Friday, February 21, 2020

Picking pods

The first sign of twitchiness at the costs and returns of podcasts at the BBC: Jim Waterson, media editor at The Guardian, says Beyond Today is being cut from five editions a week to two.

Launched at the end of October 2018, it was a Colossal investment, with one giant foot in a fibre-glass canoe of modern, young thinking, and the other wedged in the fabric-bound 1950s kayak of Today. This mixed message has never really gone in any particular direction, nor caught a wave.

Beyond Today had editors, producers and two expensive presenters of its own. Let's hope the BBC looks after them.

Meanwhile, the rebranding of Brexitcast to Newscast is to go further - with Newscast becoming a daily event, with a single host.

This is not a bold confident move; this is mere apery of the success of the New York Times' The Daily, hosted by Michael Barbaro. It topped the monthly Podtrac charts in the States throughout 2019 and boasts 2 million listeners per episode.  On the back of The Daily, the NYT now has a 30-strong audio team.

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