The horror podcast visualized in LEGO

• After we noted an episode of WTF being visualized for YouTube, another fan favourite podcast has been adapted for the platform - this time, a horror story from Tenderfoot TV’s Radio Rental has made it to YouTube… in LEGO bricks. The release comes as a new season of Radio Rental kicks off today.

• And speaking of video, Apple Podcasts launched “The Greatest Stories Never Seen” - short original video clips that highlight four shows available in video on the platform. The shows promoted are: Acast’s Toni and Ryan, Wondery’s Baby, this is Keke Palmer, iHeart’s Las Culturistas, and the indie House Guest. The videos are being promoted on the Apple Podcasts Instagram feed (90,500 followers).

• Spotify published its Q3/26 financial update. In a welcome turn of fortune, ad revenue was up +10% year-on-year, led by “strong growth in automated biddable sales channels” - and “podcasting growth was led by sponsorship gains within our Owned and Licensed portfolio”. Ad revenue accounts for only 10.7% of total company revenue - and ads are half as profitable as premium subscribers. The number of premium subscribers grew +9% to 306mn. The newly-introduced skip-ahead button seems to be not mentioned to investors.

• Triton Digital published its US Podcast Ranker for September. It measures participating publishers only; the top ten publisher ranker is unchanged.

• In the US mid-terms, 810 candidates have been on a podcast this year so far, and Democrats have twice the share of voice as Republicans, according to new data from Rephonic. The data shows that Democrats have been increasing the share of their number of appearances all year.

• In Canada, The Walrus is to launch a new Canadian podcast network in a bid to raise the amount of Canadian content listened-to by the country’s podcast consumers to 50%. We link to a submission form to join.

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People news - with podnews.net/jobs

• Losh Moodaley is now a Forbes contributor, and has written a piece highlighting “deals that could reshape podcasting”. She’s written a number of articles for Podnews.

Tips and tricks

• Acast launched a host read challenge, that generates a random sponsor, and helps you score your resulting read. It has nine tips to make your host read game better, too.

Podcast News - with Airwave

With Airwave: The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast aims to match nature time with the average amount of American kid screen time - which is more than a thousand hours a year. Nature time, research shows, contributes extensively to every area of childhood development.

The Podnews Weekly Review this week talks with Steven Goldstein about “liquid content” - and why measurement is still holding us back as an industry.

In Ripple FX this week, the show is celebrating International Day of Climate Action (October 24th) with Yelle Belle of HomeSwap Stories, a NYC-based content creator who interviews New Yorkers on their sustainable lives. Her advice is to pick one small thing you can control at home & start there. The episode includes a few easy eco-friendly habits to try.