New Subscription Listening Reports
Apple Podcasts Connect has launched an update to Listening Reports for podcasters. Now four reports are accessible: Episode, Show, Channel, and Provider Listening, which can be downloaded daily, weekly, or monthly. As Bumper co-founder Dan Misener notes, the Channel report is a useful tool for podcast networks that run paid subscription podcasts. There would be utility for a similar report for free podcast feeds that totals out listeners across the entire channel, but also de-duplicated to account for users that consume multiple shows under the same umbrella.
Who Is Watching All These Podcasts? by Joseph Bernstein
A New York Times piece giving an overview of video podcasting, with mutli-hour chatcasts reigning supreme. Following the template of early-adopters like The Joe Rogan Experience and Critical Role, some of the biggest names in video podcasting publish episodes with little to no material left on the cutting room floor, producing the kind of product that ensure all of superfans’ free time is spent staying current on one podcast. While successful, it’s worth remembering podcasting’s roots. Lightweight chat-casts are relatively cheap and easy to produce en masse, but as Tom Webster highlights in The Podcast Preservation Paradox, it’s on podcasting to preserve the aspects that made it appealing in the first place. Otherwise, there’s a future where the next investigative journalism podcast to grab the nation like Serial or the next Welcome to Night Vale-sized fiction shows are never produced.
Senate Delivers a Blow to Public Broadcasting by Josh Johnson using Newser.AI
An aggregated list of coverage concerning the Senate passing a rescission of funds previously promised to foreign assistance programs and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Of the $1.1 billion meant for public broadcasting, the majority of impact is expected to hit individual public broadcasting stations around the country as only a small fraction of CPB funds went direct to the overall organizations of PBS and NPR. Grassroots efforts to support public broadcasting have sprung up as a result, including AdoptAStation.org, which uses 2023 funding data to display what percentage of a given state’s station’s funding will be impacted.
Nicolle Wallace’s New Podcast Just Became MSNBC’s Latest TV Show by Brian Steinberg
The Best People was originally designed to be a limited series ending in August, as Wallace is also committed to anchoring two hours of a MSNBC live show on weekdays. Since launch, MSNBC has toyed with putting the podcast up on their YouTube channel, as well as running select hours of Best People interviews on TV proper. The show is now expected to continue, with episodes of the podcast continuing to appear in MSNBC broadcast slots. While podcast-to-broadcast is not an entirely new development, it is a sign of the medium coming full circle. Podcasting used to be “catch-up radio” for some – now it’s also catch-up tv.
Sounds Profitable Wins a Prestigious 2025 Content Marketing Award
The Content Marketing Institute recently held the 2025 edition of its annual awards, and Sounds Profitable won Best Data Storytelling for The Podcast Landscape. The win marks partner Tom Webster’s second CMI, following his efforts in the Edison Research team awarded Best Use of Original Research in Content Marketing in 2019. With the Best Data Storytelling win, The Podcast Landscape is now a Project of the Year finalist, with the winner to be announced next month.
As for the rest of the news…
- On Thursday, August 7th the Association of Independents in Radio is hosting a live demo of Thrumm with founder Lindsay Graham showing off the platform’s library of music explicitly designed for narrative content creators.
- Mumbrella reports SiriusXM, represented by SCA in Australia, has been removed from Triton Digital’s Australian Podcast Ranker, following their departure from Triton’s U.S. ranker back in February.
- Mission Media AI has partnered with sports betting network VSiN to exclusively represent their ad sales across VSiN’s portfolio.
- Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown has signed a new strategic partnership with Impact Theory focusing on creating contextually-relevant partnerships that resonate with both the audience and advertisers.
- Defector Media and Radiotopia from PRX have announced an expanded podcast partnership that includes two net-new podcasts and the return of Normal Gossip in October.
- LA Times Studios has debuted Making Los Angeles, a podcast featuring interviews with prominent residents in the city.
- Net Influencer has a feature piece on Wondercraft founder Oskar Serrander, focusing on where AI currently stands and where he sees it going.
