Turned off: YouTube suddenly pulls podcast

• Top 10 parenting podcast The Parent Tap has been suddenly pulled from YouTube - apparently by an automated tool. With no strikes or warnings, the show was permanently pulled on August 14th, accusing the channel of trying to circumvent a ban: a ban that the channel owner says simply didn’t happen. An attempt to appeal the closure was knocked back almost instantly by YouTube, using an automated template. Ryan McDonough, the channel’s owner, has opened a petition; and told Podnews: “I poured my heart and soul into building this channel from scratch. In 4 short months, I went from zero to 2.3k subscribers and over 50,000 views with a 150 video catalog. Having all of that wiped out overnight by an automated system is a gut-punch that keeps punching. The fact that I can’t reach a human and have literally no idea how this happened is completely beyond comprehension.” His show continues on open RSS.

• Fictional TV shows like Only Murders In The Building are giving an image of podcasting that is “at best, a crude simplification, and at worst, a fantasy flatly incompatible with the physics of sound”, says a new academic study conducted by Spanish researchers. Writing for Podnews today, one of the authors, Maria Fitó Carreras, says don’t believe everything you see on television - and, for the value of the craft, don’t let others either.

• Bloomberg is suggesting that YouTube is not happy about creators who are also posting videos on Netflix. YouTube is apparently less likely to promote these shows, will exclude creators from major brand campaign revenue, and may offer “millions of dollars” to retain first-view exclusivity. Tubefilter reports on Bloomberg’s paid story; YouTube is said to be reluctant to pay for content, and doesn’t want to appear to show favouritism to some creators over others.

• We’ve had more email about Megaphone woes. One large publisher tells us: “We’ve experienced a complete outage of ad plays, ads repeating back-to-back and who knows what else we haven’t discovered yet. We’ve had to re-write orders and move ads to different ad slots to get them to play. Discovering and remediating these issues has been an entirely manual process, with little active support from Megaphone. This not only costs the industry ad dollars but also redirects countless hours of labor toward remediation.” Another publisher tells us: “It was a bad summer working for Spotify and their Megaphone support team (unpaid) while we spent a month asking why things were not delivering. We learned we could no longer have the same order run in multiple countries - each would require its own order. A true pain for those along the border in the Canada and USA who still want to market to one another. One Star Spotify Summer. Do not recommend.” We’ve approached the company for comment.

• Need a second opinion on your podcast? A new service called PodCritic has been launched to give a consistent analysis of episodes using a combined mix of AI and human editorial review. The combination allows every episode to be analysed, with the human review focusing on strategic direction and high-consequence conclusions.

• Edison Research suggests that many right-leaning podcasts are showing increases in audience as the US moves into the mid-term election period. The growth isn’t across the board, however.

• The Onion's InfoWars has been lampooning right-wing podcasts with The Jim Haggerty Show.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• There is a new Podcast Index search endpoint for people. It uses the podcast:person feature of Podcasting 2.0; the data here doesn’t yet appear to be based on the channel, just the item, but you’ll find this data now linked from our podcast pages, like the page for Podcasting 2.0. Here, for example, are Podcasts with Alberto Betella.

• In case you missed it, Podcast Radar is a new tool looking at the location of podcasts (built by RSS.com’s Alberto Betella. It uses the podcast:location feature of Podcasting 2.0; zoom into the map to see individual shows, or click the points on the map to learn more. The globe now has a random podcast feature, as well as the ability to choose shows based on where they were recorded or where they’re about.

  • The “podcast location” can be as tightly focused as you want it to be - down to a building. That could help this feature work even harder to find you new audiences.

• Audiogram is a new remote MCP service that lets Claude, OpenClaw, Hermes and other MCP-compatible imaginary friends search Apple Podcasts, process available episodes, and retrieve full transcripts for research and analysis.

  • Alternatively, Listen Notes has added some podcast API skills to help your imaginary friend use the Listen Notes API.

• Audio Audit, a podcast audio checking service, “can now fix the problems it finds”, the company says. The tool now applies noise reduction, speech levelling and loudness normalisation.

Tips and tricks - with Podcast Movement NYC

• As Podcast Movement gets closer, here’s how to make sure your podcast is where your listeners are.
• Just discovered about ID3 meta tags? Think they’re important for SEO? We have proof that you can concentrate on doing something else. There, we’ve saved you all that time!

Podcast News - with Airwave

With Airwave: Face Off: The US vs China is an inside look at the turbulent relationship between the world’s two superpowers, the two men in charge, and the vital issues that affect us all; it’s hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jane Perlez, former New York Times Beijing bureau chief and current fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center.

“You cannot overlook the importance of a great audio creative ad. It’s the perfect media plan. But if you’ve got a bad ad, it’s still going to do badly.” Andy Maxwell, the cofounder of Earmax Media, is on PodBiz this week discussing the mechanics of podcast ad buying, audience targeting, and campaign conversion.

In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. Finding fun once more in Jane Austen’s words, Dame Julie Andrews returns to narrate more Jane Austen Stories - this time, the original text of Emma. The show is a Noiser production, and launches tomorrow.

Funny You Should Ask is a new podcast from GOLD Comedy, hosted by founder Lynn Harris. It unlocks GOLD’s members-only vault of conversations with your favorite funny people, all chatting candidly about making a living making people laugh. It launches today with Maria Bamford, then runs weekly through a season that includes Judy Gold, Jeff Hiller, Jonterri Gadson, and Shaun Cassidy.