Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 177, published September 18, 2018.
Headspin. Been quite the week, hasn’t it? In case you missed it: Last Wednesday, Panoply announced that it was getting out of the content business and, as a result, would be letting go of its entire editorial division — putting more than a few good producers out of a job — in favor of focusing solely on its “podcast hosting and ads services business,” i.e. its Megaphone platform. The company is also getting out of direct ad sales — leaving its client base to shop for new sales partners, seemingly abruptly — in favor of its podcast monetization offering that’s rooted in its partnership with Nielsen’s audience segmentation tool. Which is to say: Panoply is essentially shifting into a direct LibSyn and Art19 competitor with an additional monetization edge.
The Panoply news wasn’t an isolated development. That same day, Slate Group chairman Jacob Weisberg announced…
