast’s page at youtube.com/@thechucktoddcast appears to have been newly created. As of 9 a.m. eastern April 3, 2025, it also sported a total of 195 subscribers, according to its profile. Even as a new episode was streaming, the count remained at only nine viewers or less during most of the run.

The archived April 2 edition, meanwhile, had recorded only 596 views as of this writing, according to the public YouTube counts.

It’s not clear how accurate or up-to-date these figures are. Although there are occasionally issues with compiling stats such as these, YouTube typically is able to be fairly accurate in the counts it displays.

Those numbers suggest that many viewers are still opting to use other, audio-only platforms to access the podcast. It’s likely that these counts will grow as more viewers discover its availability on YouTube. Not all podcasting platforms provide subscriber counts or starts to public.

The podcast’s website, thechucktoddcast.com, also went live ahead of the relaunch and is powered by GoDaddy AI-powered Airo website building tool.

Before launching his independent media venture, Todd moderator of “Meet the Press” on NBC and host of MSNBC’s “MTP Daily” and NBC News Now’s “MTP Now.”