The best performing comedy shows for ads

• Bill Burr performs on stage, but also performs best for advertisers on his podcast - so says the ORBIT Rankings from Oxford Road, focusing this month on the top 15 performing comedy podcasts that deliver the best results for the advertisers who used them. Burr’s Monday Morning Podcast is at #1, NPR’s perennial favourite Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me is at #10. “There are plenty of ways to turn the funny into money,” says the report.

• The Podcast Hall of Fame will be on fire next January at Podfest in Orlando - the 2026 induction ceremony will be hosted by John Lee Dumas, organisers have announced. JLD is the host of Entrepreneurs on Fire, which has released more than 4,000 episodes.

• Overcast has launched a new feature dubbed “Promos and Reruns” that can automatically skip downloading any feed drops or trailer drops. The app also now - finally - displays per-episode artwork, and shows season/episode numbers. The app will soon support transcripts, we understand.

• FOX News announced a star-studded podcast called The Life of Jesus, starting this Advent - starring, among others, Kristen Bell as devoted follower Mary Magdalene, Malcolm McDowell as the traitor Caiaphas, Brian Cox as God, and John Rhys-Davies as the narrator. Except - none of those actors knew anything about the podcast, reports EW. It turns out the audio is from an 18-disc CD box-set made in 2010 - here’s a clip - which FOX News has licensed and repurposed by putting an intro on each episode. Kristen Bell says she hasn’t given any permission for this 15 year-old recording to be re-used; Brian Cox has previously called FOX News “the devil” and was unaware of this podcast; FOX News says it was licensed from the original “with full cooperation and participation from all actors involved”.

• WorkPerfectly, a private podcast platform, has been acquired by uStudio. The founder and CEO, Molly Beck, will become uStudio’s Head of Marketing, and has written her own thoughts about the acquisition. WorkPerfectly was previously known as messy.fm; we first covered the platform - with an original name of “Messy Bun” - in April 2018.

• Some podcast publishers produce short-run limited series within a larger podcast feed: but does that work? And can people find the individual shows if you do that? One publisher, NHPR, has given its investigative true crime series Operation Night Cat its own RSS feed, after releasing the three episodes in Outside/In. The show traces illegal poaching practices, only to stumble upon much bigger abuses of power - this time, behind the walls of a state prison.

Podcast News

In the Podnews Weekly Review this week, we chat with Riverside’s Kendall Brietman about the company’s new podcast hosting platform; and explore other new podcast hosting plans too. We recommend it!

Going somewhere this weekend? Going on a long drive or plane ride next week? You’ll be wanting New Podcasts - trailers for new and noteworthy shows - a podcast updated every day with new shows you won’t want to miss. Find your next favourite show with us!

Timothée Chalamet’s bizarre Zoom call for Marty Supreme has everyone asking: who was actually in on the joke? Also In Three this week: Britney Spears has a sleepover with Khloé and Kim Kardashian. A moment to love, or is there some sus energy surrounding it. And Taylor is out on the town with her girlfriends; but, is there a reason behind these dinners? The show aims to be your ultimate pop culture playground.

NHPR’s Operation Night Cat has released its three episodes in full. This three-part investigative series originally debuted on NHPR’s OUTSIDE/IN feed, but now can be found as its own dedicated podcast. This podcast investigates a criminal poaching ring, only to find that their abuses of power do not end at abusing just animals.