The Pod Village at the European Radio Show impresses

• The European Radio Show, currently underway in Paris, France, has a surprisingly vibrant Pod Village: an area with exhibitors from mainly French podcast companies. The area also has a demonstration theatre - when we walked past, we saw Podcastics demonstrating “lien magique”, magic subscription links. There was also a conference track of podcast topics, open to everyone, with speakers and panels: we saw Declan Moore from Wondery explain their strategy. Podnews’s Editor, James Cridland, gave a keynote: “ten things radio can learn from podcasting”. The event continues today and tomorrow.

• HotPod reports that Endeavor Audio have laid-off its inhouse advertising sales team.

• Entale, the visually augmented podcast player, has launched an Android version of their podcast app. It’s in the Google Play store now. They’ve also launched their first “Entale Original”, a show called 'Making The Cut’, hosted by TV presenters Davina McCall and Michael Douglas.

• Spanish newspaper El Mundo covers podcasting in Spain, looking at revenue generation. It claims that “Spain is the fifth country on the planet that consumes (podcasting) the most”.

• Triton Digital have released their latest podcast ranker for LATAM. One new entry is interesting: the FOX News Radio Newscast, which is (as far as we can tell) the only podcast in the ranker in English.

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• The “IMDB of podcasting ” Podchaser hit three million creator credits (hosts, producers, etc) in December. They’ve just hit 4 million.

• Little America, a show on Apple TV+, is to get its own companion podcast from Apple according to TechCrunch.

• Just when we thought we’d got the final comprehensive answer, Jack Rhysider wades into the “Apple Podcasts vs Spotify” debate, sharing his stats. A few choice quotes: “Psshhh. This clears up nothing!”, “What? Again I’m lost,” and “Whoa what is this!?”

• “The disruptive, heavy ad formats that gained popularity in recent years - homepage takeovers, expandables, etc - are not great solutions for Audio.” Lizzy Glazer, the GM at podcast producer CodeAudio, discusses the fastest way to kill podcast advertising.

From the new book Make Noise by Eric Nuzum, available now

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Tips and tricks - with Acast Open

• Do you need a podcast co-host? DiscoverPods helps you find one.

• How long should my podcast episode title be? asks Dan Misener from Pacific Content, discovering that episode titles are getting longer.

Podcast News

The BBC’s popular Brexitcast is to end this month, as the UK formally exits the European Union. The final episode will be recorded in the BBC Radio Theatre. It succeeded in making a household name of host Chris Mason, a BBC Political Correspondent, who is now hosting the prestigious Any Questions for BBC Radio 4; and was also aired on BBC television.

Cheerful Book Club is a new non-fiction book podcast, hosted by broadcaster Geoff Lloyd and politician Ed Miliband, and launched this week. It’s a spin-off from the successful Reasons to be Cheerful ideas podcast, which the duo have been doing since September 2017.