Podcasting may still be an industry where an individual with a great idea can launch a show into great success. But podcasting has grown during the past few years into an industry where deal-making is measured in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. No surprise that this year’s movers, shakers, visionaries and innovators hail from some of the biggest media and tech companies in America. Podcast News Daily and Inside Radio has compiled a list of the Top 10 Most Powerful People in Podcasting. Read more

The sudden departure of its chief executive was just the beginning of the changes at Libsyn. The company has promoted President Laurie Sims to Chief Operating Officer as it announces a strategic review has been underway for months evaluating where Libsyn’s greatest long-term potential lies. The board has also hired a strategic advisor to help it evaluate all the options, including potential mergers or acquisitions. Read more

Podcast producer Aaron Mahnke has leveraged his love of history to become one of the industry’s top producers. Now he is turning to a segment that many believe could be as big and buzzworthy as true crime. Mahnke will helm a high-profile podcast fiction launch as part of an iHeartPodcast Network alliance. In the nearer term he and iHeart will this month debut American Shadows, a series focused on the forgotten stories of American history. Read more

In a quarter when ad sales were suffering from the effects of COVID-19, the revenue from podcast has proven to be good medicine. On Monday, Cumulus Media announced that its podcast ad sales were a “bright spot” during second quarter. “Podcasting had a particularly strong quarter,” said CEO Mary Berner. The company has already booked more podcast ad revenue in 2020 than it had in all of 2019. Read more

Even with the rise of several women-run and targeted podcast networks, a review of the top podcasts shows a majority of the hits still have men at the helm. The Wrap analyzed the top-charting shows during the past month on Apple, Google, Spotify, and Stitcher, and it calculated that 79% of the shows were either hosted or co-hosted by men. Read more

Three former Obama White House staffers, all women, are launching a political podcast timed to capture some of the interest around the 2020 presidential election to help the show connect with an audience. Pod is a Woman is a weekly show hosted by Alejandra Campoverdi, Johanna Maska and Darienne Page who promise an “unfiltered” weekly conversation about politics and popular culture. The podcast is produced by Entercom’s Cadence13. Read more

A one percent month-to-month increase for iHeartRadio combined with a five percent drop in NPR’s reach has resulted in another change at the top of Podtrac’s monthly report on the biggest podcast publishers. It said iHeart had a unique monthly U.S. audience of more than 24.6 million in July, putting it ahead of NPR for the third time in the past four months. “It's no accident that NPR and iHeart go back and forth over who is No. 1,” said iHeartMedia CEO Bob Pittman. Read more

Entercom, the parent of Cadence13 and Pineapple Street Studios, reported its digital revenue grew 19% during the second quarter despite the impact of the pandemic. The company does not release specific figures related to podcasting, but CEO David Field said several metrics are pointing to it becoming a growing piece of the Entercom business. He said they’re also open to doing exclusive deals with other companies similar to a Spotify arrangement struck earlier this year. Read more

The E.W. Scripps Company may be spinning off Stitcher to SiriusXM, but it will still have a line into podcasting through its Triton Digital business. Scripps said Friday that Triton revenue increased 5.6% during the second quarter compared to a year ago, to $10.5 million. Despite selling Stitcher, CEO Adam Symson said Scripps remains “firmly committed” to Triton. Read more

Suzanne Grimes, President of Westwood One and the architect of the radio network’s push into podcasting, has just signed a new contract keeping her at the company through at least Dec. 31, 2022. It will make her the third-best paid executive at parent Cumulus Media. Grimes’ previous contract with the company expired at the end of July. Read more

Live shows have been scuttled by the pandemic, but the comedy podcast And That’s Why We Drink is testing the waters for virtual… Pocket Casts is set to release a new version of its listening app that sorts episodes by length.. Netflix has reportedly joined the team that is adapting the podcast 36 Questions into a feature film…Podchaser has added a new discovery feature for users allowing them to connect their Twitter account to their podcast listening app. Read more

There is a new podcast this week for expecting parents called What to Expect. Also, The Dr. Oz Show’s sleep expert launches a podcast. New York Magazine’s The Cut comes back to life. Ashley Flowers gets presidential. Plus, a podcast is calling famous people’s mothers. Here is some of what is new in podcasting this week. Read more

During a year like no other, iHeartMedia said Thursday that its podcast business growth path remained a constant and, if anything, accelerated during the second quarter. Podcast downloads for iHeart jumped 62% during the quarter, while podcast revenue more than doubled. “That strength in podcasting highlights how the decisions that we have made are paying off,” said CEO Bob Pittman. Read more

Warner Music Group CEO Steve Cooper thinks the addition of spoken-word content to streaming platforms may help deliver more ears to his company’s music on the apps. But while he sees links between the two in terms of delivery and discovery, Cooper said his record company is not yet ready to make the next step and sign and develop podcast artists. “We just haven’t seen the right ones yet,” he said. Read more

Thirty Five Ventures, the media and investment company created by NBA star Kevin Durant and entrepreneur Rich Kleiman four years ago, is making its move into podcasting. The company has created The Boardroom Podcast Network. Durant will serve as a curator and executive producer for the network, which has teamed up with Entercom’s Cadence13. Read more

PodcastOne’s new parent company, LiveXLive Media, reported an 11% increase in revenue during its latest fiscal quarter ending June 30. The company says it had a record $10.5 million in revenue. LiveXLive did not release podcast-specific revenue, but it said the increase during the quarter was largely due to the growth in advertising and sponsorship revenue. Last month LiveXLive closed an $18.1 million all-stock deal to buy PodcastOne. Read more

Ben Rhodes, co-host of Crooked Media’s foreign policy podcast Pod Save the World, is branching out with a second podcast miniseries that will look at the U.S. role as leader on the world stage and recent efforts to relinquish that role in favor of an America First policy. Rhodes, former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama, visited nearly every continent during the past two years as he researched and gathered interviews for the series titled Missing America. Read more

Chris Spencer may be leaving his job as chief executive of Libsyn, but he will continue to be employed by the company through year-end at his $400,000 salary. That is just one detail disclosed in a company regulatory filing. It showed he will also continue to collect a paycheck through February 2023. Read more

More than one in five digital radio ad dollars will go toward podcasts this year, according to a newly updated outlook for the sector by eMarketer. Its analysts project podcast industry revenue will grow 10.4% in 2020 to $782 million. And while the coronavirus pandemic has made forecasting especially perilous, eMarketer predicts podcast revenue will top the $1 billion mark for the first time in 2021. Read more

Chris Spencer has been Chief Executive Officer since Libsyn was born in 2016. But after five years at the helm, Spencer announced Wednesday he is stepping down as CEO and leaving the company’s board, effective immediately. “As our industry becomes more media centric with accelerating growth, I believe we need new expertise in the leadership role,” he said. A search for his successor is underway. Read more

Hot on the heels of the New York Times’ acquisition of Serial Productions and an alliance with This American Life that will see the paper begin selling the show’s ads beginning in 2021, executives say podcasting and other audio products will continue to play a larger role in what the company offers. What about becoming an aggregator itself? Or charging for The Daily? Here’s what incoming Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien has to say. Read more

ABF Creative, the Black-owned multicultural podcast platform, has struck a new partnership with Ubongo, a Pan-African social enterprise that creates entertainment for kids in Africa. The alliance will mean a popular Tanzanian cartoon character will come to life in a podcast for kids in America. ABF points out that fewer than 15% of podcasts within the Kids and Family genre include a creator or character of color. Read more

Chartable, the podcast analytics and attribution company, has beta-launched a new tool to allow publishers and advertisers to measure the impact of podcast ad campaigns for promoting new podcasts. What it is calling SmartPromos measures podcast-to-podcast attribution. To date Chartable has measured nearly 200 million promo impressions across iHeartRadio, Cadence13, Pineapple Street Studios, Pushkin Industries, Condé Nast, Pacific Content and Wondery. Read more

Entercom has been moving to grow its podcasting business beyond just buying the studios Cadence13 and Pineapple Street Studios. It is also creating more shows in-house. Now it has hired Bill Smee as its head of news programming. His role will include expanding Entercom’s portfolio of all-news and news-talk radio stations into podcasting. Read more

Podcasting has emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic stronger than ever, according to the latest Edison Research Share of Ear data. It shows podcasting’s share of ad-supported audio time among Americans age 18 and older soared 28% during the past year and is now second only to the behemoth AM/FM radio. Read more

There Be Monsters, an original ten-part narrative sci-fi thriller podcast starring some well known Hollywoood actors, is set to be released later this year in what has been part of an expanding slate of “pod fiction” or “PodFi” audio dramas that were taking shape between the iHeartPodcast Network, FlynnPictureCo., and Psychopia Pictures. For podcasters, the more interesting story may be how the series came together in the middle of a global pandemic. Read more

Fox Sports Radio is launching a new daily sports podcast featuring weekend host and FS1 contributor Jason McIntyre. Straight Fire will drop each weekday morning at 5am in what the sports network says will “set the agenda” for the day by providing “bold opinions on the biggest stories in sports.” Read more

A small number of podcasts are consumed on smart speakers, but as the devices become more common and more apps make it easier to listen to shows on smart speakers those numbers are likely to grow. In a step in that direction, Pandora has just announced it will allow users across all tiers of service to listen to podcasts on Alexa-enabled devices including Amazon Echo, Echo Dot and Echo Show by using simple voice commands. Read more

In a deal that has more than doubled the number of shows in the sales catalog of Podcast Ad Reps, the two-year-old Dallas-based company has expanded its relationship with Starburns Audio. PAR had already been repping 14 of Starburns Audio’s podcasts. The deal makes it the exclusive national sales partner representing all 36 shows released to date. Read more

The Opinion page of the New York Times already features a video tab and it will soon offer opinion-focused audio and podcasts. The company has announced it has hired a team of veteran podcasters and radio producers to lead the Opinion Audio Team. But in the announcement, Paula Szuchman, the Opinion section’s Managing Producer for Audio, offers few details of what the Times plans to produce. Read more

Free podcast promos airing on iHeartMedia radio stations accumulated more occurrences in the week of July 27-Aug. 2 than any paid advertiser did across the entire radio industry. Promos for the podcast “Forgotten Women Of Juárez” topped the weekly Media Monitors tally with 71,630 airings. Those outnumbered the 53,260 paid ads for insurance company Progressive, which ranked second for the week. Read more

Embedded podcast ads have more than twice the conversion rates of ads that are dynamically inserted. That is according to a new analysis of podcast advertising by Podsights, which examined the actions taken by listeners to 532 podcast campaigns. It shows the average conversion rate across all campaigns and industries was higher than the rate on many social media platforms. Read more

The iHeartPodcast Network has teamed with Tongal, a content creation platform, for a competition to find the next great podcast. Through August 27 any podcast host can submit a video pitch for the chance to develop and launch a show on iHeart. Ten semifinalists will be awarded $1,000 to develop their idea into a pilot. In addition to joining the iHeartPodcast Network, the winner of the competition will be featured on iHeartRadio stations nationwide. Read more

Public radio continues to pave the podcast path for commercial broadcasters as they calculate the best strategy for the blossoming on-demand world. Last week’s RAIN Global Podcast Leadership Summit brought together the leaders from four of the biggest public radio networks that are charting a course in the medium. The commonality among them is how podcasting is opening audio to new audiences and new ways of telling stories. Read more

Libsyn’s nine-month search for a new chief financial officer is over. The company has hired Richard Heyse as its new CFO. He is a veteran financial executive with more than three decades of experience. Most recently Heyse has been a financial consultant and interim-CFO for several private companies. Heyse takes over for Gabriel Mosey, who has served as interim-CFO since last October. Read more

NBA star JJ Redick and his new podcast company ThreeFourTwo Productions are teaming up with Cadence13. Part of Entercom’s podcast network, Cadence13 will produce and distribute the weekly sports show that will be co-hosted by Redick and Tommy Alter, producer and writer for Showtime’s “Desus and Mero” and HBO’s “The Shop.” Read more

The nonprofit Dig Deep calculates 2.2 million Americans do not have running water in their homes. In 2020 there may be no better time to talk about water. Anew podcast from American Public Media (APM) will do just that as the In Deep podcast immerses listeners in the history, systems, and policies of one of the resource often taken for granted. Produced by APM’s water initiative,The Water Main, the series will explore the labyrinth of how our water is cleaned, managed, and delivered – from toilet to tap. Read more

Podcasters may be focused on growing their business and attracting advertisers to help fuel that effort. One thing the industry has going for it is that, as a medium, the advertising creatives not only “get” podcasting, but they genuinely seem to like it. But theattributes that make podcast advertising so appealing also require the medium to be treated differently. In fact, two ad creative experts say the quality of podcasts has raised the creative bar for advertisers. Read more

Post-lockdown America continues to tune into podcasts on the go, according to the latest snapshot provided by Libsyn. It has released June listening download data for the more than 69,000 podcasts it hosts, and the numbers show it was a record-setter for mobile downloads as summertime weather combined with more businesses reopening. Read more

Author and time management expert Laura Vanderkam carved out some time last year to begin producing the Before Breakfast podcast to address the scheduling challenges of everyday life. When life turned upside down earlier this year with lockdowns and work-from-home the new norm, Vanderkam and the iHeartPodcast Network launched a second daily morning show called The New Corner Office. Read more

The Fangirl Sports Network, the first-ever female-focused sports content company, is making the leap into podcasting. It has partnered with Benztown + McVay Media Podcast Networks to produce a pair of shows that are geared toward not only entertainment sports fans but also empowering women. Read more

Conan O’Brien has announced he is releasing the third season of his Earwolf podcast Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend earlier than expected. It will debut Monday…Podchaser is making it easier for its users to join The Podcast Academy…Visual quote cards are being tested by Spotify on the just-launched The Michelle Obama Podcast as a way to promote podcasts on social media Latin American podcast listening decreased during June and July… Radio host-turned-podcaster Kirk Minihane is taking another break from his Barstool Sports podcast. Read more

America’s second-biggest mass murder of 2016 was in small Ohio town. The case is full of unanswered questions that a new iHeartPodcast Network show explores. Also this week, former Navy SEAL Cade Courtley tests the survival skills of famous people and listeners. CBS News correspondent Major Garrett launches a political podcast as comedian Tig Notaro launches an advice show. And APM’s Marketplace creates a kid-focused show. Here’s some of that’s new in podcasting this week. Read more

The second quarter brought a variety of challenges tied to the COVID-19 pandemic. And while the early weeks brought some changes in podcast consumption, when the dust settled new Edison Research data shows the tailwind of an expanding industry overcame all else. Its latest Podcast Consumer Tracking Report shows weekly podcast listeners spent 6 hours and 45 minutes a week on average listening to shows, a half hour increase compared to first quarter. Read more

The Interactive Advertising Bureau projects the podcast industry will reach $1 billion in annual revenue by 2021 and industry executives said Wednesday they see no reason that mark won’t be crossed even with the upheaval of the coronavirus pandemic. Speaking at the RAIN Global Podcast Leadership Summit they said as the industry continues its maturation, the strengths of podcasting’s appeal continue to hold up under scrutiny. Read more

Podcasting remains an embryonic industry in the eyes of SiriusXM CEO Jim Meyer, who fresh from striking the biggest podcast acquisition to date, cautioned investors Thursday that they need to be a “little careful” as they try to predict what the size of the podcast business will be. “Podcasting is in the first inning,” he said. What Meyer is more certain about is that companies that have an ability to bundle audio products will have a leg up. Read more

Research shows there is an opening for music podcasts, and Speed of Sound is the latest show launching in what remains a relatively small genre considering podcasting is an audio medium. Steve Greenberg, a music industry veteran who has helped launch the careers of Hanson and the Jonas Brothers, among others, is hosting the iHeartPodcast Network show. “Behind every hit song there’s a story packed with surprises,” said Greenberg. Read more

Art19 has a new partnership with Bertelsmann’s Audio Alliance. The German network brings over a hundred podcasts to Art19 from European creators. The group will also develop, produce and market spoken-word audio, leveraging Art19 technology for ad sales and distribution. “They will be a cornerstone partner for us,” Art19’s Lex Friedman said. Read more

Pollster and political commentator Scott Rasmussen is taking his long-running “Number of the Day” feature on Ballotpedia and making it a daily podcast. The show is part of Just the News, the multiplatform news network launched in January 2020 by investigative journalist John Solomon. Scott Rasmussen’s Number of the Day will be released each weekday at 8:00am ET. Read more

Ford Motor Company is bringing back the famed Bronco after a 25-year hiatus, and one way it will spur interest in the SUV brand is through a new eight-episode documentary podcast series called Bring Back Bronco. The podcast is part of a growing focus on podcasts as the automaker follows its customers beyond the traditional brand-building mediums like television. “People are getting their content in different ways,” says Chief Communications Officer Mark Truby. Read more