Supercast announces $2m of funding; new CEO

• Exclusive: Listener support platform Supercast has announced it’s achieved $2m in seed funding. The company has also announced a new CEO, Jason Sew Hoy, who joins from 99designs. In a personal blog post, Jason says “what really grabbed me was the passion economy movement and realizing just how big an opportunity most podcasters are missing.” The company will be using its investment to hire a remote team.

• What podcast buttons should you have on your website? The Apple Podcasts button, obviously - but what other ones? We have some data from our own website - and it seems to uncover the need for at least one button we bet you don’t have.

• A PRX Podcast Privacy Symposium is taking place today in New York NY, USA. They’ve posted a list of stories to read on the subject. We’d have loved to have been there; they’re not streaming the event, but apparently we can watch #podcastprivacy on Twitter.

• Podcast Radio, the London-based all-podcast station, has signed its second “pod-jock”: KROQ’s former breakfast host Gene Baxter. The radio legend joins another radio legend: the Podnews podcast, which airs on the station multiple times a day. Cough. Listen here

We [Westwood One] remain the fastest growing podcast network in the US with approximately 85 million monthly downloads. In 2019, we delivered over $25 million in revenue for the year, more than doubling on a year-over-year basis, which exceeded our publicly stated target and, importantly, continue to deliver solid contribution margins. — Mary Berner, President and CEO, Cumulus Media, in an earnings call

Get the free Podnews newsletter for more like this

Get it free

• Audible has debuted two new exclusive shows from Ant Middleton, a former British Special Forces soldier, author, documentarian and adventurer. The first, about marathons, is now available; the second will be launched at the end of April.

• In the US, Eric Johnson has joined ABC Audio as the company’s Director and Executive Producer of Podcast Programming. He’s worked with ABC News for over thirteen years as an award-winning producer.

• Neil Drumming is the new Managing Editor of Serial Productions. The writer-producer and film director joins from This American Life.

• How do you discover new podcasts to listen to? The Podcast Host are running a Podcast Discoverability Survey, and if you’ve a few moments, they’d love you to take the survey. There are microphones and headphones to give away.

Thank you to Mamamia, who produce news, podcasts and video for women, for your kind support of Podnews and becoming our latest gold supporter. Here are some of their podcasts. You can be like them.

From our readers

Noting Edison Research’s Podcast Ranker, which we reported on yesterday, John Forberger says: Podcast reach: somebody is finally measuring it. Very much needed; while Rob Kaiju says As interesting as it is, I can’t think of a content medium where who is in the Top 10 matters less.

Podcast News

Blinkist is launching their first original podcast. State of Mind launches tomorrow, and features, as guests, Carles Puyol (FC Barça), Kickstarter’s founder Ryan Holiday, and the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel. It’s hosted by Blinkist’s co-founder Niklas Jansen. (Simplecast)

Nov 11, 1975 was a dramatic day in Australian political history, as Gough Whitlam was sacked as Prime Minister by the Queen’s representative in the country. The Eleventh is a new podcast from the ABC, described as an 'explosive thriller’.

GovExec Daily is a new daily podcast for federal government managers. Government Executive says that this new launch builds on the power of the other podcasts the company makes, and claims over half a million listeners.