Audience Engagement Digital Publishing
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News podcast listeners among most likely to tune in weekly: The Media Roundup

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News podcast listeners among most likely to tune in weekly

As if we could lead today’s newsletter with anything other than a podcasting story. However, much as we’d like to link to a page that’s otherwise blank but for the words ‘PODCASTING IS GREAT’, there’s a lot in this Ofcom study to dig into. First and foremost, as the headlines suggests, news podcasts have a key role to play in encouraging audiences to reengage with a newsbrand on a weekly basis.

However! Get this: “the survey found that podcasts made by independent producers had the most loyal audiences with 58% of people who said they listened to podcasts weekly saying they listened to podcasts made by independent creators.” Meanwhile roughly a third of the respondents said they listen to podcasts made by newspapers and magazines.

That’s probably not too surprising, given the weight of independently-produced podcasts. Newspapers and magazines do, after all, focus on quality over quantity. The lesson here is that podcasting still largely has a low barrier to entry, and that audiences respond well to shows with distinct identities. Small wonder that many podcast platforms have launched incubators designed to grow the number of independent shows on their networks…

UK to press ahead with reform to tackle Big Tech’s market power

Yesterday the UK parliament introduced new legislation designed to empower the Digital Markets Unit to oversee platforms which are deemed to have so-called strategic market status (SMS) aka Big Tech. This is relevant to Media Voices because of the soft power newspapers have to influence how this legislation is viewed – and because news publishers are desperate to see Google and Meta etc reined in from a competition point of view.

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Our special Practical AI podcast documentary explores how local media organisations have got started with AI projects, the benefits they’re seeing, the challenges they’ve faced and what advice they would give to other publishers looking to get into AI.


This content originally appeared in The Media Roundup, a daily newsletter from Media Voices. Subscribe here: