A few years ago I managed to get a Corporate podcast to both work through an Intranet and itunes.
In recent weeks one of the shows my company produces called: The Smooth Groovers Review achieved 42 reviews.

I then thought, ‘How does the itunes featured podcast’ choice work.
Is it via algorithm or human intervention. Some have suggested it has a commercial link.

The following article, albeit originally written by Mark Glaser back in 2006 has some fascinating insights…
Its entitled, ‘How Does iTunes Pick Featured Podcasts?‘

In summary it suggests:

• Physical intervention - Real people watching and looking
• Some algorithmic applied work

With regard to the latter, one of the contributors suggests:

The Top100 lists are driven purely by an algorithm that looks at new subscriptions during the past week, with subs during the past day weighted heavily and older subscriptions weighted less (decay algorithm). We do not and have no ability to affect these lists.

To an increasing degree, the subject rooms (read Featured Podcasts) are also driven by data. With a huge, diverse, and rapidly growing set of podcasts in our directory, user behavior is our best gauge. It’s true that success tends to self-perpetuate, so we attempt to create algorithms that continually percolate material through the lists. But the best advice we can offer is to ask your users to subscribe to the podcast using the iTunes directory and, if they like what they hear, to write good things about you in the reviews.

For more background on the operations of the podcast page, please see the tech spec (http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/techspecs.html )