NPR news shows are safer for brands

• First look: Are news podcasts a brand-safe place to be? Analysis from Sounder suggests that over 80% of NPR’s news shows were classified as safe for brands to advertise in - significantly better than all news podcasts, where that figure drops to 54%.

• Triton Digital has announced an integration with Amazon Publisher Services for interactive audio ads on Amazon’s smart speakers. The service lets you ask your smart speaker for more information on the ad you’ve just heard, or even to add the product to your shopping cart.

• PodMatch paid more than $185,000 to podcasters last year, and the company announced it has now achieved more than a quarter of a million dollars overall.

• As we reported yesterday, Audacy filed for bankruptcy over the weekend. It announced this news with a curious graphic on its corporate website.

• Podcast analytics company Voxalyze has announced it is filing for insolvency. Only two weeks ago it had announced it was discontinuing its analytics service. It is working on a restructure.

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• Semafor reports that the podcast arm at Universal Studios, USG Audio, is being “reined in”. The publication had heard it was to close; but it will continue acquiring podcast content that could be used by Universal’s TV studios.

• Four hours after we published yesterday, the podcast app Castro finally acknowledged that its app had been down, before, a further nine hours later, announcing a fix had been put in place.

• Fable and Folly has announced an exclusive ad sales partnership with AdLarge.

• The legal action against SiriusXM for not having podcast transcripts, brought by the National Association of the Deaf, is now not going to be decided until at least May.

• PodInbox changed its name today to Fanlist. Old links will still work.

• Ausha published its list of podcast trends for 2024.

Tips and tricks - with Patreon + Spotify

• DiscoverPods looked at the process of making The Neurotic Vaccine, a comedy show produced by Andy Cowan, a former writer for Seinfeld. He edits the show on Hindenburg PRO, which our title sponsor this month will be keen to know; and focuses on timing, which, he says, is crucial in the edit process.

• Want badges for your website for all the major podcast players? Nathan Gathright’s podcast badges are nicely produced and so uniform-looking, we’re now using them in our podcast pages.

Podcast News - with Airwave

From Airwave: As CES kicks off today, What’s New With WIRED brings you the latest in-depth coverage covering the intersection of technology and culture. WIRED’s award-winning journalism will help you make sense of a world in constant transformation, and explores the ways technology is changing our lives.

Celebrating its 40th anniversary as a radio broadcast this year, America In The Morning has joined the Cumulus Podcast Network. Expect news reports from around the country and across the globe, with the latest overnight developments in business, breaking news, politics, sports, entertainment, and weather.

Moms and Mysteries has renewed its advertising sales agreement with Libsyn’s AdvertiseCast. The show has amassed more than 30 million downloads to date.

Payton Moreland’s podcast Binged has a new name - the show is now called Into The Dark. It’s with AdLarge.

The history book on the shelf is always repeating itself: fifty years ago, ABBA’s Waterloo won the Eurovision Song Contest - and now you’ve got this ABBA song going round your head, and you couldn’t escape if you wanted to. Like A Magic Spell is a brand new podcast unlocking the joy of ABBA, one song at a time with ABBA superfans and music journalists.

United Bodies is new this week from Ms. magazine, hosted by health and disability writer, producer, and activist Kendall Ciesemier. The show is a podcast about the lived experience of health; it’s the third podcast from Ms. magazine.

Winnie Taylor’s 4th and Inches is an eight episode audio fiction podcast launched this month from Gen-Z Media. It’s the story of a teenage girl who reconnects with her estranged father, a once-prominent quarterback making one last run at glory.

In the UK, legendary football broadcaster Jeff Stelling is launching his debut football podcast Football’s Greatest, a Folding Pocket production with BBC Studios, kicking off (if you’ll pardon the soccer pun) with his first guest Chris Kamara today. The season is planned to be 40 episodes.

Spotify’s The Receipts podcast (marked in the artwork as “A Spotify Video Exclusive”) returns after a two month break, following the departure of former co-host Milena Sanchez. Milena made her unexpected exit via an out-of-the-blue email resignation; hosts Tolly T and Just Call Me Audrey have plenty of life news to catch you up on.

Things Fell Apart returns for a new season today, with Jon Ronson revealing eight more wholly unexpected but all too human stories about the culture wars that divide us so toxically today. Featured are the new battle lines in the culture wars which ignited during lockdown and that dominate society now: from covid conspiracies and Antifa hysteria, to racial and gender identity politics, free speech and protests against lockdown that spiralled out of control.

Wrongful Conviction returns for a new season this week, highlighting thirty new stories of innocent people behind bars. The cases underscore shocking systemic failures and outright biases within the legal system, and celebrate the triumph of the human spirit even in the face of overwhelming injustice. It’s produced by Lava For Good.