Laura Mayer has joined Talkhouse

• Laura Mayer has joined Talkhouse as Head of Podcasts. She was the Executive Producer of Podcast Programming at ABC News; and made Shameless Acquisition Target, a podcast acquired by Gilded Audio in Jan 2023.

• The first inductees for the Podcast Hall of Fame 2026 have been announced. They are: Dan Carlin, the host of Hardcore History; podcasting’s Arielle Nissenblatt, and CEO of Captivate, Mark Asquith. Tickets for the Hall of Fame induction ceremony are available now.

• Netflix is to acquire Warner Bros. The acquisition, which is likely to conclude in Q3/26, is worth $82.7bn. Hollywood has not reacted well to the news. The company is currently buying exclusive video rights to shows from podcast publishers.

• Canadian journalism company The Walrus has acquired branded podcast company Lead Podcasting. The companies have worked together for some years. Amanda Cupido, Lead Podcasting’s founder and CEO, says “I could not have picked a better home”.

• Libsyn has shared its new pricing for most of its plans, most of which are $5/month extra. The pricing, which takes effect on Jan 1, still isn’t appearing on its website.

• Global ad revenue is expected to rise 8.8% next year - an improvement on earlier forecasts.

• Podium.page, a set of podcast AI tools for podcasters, has suddenly announced it is to close. The company produced transcripts and AI-written show notes and blogs, and was white-labelled by a number of podcast hosting products.

  • Podium.page is not related to the Spanish-language podcast network; nor to the Vancouver-based branded podcast agency; nor to the British young creator network.

• Acast has a new, temporary, CFO - current deputy CFO Katrin Vogel will do the job for 38 days, until Anders Hägg gets there on Jan 15.

• Work+Money publishes the Most Successful Female Podcast Hosts in the World. The list doesn’t include Alex Cooper or Mel Robbins, and does include a show which ended in 2022.

• What happens to a podcast when it suddenly gets loads of promotion? Bad reviews, much lower consumption time, but gains in the end, says a subredditor who’s been there more than once.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• Livewire notes a fair amount of churn in the podcast hosting company “share of episodes” graph for November. Part of that may be that Livewire no longer lists what they coyly call shows “completely generated by text-to-speech”.

  • That decision to remove TTS podcasts also impacts the tracking data, since Podtrac measures all shows from Inception Point AI. (And there are many of those.)

• Buzzsprout published download stats for November. While Apple Podcasts remains top for episode share, up 2% year-on-year, Spotify shows a significant decline, down 7.6%. (Part of that is undoubtedly video, which Spotify entirely caches. But - all of it?)

• ChadF has launched StableKraft, a V4V music app - using podcast RSS feeds - which supports singles, albums, playlists and publisher feeds.

• If you are producing video and audio in the same RSS feed (using alternateEnclosures)… should there be a difference in which plays on what platform? In a discussion on the Podcasting 2.0 podcast, and on the podcastindex.social website, it’s been suggested that on desktop, the video ought to play, rather than the audio version. Worth a think about what creators would like.

Moves and hires

• True Native Media has hired two new account executives - Melanie Margolin and Nancy Komarow have already started with the company.

Podcast News - with Airwave

With Airwave: The 21st Century began with the rise of the Internet and social media. The next decade will mark the rise of the Intelligent Machines. AI will inhabit all our devices from cars and appliances to smart phones and robots. Intelligent Machines explores the most exciting revolution humanity has ever seen, filled with promise and peril.

The internet is abuzz with news that The Rest Is History has solved the mystery of the identity of Jack the Ripper. The Times goes into detail in a paid article. They’re more than 230 years too late, disappointingly, for justice to be served.

The latest episode of The Bugle was recorded in Brisbane, Australia, where host Andy Zaltzman has been watching England lose at the cricket again. At the recording was Alice Fraser (in person), and Nish Kumar (on a slightly time-delayed computer).

Rebuilding your body in midlife shouldn’t feel impossible. my Body can returns for Season 2 with a weekly look at what it actually feels like to move again after years of injuries, illnesses, and hormonal chaos. Expect weekly episodes focusing on what’s ahead, not what was; and exploring how strength, stability, and confidence can grow in the middle of life without perfection or pressure.