Serial returns

• It’s ten years since Serial started - and this month, it’s coming back. The fourth season features Sarah Koenig and Dana Chivvis, telling the history of Guantanamo through the personal stories of those on the ground who know things the rest of us don’t. It’s out on Mar 28 on the NYT Audio app and everywhere podcasts are.

• Yesterday evening, Gimlet, Parcast and Ringer Unions appeared to have failed to have reached a deal with Spotify management. Ringer Union claims 86% of their members are ready to walk out, while 100% of Gimlet’s team are.

• Meanwhile, Ashley Carman writes about US podcasting’s strange double-life: as employee negotiations appear to fail and layoffs continue, big shows are hawking themselves for big money - Alex Cooper is trying to find a buyer for Call Her Daddy (currently with Spotify), and is seeking a nine-figure deal; and Jason and Travis Kelce’s New Heights, a Wave Sports & Entertainment show that is on Spotify’s Megaphone, is also looking for a buyer.

• CoHost, the podcast analytics and audience insights platform created by Quill podcast agency (and this month’s sponsor of Podnews), has launched a pro podcaster research survey. If you’re a pro podcaster, participate in the survey and you’ll be entered to win a $100 Amazon gift card. It looks as if it’ll take a few minutes - please support them and take part!

• TEGNA released its latest financials. It’s the owner of the Locked On Podcast Network, and that saw a 37% increase of downloads and views in 2023, broke 30mn in October, and is expanding into video. Our sister publication the Podcast Business Journal will have an interview with David Locke later today about the company’s strategy to get close to audiences.

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• iHeartMedia released its Q4 financials. Podcast revenue was $132 million, up 17% for the quarter, and up 14% for the whole of 2023. The company claims growing demand for podcast advertising.

• Joe Casabona went to Apple’s “What’s New At Apple Podcasts” event.

• Podcast ad rates are up month-on-month, according to Libsyn’s AdvertiseCast; the average CPM spot in February was $21.99, up from $21.61 in January, and unchanged year-on-year. (Cost per thousand downloads are, of course, related to total downloads: which, as we covered recently, are down by nearly a third.)

• The new owner of Castro is making welcome changes: every podcast with a listener is now being updated much more frequently. Under its previous owner, you might have had to wait up to 45 days (!!) for new episodes to show; every show is now being updated at least once every two hours.

• It’s not just you - Apple Podcasts’ “promo request form”, linked-to from the Apple website, appears to have broken. It was down for all of yesterday. We’ve let them know.

• The owner of Pocket Casts, Automattic, is to sell data from posts on Wordpress and Tumblr to train AI tools, 404 Media has reported. Sites will need to opt out.

• Please go and leave PodcastAddict a positive review in the Google Play store, since he has people like this leaving him a one-star.

Moves and hires

• Sarah van Mosel is back at SiriusXM as SVP, Podcast Strategy. It’s part of a number of podcast leadership changes at the company - we’ve an excerpt from an internal memo. She’d worked at Stitcher; then worked for Realm and iHeartMedia among others.

• Ben Juster has been hired as Vice President of Podcasting Operations at Pionaire. He joins from iHeartMedia.

Tips and tricks - with Memberful

• RedCircle takes a look at the technical side of podcasting. Editing makes perfect, the company says - but only if you remember to press record…
• Lower Street, a branded podcast company, shares the company’s strategies for successfully growing your podcast.

Podcast News - with Airwave

From Airwave: The Dallas Morning News features short news summaries, available Monday-Friday from the newspaper. Yesterday, the podcast covered the approval by the City Council of a $2.5 million settlement in a civil rights lawsuit.

Need some good news for the weekend? CNN 5 Things is launching a new show tomorrow: called 5 Good Things. They tell us “Saturdays are for sunshine — especially for your ears”, and we’re promised all the uplifting happenings across the world, and hopefully rather less about elections, climate emergencies, ongoing wars and iOS 17's auto-downloads.

In Norway, a young woman’s boyfriend forgets who she is, overnight. In Detroit, a shop is robbed and a man is arrested but he says he was never there. Humanity is colliding with AI; and The Guardian’s new podcast Black Box tells the stories behind this new world. It launches on Monday.

Revisionist History has a new limited-series called Development Hell, delving into the captivating realm of Hollywood’s unmade projects. The first episode discusses how Malcolm Gladwell and Steve Gaghan nearly adapted his best-selling book Blink with Heath Ledger but the project was put on indefinite hiatus when tragedy struck.