News, broadly…
- Parcast is moving to form a union, which means that all three podcast content companies acquired by Spotify are organizing. Here’s The Verge on the matter.
- Edison Research posted a quick update webinar on listening habits during quarantine in late August, and found that podcast consumers have expanded listening time up to 6 hours and 45 minutes per week on average over the second quarter of 2020. That’s about a half hour per week growth since the previous quarter. The big takeaway from this? After the consumption drops in the early stages of the lockdown, it seems that podcast listening might end up actually seeing some growth through these conditions. Here’s the link to the webinar.
- Take with a grain of salt given the source, but still interesting: a podcast advertising analysis effort by Magellan and Westwood One suggests that ad volumes have recovered since the drops during the early stages of lockdown and are poised to surpass prior levels. Here’s the official blog post.
- Audible has announced the launch of an upcoming Sesame Street audio show on its platform. Two notable things: firstly, Audible is really pushing hard on the “podcast” language, to a point where the McClatchy press service is now describing Audible as a “podcast service.” Secondly, and this isn’t a podcast-specific point, but Sesame Street is really a gated community now, huh?
- Curtis Flowers, the subject of In The Dark’s second season, is officially a free man, after the Mississippi attorney general announced that the state was dropping charges against him. Here’s the New York Times on the matter.
- ESPN has a new podcast franchise in the form of “ESPN Investigates,” which is presumably separate from its 30 for 30 podcast exploits. The first series released under the banner is “Bloodlines,” written and hosted by senior writer Wright Thompson, and not to be flip, but it’s about horses.