Acast gets podcasts into new Ford cars

Acast is getting podcasts into new Ford cars: announced at Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona, the product “offers offline downloads and an intelligent recommendation engine analyses commute times to suggest podcasts which best fit journey length”. Radioplayer will also be available on the new version.

• Twitter has written-off most of its US$70m investment in SoundCloud, according to Variety. Their annual report notes that there’s no chance in “a reasonable period” to get that money back. (On Feb 12, an Apple Podcasts marketing executive also warned podcasters off from using SoundCloud.)

• Podcasting and smart-speakers are big trends to look for in 2018, according to some excellent commentators in Radio World magazine. We should warn you that there’s a big picture of podnews.net’s editor in this piece.

  
  Jul 30 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• The Broadcasting Press Guild Awards, a UK award ceremony, has a podcast category in it for the first time this year. The nominations have just been announced: Reasons To Be Cheerful, Remainiacs, Hip Hop Saved My Life and The Butterfly Effect.

  
  Jul 30 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Pacific Content’s Steve Pratt writes about a simple graph that describes how to make successful content. The big takeaway: don’t make podcasts for clients that clients will like; make great podcasts instead.

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• Also in Canada, the CBC have announced they’re making something with Kaitlin Prest (Radiotopia, The Heart). They’ve released a strange video involving candles. Whatever it is comes out in September. They’ll tell us more in June.

• RadioPublic has a new investor: Bose.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Jul 30 2023

• Two radio stations in Fredericksburg VA, USA have started a podcast network, Channel B - it launches with six local podcasts.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Jul 30 2023

• Congratulations to long-time reader Steven Scott, who we discover won an Inspiring Communicator Award recently: he works for Connect Radio, the UK radio station of the Royal National Institute of Blind people. In the last twelve months, according to the article, RNIB podcasts were played 329,552 times.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Jul 30 2023

• Thank you to the Horse Radio Network, who are a new personal supporter today. The network boasts 16 different shows.