Layoffs and closed shows at NPR

• As announced in February, NPR has made 10% of its workforce redundant in a cost-cutting move. The cost-saving has also impacted NPR’s podcasts, with Invisibilia, Louder Than A Riot and Rough Translation, as well as a short-form comedy show Everyone & Their Mom, all stopping production. The Embedded podcast will also absorb a number of other narrative series; no radio shows were cancelled. The equivalent of 150 job losses, it’s the largest job reduction at NPR for fifteen years.

• Audible has announced the launch of Dolby Atmos on the platform, and a launch of more than 40 shows mastered in spatial audio. “Dolby Atmos expands the possibilities of audio storytelling through the ability to place sounds in a multidimensional space, drawing listeners into a deeper, richer, and more lifelike spatial sound experience that fully engrosses them in each story.”

• A number of podcasters are making their way to Prague for Radiodays Europe 2023. Speakers include Eric Nuzum, Arielle Nissenblatt, and Podnews’s Editor, James Cridland.

• Following our coverage of Bloomberg’s story on Spotify yesterday, we’re told that Spotify has spent more than 10% of the fund to date. We’re also separately told that this includes administrative costs and other initiatives.

• Popular YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips has been hacked: the channel’s 15.3mn subscribers got to see promotion for crypto scams instead. The videos now appear to have been restored.

  • YouTube does have two-factor authentication for its accounts, which makes this hack harder to achieve. We’re unaware of podcast hosting companies using 2FA as a security tool.

• Spotify’s R&D team has published a paper about goal-oriented podcast recommendations - “I want to learn something” rather than “play me something similar to what I’ve listened to already”.

• Podcasts are turning into real-life events, says WIRED magazine; reporting a recent get-together for “murderinos”, the name given for listeners to My Favorite Murder.

Tips and tricks - with Phantom Producer

• Podcastpage tells us four key strategies to grow your YouTube channel.

Podcast News - with Left Over

In the Podnews Weekly Review, Sam Sethi is back from skiing, and we talk to Captivate co-founder and CEO Mark Asquith about his company’s recent embrace of the new podcast namespace. We also discuss YouTube’s recent announcements.

Hiding in The Ringer NFL Show over the next week is Blackballed, a new four-part narrative podcast hosted by Chelsea Stark-Jones examining the “Forgotten Four” Black players who reintegrated professional football in 1946. It’s new from Spotify’s The Ringer.

Indie show Our Opinions Are Correct has just started a mini-series, Silicon Valley vs. Science Fiction, looking at all the ways that tech companies have misinterpreted or misunderstood the great works of the genre, in order to create marketing hype. The show’s in its fifth year, and has nearly a million downloads so far.