This week, Steven Bartlett, host of Diary of a CEO and co-founder of Flightstory, launched a new business in partnership with ex-MrBeast engineer, Rox Codes.

It’s called Flightcast.

It aims to fix podcasting’s messy data and insights problem, and honestly, I’m low-key excited to see if they pull it off.

While many are excited about the product, it has ruffled the feathers of traditional podcasters who don’t agree that video-led podcasts are, well, podcasts.

While that’s a discussion for another time, this will change how we approach podcasting in 2026.

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Let’s get into it 👇

Quick Fire 🧨

• YouTube will give banned creators a ‘second chance’ after rule rollback 

• ‘Call Her Daddy’ podcaster Alex Cooper opens an Unwell ad agency

• Instagram is launching its own awards for creators: “Rings”

• Google and NBCUniversal reach multi-year agreement for YouTube TV

Steven Bartlett teams up with a former MrBeast engineer to disrupt podcasting

Steven Bartlett, host of The Diary of a CEO and co-founder of FlightStory, has partnered with Rox Codes, formerly an engineer for MrBeast, to launch Flightcast, a new video-first podcast hosting platform.

It offers one-click distribution to multiple platforms, including YouTube and Spotify, along with cross-platform analytics and AI-generated titles, chapters, descriptions, and insights.

The platforms feature the same tools that helped grow The Diary of a CEO. The selling point is that Flightcast will give creators the resources used by one of the world’s biggest podcasts to scale their own shows.

One of the biggest problems with podcasting is the lack of audience data and analysis. It has been a terrible pain point of the industry since the first podcast. This is partly due to the lack of data transparency from giants like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It’s also a result of data fracturing captured across platforms, making it difficult to consolidate and identify trends and insights across your given audience.

Key features of Flightcast:

1. One-click capability: After connecting your podcast accounts to Flightcast, creators can now upload their video-podcast across Spotify and YouTube with the click of a button. This is an industry first.

2. Unified analytics: Consolidate all video and audio metrics in a single platform. Includes not only views and downloads but also advanced statistics such as CTR (click through rate), AVD (Average View Duration), returning viewers and listeners, and additional metrics.

3. AI-Powered, automated video clips channels: Automatically generate AI-edited clips of episodes and upload them straight to YouTube. Flightcast tracks which clips gain the most views and reports on the key moments that are performing well.

4. AI Data Analysis: Utilise all available data from Flightcast and request the AI to generate insights about your podcast.

5. AI Trained On You: Generate titles, descriptions, and chapters that actually sound like you to save hours each month.

Instagram

• added the ability to draw in DMs.

• Edits app got 250+ new sound effects, new text styles + fonts, shareable insights, and more.

• launched an animated Collage feature in Stories.

• launched animated Collages in Stories

YouTube

• is introducing its Brand Pulse Report

TikTok

• is introducing ‘Portfolio’ in the Creators Marketplace, letting creators showcase their best videos to brands.

• now offers US and Canadian creators up to 90% of subscription revenue.

• is introducing Shared Collections for saved posts, similar to Instagram.

LinkedIn 

• now lets you add named contributors to projects and jobs.