PodcastOne bought by LiveXLive for $18.1m

• US podcast network PodcastOne has been purchased by LiveXLive Media for $18.1m. Norm Pattiz will join LiveXLive “as a significant shareholder” and remain with PodcastOne. The release claims that PodcastOne brought in $27.5m revenue in 2019, with shows like Adam Carolla and The Jordan Harbinger Show.

  • LiveXLive has also renewed its agreement with iHeartMedia to stream its live events, including the iHeartRadio Podcast Awards - it’s worked with iHeartMedia since 2019.

• iHeartMedia had their investor call on Thursday. The company mentioned podcasts 57 times, more than they mentioned radio (49 times). Their podcast revenue in Q1 grew 80% year-on-year, said Bob Pittman, adding that their own iHeartRadio app has doubled year-on-year for podcast usage.

• Scripps also released quarterly earnings figures. Of their podcast companies, Triton Digital, which also owns Omny Studio, showed a small decrease in revenue (down 1.1% to $10.3m); Stitcher/Midroll saw an increase of 13.4% to $17.1m.

• 99% of podcast advertising is dreadful, says Fable and Folly’s Sean Howard in a blog post that demonstrates the power of unique creative to fit both a brand and a podcast. Meanwhile, Acast’s Brian Danzis suggests that we shouldn’t treat podcasting the same way as we did digital video.

• Podthon 2020 is looking for speaker submissions for their virtual summit, which will be held in July.

• Acast is giving away a fortnight’s sponsorship of their hit podcast Mellan Himmel och Jord, a podcast that has 1.6m listeners a month. The prize is worth $15,000. Tävlingen avslutas den 1 juni 2020, the company adds, clarifying de som kan vara med och tävla är svenska företag och organisationer, stora som små, which we think is important.

• The best-of-breed podcast app Overcast has released an update that improves the Apple Watch functionality, allowing you to stream over cellular direct to the watch. You lose the voice boost and smart speed functionality, sadly.

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• Our podcasting jobs service Podjobs now removes jobs automatically if they’re no longer available. (Just make your original jobs page return a 404). It’s quick and free to post jobs on Podjobs; and Podnews carries new positions every day.

Podcast News

Manoush Zomorodi and Jen Poyant have released a new episode of ZigZag, announcing the end of the partnership. Parenting time pressures and the uncertainty of the coronavirus were to blame.

“Take me to the magic of the moment on a glory night, where the children of tomorrow dream away in the Wind of Change”… The song by The Scorpions from 1990 captured the zeitgeist of the disintegrating Iron Curtain and the fall of the Soviet Union. But what if it wasn’t a song by The Scorpions at all, and was actually written… by the CIA, in a dastardly plot to bring down America’s long-time enemy? A new podcast released today, Wind of Change investigates - with Pineapple Street Studios, Crooked Media and Spotify.

Let’s Find Common Ground is a new podcast interview series with public policy leaders that seek to find points of agreement on divisive issues, produced for Common Ground Committee by DaviesContent, and co-hosted by podcast journalists Richard Davies and Ashley Milne-Tyte.

Back before all the madness, there was a pop group called S Club 7, and they had a TV show called (depending where you were) Miami 7 or S Club 7 in Miami. Remember it? It’s an S Pod Thing! remembers it in rather more detail than you ever will, revisiting every episode of all four seasons, in the company of different guests. There ain’t no party like an S Club party!

Like The Moth but a little wilder, RISK! this week has a strange story: a guy who had his leg amputated, and then decided to eat it and serve it to his friends. For real. It’s on Stitcher today, and everywhere from tomorrow.

Thank you to Bernie Goldbach for becoming a new personal supporter on Patreon. You, too, can be like Bernie. Thanks, too, to Stephen Neal for being an excellent voiceover in our newsletter today.