ICYMI: Jacob Weisberg and Malcolm Gladwell’s new audio venture, Pushkin Industries, stepped into the open last week, and the company also announced a new Chief Marketing Officer: Heather Fain, a book publishing veteran. Here’s an interesting personnel move: Jonathan Zenti, the creator of Meat (a finalist for Radiotopia’s PodQuest competition back in 2016), joins the […]

“The Troubles.” We’re three months into New York Public Radio’s reckoning with sexual harassment and an organizational culture that allowed for bullying and discriminatory behaviors that have especially hurt women and people of color. (See here, here, and here.) And it’s far from over. Boris Kachka, writing for New York magazine’s The Cut (where the […]

Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 135, published September 5, 2017. Programming note! Ah yes, so we are in September! As you might already know, I’m taking a five-issue break from writing Hot Pod, starting next week and back on October 17, to do the Knight Visiting Nieman Fellowship in […]

Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 111, published March 14, 2017. Infinite Dial 2017. The latest Edison Research report capturing the size of podcast listening audience is in, and growth continues to look pretty solid. However, just how we should feel about that growth appears to be a debated question among […]

The Infinite Dial 是一份针对消费者数字媒介、尤其是音频媒介的使用情况研究报告,自 1998 年来持续以听众数据为依托进行独立研究。最新发布的 Infinite Dial 2017 显示,播 客听众的数量呈持续增长态势。然而,不少播客界人士对此并不满意,认为介于外部市场环 境,播客听众的增速应该远高于这个数字。 (1) 增速缓慢暴露行业短板 报告显示,2017 年全美播客的月活跃听众占到其覆盖听众的 24% (6700 万), 比去年同 期的 21% (5700 万)增长 14%。还有一个更亮眼的数字:过去两年间,全美播客的月活 跃收听人数增长了40%。 然而,今年来的增速趋缓似乎与前阵子备受吹捧的“播客元年”概念形成了强烈的反差。在 我看来,质疑情有可原,却也不宜操之过急: — (a) 首先,播客背后的基础技术这么多年来就没有过突破性的飞跃; (b) 其次,针对播客的大笔投资 案例较为少见,资本对音频内容似乎不太感冒; (c) 第三, 整个播客行业的格局还十分混乱; 关于这一点, Edison Research 公司的战略和营销副总裁 Tom Webster 最近也表示:“这 么些年,播客业仍然没能形成一个组织良好的生态,甚至连‘播客’一词的定义都非常模糊, ‘播客如何做营销’、‘对大众的意义何在’等一系列问题也悬而未决。”  虽然用户基数仍在增长,但不容忽视的是,这些年来用户对这个领域的认知近乎停滞。从 2010 年到 2013 年,美国民众中,对“播客”有概念的群体比例一直在 45%-46%徘徊。 播客行业接下来何去何从,或许离不开以下几个探讨: (2) […]

Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 102, published January 10, 2016. Digits to start the year. Is the podcast industry growing, and if so, how? I’m keeping these three numbers taped to the corner of my laptop as benchmarks to keep track: Audience size: 57 million U.S. monthly listeners, according […]

Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue eighty-nine, published September 27, 2016. Panoply opens a London office. The Slate Group’s audio arm announced yesterday that it was expanding into the good ol’ United Kingdom. Specifically, the company is opening a new production office in London that will “facilitate closer collaboration with […]

A living wage. Last week, a Change.org petition cycled around the Facebook feeds of public radio types asking New York Public Radio — the entity that runs WNYC, classical music station WQXR, and the events-oriented Greene Space — to pay its interns a living wage. The station currently pays interns a stipend of $12 a […]

Audible launches Channels. If you’re reading this column at Nieman Lab, you probably already know the basics: Over the course of last week, Audible initiated the staggered rollout of a new feature called Channels, a portal through which the company now delivers what it’s calling “short-form listening experiences.” Right now, such short-form content on offer […]