After forging a sales representation partnership with NOVA Entertainment in February, Schwartz Media have now sold their pioneering daily news podcast 7am to South Australian company Solstice Media.

The sale is expected to go through by the end of financial year and Solstice Media intends to continue with 7am’s current team and format.

Schwartz Media also publishes The Saturday Paper, Australian Foreign Affairs, Quarterly Essay, The Monthly magazine and the weekly podcast Read This hosted by The Monthly’s editor, Michael Williams. Solstice Media have an array of QLD and SA print publications and a suite of podcasts tied into The New Daily, an Australian news website they also own.

This sale is significant for independent podcasters and news providers. 7am was one of the first daily news podcasts, launching in May 2019. It was for a long time the top Australia news podcast getting during the height of Covid, 45,000 listens each day, and almost a quarter of a million listens weekly.

It was No 18 in the April Triton Australian Podcast Ranker, with nearly 300,000 monthly listeners, a drop from 2020, but more due to greater competition than lessening of quality or reputation.

7am is hosted by award-winning journalists Ruby Jones and Daniel James. It will be interesting to see what Schwartz Media does next without its podcast news offering.