*By Bridgette Webb*
Public Radio Exchange (PRX) and Public Radio International (PRI) are joining forces in a bid to capitalize on the booming popularity of podcasts.
The radio producers are two of the four national distributors of programming for public radio stations in the United States, and the first among their peers to merge.
PRX's chief executive, Kerri Hoffman, said there's a real synergy between the two companies.
"Think of PRX and PRI as siblings born a generation apart," Hoffman said Friday in an interview on Cheddar. "There are some things, at our core, at both organizations that we can strengthen. And the things that are differentiators are really where the opportunity is."
The merger may have arrived just in time, with listeners slowly tuning out traditional broadcasts in favor of on-demand and streaming options.
The number of people listening to podcasts has more than doubled over the past five years and is expected to hit roughly 73 million listeners this year, according to [Edison Research](http://www.edisonresearch.com/podcast-consumer-2018/).
That growth has been buoyed by podcasts' ability to showcase diverse and compelling content ー with voices that were traditionally neglected by mainstream radio.
Hoffman said it's a trend she hopes will continue.
"The barriers to entry is so much lower, but that is just part of they story," she said. "The thing that we learned over many years is that we need a whole suite of services that help people get successful."
According to PRX, the combined organization will reach more than 28.5 million listeners a month through 885 stations’ broadcast signals and websites. The companies are projecting $38 million in revenue in the first year after the merger.
Hoffman sees some roadblocks ahead, specifically, the proposal by [Republican lawmakers](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-pbs-cpb-npr-trump-budget-cuts-20170316-story.html ) to reduce funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Still, she thinks public media is here to say ー largely because of listener and viewer support.
" It's always a threat, but we really believe the American public has demonstrated over and over again that there is a strong and important place for non-commercial media in a Democratic society."
For more on this story, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/public-radio-platforms-merge-to-create-podcast-powerhouse).
TD Ameritrade posted quarterly earnings above expectations, but Wall Street's reaction wasn't exactly enthusiastic. Still, the brokerage firm is celebrating last month's successes. President and CEO Tim Hockey talked to Cheddar about how the company navigates market volatility.
TD Ameritrade president and CEO Tim Hockey said the company feels primed to compete with younger-skewing investment products like Robinhood because it's already deep inside millennial pockets ー and more users join the platform every quarter. "In our case, we have a much more sophisticated trading platform, technology platform, education platform, and we are growing at a very happy rate, so we are quite confident in our offering," Hockey told Cheddar Wednesday.
Latch's partnership with UPS is expanding to more cities ー and applications. "The use cases are so much broader than what we would've thought," Latch CEO and co-founder Luke Schoenfelder told Cheddar Wednesday. "People are coming up with entire new businesses just using our system."
Symbiont, a smart contracts platform for institutional applications of blockchain technology, has raised $20 million in a Series B funding round led by Nasdaq Ventures and joined by new investors Citi.
The addition of Netflix to the exclusive Motion Picture Association of America on Tuesday is likely to prompt a shift in policy, both for the movie industry and for the streaming giant.
"Netflix ($NFLX) is going to shape the MPAA's agenda as much as the reverse," Eriq Gardner, a senior editor at The Hollywood Reporter, told Cheddar.
CBD is the latest hot trend in wellness ー and Alkaline Water Company is jumping aboard with a new CBD-infused water.
"We just see that as a market we can take right onto, and glom onto," Alkaline Water Company CEO Ricky Wright told Cheddar on Tuesday. "We already have a lifestyle health product in alkaline water ー we see that as a natural extension."
Slowing economic growth may spell disaster for some businesses, but travel booking site Kayak tends to see more business when times are tough. "When we enter a recession, prices come down and so, as a result, services like Kayak get used more frequently as consumers try to find those deals," Kayak CEO Steve Hafner told Cheddar on Tuesday. The International Monetary Fund on Monday downgraded its forecast for global economic growth, sparking fears of a global slowdown. But Hafner said Kayak managed to grow through the last major recession, and he feels good about its prospects moving forward. "It was a bad one, but we grew right through it and I suspect this would be no different than that," he said.
Oracle has incorporated autonomous technology into its cloud services in an effort to boost security, but Steve Daheb, senior vice president for Oracle Cloud, said Oracle's not the only enterprise company rushing to bring emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence, blockchain, and IoT, into its applications. "We are seeing this fundamental shift, particularly within enterprise, where we are seeing this tipping point where enterprises are looking at adopting \[emerging technology\] into the mission critical applications that they are deploying to market today," Daheb told Cheddar on Tuesday.
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, these are the top stories that moved markets and had investors, business leaders, and entrepreneurs talking this week on Cheddar.
Snap’s global security chief, Francis Racioppi, has been fired after an internal investigation found that he had an undisclosed relationship with a woman from a third-party consulting firm that he paid a sizable, six-figure amount of money to on behalf of Snap. Controversial Snap VP Jason Halpert is also leaving in connection with the investigation.
