Acast and Radio Ambulante Estudios launch Spanish-language news show El hilo

Podcast company Acast has partnered with nonprofit media organization Radio Ambulante Estudios for the launch of El hilo, a narrative Spanish-language podcast covering news from Latin America and the world. Acast will host and distribute the show, and allow for it to support sponsorships.

Published Fridays, El hilo features interviews with journalists and regional sources to present the week’s news stories from a Latin American perspective, using narrative storytelling, scoring, and archive. The name El hilo, which translates in English to “the thread” — a thread of discussion that one may find online and on social media, for example — connotes the show’s aim to provide deep analysis, context, and understanding of news.

Eliezer Budasoff, co-host of El hilo, who is current editor for special projects at El País and former editorial director at The New York Times en Español, said: “From our very first episodes, we have sought to cover the essential stories of the region. We spoke with Ecuadorian doctors fighting the new coronavirus in a city overwhelmed by death. We reported on the thousands of migrants whose treacherous northward journeys were made even more complicated by the pandemic. And we explored how this health crisis has affected a social and political uprising in Chile.

“Reporting on a region as diverse, alive, and complex as Latin America requires vision, rigor and informed curiosity. This is what we hope to bring to our listeners.”

Radio Ambulante Estudios has a history of producing award-winning content. The organization’s first podcast, Radio Ambulante, in 2016 became the first Spanish-language podcast to be exclusively distributed by NPR. The long-form journalism podcast has published more than 150 episodes to date, which have received more than 18 million downloads from listeners around the world.

“Our launch coincided with a global pandemic, a time when listeners crave insightful and rigorous reporting, especially in their own language,” said Silvia Viñas, co-host and executive producer of El hilo, who has produced and edited Radio Ambulante stories for more than seven years. “For us, this is an opportunity to use the audio storytelling techniques we have learned and mastered at Radio Ambulante to inform and engage listeners during this unprecedented and often confusing time.”

Added Daniel Alarcón, editorial director of El hilo and executive producer of Radio Ambulante: “Radio Ambulante’s audience has been asking for a show like El hilo. We know it’s challenging to launch a project like this one at a time like this, but we do it because we are convinced of our mission.”

The podcast market in Latin America is growing rapidly. In February, Acast launched operations in Mexico City, with the mission to become the region’s go-to podcast company.

“Podcasting thrives through the work of local creators,” said Diego Bolaños, Acast Content Director for Mexico. “As audio grows in markets around the world, we’re committed to supporting creators who are sharing stories from and for different communities. Radio Ambulante Estudios and Acast share a common vision in amplifying stories and voices from around the globe, and with El hilo we’re introducing a high quality podcast with a necessary Latin American perspective.”

Per the new partnership, Acast will manage the monetization of El hilo. Acast, which invented dynamic ad insertion in podcasting, recently launched Acast Marketplace, the hub for podcast ad buying globally.

El hilo is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the Acast app, and all podcast players.

About Acast
Acast is the engine powering podcast creators, advertisers and listeners everywhere. Its services are the most sophisticated available and are constantly being updated with innovative new tools and functionality.

Acast hosts 10,000 podcasts worldwide and monetizes shows from independent creators and networks, including Watch What Crappens, Forever35, and The Earios Network, and those from publishers such as VICE, HuffPost, Scientific American, Complex, The Economist, The Guardian, BBC, and PBS NewsHour.

Co-founded in Sweden in 2014 by Johan Billgren, Acast’s team of audio lovers is creating a sustainable and open podcast ecosystem — ensuring the whole industry continues to grow and flourish. The company has teams on the ground in 13 markets around the world, including in the UK, US, Australia, France, and Germany.

About Radio Ambulante Estudios
In launching El hilo, Radio Ambulante Estudios brings to bear all the expertise gained from nine years producing our flagship podcast, the award-winning weekly show Radio Ambulante. El hilo, like our first podcast, adheres to the highest standards of journalism and narrative audio production.

Radio Ambulante launched nine seasons ago with the mission to bring greater understanding of Latin American and US Latino communities through well-told, rigorously reported, and expertly produced audio journalism, offering audiences a nuanced portrait of a complex and vitally important region. We work with an extensive network of reporters and producers throughout the region, in order to tell Latin American stories that are both local and universal.

In 2014, Radio Ambulante won the Gabriel García Márquez Award for Innovation in Journalism ― the most prestigious journalism award in Latin America ― and in 2017, it received the Third Coast/Richard H. Driehaus Best Foreign Language Documentary Award.