Podcast-land saw the release of two extremely high profile projects: The Michelle Obama Podcast and Nice White Parents. July turned out to be really busy this year, which wasn’t really the case last summer. Then again, we didn’t have a pandemic this time last year. Oh boy. A few brief notes on those two launches. […]

Seems like some folks have been getting this email lately: Keep this between you and me, though. It’s confidential, they said.

Last week, Palace Shaw, an out-going employee at PRX, circulated a letter among her colleagues that laid out several details and reasons that contributed to her departure. In that letter, she paints a picture of PRX as being a workplace that made things structurally and culturally hard for her, as a Black woman, to feel […]

“Anyone claiming to have solid expectations in this environment is playing someone for a fool,” said Bikram Chatterji, the managing director of Maximum Fun. We were talking about the veteran podcast company’s annual membership drive, the MaxFunDrive, which wrapped up its latest campaign last week. Membership revenue is a crucial part of Maximum Fun’s business, […]

New York Times assembles its Opinion Audio unit. Back to the Times for a hot second. Earlier this month, the news organization announced the eight hires they’ve made to make up the team that will be expanding the prominent Opinion section’s work around audio. As a reminder, there’s already one Times Opinion podcast that’s been […]

This is Headgum’s first investment raise ever, since its founding in 2015 by Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld. The news strikes me as a response to the times. Broadly speaking, Headgum can be viewed as having been a fairly conventional podcast network for much of its existence, structured as a collection of network-owned programming bolstered […]

Let’s do a little bit of Kremlinology. Last week, Spotify officially rolled out support for video podcasts, initially limiting the experience to a small number of shows. This comes after a period of testing around Zane and Heath: Unfiltered, a podcast fronted by two YouTube stars, originally announced in early May. The initial batch of […]

ICYMI: Serial Productions is now a New York Times company. Also, the Times forged a “strategic alliance” with This American Life, in which the famed public radio and podcast operation will continue editorially collaborating with Serial Productions, while also receiving co-marketing and advertising sales support from the Times. Aside from the general head-turning nature of […]

Last week, Amanda Seales — the actor, singer, and celebrity, whose credits include Issa Rae’s Insecure — officially launched a new network, called the Smart Funny & Black Podcast Network, that springboards out of her popular show, “Small Doses with Amanda Seales.” But the launch announcement came with a declaration that rubbed some the wrong […]