City Cast, the local podcast and newsletter network, has announced an expansion to Seattle and the Twin Cities, marking the 15th city the company will cover.
In a social media post, the company’s CEO David Plotz made the announcement.
“I’m thrilled to announce that City Cast is expanding to Seattle and the Twin Cities!” said Plotz. “We’re hiring five people in each market, and launching daily local podcasts and newsletters in the fall. If you’re keeping count, this means the City Cast network will now cover 15 U.S. cities.”
Additionally, the company shared insight into how it chooses the cities to expand to. “We look for rapidly growing cities not just because it means more listeners and readers but because growth brings tension and tension makes for great podcasts,” it stated.
The company also said it looks for competitive markets, cities that feature local issues that transcend the right versus left barrier, a city that overindexes on news podcast listening and closely resembles its current demographics.
It added that it had a robust list of candidates for expansion before settling on the Twin Cities and Seattle.
“When we set out to pick our 2025 expansion markets, we started with a long list of 20 cities, and then walked through each of these criteria, city by city,” Plotz and co-founder Andi McDaniel said in a joint statement. “We made charts, we awarded points, and we talked to people who lived there. And then we did what companies always do: we had a big argument about it. A delightful, roisterous Zoom fight about which two cities should rise to the top. In the end, the data pointed us toward two cities (okay, technically three): Minneapolis/St. Paul and Seattle.”
With the addition of Seattle and the Twin Cities, City Cast will now be operating in Austin, Boise, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Madison, Nashville, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Washington D.C.
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