The locally-focused media startup City Cast has named Andi McDaniel, the company’s Chief Creative Officer, its new CEO, replacing David Plotz.
City Cast launched in 2021 as a local podcast and newsletter venture aimed at serving cities where local news was shifting from old newspapers and radio to screens. The company has since expanded to 13 cities, including Austin, Las Vegas, and Philadelphia, among others.
“This next chapter for us is about expanding audiences. It’s about adapting to AI, and it’s about making the business successful,” McDaniel, a veteran public radio executive and co-founder of City Cast, told Semafor.
City Cast has gained greater visibility in recent months, primarily for its expansion in its hometown. As Semafor first noted last year, in response to what the company saw as an opportunity created by the turbulence at the Washington Post, City Cast scaled up its newsroom and business in Washington. City Cast is backed by Graham Holdings, which owned the Washington Post before selling to Jeff Bezos. City Cast DC now has 20 people on staff, and said it has found some success attracting a younger audience to its content, tripling the size of people it reaches regularly from roughly 100,000 at the beginning of the year to around 300,000.
