Conan: podcast success 'greatest surprise of my career'; and more from Podfront

• Podfront took place yesterday morning in Los Angeles, with a set of new announcements from a number of podcast publishers including Wondery, NPR and PodcastOne.

• At Podfront, Conan O’Brien was one of the surprise special guests. His podcast with Stitcher, Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend, is “the greatest surprise of my career”, he said. “Now I’m in the situation where I have a television show and big stars come on the show as a ploy to get on the podcast. Why is the podcast so successful? We’re finding out that people prefer not seeing my face.” Exactly Right, the podcast network run by My Favorite Murder’s Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, also announced new shows with Stitcher

• iHeartMedia released its new iHeart Podcast AdSuite at Podfront. It offers a number of tools, including iHeartPodcast Boost, a service that promotes clips of podcasts across the “almost 300 million listeners” of around 900 iHeartRadio stations in the US. iHeartMedia also announced an expansion of Spanish-language content, including a multi-year development, co-production and distribution partnership with multicultural digital audio network, reVOLVER. At Podcast Movement later today, Bob Pittman, CEO of iHeartMedia and Conal Byrne, President of iHeartMedia, will both speak.

• Podcast publisher and host Audioboom is trying to find a buyer, the company has confirmed to a UK financial newspaper. The company also got another $4m loan from its investors last week.

• ART19 and Veritonic have released a case study into effectiveness of podcast ad campaigns, showing significantly high recall scores for a targeted audience. The results will also be covered in a talk today at Podcast Movement Evolutions.

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• Happy World Radio Day! Just to remind you, the super-simple but really capable podcast audio editor Hindenburg does sales on World Radio Day, and your purchase helps charity, too.

• Patreon are “discontinuing some third party integrations”, including one powering Breaker’s patrons-only episode functionality. That’ll be removed on Feb 28.

• Anyone wanting their podcast to sound as if it’s been recorded on cassette? Here’s a plugin for you

• James Mulvany has written a helpful guide on How to make a rubbish podcast. “Be unenthusiastic” reads one piece of advice. “Make your podcast really, really, wordy and long” is another.

The picture of Conan O’Brien, above, is from 2019's San Diego Comic Con International, not from Podfront - we were prohibited from taking pictures.

Podcast News

The Pineapple Project has a new host: Jan Fran; and a new topic: death. “From understanding what happens in the hours after we die, to the secrets of funeral homes; it’s an insider’s guide to what is coming to all of us.” (ABC Australia)

Business and Life interviewed Rob Greenlee in a recent episode, covering the career of the podcast hall-of-famer. (Also, on YouTube).