The podcasting daily news space is crowded and successful as a category. Up First (NPR) and The Daily (The New York Times) sparked it off years ago, via standard podcast distribution and the rise of smart speakers (the latter especially for Up First, which was the default morning news brief when Alexa launched in the Amazon Echo). In Apple’s U.S. chart of all podcasts, those two shows are both in the top 10. Other “newsy” podcasts with political slants are also in that rarified cohort. Others have piled in down the chart.
The extensive lineup of daily news podcasts fluxes quite a bit, with new additions, and revisions to existing programs. Here, three items of note.
Cadence13 and Punchbowl
Entercom’s Cadence13 network today announces a partnership with Punchbowl News to create a new morning brief called The Daily Punch. Punchbowl is a news community focused on power, people and politics in Washington founded by leading political journalists and bestselling authors Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer and co-founded by veteran Capitol Hill reporter John Bresnahan. Sherman and Palmer will co-host.
There is a quick-moving, opportunistic slant to this: Punchbowl News launched just this month, on January 4, two days before the Capitol riot. (“Punchbowl” is the Secret Service codeword for the Capitol.) The podcast will drop its first episode on February 1.
Vox’s not-podcast
News site Vox, a property of Vox Media, has launched an intriguing (or baffling) podcast-not-a-podcast. It is a podcast playlist of three, four, or five shows, each under 10 minutes, some distilled from existing longer podcasts (like Vox’s Today, Explained which drops in the afternoon), which, when you subscribe, play in your feed like a big three-, four-, or five-part show that can last for 50 minutes. Got that? Neither do we.
The explanatory collateral notes that Covid has disrupted commutes and long-form podcast listening (we’re not sure that is really documented, but we’ll take it as a premise) and listeners will enjoy under-10-minute explainers. If you’re not into one, just skip along your feed to the next.
Come to think of it, the usability is really like a massive fast-forward button that goes straight to a new topic. Hey, suddenly we like the idea. HERE is the podcast. HERE is where it’s explained.
Shuffle at The Daily 202
The Daily 202’s Big Idea is a five-year-old morning news podcast adapted from the daily column of the same name, authored by Washington Post reporter James Hohmann. Hohmann announced on yesterday’s show that it would be his last, as he moves to a new WaPo gig as an opinion columnist. We assume this is a reward for five years of getting up at 2:00am, and producing the show in over 40 states when traveling to report political events.
The podcast will continue, and Hohmann promised “substitute” hosts. That seems like the wrong characterization if Hohmann is no longer the host, but anyway, this morning featured Allison Michaels. HERE is the feed.
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