Season 3 of "Serial" is coming.
Unfortunately, we just don't know exactly when.
Pandora Senior Vice President Lizzie Widhelm teased the new season of the wildly popular "This American Life" series as she explained to Cheddar why her company sees a ripe opportunity in what remains a very young platform for podcasts.
"We think there's a huge opportunity there to grow listener hours, make those makers happy and have something for advertisers," she said in an interview with Cheddar's Peter Gorenstein at the Cannes Lions festival.
But many obstacles must be overcome, among them the advertising model.
"Anything that's early has a non-scalable ad model," Widhelm said, referring to the relative newness of podcasts as a medium.
But the content offers real potential for advertisers, she said.
"There's a lot of consumers right now that are moving into podcasts and loving them because their identity is becoming so important to them.
"When you're listening to content that really resonates with you and is really personal to you, any ad that sits in that format is going to have a better chance of performing than an ad that's stitched into something that's just a mass broadcast."
Discoverability of podcasts is another problem. "What's broken with podcasts is not the audience; the audience is there, they love it," she said. "They can't find anything from a topical standpoint."
She added that Pandora was in a "pilot phase" of testing different topical shows.
As for the launch date of "Serial" Season 3, Widhelm said, "I can't tell you; Sarah will kill me," a reference to one of the show's creators, Sarah Koenig.
"But you'll know soon enough; it's gonna be great."
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/pandora-svp-lizzie-widhelm-on-state-of-advertising-for-audio).
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
