Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 192, published January 22, 2019.
Pinna stands alone. This morning, Graham Holdings announced that Pinna — the kids programming-focused paid listening service that originally launched in 2017 under the Panoply umbrella — is being spun out into a standalone company. The new entity will be led by CEO Maggie McGuire, a veteran of children-focused media divisions, including Scholastic, Viacom’s Nickelodeon, and Cablevision. The standalone Pinna will be backed by Graham Holdings, the company formed from what remained of The Washington Post Co. after the Post itself was sold to Jeff Bezos five years ago.
Back when Pinna first rolled out, I considered the product to be “the first really interesting attempt to get people to pay for podcasts.” (Still do, given my arguments here.) But its fate was left uncertain in the wake of Panoply’s divestment from the content business last fall. I inquired about Pinna back when…
