Africa Podcast Day is this Sunday

• Sunday is Africa Podcast Day 2023. You can celebrate with digital graphics and use #AfricaPodcastDay2023 to tag your posts, and follow @afripods on Twitter to watch a live stream with panels and advice.

  • In addition, the Africa Media Festival is Tuesday and Wednesday in Nairobi.

• Speaking in the Podnews Weekly Review this week, Novel’s founder Sean Glynn says that podcasting is in good shape, even after the advertising downturn. “I think it’s going to bounce back a lot quicker than what people are saying. I think recent economic output and data from the US is much more promising than what people would have thought. The obvious thing about there being fewer feeds, but listenership still going up regardless - I don’t think it’s as dire as what some predict it could be.”

• Almost 20% of episodes in Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast contain false, misleading or unsubstantiated statements, according to new research from the Brookings Institute, reported by The New York Times.

• Axios is the latest to claim that podcasting is “facing an identity crisis”.

• Radiodays North America has announced its first set of speakers, including our Editor, James Cridland. The event, in Toronto, is in early June and is part of Canadian Music Week.

• Former late night host Craig Ferguson is to do a podcast with iHeartMedia.

• PodText is one of a slew of new services that searches within podcast transcripts, and allows you to share clips. On YCombinator, the author adds “my employer will fire me if they found out about this project”.

• “First-Look Deals Emerge In Podcasting” says Deadline, reporting that “first-look deals - common in TV and film - are coming to podcasting” in a story about Campside Media signing three first-look deals. They’re hardly new to our industry, though: among others, Podnews has covered first-look deals between Sky and Tortoise, Audible and First Produce, SiriusXM and Audio Up, Kudos and What’s The Story?, UCP Media and iHeart, Parcast and Noiser, and Goldfinch and Stakhanov.

People News

• Seb Rennie has been hired as Executive Head - LiSTNR Commercial. He’ll drive the commercial strategy for the Australian radio and podcast app.

• The producer and co-host of Ear Hustle, Rahsaan “New York” Thomas, has been released from prison.

• Matt Medeiros started a new role this week as WordPress Community Evangelist for Gravity Forms. He had been with Castos.

Tips and tricks - with Podcast Movement Evolutions

• How many podcasts are there? We’ve updated our data with the latest numbers - and pointed out why the number isn’t as daunting as you’d think.