James Cridland's PodNews For Wednesday, Dec 17

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Wednesday, December 17, 2025

Netflix and iHeartMedia have announced an exclusive video partnership for top iHeartPodcasts. iHeart continues to retain audio-only rights and distribution; but the 14 announced shows will be removed from YouTube.

• Some of the shows that are not part of the deal include On Purpose with Jay Shetty with 16mn views over the past 30 days, but which isn’t headed to Netflix. Nor is Club Shay Shay (20mn), Drink Champs (2.2mn), or Las Culturistas (3mn). One of iHeart’s biggest shows is also obviously missing: Stuff You Should Know doesn’t currently make video versions of its podcast. (There are more shows to be announced though.)
• How big is Netflix? In 2023, Podnews built a tool using Netflix’s own data to help compare the size of Netflix shows to podcasts; our own Podnews Weekly Review is bigger than 1-in-5 of all the shows on Netflix, despite only getting 26,500 downloads a month.


Good news from the UK: after a lobbying campaign by AudioUK, the UK Government has granted a seat on the Creative Industries Council to podcasting and audio, representing a significant recognition of the creative, cultural and economic value of podcasting and audio. It will allow the industry to engage directly with policymakers.


The BBC’s future funding model from 2028 is the subject of a green paper and public consultation from the UK government. (In the UK, “green papers” propose policy ideas for discussion and consultation). Radiocentre, the UK commercial radio trade body, has suggested that ad funding should be ruled-out; earlier this year, after considerable industry pressure, the BBC abandoned plans to place ads in its podcasts in the UK.

• The BBC currently earns most of its funding from a $233 “licence fee” directly from UK households - which raises $5bn per year. This week, US President Donald Trump announced plans to sue the BBC for $10bn for a misleading edit of a speech in a TV program which did not air in the US.

The National Headliner Awards has just opened for entries, including those for podcasts (see the Digital Multimedia category). The awards have been going since 1935.


Spotify highlighted all the money they spent to promote Wrapped

✔There's More to Read:  HERE

Tuesday, December 16, 2025

Some of the best performing podcasts for advertisers are tried and trusted shows that have been established for more than five years. That’s according to Oxford Road’s ORBIT data, which draws on $1.6bn+ in ad campaigns. Top performing shows include The Tim Ferris Show, Young and Profiting with Hala Taha, and Crime Junkie - all of whom have been podcasting since before March 2020, and out-perform newer shows.


The Washington Post knew that its AI-produced podcasts were going to be poor after internal tests but launched them anyway, reports Futurism. A piece in LAist quotes Gabriel Soto from Edison Research - 1 in 5 podcast consumers say they’ve listened to an AI-narrated podcast; but many prefer the human connection, he says.


The new features in Apple Podcasts makes the app “finally good again”, says HowToGeek. The automated chapter feature is “really slick”, according to none other than Podcasting 2.0's Dave Jones, who says that he’s now using Apple Podcasts for his work-related podcasts. (You get the new features by updating your device to v26.2 - chapters and timed links are also visible on Mac using 26.2 as well).

Apple Podcasts added a new support document helping users who have trouble signing-in to Apple Podcasts Connect. The first step is to give them valid payment information (which won’t be used until you make a purchase).


Podcastle has launched Async Intelligence, a tool that watches your video content and suggests edits to make for better engagement. It’s been trained with 500,000 hours of content, and more than a million sets of engagement signals.

✔There's More to Read:  HERE

Monday, December 15, 2025

2025's best true crime podcasts have been announced by the true crime review podcast Crime Writers On. The podcast has reviewed more than a thousand true-crime and crime-adjacent podcasts. We publish the full list today.


iOS podcast app Castro has blocked Inception Point AI podcasts from its app search results. In a blog post, Castro’s Dustin Bluck says that Inception Point AI “seems to be keying on popular searches in order to flood search results and deceive users.”

• Is the accusation fair? A search in Apple Podcasts for Charlie Kirk brings up four shows from Inception Point AI in the results - Charlie Kirk Biography Flash, Charlie Kirk, Charlie Kirk Death and Charlie Kirk Manhunt. The company’s CEO, Jeanine Wright - who is a former legal attorney - has been clear about the company’s SEO policy, saying in an interview for the Podnews Weekly Review podcast: “When people typed Charlie Kirk into Apple and Spotify, we were three of the top five shows - even beating out the Daily Mail.” Only one of those shows makes any mention of AI in the audio; another claims it has “personal interviews” and “a team of expert researchers and journalists”.
• As of checking today, Inception Point AI’s biography channel contains 733 shows; the vast majority of which are, according to the company, not checked by humans before publishing.

Apple released iOS v26.2 at the end of last week. In Apple Podcasts, it rolls out automated chapters for every podcast, as well as “timed links”, which is particularly helpful for guests, allowing links to their podcasts to appear when they’re mentioned in the audio. We’ve updated our FAQ. The v26.2 update also includes more than 25 different security fixes, so we’d suggest you update as soon as you’re able to.

• To update your iPhone or iPad to v26.2, open the Settings app, choose “General” then “Software Update”, and pull down the screen to check for the latest. (Do it from a fast wifi connection!)

✔There's More To Read:  HERE

Friday, December 12, 2025

In the US, there are almost twice as many men creating podcasts as women, according to The Creators 2025, a new study from Sounds Profitable into the creator ecosystem for podcasting, which became available to all yesterday. The full report is a free download.

• While there is woefully poor gender balance in podcast creation, there is growing creator participation from multicultural communities, the study suggests, with the number of Hispanic, Black and Asian creators outpacing White creators. White creators also are less likely to create video.
• The data also shows that one in three podcast creators quit. That figure is higher for those aged 55+, or for those who identify LGBTQ+.
• “Women aren’t quitting podcasting more than men — they’re just not starting. That’s an entry problem, not a commitment problem,” said Sounds Profitable’s Tom Webster, suggesting that there are structural barriers to entry. “We lose something when voices opt out before they ever opt in.”

Good news for fans of Nerdette - the show is to relaunch as an independent production, called Happy to Be Here. Nerdette was the casualty of cuts at WBEZ announced in April 2024; the host, Greta Johnsen, was able to use the old Nerdette feed for this new show.

The Fiction Podcast Weekly newsletter is now independent. Expect resources and news for fiction podcast makers.

The Washington Post is making AI-generated podcasts for the paper’s mobile app. But Semafor reports that the shows are riddled with errors: from poor pronounciations to misattributions or even just making stuff up … meanwhile Australian radio group SCA, which uses AI to write some of its news bulletins, has wrongly named a man accused of escaping from the police as Dylan Hogarth, the journalist for a local newspaper that reported on the same story.

Spotify published questions (and answers) about Spotify Wrapped.

✔There's More to Read:   HERE

Thursday. December 11, 2025

The inductees of the 2026 Podcast Hall of Fame have been announced, recognising what the organisers call “visionary creators, innovators, and advocates whose work has shaped the modern podcasting landscape”. The Hall of Fame Ceremony is at PodFest, Jan 16 2026; the evening will be hosted by John Lee Dumas, founder and host of Entrepreneurs on Fire.

• This year’s inductees are: \ Mark Asquith, Founder of Captivate \ Arielle Nisenblatt, founder, EarBuds Podcast Collective \ Dan Carlin, Creator, Hardcore History \ James Cridland, Editor, Podnews \ Pat Flynn, Founder, Smart Passive Income\ Julie Samuels, President/CEO Tech:NYC, Senior Staff Podcast Troll Attorney, EFF \ Veronica Belmont, CNET’s Buzz Out Loud, Sword & Laser, Mahalo Daily, co-host of Tekzilla \ Sarah van Mosel, former VP, Sponsorship at New York Public Radio, Acast, Stitcher, iHeart, SiriusXM \ Paul Colligan, President, Podcast Partnership \ Kerri Hoffman, CEO, PRX \ Dan Miller, host, 48 Days to the Work You Love, in memoriam - to be presented by Dave Ramsey

Speaking of which: Podfest’s pricing goes up on Friday. As a Podnews newsletter subscriber, you can save a further 10% over here.


Libsyn has published its new pricing on its website. Its “bare essentials” plan has been removed.


YouTube’s Neal Mohan has been named TIME’s 2025 CEO of the Year.

Last month, Steven Bartlett announced that he’s been running “consistent on-screen fact-checking” for Diary of a CEO since June. A “medical PhD graduate” is “adding real-time notes to episode transcripts” in a way that is said to improve editorial accuracy. The announcement wasn’t serviced to the press. It may be a response to a story from the BBC World Service last year about claims of harmful health information on his show.

✔There's More To Read:  HERE