The Death of The Late Show Is the Canary in the Linear Coal Mine by Dave Dembowski
Setting aside the political implications and timing of CBS choosing not to renew Stephen Colbert’s contract for The Late Show, there’s something to consider about the sheer weight of the linear TV late-night talk show. Dembowski points to The Daily Show. On paper it gets under half the viewership of The Late Show, but outside the world of linear TV it’s a multichannel empire. The show itself is built in such a way that complements both sharable clips and chain-watching interviews. In a world where the biggest late-night can’t carry its own weight monetarily, are similar decisions coming to news, morning chat shows, or soap operas that aren’t inherently structured to be clip-machines like The Daily Show?
How Does This Podcast Star Make $20 Million a Year? by Jessica Testa
That’s right, I’m finally covering it. Last month celebrity podcaster Joe Budden posted a screenshot of traffic to his podcast’s Patreon account in an attempt to flex traffic stats. Of course, online sleuths did some deductive work and calculated the traffic meant Budden earned around $900,000 in June alone. What makes this article fascinating for the business side of podcasting, though, is the candor and openness Budden offers Testa, sharing details about how the Joe Budden Network makes money, and how much is made. While the Patreon income grabbed headlines, the overall network brings in $20 million per year, only half of which is accounted for by Patreon income. Running a healthy podcast production requires several income streams, with Budden’s in particular selling its own ads directly and collecting passive ad income on platforms like YouTube.
Ad Awards Rush to Tighten AI Rules Amid Cannes Fallout by Brittaney Kiefer
A handful of controversies went down following the award ceremony at this year’s Cannes Lions, including a Grand Prix prize being revoked when DM9’s winning campaign was outed for not disclosing use of AI generated and manipulated footage. In response to this, and several other incidents of submitted campaigns obfuscating facts or misrepresenting data, several ad awards are working to strengthen and clarify their rules re: generative AI content. Specifically, The One Club for Creativity, the Clio Awards, and D&AD told Adweek they’re reviewing their guidelines before submissions open for entries later this year. Cannes has introduced new global integrity standards they say will take effect for 2026 submissions, with agencies facing a ban of up to 3 years if caught intentionally submitting misleading work.
Audiobooks+ Brings More Choice and Flexibility to Spotify Premium Subscribers
Last week Spotify announced an upgrade to their audiobook offerings. Before the announcement, audiobook fans who used up the 15 hours that come with a Spotify Premium subscription could top up by direct-buying more hours or outright buying individual audiobooks. Now the Audiobooks+ add-on gives a Premium account 15 more hours of listening per month for users in 13 countries (not including the U.S).
Newsletter Publisher 6AM City Buys AI Startup Good Daily to Expand to 400+ Markets by Mark Stenberg
Newsletter-focused local media network 6AM City has acquired AI newsletter startup Good Daily, bringing the overall reach of 6AM City to almost 2 million newsletter subscribers across over 400 U.S. cities. The business proposition of the Good Daily acquisition is to use GD’s AI-first model to generate newsletters focusing on hyper-local news and events without the overhead of 6AM City’s previous method of hiring at least one journalist per city to curate daily newsletter-worthy events. Hyper-local coverage of cities often left underserved by local journalism is a growing field, and feasibly the jump from newsletter to local podcasting could be the next step.
As for the rest of the news…
- Speaking of hyper-local coverage, CityCast has new offices in the Twin Cities and Seattle, both of which are hiring multiple positions. You’ll see some of them in the Jobs section below, and you can find all of them on our Job Board.
- BrandStorytelling.tv interviews JAR Podcast Solutions co-founders Roger Nairn and Jen Moss about the company’s recent rebrand and what it reflects.
- Matt Hird has been announced as the new Vice President of Signal Hill Insights.
- Amplifi Media founder Steven Goldstein covers the sold-out Radio City Music Hall live show of Acquired and how a niche business podcast has become one of the biggest live events in podcasting.
- Remember the whole Astronomer CEO affair situation at a Coldplay concert last week? Bloomberg has an op-ed video in which columnist Beth Kowitt suggests company boards keep close tabs on their CEO’s mental status.
