The biggest UK shows in the US

• Exclusive: Ahead of today’s UK Podcast Consumer 2025 webinar (at 2pm London time today; 9am Eastern - still time to register), Edison Research have revealed the power of UK podcasting. The biggest ten shows in the UK reach a staggering 2.3mn Americans every week.

  • Two of those shows are from Goalhanger: founder Jack Davenport is on the keynote stage at Podcast Movement to share his company’s tips for growth.
  • One show is from Wondery, which announced 110 layoffs earlier this week.

• How fast is video podcasting growing? Audioboom has doubled its video revenue in the first half of 2025, it says, and suggests that more than 60% of its creators are producing video podcasts. Over 13% of its business is now video revenue, the company says.

• We’ve updated our list of Apple Podcasts “Best Of” shows to include the “best of” lists in Arab nations, which are also listed in the Apple Podcasts app. Sorry to the team from Debt Heads who noticed we’d missed them out. We’ve also corrected the star ratings that appear for some shows.

• Ausha opened its PSO (Podcast Search Optimization) Control Panel for everyone. The tool, which has been successfully used by publishers like the BBC and agencies like Resonate Recordings, is now open for all podcasters, regardless of hosting platform.

• Podtrac released its rankers for July 2025.

• Shondaland has “dissolved its podcast department”, according to former Senior EP Lauren Hohman. The company behind Bridgerton: The Official Podcast and The Laverne Cox Show had worked with iHeartMedia.

• “Cheese makes everything better,” suggests Tom Webster. In Sounds Profitable this week he also shows research to suggest that podcast advertising works very well with social media ads, in the same way that cheese works very well with almost everything. (Even chocolate apparently).

• Podcast host RSS.com has added dark mode, to save your retinas during those late-night releases.

• Running since Dec 2021, the legal action against SiriusXM by Disability Rights Advocates for not having transcripts in their app continues; with the lawyers now asking for a further delay until Oct 3. In the meantime, a standard for transcripts in podcast content has been produced; transcripts have been put live in Apple Podcasts, in Pocket Casts and in Spotify, and SiriusXM released a new app with transcription.

  • Opinion: Perhaps all this welcome work on transcripts wouldn’t have happened without this initial case: but given that the DRA runs on charitable contributions, you’d have to ask whether donors are getting good value from any continuation of this legal action.

Moves and hires

• Sharon Taylor has been appointed Chief Revenue Officer at Triton Digital. “Sharon will now lead our global revenue strategy, driving growth, strengthening client partnerships, and expanding our international reach.”

Tips and tricks - with Podcast Movement

• So, you’re just getting ready to speak at Podcast Movement, or PodSummit YYC, or Radiodays Asia. Most conferences record the audio for later use: and Christian Heilmann has produced a list of things to do to help that recording be as brilliant as you’d like it to be.

• If you produce audiobooks alongside podcasts, you might be interested in this technical article about how they work. You know how we use m4a files? Books use m4b files. Mind blown.

Podcast News - with Airwave

From Airwave: True Spies takes you inside the world’s greatest espionage and detective operations. Hosts Hayley Atwell, Vanessa Kirby, Sophia Di Martino, Daisy Ridley and Rhiannon Neads talk to the real spies behind the missions. What do they know? What are their skills? And what would you do in their position?

The Dan Buettner Podcast has just been announced by Lemonada Media and Intuitive Content - hosted by Blue Zones founder, National Geographic Explorer, and multiple New York Times Bestselling author Dan Buettner. Expect intimate, thought-provoking conversations about living a longer, better life; the show starts Aug 21.

Cerebral, it isn’t; but one of the best radio presenters in the UK is Chris Moyles, and The Chris Moyles Show on Radio X Podcast is an edited highlight of the week’s show, with Dom, James, Binners and occasional fart noises.