Comprehensive coverage of the podcasting industry and its business ecosystem.
Podcast platform RadioPublic announced that public media company WGBH is now an investor. The company led a strategic investment that also included Companyon Capital, former Groupon CEO Andrew Mason, and Third Sector Capital founder George Overholser. RadioPublic has raised $2.8 million in seed financing to date. Continue Reading
iHeartRadio announced the debut of a new podcast, which also marks the official start of Bobby Bones’ Nashville Podcast Network. The new show, Good Company with Jake Owen, is part of the new podcast network launched by iHeartMedia’s nationally syndicated radio host Bobby Bones. Continue Reading
Omny Studio has introduced a new tool for transforming radio broadcasts into monetized podcasts. The company has added intelligent automation to its live broadcast capture software, which allows the creation of podcasts from broadcasts without manual editing. Continue Reading
We learned from James Cridland’s podnews that UK publication LBC is getting on the bandwagon of daily news podcasts. The Daily Debrief will release new episodes in the afternoon, reaching commuters on their way home from work. Continue Reading
The Canadian Podcast Listener report details an audience with a strong interest and steady growth for podcasts. RAIN covered details from the summary in October, but now the full report from Audience Insights and Ulster Media is available. Continue Reading
Podtrac has published its ranking of the top podcasts in October 2017, a month with an unusual amount of shuffling among the most popular shows. Three podcasts joined the list for the first time, while the rest of the ranking included the same shows as in September. Continue Reading
Edison Research and the Knight Foundation collaborated for a study investigating the podcast audience, with interviews of nearly 29,000 podcast listeners. All of the participants are age 18 or older and listen to at least one audio podcast from NPR, WNYC, American Public Media, WBUR, PRX, or Gimlet Media. A comparison of these results with the more general habits detailed in The Infinite Dial surveys show some marked distinctions between casual and serious podcast listeners. Continue Reading
Podcasting company Acast has hired Guy Scott-Wilson as the content director for Australia. In this position with Acast, he will be responsible for expanding the company’s presence and local content strategy. Continue Reading
VSporto, a network of sports podcasts, has entered a deal with Gow Media to have its programming syndicated on SB Nation Radio. The partnership will see VSporto’s shows air on more than 100 SB Nation stations affiliates on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings from 11 pm to 7 am CST. VSporto’s shows cover college sports, the NFL, and the NBA. Continue Reading
The BBC has introduced a new show called Podcasting House that aims to be a discovery hub for its audio content. In its introduction, the show is described as “a clearinghouse for hundreds of podcasts from the BBC.” Continue Reading
Podtrac posted its ranking of the top 10 podcast publishers for October 2017. The new ranking features the debut of iHeartMedia at the No. 2 spot. Its 525 shows secured a U.S. unique monthly audience of nearly 8.96 million and 33.59 million global unique streams and downloads. Continue Reading
Today’s Test Drive explores a tech niche that has been getting lots of buzz lately: podcast discovery. With the audio format on the rise in cultural cache and audience numbers, it makes sense that new properties would emerge to offer additional services to listeners. One of these is Podchaser, a podcast discovery tool currently in open beta and has more than 18 million podcast episodes. The theory of a massive podcast database that’s searchable and filterable is an admirable one, but Podchaser still has some big wrinkles to iron out. Continue Reading