A new owner for Vox Media’s podcasts?

• Vox Media’s podcasts may be being bought by Versant, the owners of CNBC and MS NOW, suggests The New York Times. The network includes On with Kara Swisher, A Touch More with Sue Bird & Megan Rapinoe, and Stay Tuned with Preet. Speaking recently at the Podcast Business Summit, Kara Swisher advised the audience: “You should own what you make, there’s no other choice in this media environment … entrepreneurism and media have to go together now.”

• Last year, the NZ Podcasting Summit managed to make a Mic Drop Marathon - 26 hosts and 25 guests in just 50 minutes, during the event. That session is coming back this year - the NZ Podcasting Summit 2026 is Sat May 9 in Auckland, New Zealand.

• More details - and pictures - of the new British Airways in-flight podcasts experience with Audible.

• Auddia, which promised to launch an ad-skipping podcast app in Nov 2023, has announced a reverse stock-split in order to stay on the NASDAQ. Earlier this month, the company released its financial report for 2025, revealing that, once again, it made no revenue at all during the year: and managed to lose 49% more money: a loss of $485,885. Auddia announced a new business model in January - charging music artists to get their tracks played during AM/FM adbreaks, which the system also replaces. Nowhere in the description of the new business model does Auddia say how providers of AM/FM radio and podcasts will be paid.

• Why does your studio sound so bad? A new iPhone app called SonarRoom might help you understand why. It’s meant for hifi buffs, but could be helpful for us, too.

• SoundStack has recertified as IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines v2.2 compliant.

• It’s all kicking off in Germany. A German media journalist, Gabor Steingart, has written in an article for his The Pioneer news website: “Renowned journalists read out advertising copy in their podcasts, which are particularly valuable as so-called ”host-read ads". Credibility is traded for cash, while maintaining one’s own voice. In the statistics, this still falls under “journalism”. It would be more honest to reclassify it as prostitution.” Why the grumpy post? Meedia notes that Steingart is trying to promote his own publication’s paid subscription; and could have been directing his comments to one of the hosts of Machtwechsel - the former Editor of The Pioneer, Dagmar Rosenfeld. She’s responded on X by resigning as a columnist. Steingart has dug his heels in, saying that it violates the separation of editorial content and advertising, according to commentator Denise Fernholz. She adds: “in the newsrooms where I worked, we couldn’t have anything to do with monetising our content. Where did that lead? I lost my job, because the (company) couldn’t monetise our output. Haha.”

• Darryl von Däniken writes: “A podcast was never meant to be watched. It was meant to be heard.”

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• John Spurlock is keeping tabs of podcast hosts doing HLS video - in Apple Podcasts or outside. So far, he’s found 78 shows in Apple Podcasts (1,070 episodes). Just want to see an Apple Podcasts m3u8 “multivariant playlist”? Here’s one from Acast (for a trailer episode).

• Transistor has added an integration with Ghost, the popular open-source CMS. You can use Ghost’s paid membership tools to give access to a Transistor private podcast.

• Pod Claw is a new podcast hosting company just for AI agents. There’s no user interface at all; just REST API calls to publish your AI slop to the world via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. It’s free forever if your podslop gets less than 10,000 downloads a month. Here’s a walkthrough.

• A (new?) Japanese podcast hosting company, called Listen, is publishing HLS video to open podcast apps.

• Remember when Google News was trying to bankrupt us with tens of thousands of downloads a day from random Android devices? While we killed that service after Google’s poor communication, others who have persevered with it have finally seen a cut in this spurious traffic (by up to 85%) in the last few weeks.

• Riverside is shortly to be using Auphonic’s services to improve audio quality, according to a legal email sent to customers pointing to new sub-processors. Auphonic is in-use by a number of podcast hosting companies to process audio, and can offer noise reduction, automated de-umming and de-erring, and dynamic audio levelling.

People News

• Del Fordham has been hired as Head of Podcasts for Nine Radio in Australia. He returns to this role after a year working for Audible as Director of APAC Originals. Nine Radio is to rebrand as Tapt Media on May 1, after the business was acquired by the Laundy family.

Tips and tricks - with Riverside

• Riverside shows us the best podcast equipment for beginners and pros in 2026.
• What are the best podcast formats? The Podcast Host looks at them in terms of popularity, but also how easy they are to do.
• What are the biggest podcast pet peeves from your listeners? Dave Jackson’s School of Podcasting highlights a number of them, including an obvious lack of preparation from hosts.

Podcast News - with Airwave

With Airwave: In Data Over Dogma, bible scholar Dr. Dan McClellan and atheist podcaster Dan Beecher team up to discover what the Bible actually says, and what it doesn’t say - even if everyone thinks it does.

NPR’s Newsmakers is new from the public broadcaster: a long-form interview strand within Morning Edition and All Things Considered, as well as its own podcast. It’s in video on YouTube and Spotify (not Apple). The first episode was released last Friday, featuring Maryland Governor Wes Moore.

In Blunt Force Trauma, you’ll step into a case that was supposed to be simple: a young mother found dead on the side of an Oklahoma highway, ruled a hit-and-run. But as you follow the evidence, things stop adding up. The injuries don’t quite fit. The timeline feels off. And the deeper you go, the harder it becomes to accept what you’ve been told. This isn’t a story that gives you easy answers. It’s one that pulls you in, piece by piece, until you’re left asking the same question that started it all: what really happened to Faithe Ely?

How to Dream is a hope-forward podcast for people who feel overwhelmed, discouraged, or stuck. Hosted by therapist and author Deedee Cummings, each episode blends healing, truth, and practical steps to help listeners reclaim their voice and start dreaming again.