Rethinking Audio vs. Video Podcasting, Creators Selling TV-Style, & More

0:00This is the Download, your daily source for the essential news in the business of podcasting on Gavin Gattis. Here's what you need to know for today Tuesday, September 22, 2026. First up, most podcast listeners aren't choosing between audio and video. Why is the industry? This is a guest post on Sounds Profitable from Triton Digital Chief Revenue Officer Sharon Taylor. Taylor argues that data does not support the recurring news cycle about podcasting leaving audio behind. According to the 2025 US podcast report, only 7% of month the US podcast consumers watch podcasts exclusively by comparison 13% listen exclusively and 80% do both. It was shaping how people discover shows far more than how they consume one once they

1:01found it. Taylor's prescription is to treat video as an expansion rather than a migration, building a tune-lane show where a single video file generates video and audio outputs and audio ads run inside video episodes instead of a separate video attack. She notes that podcasting's first-year listener skew more female and nearly a decade younger than long tenured ones and are far-likelier to arrive through YouTube and social platforms. Next up, some creators want to negotiate deals like TV networks. This is a digital piece looking at a growing number of creators and the companies representing them who want to sell advertising the way television networks do. Through upfront style, commitments. These include arcade, spotter, Forbes, Walmart and the IEP all have held creator focused upfront events but the model runs into a structural problem broadcast does not face. As GoFish's Lauren Lister puts it, creator inventories effectively unlimited and spread

2:05across hundreds of thousands of sellers, unlike the finite seasonal inventory and network controls. Experts told DigitA that any workable creator upfront will likely center on the top 1% of talent sold through agencies and creator networks with arcade CEO Matt Alek arguing deals needed to find output, metrics and pricing that much of the creator market still lacks. And for final top story, Trump's NPR PBS funding fight quietly comes to an end. The legal fight over an executive order meant to strip federal funding from National Public Radio and PBS quietly ended back in July. The broadcasters, public stations and administration agreed to dismiss the remaining claims leaving a ruling in place by a US district judge Randolph Moss that permanently blocked key provisions of executive order 14 to 90 as view point discrimination and retaliation barred by the

3:06first amendment. Which is a peric victory for public media given congressional rescinding of funds has already disbanded the corporation for public broadcasting back in January. As for the rest of the news, Futuro Media's three decade flagship series Latino USA is joining I Heart Media's My Cultura podcast network, a new WPP media and system one study of 1,217 ads found that naming the advertiser within the first two seconds paired with strong positive emotion can lift brand recognition up to seven fold and ranking podcasts and AMFM radio among advertising's top touch points. On the latest episode of media roundtable marketers from master class, Skylark marketing and select quote, dub media mix modeling the quote, mollet of measurement and quote, back in style only because user level tracking stopped working journalist founded storytelling studio brazen has raised 2.5 million dollars in a seed ground led by Lotus Singapore group

4:11to fund investigations across podcasts, including brazen FM and whale hunting. Magellan A.I's latest chart shows retail and AI leading podcast ads spend with quince on top and an estimated $7.6 million in August and open AI surging to 4.8 million from $174,000 a month earlier. A Nielsen and cats digital study in the Washington DC market found unabial brand recall reached 65% among adults exposed to both digital audio and connected TV versus 37% for either format on its own. And finally academic podcasting company cited media has hired Alan Black, founder of Blast of Dial Media as its director of operations and development. That does it for today's issue of the download you can find links to everything I just talked about by clicking the link in your show notes that takes you to today's episode post on

5:13our site where you can also subscribe to get the newsletter version of the show every day. This issue was written and produced by myself, Brian Brale, led a Tom Webster and Molly Demilier. For Sounds Profitable, I'm Gavin Gattis and I'll see you tomorrow morning for the download recap.