• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, January 7, 2015

Coming close on the heels of the wildly successful “Serial” podcast, a spinoff of “This American Life” from Chicago Public Media, commercial radio broadcasters are creating new podcast platforms focused on spoken-word programming.

This week, CBS Radio and CBS Local Digital Media unveiled one of the biggest podcast initiatives yet with the launch of Play.it, a network aggregating over 300 podcasts from big publishers as well as CBS Radio.

The list of podcasts offered by Play.it includes news, lifestyle, business, sports and entertainment content from CBS Radio broadcasters like Boomer Esiason & Craig Carton, Carson Daly, and Kevin & Bean, along with audio programming from media brands such as "60 Minutes," "48 Hours", Vox, Deadspin, and Simon & Schuster.

The podcasts are available for both streaming and download, and can also be accessed via CBS Local Digital Media’s Radio.com and its associated app, as well as TuneIn and iTunes.

Play.it is ad-supported, including dynamically inserted audio ads, as well as native advertising and sponsorships. Advertisers can buy multiplatform campaigns that span CBS broadcast, live streaming and podcast channels, targeted to specific audiences or across multiple programs.

CBS Local Media President Ezra Kucharz noted: “The demand for on-demand audio content is huge, with tens of millions of people and growing listening to podcasts each month, yet this content currently has been spread across multiple sites and services. With the launch of Play.it, we aim to bring consumers a unified, easy-to-use platform featuring the best podcasts from not only CBS brands but other major brands, personalities and publishers as well.”

As noted, the CBS Radio announcement follows the hugely popular “Serial” podcast. It averaged over 1.5 million downloads per episode and set a record on Apple’s iTunes store by reaching 5 million downloads faster than any previous podcast series.