Layoffs at Leo Laporte’s TWiT

• TWiT, one of the oldest podcast networks, has made a number of layoffs “in order to keep operating without a loss”. Hosts Jason Howell and Ant Pruitt and editor Victor Bognot have left the company. TWiT was projected to lose $1.1mn next year. We’ve a full transcript of Leo’s announcement.

• For consuming podcasts, YouTube has more than twice the users of Apple Podcasts, and almost twice that of Spotify, according to a study of YouTube’s growth as a “power podcast player”, highlighted in a new study from Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights.

• UK podcast production company Listen is to produce a companion podcast for a BBC reality TV show. The Traitors: Uncloaked will be “visualised” and shown on TV directly after the main show has aired.

• Podcastle has added Santa Claus and Grinch AI voices to its text-to-speech generator. (Hear them in our podcast).

• A podcast app called Podlight, which promises to make social media clips for podcasts, has won a prize for “most creative idea” from the University of Queensland.

• The Week looks at the UK’s Goalhanger Podcasts, which claims 17.5mn downloads a month.

• Podcast player Podfans has released a new video player. As you’d expect, it supports the alternateEnclosure tag, has picture-in-picture, and works alongside other podcasting 2.0 features.

• The Webby Awards has published its 2024 Webby Awards Trend Report, which looks at insights into the use of AI innovations. Meanwhile, Steve Goldstein and Amplifi Media have published Authenticity and AI in Podcasting, a look at the intersection of podcasting and AI.

Podcast News

The Engadget Podcast produced its 200th episode at the end of last week. The show looked back at tech developments since 2019.

The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast has signed with Adalyst Media, a network of podcasts with predominantly female and mom audiences. Margaret Ables, Adalyst Media’s co-founder: “We are delighted to help Ginny’s show reach new listeners, and to help brands connect with her sizable, dedicated, and engaged audience of parents.”

The Staying Relevant podcast has seen a 70% increase on downloads week-on-week. How did they do it? One of the co-hosts, Sam Thompson, won the final of the UK version of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, which got 7.6mn viewers on Sunday night. “We can already see the impact his time in the jungle is having”, said Andy Goldsmith from Adelicious.

Podcast promotion in the wild

Amazon Music held a Best Podcasts of 2023 celebration in London, attended by over 300 people. The Some Voices choir performed through the evening, even performing some podcast theme tunes; and a number of shows did live recordings. We spied Persephonica’s Dino Sofos in the guest photographs.

The mission, we’re told, was “to do something joyful for the podcasting community and industry in the UK, in an especially trying year”. Images are from Rachel Billings.

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