Podcast News

• Schools will be closed in the UK from Monday: Stuck at Home is a new podcast from UK broadcaster Fun Kids, and “will be hosted by the station’s presenters Dan, Bex, Conor, Sean and George all from their own houses - as they, too, are stuck at home. The podcast will include three things that kids can do at home each day, interviews from Fun Kids Radio, features around subjects like space, health and the climate as well as news updates from The Week Junior magazine.” (Omny Studio)
• Pineapple Street Studios have also announced a project called Stuck at Home, encouraging kids to make their own podcast. “As part of this experiment, kids are encouraged to create their own Stuck at Home podcast featuring the content of their choice”.
• Kids Listen, an advocacy organization for kids’ podcasts, has produced the Kids Listen Activity Podcast, a different podcast each time with an episode and an activity based on that episode. (Libsyn)

Aug 22 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.
• Satire, thankfully, continues. News Fighters, an Australian news comedy clips podcast, is to double its output to weekly; Harry Shearer’s Le Show is continuing as normal, he says; The Last Post will be produced by Alice Fraser from mandatory self-isolation in Australia when she arrives back tomorrow; A Rational Fear will be weekly via Google Hangouts; and longrunning Podnews favourite The Bugle will be “bugling through this”, they’ve said on Facebook.

Elsewhere…

• Multilingual podcast company Studio Ochenta has launched a global call for story pitches. The company will bring together eighty five-minute stories, which will be translated into multiple languages for the world to hear. It’s a paid opportunity: specifically to allow producers quarantined across the world to tell their stories.

• In an up-beat interview, Jen Sargent, Chief Operating Officer of Wondery, sees a tremendous opportunity for podcasting over the next few years.

• Podcast Movement is five months away; and currently is still planned to happen at the end of August. Happily, the event is scheduled to be in Dallas TX this year, which is where Podcast Movement’s main headquarters is based, so they know what it’s like. The company has also posted details of a “contingency registration”, and ways that it offers to remain part of the podcasting community.

• Whooshkaa is offering free private podcasting accounts to schools worldwide. We covered fellow Australian company RØDE’s offer of a free RØDECaster Pro kit to any NSW school a few days ago. Veritone is also giving free access to its applications. UK-based podcast host Podiant is offering a free 30-minute consultation to help you get started.

  
  Aug 22 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Bouncecast is a Finnish audio editor app that includes level normalisation, de-essing and noise reduction.

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• Steven Goldstein posts What Podcasters Can Do During A Pandemic. “The longer we are forced to practice “Social Distancing,” the more likely connection Is what people will crave,” he says.

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 22 2023

• The BBC has released a statement of how it plans to keep the UK “informed, educated and entertained” during the coronavirus outbreak, including plans to rerun old comedies and broadcast new cultural programming. (We’d note that this public service broadcaster, paid-for by the UK public, is still witholding programmes from Google Podcasts users).

• Having to record at home rather than in a “real” studio? Acast have produced a useful set of tips for home recording.

• Radiodays Europe, a large radio and podcasting conference, has been re-scheduled for 13-15 December 2020. It’ll still be in Lisbon, Portugal.

• Event ticketing company Eventbrite is holding all ticket money from events, and not allowing event creators to withdraw any money to pay their own cancellation fees, we learn. This is impacting some podcast events scheduled for as far ahead as October. Opinion: Not cool.

• East Coast Studios post about a successful resolution of a problem with one of their podcasts - Unable To Play. Something went wrong. Try Again Later. tl;dr: don’t go uploading variable bitrate podcasts, y’all.

• The CEO of Zoom, Eric Yuan, has just sold about $15.4m of shares in his company, which offers video conferencing and is used by podcasters.