Multiplatform podcasting

• Podcasts are becoming multiplatform - audio, video, short-form, social and newsletters - and audiences are switching between them. That’s one of the findings of a new piece of research: The Podcast Atlas by Sounds Profitable, which gets covered in a free webinar this Wednesday. The data also covers the benefits of podcast newsletters (not this one) - which “create direct, owned relationships that are independent of platform algorithms. Among newsletter subscribers, 87% said podcast newsletters lead them to listen to episodes”.

  • We also learn that audio and video listeners demonstrated nearly identical episode completion rates.

• The winners of the Scottish Podcast Awards were announced. The Podcast of the Year went to comedy show The Ford & Shelby Show.

• iHeartMedia announced an expanded relationship with Amazon Ads. iHeartMedia customers can now leverage Amazon DSP; iHeart is also a local reseller of its audio and video inventory.

• From podcast producers Collision Productions, Castly has launched a tool that turns a podcast RSS feed into a podcast website. The French service charges €9.99 a month (about US $11.50); there’s a free tier, and you can see how it looks for your podcast almost instantly.

• In the US, cable news network MS NOW is to expand the amount of podcasts that it airs on weekend evenings. The move will lead to job cuts, including the departure of the network’s longest-serving anchor, Alex Witt, who has been on the channel, formerly known as MSNBC, since 1999.

• Pocket Casts has had a “liquid glass” visual update for iOS users. The app has used more Apple controls for consistency on the platform. And for iOS and Android, transcripts generated by Pocket Casts now highlight each sentence as it plays.

The Tech Stuff will be published tomorrow, owing to some “tech stuff” of our own today.

Tips and tricks

• Should your podcast hobby become a business? Is there a benefit of becoming a business (spoiler: yes), and is it worth bringing in a professional to help (spoiler: yes, though it’s a professional saying so). Ralph Estep Jr explains, for the US market, in a new blog post.
• Out on the Wire - The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio - is a recommended book by Matthew McLean or the Audio Indies podcast. You can take a peek inside at this graphical book; it lets you “go behind the scenes of seven of today’s most popular narrative radio shows and podcasts, including This American Life and RadioLab”. It dates from 2015; you’ll find it in the Podnews bookshop along with other books to help you make great shows from Tom Webster, Eric Nuzum and Dave Jackson.

Podcast News - with Airwave

From Airwave: If Hardcore History met up with My Favorite Murder in the ancient world, with a heavy helping of booze and laughter, you’d get Ancient History Fangirl, an ancient history podcast run by two Millennial women.

Even the stars have niche things they’re excited about. A new show hosted by comedy writers Freya Bennett and Lucy Regent, Big Little Interests, features guests they admire to reveal their unusual area of interest and curiosity, and where it fits into the wider picture of their lives.

Today marks 70 years since the Federal-Aid Highway Act transformed communities across America, and in a bonus episode from We Are North Nashville, listeners hear who paid the price for progress - and who profited from it. The episode examines how routing I-40 through a thriving Black neighborhood displaced residents and reshaped generations of lives, while creating opportunity and wealth elsewhere.

“You say the price of my love’s not a price that you’re not willing to pay”: as America prepares to celebrate Independence Day and its 250th “birthday,” Caloroga Shark Media’s Palace Intrigue looks at the American Revolution through the lens of the British Royal Family. What did King George III think was happening in America? How did the Declaration of Independence look from inside the Palace? And perhaps most intriguingly, how did a nation founded in rebellion against a king become fascinated by the Royal Family centuries later?

In PodBiz this week - Liam Heffernan from Mercury Podcast Network shares why the real money in podcasting lies in community over vanity metrics, details his unique journey from banking to building an independent podcast network, and discusses the launch of Independent Podcasters Day to champion indie creators.

All week long on Caloroga Shark Media’s Daily Crime & Justice, the UK’s most notorious cases feature in a special “Crown v. Colony” segment. From the infamous manhunt for Jack the Ripper to the horrifying House of Horrors, Garret Fisher brings you the verdicts, monsters, and trials that stopped the old country cold. Five crimes. Five reckonings. One question: what does justice look like on the other side of the Atlantic?