Shifty Jelly, maker of Pocket Casts, gets acquired by NPR, others

Shifty Jelly, the Australian company behind Pocket Casts, has been acquired by NPR, WNYC Studios, WBEZ Chicago and the group behind the humongously popular podcast, This American Life.

The team behind Pocket Casts is to remain exactly the same under its new ownership, with Shifty Jelly co-founders Russell Ivanovic and Philip Simpson continuing to helm the project in as of yet unspecified leadership roles. In addition, former iHeartRadio General Manager Owen Grover will be the CEO of Pocket Casts, overseeing operations there on behalf of the acquiring parties.

The money spent in this acquisition hasn't been disclosed, however.

Via a brief conversation over Twitter, Ivanovic says that Grover has no intention of usurping the throne, so to speak, and is present to act as a (very senior) supervisor of sorts, along with providing guidance to the company given his decades of experiences in this field. Ivanovic also maintains that Shifty Jelly will continue to act as a separate entity that makes its own decisions, and that NPR and co. are partial owners and "don't run [the] new company",

He’s the CEO, so adult supervision. Their insurance policy that we don’t set it all on fire.

Or more seriously, he’s there to help us with things we don’t have experience with. Growing the company while keeping our culture, etc.
— Russell Ivanovic (@rustyshelf) May 3, 2018

To directly quote Ivanovic:

OMG ARE YOU ABANDONING US?!
No, the whole team (Russell, Philip, Chris, Priya & Simon) are joining the new venture.

OMG ARE YOU TOTALLY GOING TO RUIN THE APP AND MAKE US HATE YOU?!
No, today nothing about the app is changing. Going forward our aim is to make it better, like we always have, year in, year out.

OMG IS THIS GOING TO BE A PUBLIC RADIO APP NOW?!
No, we’re still all about podcasting, and still about the entire world, not just the US of A. We do live in Australia after all.

OMG IS EVERYTHING CHANGING?!
No, nothing is changing. Same app you know and love, same team working on it but now with more resources than ever before.

Pocket Casts continues to be available on nearly every popular platform, including iOS, Android, Windows 10, macOS and the Web, with no change in their respective pricing for the foreseeable future, rendering your pitchforks unnecessary if you just purchased a license for one of these yesterday.