In case you haven’t heard it elsewhere, I’m pleased to announce that For Immediate Release, the podcast I co-host with Neville Hobson, has a new sponsor. Lawrence Ragan Communications joins our existing sponsor, CustomScoop, in supporting FIR and enhancing its value to our community of listeners.

There’s a brief announcement of the sponsorship on the FIR blog and Neville has written about it on his blog.

The key terms of the agreement include a reference to Ragan as the sponsor in the opening of the show (variations of “Welcome to episode xxx of For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report, brought to you by Ragan Communications, serving the communications profession for 35 years”), inclusion of a Ragan-produced 30-second audio clip during the show, and a Ragan tower ad on the FIR blog. (The current ad touts MyRagan, the social network for communicators Ragan launched recently. For its part, Ragan will promote FIR on its various properties.

Explicit in the contract is an understanding that the sponsorship will not affect editorial content. We will remain objective in our reporting of the business, including Ragan’s activities.

Oh, Ragan is also ponying up a few bucks for the sponsorship. Outside of Leo LaPorte, there aren’t many people making a living from their podcasts. The sponsorship fee will help us cover production costs and leave a few sheckels for dinner and a movie now and again. But money isn’t at the core of our excitement over the sponsorship deal with Ragan. Rather, we see this as an opportunity to expand our listenership and grow the FIR community, which benefits existing listeners through the input of additional voices and new listeners through exposure to our content and membership in the extended FIR family.

We expect even our existing sponsor, CustomScoop, will benefit as new listeners have an opportunity to learn about the service and benefit from CustomScoop CEO Chip Griffin’s regular contribution, the Media Monitoring Minute.

Ragan’s sponsorship extends beyond The Hobson & Holtz Report, to all of FIR’s properties, including book reviews, interviews, and speakers/speeches.

Neville and I also hope this sponsorship is only the first step in some additional expansion plans we’ve been discussing. Nothing is concrete yet, but we envision taking the FIR brand beyond the podcast and into some new territory.