iHeart Continues to Sacrifice Radio For Podcasting's Sake

It's been a long week. It started with two familiar foes in conflict with each other. If only they could work together, the sky would be the limit, but one side is so obsessed with the other, that they seem to have lost their own way. Of course I'm talking about radio and podcasting.

On Monday, iHeartMedia laid off another bucket of local radio employees. (Edit: More came Thursday.) It's no secret that the radio industry has been hard-hit by the pandemic, and radio revenue is way down. In a vacuum, you can understand the tough decision to have layoffs. In 2020, that's not unique to radio. But consider this. Last week I told you that iHeart just bought Voxnest - rumors have the price tag around $55 million. Voxnest is big in podcast analytics, and also owns the Spreaker platform. Once iHeart filed bankruptcy in the face of its $22 billion debt, it freed them up to re-work their business ventures.

Radio's strength has always been its personality -the ability to connect to listeners. And a big part of that is its on air talent. But when a company decides its priority is to invest in podcasting, and keep slashing radio assets, that tells you where their priorities are. I just hope they don't destroy podcasting like they did radio.

iHeart owns the most shows in Top 200 podcasts, according to Podcast Business Journal, largely because they pimp them out across their radio network.https://podcastbusinessjournal.com/media-monitors-iheart-is-1/

Stitcher launching new app. Instead of Favoriting a show, you'll follow it to subscribe.

Magellan's AI Blog tracked the Election, and how the Biden and Trump campaigns utilized podcast advertising. https://www.magellan.ai/blog-posts/how-have-the-presidential-candidates-used-podcast-advertising-in-the-election?utm_source=podnews.net&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=podnews.net:2020-10-30

Nielsen has more data about host-read podcast ads being more effective: https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2020/host-read-podcast-ads-pack-a-brand-recall-punch/

Finally, two great courses I took this week in my professional development.

Tom Kelly from Clean Cut Audio did a "Beginner's Guide to Equalization for Podcast and Voiceover on Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/share/103H9oAEASdFhTR3gJ/

Tanner Campbell's "Learn to Edit Your Own Podcast" on AppSumo. https://appsumo.com/learn-edit-your-own-podcast/?utm_source=sendfox&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=this-week-in-podcast-editing

Both courses were very helpful as I work to improve my skills in Compression and Equalization.

Find jag on social media @JAGPodcastProductions or online at JAGPodcastProductions.com

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