Last week Tenderfoot TV premiered Laura of the Woods on YouTube. The 10-minute short is a handmade, “LEGO-inspired” stop-motion adaptation of a firsthand account from Radio Rental. The short is produced by LEGO stop motion animation company Twisted Bricks. The adaptation, built from a 2019 episode with over 3 million downloads, debuted the day before new episodes of Radio Rental dropped for the Halloween season. Creator and Tenderfoot co-founder Payne Lindsey says he loves that something made of toys “can be this unsettling.” Apple Podcasts launched a similar project the same week. The Greatest Stories Never Seen is a series of four animated videos, each about one minute long, built from four different podcasts: Acast's Toni and Ryan, Wondery's Baby, This is Keke Palmer, iHeart's Las Culturistas and the indie House Guest. Apple is promoting the videos on its Apple Podcasts Instagram feed. Ashley Lusk, who worked on the series, wrote on LinkedIn that the hosts were willing to try something new. She says the project explores how audio and video work together and separately. Both projects keep the original podcast audio and pair it with new animation, branching out from the tradition of fixed-camera filming podcast hosts.

The U.S. Small Business Administration now classifies creator-led businesses under NAICS 5121, Motion Picture and Video Industries. The SBA calls its October 15 guidance the first federal small-business classification to recognize qualifying content creators. Podcasters are named alongside filmmakers, video producers, streamers, gamers, digital publishers and creative agencies. The SBA says the classification covers 27 million creator-led businesses. Creators could already qualify for SBA loans and contracting when they met program rules but lacked clear direction on which industry code fit their business. Now, the SBA encourages creator to start with NAICS 5121 and pick the six-digit code that best matches their main activity. Commenters have asked for a specific industry exception for content creators. The SBA will consider those comments after the public comment period closes November 20.

YouTube reached a record 15.8% of U.S. TV viewing in August, according to Nielsen data, up from 13.1% a year earlier. Viewing among adults 50 and older rose 9%. The Streaming Wars argues this gives Google a stronger pitch for budgets that have gone to broadcast and cable. Google's TV in Reach Planner lets U.S. advertisers compare YouTube and linear TV on estimated reach, frequency and cost. Media Dynamics estimates advertisers committed $17.2 billion to streaming in the 2026-27 upfront. Broadcast and cable combined drew $16.6 billion. Average CPMs fell in all three categories. The Streaming Wars cautions that more viewing time is not the same as more reachable people or ad impressions. YouTube also sells a mix of creators, publishers, music and podcasts across thousands of channels, not a network schedule. Exclusive sports and news franchises keep their pricing power. General entertainment with heavy audience overlap faces the most pressure.

Bloomberg's Ashley Carman looks at why Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert dropped out of Edison Research's top 50 U.S. podcasts. The show made the chart every quarter from 2022 through 2025. It ranked No. 50 in Q1 2026 before falling off. Edison says it ranked No. 59 in Q3. Edison research director Gabriel Soto tells Carman the drop fits a larger trend. Shows with a stronger YouTube presence are rising over shows that built audiences on legacy podcast apps. Soto adds that Armchair Expert listeners use Spotify most, likely a result of Shepard's past exclusive deal there. Carman notes the show's YouTube episodes usually draw well under 50,000 views. Amy Poehler's Good Hang launched in March 2025 and now ranks No. 18. Its episodes often top 1 million YouTube views. Carman also cites Reddit fans who say they have tired of the show's repeated stories. Elsewhere in the Q3 ranker, Dumb Blonde jumped 32 spots to No. 17. Five shows entered the top 50 for the first time.

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