- Megaphone announced a new partner today: the NBC News group, a.k.a. the news division of NBC Universal.
- QCode, the LA audio studio that produced the Endeavor Audio-distributed Blackout starring Rami Malek, is doubling down on its Hollywood-rooted position, with upcoming projects that include a fiction podcast starring Cynthia Erivo, an unscripted podcast based on an upcoming Elle Fanning movie, and a behind-the-scenes movie podcast. Here’s the Deadline article on the matter. For reference, QCode was started by a former CAA agent, Rob Herting.
- The Harvard Business Review announced last week that it is forming an additional network of four new business pods curated by HBR editors. That builds upon an existing network — which features shows like HBR Ideacast, Dear HBR, and Women at Work — which is said to currently drive more than 2 million monthly downloads. Here’s the press release.
- Don’t miss three great Gabe Bullard pieces in Nieman Reports: “Smart Speaker Use Is Growing. Will News Grow With It?”, “Augmented Reality Comes to Audio,” and “Hudson Mohawk Magazine demonstrates how hyperlocal news shows can make their limited broadcast range their strength rather than a limitation.”
- Speaking about smart speakers, from The Verge: “Apple drops HomePod price down to $299.” I’m just going to link myself from this time last year: “How do HomePod’s meh sales affect Apple’s place in the podcast ecosystem?”
- Shout-out to all culture podcasts everywhere prepping for the final season of Game of Thrones. ‘Tis the Super Bowl (Cleganebowl?) of pop culture, and a great audience driver to boot.
Release Notes
- Night Vale Present’s I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats returned for a second season last week.
- Vox Media is launching a new culture podcast called Primetime, which will “dig into the hidden history of television.” It will be fronted by its critic-at-large Todd VanDerWerff on April 14.
- KCRW’s Lost Notes — described as “an anthology of some of the greatest music stories never truly told” — will return for a second season on April 25 with a new host: the music journalist and author Jessica Hopper.
- WaitWhat, the podcast startup which raised a $4.3 million Series A round in February, has a new collaboration with Quartz, called Should This Exist?
Send me your show notes, y’all.