'Fat Leonard' podcast exposes corruption in US military

• A new podcast, Fat Leonard, highlights what it claims is corruption within the US Navy. Leonard himself talks for the first time, and the podcast also includes the brave women who exposed the fraud. From PRX and Project Brazen, the content studio created by former Wall Street Journal reporters Bradley Hope and Tom Wright, it launched yesterday.

• A market share of podcast hosts based by new episodes has been published for September. John Spurlock’s Livewire Labs has produced the data: Anchor published the most new episodes, with Buzzsprout, Spreaker, Libsyn and Soundcloud also in the top five.

• Exclusive: A look at the podcast market in Latvia. Andrejs Siliņš tells us that Apple Podcasts is the #4 platform, with just 10% of Latvians saying they use it. Spotify is more than three times as popular; but there’s a bigger platform still.

• Meanwhile, 31% of Norwegians listen to podcasts every week, according to research from Kantar, presented by Knut-Arne Futsæter at the EMRO 2021 Conference. That has doubled in the past five years, according to the company. Norwegians spent 12 minutes with podcasts per day, versus 65 minutes with the radio.

• Audioboom has launched Audioboom Studios, a “new business unit” producing shows. They’ve promoted Brendan Regan to CCO of Audioboom Studios, Mike Newman as VP, and Neil Fearn joins from Global. (This is the second time the company has launched Audioboom Studios - the first was in 2018, with coverage in Podnews and in RAIN News.)

  
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• The Techmeme Ride Home podcast has launched its own investment fund. The Ride Home Fund will reach “some of the most interesting ideas before others even see them”, using the podcast’s audience and active angels to spot deals.

• The IAB UK podcast upfront took place in London. Among other presentations, Sony Music Entertainment previewed their upcoming podcast slate.

• Cloudflare has won an important court case in the US - a Californian court rejected a copyright infringement claim against the company, which operates a content delivery network.

Moves and hires

• Tim Clarke has been promoted to Senior Vice President, Digital Audio Content at Audacy. Clarke will be responsible for audio content, including podcasts, across the Audacy digital platform, which includes the Audacy app, Audacy․com, and Audacy’s station websites.

• Erika Aguilar will be the new 'Morning Edition’ and 'Up First’ Executive Producer for NPR. She joins from San Francisco member station KQED, where she was Director of Podcasts.

  
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• APM Studios have made two new executive appointments. Joanne Griffith has been made Chief Content Officer, while Thomas De Napoli has been named Chief Strategy Officer.

  
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Your help for a story: is your podcast being randomly marked as not suitable for under 18s by Google Podcasts? We’d love to hear from you, in confidence: editor@podnews.net

Tips and tricks

• What happens when you’re featured on Apple Podcasts? Jack Rhysider was. “In the past 4 years I’ve done so many other marketing techniques and none of them cause immediate noticeable growth as much as being featured here does.”

Podcast News

Field Work, a popular sustainable agriculture podcast from American Public Media, has announced a third host for their next season. Tara Vander Dussen is also known as the New Mexico Milkmaid.

The Sx with Emily podcast, which isn’t missing an 'e’ in its real name (but then it isn’t an email newsletter sent to over 20,000 people with anti-spam filters) is one of the oldest podcasts in the world, launching in 2005. The podcast has joined Acast; it was previously with Libsyn.