deleting podcasts in iTunes 11.1

My latest tragedy with iTunes 11.1 is that it deleted ALL my saved NPR Tiny Desktop Concert episodes. The Music/iTunes/podcasts/npr Tiny Desktop Concerts folder was empty. List showed everything in the cloud. When I reimported them from a backup, they were still all listed as in the cloud, mixed with the episodes I had not saved. Some but not all of of the episodes I imported were saved in the iTunes/podcasts folder. The deletion of saved episodes didn't happen with all of my podcast streams, just some. I can't figure out why some and not others. Any recommendations for an alternative podcast app?

There seems to no end to the mess 11.1 has made of podcasts.

Thankfully I CAN get the 2 podcasts I subsctibe to from the author's site.

I wonder if Apple / iTunes may be phasing out the podcast feature.

http://bit.ly/18Qzf7F

"Five Best Podcast Managers"

With me itunes 11.1 just dumped all the already listed to the cloud, if i had not deleted them it cos i wanted to keep them on my computer and if I don't want to see 4000 old episodes in my list view I should be able to turn them off. This is all a bit of a **** up me thinks.

Oh, and when you've re-downloaded the ones you wanted to keep, they get marked as un-played, an easy fix I know but just more time wasted fixing the itunes 11.1 balls up.

The problem with keeping the old (meaning I have listened to them already) on the list view is not the space occupied on the hard disk. It is screen area occupied. I listen to a number of daily broadcasts. To scroll through the list is now tedious and makes the list view useless. I don't really like the other views having worked with the list view for years. I don't understand why they changed the way the list operates, but if it does not go back I will have to change how I subscribe to podcasts. Any suggestions for alternative podcast aggregator?

http://bit.ly/18Qzf7F

"Five Best Podcast Managers"

I really don't get the changes to podcasts in iTunes 11.

For some really stupid reason, I can set old video podcasts that are "in the cloud" as watched, but I cannot set old audio podcasts that are "in the cloud" as played.

I also found another annoying "feature" of podcast management since upgrading to iTunes 11.1.

I was happily riding to work this morning listening to my podcast playlist, when all of a sudden the podcast I was listening to just stopped playing. I didn't want to stop to find out what happened so just kept riding. When I got to work I discovered the podcast I was listening to had just vanished from my iPhone. My iPhone was secure in my pocket with the screen switched off so there is no way I could have accidentally pocket deleted it. I have never allowed the podcast app on my iPhone to manage my podcasts. I just use it to play my iTunes playlists.

Now that I am back at home I thought I would check iTunes and I have discovered that the podcast I was listening to has also disappeared from my iTunes library. I haven't synced my iPhone to iTunes for 3 days. This can be confirmed by looking at the last backup for the device in iTunes and the last sync time on the iPhone.

I get my podcasts from BONGTV. So whenever they are in my itunes I delete them from BONGTV in order to keep my space for new shows. In this case it's not that the podcasts with the cloud are on the originator's server. Wonder where they are? Still I would like to delete forever what I have watched once.

If you unsubscribe from the podcast, the cloud ones go away. Stinks that this is the only solution, but it works. Even unsubscribed, the deleted ones will stay, until you subscribe and unsubscribe again.

The issue is not hard drive space, as some here are mentioning. Yes, the "cloud" listings don't take up space. The probem is that all these listed "cloud" podcasts make it exremely hard to find and organize the ones you want to keep vs the ones you never want to see again. The simple answer is for Apple to allow us to hide the cloud listings. It is beyond me why Apple did not see the folly of this change. It has completely ruined my carefully culled list of podcasts.

Thanks Jim for the "Five bst podcast managers" link. Podcasts are clearly something Apple is clueless about.

Yes. That's what I do.

Subscribe, check for new episodes, download, unsubscribe.

Also, make sure you click each podcast and click "Don't Allow Auto-Delete".

I wish I hadn't updated to the latest version of iTunes now, I was running 10.7 up till about 2 weeks ago. I remember now why I rolled back to 10.7 now. Post 10.7 version are buggy.