Last week saw Facebook launch podcasts on its platform. Not that you’d notice if you were outside of the US.
The roll-out seems somewhat limited. US listeners are the only ones that can tune in, and participation for podcasters seems invite-only for the moment.
This means that even if your podcast episodes are pulled through and published they won’t show up in an international user’s newsfeed, or even on a Page if you visit it.
Last week there were some more audio acquisitions with Sony Music grabbing audio production company Somethin’ Else and Bauer adding the few Imagine stations to their portfolio.
On the radio consolidation front there isn’t a lot left to buy up. The majority of UK FM licences are owned by Bauer and Global, with the other two last remaining groups heavily aligned to one, or the other. Bauer provide advertising and services to the Nation Radio stations and Communicorp (other than a single station in Manchester) operate stations under brand licence from Global. In effect, both of these groups operate the local radio bit (local ads and programming) and everything else comes from their partner.
It’s not often you get a month-long preview of a radio station before it launches, but we certainly have with GB News.
If you didn’t know, as well as launching as a TV channel, the new ‘news’ channel GB News is also going to be broadcasting on the radio too – they announced they’ve snagged a slot on Digital One.
There’s some confusion about whether it’s going to be a feed of the TV channel, or something more. My take is that whilst ‘the TV feed’ will make up a decent part of it, I’d expect there to be some radio specific programming in time too.
I’ve had a busy time in podcasting land recently. We’ve been gearing up for the announcements of this year’s British Podcast Awards nominees and simultaneously planning a 24-hour podcasting conference with parts in Australia, Europe and North America – Podcast Day 24. There’s been a lot going on.
I was very happy to get the British Podcast Awards nominations announced. It whittled around 1600 entries down to about 130 nominees, through the hard work of nearly 200 judges. The list is a great mix of shows, small and large, famous and anonymous. There are nominees with 200 listens per episode and 200,000 per episode. The Awards has always been about discovery – and I love that there’s so many new shows to sample.
