Resubmitting to apple podcast after rss feed link was broken

Archiving and then restoring the podcasts worked!! We were able to retain our reviews and subscribers!

Leaving a write up of what happened for anyone else who may run into this issue in the future:

1. RSS feed links for a few of our podcasts break
2. an update was made to said podcasts, triggering a refresh on apple podcasts
3. apple sees that the rss feed urls are broken links, does not communicate that with us and proceeds to take down our shows from the consumer side (although they still appear on the Apple Podcasts Connect dashboard as "published")
4. we realize the rss feed links are broken and fix the issue
5. we try to manually refresh via Apple Podcasts Connect podcast page
6. the manual refresh does not fix the problem and our podcasts are still missing
7. we reach out to apple support
8. apple support says they cannot do anything because the shows were removed (see below: 8*) and the only way to fix the issue is by resubmitting the shows from scratch
9. we ask for assistance in helping us retain ratings, reviews and subscribers because we understand we will lose our ratings, reviews and subscribers/followers by resubmitting the podcasts, but the response we got was (see below: 9*)
10. we are devastated 😣😞😔
11. we prepare to resubmit the podcasts from scratch....
12. lightbulb moment💡 after reading this doc (specifically this bit: see below 11*). I wonder if we can simply archive the missing shows (since they are still technically in published state on the Apple Podcasts Connect dashboard), restore them and if this might restore all other data connected to the podcasts.
13. IT WORKED! archiving and then restoring the podcasts fixes the issue
14. we get an email from apple support (below 13*).... (😑 I thought you said it couldn't be fixed..)

I hope this write up serves other developers / podcast creators in the future the pain of trying to troubleshoot an issue that was as simple as archiving and restoring...

[excerpts]

8*

As the original show was removed and since we are unable to refresh or modify the original show, to move forward, a new version of the show must be submitted. 

9*

We currently don’t have a way to merge podcasts, subscribers, ratings and reviews

11*

You can restore archived content to a Draft state. Restoring content brings back most information and settings, and historical data is restored to Analytics. If you want to make the content available on Apple Podcasts, submit it for review.

13*

The version under show ID **** is the original submission and is currently the only instance that is live on Apple Podcasts after being restored and resubmitted. This means that historical data, reviews, and followers will also be restored within 24 hours.