On 9/24/04 a search for the word “podcasts” resulted in 24 hits. Now it returns 60,700,000 results. To bad Leo Laporte thinks podcasting is dead. I'm sure he'll say it again at the blog world expo in a few weeks.

Well a new report from Wizzard Media shows that podcast listeners are up from 15 million to 18 million. Here are some samples of that report:

Wizzard Media (NYSE Amex: WZE), the world’s largest podcasting network, today announced that for the third quarter of 2009 the Wizzard Media Network saw total podcast download requests of 332 million vs. 287 million in the third quarter of 2008, an increase of 45 million.

The number of podcast shows on the Wizzard Media Network grew from 11,600 at the end of the second quarter of 2009 to 12,281 shows at the end of the third quarter of 2009. Podcasters pay Wizzard Media to use its publishing platform and work with Wizzard to monetize their show through brand advertising and more recently, content sales (Apps).

In the third quarter of 2009 Wizzard delivered over 12.7 million podcast advertisements, its second highest quarterly total on record and an increase of 130% from 5.5 million ads in the third quarter of 2008.

So to anyone who says “Podcasting is Dead” I say “quit saying things for publicity” becuase your are wrong.