Podcast Hall of Fame pays its respects

• Dave Ramsey led tributes to Dan Miller, the host of the 48 Days to the Work You Love podcast, at the Podcast Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Friday evening. The popular podcaster was given the recognition posthumously, accepted by his family who attended the event. He died in Jan 2024. The awards also remembered Hall of Famer Todd Cochrane, who passed away last September.

  • New inductees to the Hall of Fame included former attorney at EFF Julie Samuels, who successfully fought a legal battle against a patent troll, Captivate founder Mark Asquith, Podcast Partnership’s Paul Colligan, PRX’s Kerri Hoffman, Arielle Nissenblatt, and our Editor, James Cridland. A video of the event, hosted by John Lee Dumas, is on the Podcast Hall of Fame website.

• UK podcast company Goalhanger has announced it has more than 250,000 paid subscribers. Each paid subscriber pays on average £6 a month or £60 a year (US $8 / $80), suggesting that the company earns around $20mn a year from paid subscribers.

  • Assuming Apple Podcasts is responsible for 50% of those subscriptions, that suggests Apple earns between $1.5mn and $3mn per year from Goalhanger. Supporting Cast, who Goalhanger use for other platforms, charges 10% (perhaps earning $1mn from the other 50%).
  • Paid subscribers get shows ad-free. Given two shows a week per subscriber, that’s at least 26 million downloads delivered ad-free; assuming 4 ads per episode at $20 CPM, that’s a loss of around $2mn in ad revenue.

• Do people turn to podcasts for breaking news? Yes, they do. Podcast411's Rob Walch, speaking at Podfest, discovered that durations for the top 200 (US) episodes in Apple Podcasts dipped notably on 3rd January - with the median duration dropping from 58 minutes to just 51 minutes. The reason? The capture of Nicolás Maduro: many more shows that day were news shows, as audiences caught up with the news.

• Podcast monetization company AdLarge acquired Inlet Media, “a technology platform the company has used for nearly two years to onboard, distribute, and monetize audio and video content through its AI-powered podcast and creator workflows”. Co-founders Patrick Cedrowski has been named Chief Technology Officer of AdLarge and the fwd. network, and Brian Egan has been promoted to Vice President and Head of Product.

• There’s a new website for Godcaster, the podcast and live radio tool. The service now offers a “try free” option. Godcaster will be showcased at the NRB 2026 conference.

• Here’s what else you need to know today: from The New York Times, The Daily is now publishing on Sunday. Episodes “will move beyond the front page to explore the stories that define our culture, explore our health and illuminate how we live”. Expect the show to post 20% higher download numbers as a result.

• Canadian True Crime is publishing its 200th episode today. The show - the biggest independent show in Canada - is hosted by Kristi Lee, and has been telling researched and nuanced true crime stories since 2018. It has amassed over 75 million downloads, remained a top 10 Apple show since launch, built an incredibly loyal audience, and just last week Breaking Idol, a tv show based on one of the podcast’s biggest episodes about Canadian Idol Jacob Hoggard aired on CBC. The 200th episode is part of a mini-series on notorious Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton.

• Acast has shared predictions for podcasting in 2026. 2026 is the birth year of the Narrative Influencer, the company claims.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• Conversations over a bar table at Podfest are always useful. In this case, over a set of glasses of finest Floridian tap water, a set of podcast folk once more bemoaned the lack of listener comments in podcast apps, and came to a rough agreement of a way forward: using the existing RSS <comments> tag which would link to a JSON file of comments for the episode or for the show as a whole. It would allow comment moderation if required; support a variety of different discussion platforms; and be really easy to code. This Editor supposes that this is something for him to write up somewhere. Watch this space.

• Fun fact - it’s valid for podcasts to include PDF files as enclosures instead of audio files - Apple Podcasts says so on their website, despite not actually supporting PDFs any more. Breaking Bad News is an example of a podcast that includes PDFs, and we can find 1,718 shows with PDFs in the Podcast Index. We can’t find any podcast apps that support PDFs, though, so we probably wouldn’t recommend it, and we’d probably like to ask Apple to officially remove support for PDF on this page. (But we’ve added PDF support to our podcast episode viewer, like this, so…)

Podcast News - with Airwave

New with Airwave: THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent - every weekday, The New Republic’s Greg Sargent brings you a fresh way of thinking about the biggest political stories of the moment, offered up in an entertaining, information-packed conversation with a leading lawmaker, journalist, or newsmaker.

The Savoy Originals has returned for a new season. Hosted by Alex Zane and recorded in The Savoy in London, the show celebrates Britain’s compelling cultural figures at the peak of their powers. The first guest is Tom Fletcher, the musical mastermind behind the critically acclaimed new stage production PADDINGTON The Musical.

For the first time ever, “reduced screen time / social media” topped losing weight and Dry January as the #1 New Year’s resolution. This is a signal that our minds need help. Sufferless with a Part-Time Monk offers a compassionate look at why so many of us are trying to scroll less, and why it feels so uncomfortable when we do. If you’re feeling tech fatigue or digital overwhelm, this episode shows you a kinder way to understand your mind and move toward more peace.

Spot the difference

As seen at Podfest - on the left, the white header and lime green subtitle on a dark green background belongs to heritage podcast hosting company Libsyn. On the right, the white header and lime green subtitle on a dark green background belongs to Florida’s podcast hosting company Buzzsprout.

Tediously, we’ve checked: Buzzsprout posted these new colors in a July 2024 blog post. Libsyn seems to have appropriated a similar color scheme on its website, adding lime green highlights and a dark green background, on Dec 25.