From our daily newsletter, the latest from podnews.net with Red Circle. Acast has launched its first AI-powered tool, that's Acast Intelligence to you, Smart Recommendations, an AI-powered podcast ad planner. The tool takes natural language to allow advertisers to turn a desire to reach, for example, men living in capital cities in Australia interested in craft beer, into a curated set of podcasts to advertise in.
In the UK, the BBC has announced a partnership with the Crosswires Podcast Festival in Sheffield to run a weekend of free shows in early July. Free tickets will be available at the end of next week. We may have an end to Cast Media's bankruptcy proceedings, which we've been covering for over a year. The company's plan to emerge from bankruptcy was confirmed by a court yesterday. Meanwhile, Cast Media published its accounts for April 2025 as part of the bankruptcy proceedings.
The company made $11,000 in advertising, $3,700 from Apple Podcasts' premium subscriptions. After paying CEO Colin Thompson's salary and freelancers, the company lost $11,500 in the month. Podcast app Metacast has added AI-generated podcast summaries. Summaries are used by search to make shows easier to find. You can find a short summary for the PodNews Weekly review on their web app. We link to that today. The app also plans support for private RSS feeds in future.
In a LinkedIn post, Pave Studios founder Max Cutler says that Pave uses the term show instead of podcast. And the term podcasting has out-served its purpose. He said similar in our interview with him last week in the PodNews Weekly review, which you can find wherever you got this podcast. Podcast platform Truefans has announced support for hosting video and audio via HLS, a streaming technology. It's part of a wider piece of industry work for video support in open RSS.
The BBC is to remove Gary Lineker's The Rest is Football from its BBC Sounds app, following the broadcaster leaving the BBC last weekend. The Rest is History will remain on BBC Sounds in an eight-week delayed version with advertising removed. And it's the last day to enter the British Podcast Awards today. In People News, John Sardelis is to leave Barometer, where he was Chief Revenue Officer, to join the BBC as Head of Sales for podcasts in North America.
And in podcast news, brands and media partners need to take the time to trans-create, not just translate. The Media Roundtable this week recaps the podcast show London 2025, with a number of people from Oxford Road and Veritone One who were there. And this podcast is sponsored by Red Circle. Talking into a microphone for free? Well, that's a choice. Getting paid for it? Well, that's a business. There's a link in the show notes to find out more.
And that's the latest from our newsletter. To read all the stories and subscribe for free, we're at podnews.net.