The Rest is History crowned “Show of the Year”

• Apple Podcasts named The Rest is History the 2025 Show of the Year - the first time the accolade has gone to a show that isn’t from the United States. Apple Podcasts has interviewed the hosts, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook.

• Exclusive: PRX and AudioUK have announced a 2026 Podcast Creator Summit in London, UK, inviting podcasters of all experience levels to share and gain insights spanning the art and business of making podcasts and audio. The free summit is organised in partnership with Apple Podcasts, and will be held at Battersea Power Station in February. The press release contains details of tickets: you can sign up now.

• Amazon Music released its 2025 Delivered recap earlier in the week. The company released data of the top podcasts for 2025, in a number of countries - we’ve a list of some of those countries here. In Japan, three of the top five were from TBS Radio.

• Triton Digital’s Omny Studio announced support for video podcasting. It’ll let you produce an RSS feed with video, and automatically produce an audio RSS feed from it if you need that; and dynamically-inserted ads will come soon, we’re told. This is in addition to using Spotify and YouTube’s own systems. (The system encodes all video at 720p, and doesn’t yet support alternate enclosures).

• It’s time to make video open, says podcast host and app Fountain. The post details the “alternate enclosure”, which allows podcasters to use one feed (not two) for their shows - with benefits for SEO and promotion, but also to keep podcasting open, even with video.

• “The Glastonbury of podcasting” is to return for 2026: the UK podcast festival Crossed Wires has released an initial set of shows and a way to sign up for priority access. Last year, the event saw exclusive Monty Python content, an on-stage proposal, and new life being breathed into the city centre of Sheffield. Next year it’ll be four days long, with an additional venue being laid on by BBC Radio 4. Tickets are available on Thursday (but sooner if you sign up now).

• The Rest is Football from Goalhanger is to be on Netflix during the FIFA World Cup next year. The show, hosted by Gary Lineker, will be broadcast from New York. It doesn’t have rights for the World Cup matches. Lineker was once a television presenter for the BBC, but left in May after sharing an anti-semitic social media post.

  • Goalhanger also reportedly announced The Rest is Fest, a set of live shows from the company in September next year.

• Podscribe released its Podcast Industry Rankings data for November 2025. New Heights has dropped out of the top ten; Wondery has dropped from #5 to #8; and Better Help remains the #1 podcast advertiser.

• Libsyn has announced a pricing increase, via email, to some of its customers. The $5 “bare essentials” plan will change to $8/month from Jan 1. The website still says it’s $5. Regardless, we’d expect Libsyn’s other plans to also increase.

• “The outages will continue until decentralisation improves.” Cloudflare fell over again today for a short time, pulling down (at least) Buzzsprout and Ausha. The system status page currently doesn’t mention it, but we have the evidence.

• In Australia, the CRA reports that broadcast radio revenue shrunk by around 5% year-on-year for Q3/25, but digital audio revenue grew 12.1% in the quarter, to AUD $26.7mn (US $17mn). Digital revenue accounts for just 9.7% of total radio company revenue in the country; the CRA represents a third of the digital audio market.

• The winners of the iVoox Audience Awards 2025 were announced in a gala event. There were more than 300,000 votes.

• From Wrapped 2025, Spotify shared the UK top 50 podcasts. Adam Bowie, a UK radio and podcast analyst, compares the list with others, and notes that always-on podcasts will always do well in these charts.

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Moves and hires

• Steve Ackerman is to leave Sony Music Podcasts. He’d been working for the company, initially called Somethin’Else which he co-founded, since 2000.

• Misha Glenny has been announced as the new presenter of one of the world’s longest-running podcasts, In Our Time. Lord Melvyn Bragg stepped down in September. The show returns in January.

Podcast News - with Airwave

With Airwave: From TWiT, Security Now has now joined Airwave. Cybersecurity guru Steve Gibson joins Leo Laporte every Tuesday. Steve and Leo break down the latest cybercrime and hacking stories, offering a deep understanding of what’s happening and how to protect yourself and your business.

In the Podnews Weekly Review this week, Brad Mielke from Start Here, the ABC News daily news podcast, talks about what it takes to produce 2,000 daily shows. And, we look at the recap-a-pocalypse.

Season two of YA horror series Personal Demon drops tonight at 7pm London time. Norah’s just your average 17 year old girl… other than she can eviscerate you with one look. Haunted by powers she can’t control and a past she doesn’t understand she flees to Hogarth, a strange town with dark secrets, in search of answers about who (or what) she really is. If you love spooky, campy teen horror about demons, cursed family secrets and carving out your place in an uncertain world, this might be the one for you.

Second Helpings has launched a new season today, examining mental health in art and culture. The new season introduces a refreshed format, with each episode offering an in-depth analysis of a work of art or pop culture through a mental health and recovery lens. Episodes will be released bi-weekly. The first episode of Season 2 premieres on Thursday, December 4, on all major podcast platforms, examining Taylor Swift’s song “The Fate of Ophelia.” It’s from Mercury.