Apple has revealed it has removed "The Glenn Beck Program" from Apple Podcasts due to an unspecified dispute.
Over 3,000 of the podcast's episodes were removed by Apple Wednesday (August 16), prompting Beck to demand an explanation from the company. The company responded they have "found an issue" with his show, which should be resolved before restoration.
The show was later restored on the platform, resolving the issue.
However, not all of the show's episodes have been restored as only around 1,900 of them, or over half, have been listed on Apple Podcasts as of this report.
Beck added he was not given any "clear answers" why the incident happened.
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Looks like Apple restored my 3000+ episodes to their platform but still don't have clear answers as to why this happened. Hope to have an update for you tomorrow on radio.
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) August 16, 2023
Reason Behind the Deplatforming
Beck, a conservative media mogul, speculated his show's removal was connected with election interference. Others noted a likely technical reason for the removal.
"Apple totally de-platformed me - they removed every last episode from Apple Podcasts," he said Thursday (August 17) on his syndicated radio show. "It was removed with no explanation why for several hours."
According to Apple Insider, the RSS feed for the over 3,000-episode series is over 11 megabytes (MB) whereas Apple has previously flagged ones that exceed just 5MB, which meant it was most likely the reason why the podcast was removed.
However, an Apple spokesperson told Variety the removal was more legal than technical, but fell short of providing a reason why other than a trademark dispute, which has now been resolved.
Neither Apple nor Beck have made any comments about what the trademark issue was, or how it was resolved.
