Recording episode 84 of the For Immediate Release podcast with Shel Holtz yesterday evening was like stepping into a new – but, at the same time, familiar – room to start a friendly conversation.

It was The Hobson and Holtz Report again as we discussed a handful of highly-topical issues:

• Will social media will be a significant factor in the snap election called for by UK Prime Minister Theresa May? We also considered the role of social media in the French presidential election.
• Social media evidently had a larger-than-apparent impact on advertisers that pulled their commercials from Fox News’s “O’Reilly Factor,” the US cable news network’s biggest show.
• The Telegraph newspaper in the UK has launched a daily audio show specifically for the Google Home smart speaker/voice appliance.
• Could Facebook’s AR, VR, add hardware plans spell the end for smartphones (and anything else with a screen)?
• Google’s plans to add an ad blocker to Chrome could be a game changer.

In addition, regular contributor Dan York reported on a plethora of topics, including Mastodon’s growth and video ads on Twitter.

Links to all the discussion topics are on Contentle.

Download the show or listen right here:

This episode continues the “hefty but good” moniker, first used by our good friend Donna Papacosta, and which we attributed to The Hobson and Holtz Report that Shel and I presented for over ten years between 2005 and 2015, coming in at just under 1 hour and 40 minutes. (Perfect for listening during your commute – enough here for a return trip!)

We’d described this episode beforehand as “a special limited return engagement.” It was that indeed. But this has rekindled an appetite for more. Let’s not call it a ‘resurrection’ but let’s think that H&H might have a new future in some form.

Stay tuned, as they say! Meanwhile I hope you enjoy this ‘limited return engagement’ episode of the For Immediate Release podcast. Let us know your thoughts if you’d like to share them.