Classy new San Diego sports doc

• An innovative new show from Message Heard, COPA90 and iHeartPodcasts launches later this week - San Diego FC: Behind the Flow. It starts as a documentary-style sports podcast, looking behind the scenes at the newest team in Major League Soccer; but the show will then transition into a sports talk show covering the rest of SDFC’s first ever season.

• A new, virtual, summit has been announced for Health Podcasting. The Health Podcast Summit will take place on Oct 1-2, with a number of industry leaders as speakers. The summit coincides with Health Literacy Month, and it’s free to register.

• Audio monetisation company Audion has released a study showing that adding audio ads in video increases brand recall. Video is often consumed without actively viewing the image, and therefore the audio message in ads reaches both video and audio users.

• The British Podcast Awards 2025’s Listeners’ Choice Award is now open for public voting. Last year’s winner was Help I Sexted My Boss from Audio Always.

• Saudi podcast host Thmanyah has gained IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines compliance to v2.2. It’s the first time the company, based in Riyadh, has achieved certification.

• CNN Audio is changing its name - to CNN Podcasts. “The fact is, these are podcasts. It’s what the industry and the general public, more importantly, calls them,” says the Head of CNN Podcasts, Steve Lickteig. It’s part of an expansion push for the company.

• Further reading: John Wordock thinks there are things for podcasters to learn from The Beach Boys, and Brian Wilson in particular … the IAB in the UK post the company’s recent talk at The Podcast Show … meanwhile Lama Masri Osman reports on the 2025 Arab Media Summit’s Podcasting “closed-door” session.

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Moves and hires

• Andy Rogers, formerly Senior Director, Business Development & Partnerships at Libsyn, is “now a free agent”, he tells us, and is available for work. He’d been at Libsyn for four and a half years.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

The Podnews Daily podcast uses both websub and podping to announce that we have a new episode available, as soon as we publish. So, as a fun timing experiment, how quickly did those new episodes get onto podcast apps?

On iPhone, we set a notification to appear for each new episode on both Pocket Casts and Apple Podcasts. Here’s when those notifications came in (local time):

May 30: Pocket Casts: 22:50. Apple: 23:04.
May 31: Pocket Casts: 20:28. Apple: 20:43.
Jun 2: Pocket Casts: 20:57. Apple: 21:07.
Jun 5: Pocket Casts: 19:49. Apple: 19:56.
Jun 6: Pocket Casts: 19:30. Apple: 19:41.
Jun 10: Pocket Casts: 21:29. Apple: 21:47.
Jun 11: Pocket Casts: 21:26. Apple: 21:39.

In all the examples above, it took Pocket Casts less than ninety seconds from us publishing the show on open RSS to send us a notification. Apple Podcasts was consistently later: anything from ten to 18 minutes late.

Our RSS stats for last Friday show that Pocket Casts grabs our RSS feed every 17 minutes, while Apple grabs it every 5 minutes - more than three times more.

This isn’t a fair test for a number of reasons; as a daily podcast, we’re polled more often than a weekly one; notifications aren’t a reliable indicator for when a new show is playable in the app; etc. But, if it’s of interest, Apple Podcasts doesn’t use websub or podping, to the best of our knowledge, while Pocket Casts uses both.

• Did OP3 go down at the end of last week, during the Big Google Outage that appeared to knock almost everything off the internet? John Spurlock would like us to know that no, it didn’t.

• Podcasters using 11ty to produce their static websites might like Podcaster, an Eleventy plugin, which produces RSS feeds, so you can host your own audio too.

• There’s a <source> tag in the original RSS 2.0 specification. As of now, the New Podcasts podcast feed uses it, because it’s ideal to link back to the original feed that the trailer comes from.

Tips and tricks - with Memberful

• Can you use commercial music in your podcast? No. No, you can’t.

• Wil Williams explores the podcast data that matters - suggesting that not all data matters for all occasions. Yes.

Podcast News - with Podcast Movement

The Medley is a talk show hosted by an autistic media personality Blake “Crash” Priddle featuring intimate conversations with all kinds of aspiring people from across the arts and entertainment industry as well as folks that have inspiring stories to tell. What makes this show special is you will find guests that you won’t find on another other podcast.

Hosted by LA-based best friends Krista Williams and Lindsey Simcik, Almost 30 is brand new to the YAP Media Network - the chart-topping, soul-nourishing, conversation-sparking podcast that’s captured the hearts (and minds) of millions. With 800+ episodes, 120M+ downloads, and a fiercely loyal community, this podcast has become a mainstay in the lives of late 20s and 30s female listeners navigating growth, purpose, and everything in between. YAP Media is representing the show from today.

In New Zealand, the legendary author Witi Ihimaera’s list of achievements is expansive. But at the age of 80, he felt a yearning to master something he had never done: learn te reo Māori - the Māori language. Witi Underwater is new from RNZ, hosted by Adam Dudding and Eugene Bingham, and follows him and his classmates through this year-long immersive journey. You’ll also learn about the revitalisation of te reo Māori, and the complex and personal challenges facing its learners.

We Just Got Here is your friendly reminder that you’re not alone in the chaotic adventure that is adulthood. Hosted by Steph and Tia, this podcast is for you whether you’re looking for a laugh, the tea on what’s got the internet’s knickers in a twist, some sage advice, or just a fun escape from the daily grind.

New in the Play On Podcasts feed today is runboyrun, a new audio drama from playwright Mfoniso Udofia which tells the story of a married couple grappling with the lingering trauma of surviving the Nigerian Civil War. The play was recorded and made available as a podcast in partnership with Boston Public Library, GBH, The Huntington, and Next Chapter Podcasts.

Levian is a new high fantasy audio drama from the creator of Desperado and Hug House Productions - it’s a story of betrayal, sorcery, and leviathans. The show employs a majority of artists from marginalized communities, and it is at the heart of this project to platform and spotlight those from the most under-represented backgrounds.

It’s fifty years since Jaws - and Radiolab has a treat for us with a five-part audio event starting today, called Swimming with Shadows. This Radiolab week of sharks dives deep beneath the surface to ask: Who are sharks, really? And do they warrant the level of terror so many of us have of them? Expect a globe-spanning journey to Australia, South Africa, Malta and ….Madison, Wisconsin.

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