The Daily, The Weekly, the Apple Watch, and more Google Podcasts features

• Michael Barbaro and Lisa Tobin from The Daily are the subject of a long piece in The Hollywood Reporter, as they gear up for The Weekly, a 30-episode season on FX and Hulu. It launches in June.

• Network 10, an Australian television network owned by CBS, has released its first podcast. The Professor and The Hack is the first from the company’s 10 Speaks division, and is a political podcast coinciding with the recently-announced Federal Election in the country. It isn’t, yet, in Apple Podcasts, though.

  
  Aug 12 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Megaphone post about the Apple Watch, calling it podcasting’s stealth success story.

  
  Aug 12 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Advice: 3 ways to build and keep your radio or podcast audience from Backstage magazine; JAR Audio looks at ideal analytics for branded podcasts; Billboard highlights what makes a great podcast studio; and Brett Schafer examines Spotify’s podcast analytics.

  
  Aug 12 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Spotify is using Instagram to advertise its podcast content in Canada. Featured podcasts include Canadaland, Frontburner and The Daily.

• Google Podcasts appears to have many BBC podcasts back again: this time, via republished RSS feeds on Feedburner. Meantime, explore topics you have listened to is a new section of the app, leading you to Google searches about podcast topics you’ve listened to, and an auto-generated popular with listeners of Podnews panel appears to suggest… well, we’re not sure what to think.

  • Now that the website link has disappeared from Apple Podcasts pages, we (again) wonder about the validity of the BBC’s removal of their podcasts from Google Podcasts.

Podcasts

Shell, the petro-chemicals company, has released its first podcast. The Energy Podcast speaks about the global energy system. (Omny Studio)

The Bugle - the audio newspaper for a visual world - has moved to Entale, using the company’s new RSS transfer feature. The podcast used to be part of Radiotopia, but has recently attempted to gain even more independence, much like the country of Andy Zaltzman, the main host. (Entale)

Westeros Weekly is a new Game of Thrones weekly podcast, available Monday afternoons through Game of Thrones’ final season. (Himalaya)

Correspondence

• There were a few opinions yesterday on the problem with the word “subscribe”; Podnews just prefers to use the word “listen”.

• Jason writes:

  There is a big difference between the word “subscribe” and “listen.”
  “Listen to this podcast” sounds like you’re asking people to hear one episode.
  “Subscribe to this podcast” sounds like you’re asking people to hear all your episodes as you publish them.
  The only solution I can think of this early in the morning is “subscribe for free to hear all episodes.”
  I’m sure there’s a better solution. I’ll work on that.

• Harris says:

  I think “Subscribe” (used with one simple change) can be even more enticing and helpful than “Listen” when providing instructions to listeners.
  My solution is to take the weakness of the word “Subscribe” (I don’t want to pay money!) and turn it into a strength (I’m getting something FREE?!) . Here is how I use it in my show notes:
  Subscribe (free) on Apple Podcasts.
  Subscribe (free) on Google Podcasts or An Android app.
  I think “Subscribe (free)” is better than “Listen” bc you want to instruct them to find and click “Subscribe” rather than just seek out a play button on each episode and “Listen” (and not Subscribe).
  I hope that is a helpful perspective.

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