Nieman Foundation at Harvard
Editor’s note: Hot Pod is a weekly newsletter on the podcasting industry written by Nick Quah; we happily share it with Nieman Lab readers each Tuesday.
Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 164, published June 12, 2018.
Expanding pie. The Interactive Advertising Bureau has released its second annual podcast revenue study, which gives us a clear baseline on the size of the podcast ad business. Here’s the big takeaway for those on the run:
Over at Recode, the dude Peter Kafka argues that the persistent minisculity of the podcast advertising business is actually a good thing. “One of the reasons podcasts are fun to listen to is because the podcast ad business is so tiny,” he writes. “Measuring podcast audiences is still a work in progress, and there’s no good way for advertisers to automate their ad buys across lots of podcasts if that changes, you may well see podcast advertising move much faster — but it also means podcast advertising will be more unpleasant.”
I’ve come to feel about podcasting the way I’ve long felt about a certain up-and-coming city in the American inter-mountain west (which will remain nameless for reasons that will become clear): I love it a whole ton, and I love that loads more people are beginning to love it too, but maybe we should start shit-talking the place before the tourists get here and drive the market out of whack.
Anyway, Kafka also made a parallel point about how it’s not hard to make a podcast, which (rightfully) sparked some grumbles in my inbox. Obviously, that’s not true — I see you, ESJ — but I think the more important point is how podcasting remains significantly cheaper to produce compared to movies, television shows, and even good chunks of commercial talk radio programming. At this point in time, anyway. Given the influx of celebrities into the space and the way talent contract sizes are going, we might have to adjust that analytical position in the not-so distant future.
Some other odds and ends:
Again, you can find the report here.
Public improvements. Pew Research has started rolling out this year’s updates to its State of the News Media report, with its public broadcasting factsheet dropping on Wednesday.
Obviously, do check the thing out in full, but here’s the big story for me:
The factsheet describes a public radio system that appears to be holding steady — perhaps sustaining the so-called Trump Bump experienced during the 2016 presidential election cycle, and even incrementally growing its average total weekly listenership. It observes that “the top 20 NPR-affiliated public radio stations (by listenership) had on average a total weekly listenership of about 11 million in 2017, up from about 10 million in 2016.”
But note how this factoid primarily focuses on the top end of the system, which tweaks the central finding into a picture of how the most-listened stations in the country have become marginally more listened to.
The fact sheet widens its scope when it attends to the question of local public radio revenues, drawing data from Mark Fuerst’s Public Media Futures Forum initiative that displays aggregate revenues for 123 of the largest news-oriented public radio licensees. Those aggregate revenue levels largely remained flat between 2014 and 2016 at a little over $800 million. (There was no 2017 number.) But even that doesn’t improve the core framing problem: it’s a broader pool, but it’s still looking at the top end of the system. For context, there are over 900 NPR member stations in the US.
It’s productive to pair Pew’s factsheet with this Current writeup on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s latest “state of the system” analysis. According to that study, while the public radio system appears to be broadly enjoying an overall trend of growth, smaller stations continue to struggle financially compared to their larger peers. Not unlike the broader media industry (and the American economy writ large, I suppose), the system may well be growing, but the gains are being felt by fewer participants.
Meanwhile, the Pew Research fact sheet found that: “At the national level, NPR increased its total operating revenue in 2017 to $233 million, up 9% from 2016 levels. APM saw gains as well, rising 33% to about $168 million in total revenue for 2017. PRI’s total revenue, on the other hand, went down 17% year over year, amounting to $18 million in 2017.”
What’s the best word to describe a situation in which a smaller number of entities begins to represent bigger swathes of a system? It’s not quite centralization…nor is it distillation, either.
Anyway, I liked how Nieman Lab framed its analysis on the Pew fact sheet: “A year after Trump’s zero-budget threat, public broadcasting is…doing okay.” I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more threats before this administration is up.My eyes will be kept peeled for the upcoming update to the audio and podcasting factsheet, which should come out at some point over the next few weeks. I’ll write it up here when that happens.
In other public radio news…
Standing alone. Google is apparently working on its own dedicated podcast app for Android, according to a report by 9to5Google. The article goes on to say:
We can see that the Play Store listing of this app will likely act a bit like the Assistant and Google Lens listings in the Play Store, simply acting as a shortcut to open the functionality. While that app is not live yet, it should appear on the Play Store at this link when it goes live.
The sighting comes barely a month after Google discussed its efforts to increase podcast functionality on Android through a series of interviews on the branded podcast studio Pacific Content’s corporate blog, and a few weeks after the tech giant began pushing out the feature along with subsequent minor updates.
On the one hand, neat! On the other hand, it’s much ado about table stakes. Here’s how I’m reading the situation:
Meanwhile, Apple continues to hold court as the dominant podcast platform provider. During its WWDC developer conference last week, Cupertino announced that the Apple Podcasts inventory now boasts more than 550,000 active shows, nicely complementing its April disclosure that the platform has officially surpassed 50 billion all-time podcast streams and downloads.
The company also announced that its official Podcasts app will finally be made available for the Apple Watch as part of the upcoming watchOS 5 update, scheduled for the fall. I don’t personally own an Apple Watch — lord knows it’d absolutely ruin my capacity for eye contact — but the renewed prospect of even more frictionless podcast listening is…making me reconsider my position. I hope my family will understand.
Also, congrats to Stuff You Should Know, which was announced onstage during the podcast-specific session of WWDC to be the first show to officially cross the 500 million all-time stream and download mark on the Apple Podcasts platform. The flagship podcast of the HowStuffWorks network turned a decade old earlier this year.
Extra life. Audioboom has successfully raised £4.5 million (about $6 million) to keep the lights on, marking a return to business after a failed attempt to execute a “reverse takeover” of Triton Digital left the U.K.-based podcast company in a precarious financial position. Prior to this new funding round, the company was said to have enough working capital for only four weeks of operations.
Stuart Last, the company’s chief operating officer, tells me that the new funds come from a mixture of new and current investors. He argues that the money is not a stopgap measure. “This is investment that will accelerate the growth of Audioboom,” Last said. “While there were aspects of the Triton merger that made being part of a bigger corporate entity exciting and in some ways easier, we’ve always felt we could do this independently.” The identities of the new investors were not disclosed, but you can find the list of major shareholders here. (Note that investors with holdings under 3 percent are not listed.)
For all intents and purposes, the deal with the Los Angeles-based Triton Digital was supposed to result in what is essentially a merger, despite the “reverse takeover” labeling. If it had been successful, the move would have resulted in the formation of a new company that combined Audioboom’s advertising network and creative agency with Triton Digital’s audio analytics and ad-tech services. The deal fell through mid-May when equitable terms could not be negotiated. As CEO Robert Proctor told me at the time: “Investors and institutions were not convinced and as the deal terms flexed to try and accommodate all parties then the final terms on the table were just not attractive to myself, my board or the wider Audioboom shareholder base. So it just could not be sanctioned, I’m afraid.”
Audioboom experienced cashflow issues throughout the deal-making process and subsequent breakdown, leading them to fall behind on some important processes like partner payments — a development that has hurt their standing among some of their clients. Now that it’s solvent again, the company has crucial work to do. “Since we withdrew from that deal, we’ve taken some big steps to catch-up those payments and have more than 70 shows up to day and many more on payment plans,” Last told me. “So as the money comes in from this funding round it will be a high priority to get our partners fully paid — then we can regain their trust and become a proper partner again, helping them grow, reach new audience, taking their revenues to even higher places.”
Regaining trust may prove complicated for the company, especially given some of the messaging it has been putting out over the past few weeks. In the immediate wake of the deal collapse, Audioboom told Inside Radio that, as part of its efforts to control its financial situation, it would be looking to “attract ‘more commercially viable’ podcasts and trim smaller, unsustainable podcasts.” Some viewed the statement as an indication that the company would be throwing its smaller independent partners under the bus. Last tells me that’s not the case. “Yeah, so the reference to cutting smaller shows was actually about the natural end of some of our legacy radio relationships,” he said. “We hosted and distributed thousands of podcast channels for our radio partners globally — those channels took a lot of staffing and tech resource, but provided a very small part of our income.”
He added: “We are fully committed to working with podcasters at all levels.”
Catching up is one thing; growing is another. While Audioboom is thought of as a U.K. company, I’m told that around 90 percent of Audioboom’s business actually comes from the significantly more heated U.S. market, where it competes directly with other network-centric companies like Panoply, which has a strong parent company in Graham Holdings, and Cadence13, which sold a 45 percent stake to Entercom for $9.7 million last fall. Is $6 million enough for the company to both rebuild and compete in this environment?
Year over year. ICYMI, APM Reports’ In The Dark is currently in the midst of a spectacular sophomore season. And at this point of the season, seven episodes deep and about a month out from launch, the podcast appears to be outperforming its previous season.
Speaking last Friday, a spokesperson told me:
American Public Media hosts its podcast programming with StreamGuys, which touts a platform that’s IAB and Podcast Working Group-approved. The big takeaway from this item should focus on the show’s improvement upon its own past performance, as making cross-show comparisons will prove to be complicated. At this moment, there isn’t a clean way to contextualize In The Dark’s performance against comparable podcasts, but here are two data points on similar shows that can help you map the state of the limited-run true crime podcast genre in mid 2018:
The eighth installment of Madeleine Baran’s investigation drops today.
Career spotlight. And we’re back with this recurring feature! I’ll be doing these monthly instead of bi-weekly from now on. This week, I traded emails with Ryan Kailath, a public radio reporter who has served stints at a bunch of different places. (Though, I suppose, that’s how you’d typically describe a public radio reporter.) Let’s jump in:
More concretely: The five-year goal was to become a full-time maker of high-quality ~~narrrative loongformm~~. I didn’t expect to get there overnight, so I’ve tried to chart a course that makes me better along the way. I’m almost four years on the path now and feeling good.
After the internship, I wanted to report, to just have constant practice pitching and writing and interviewing and making tons of stuff day in and out. So I went the public radio route instead of assistant producer’s assistant somewhere in podcasting. Also I have a hangup — it tends to come with immigrant parents — about having “traditional” jobs and the attendant validation/permission and markers of success. But mainly I wanted to get radio buff.
So I’ve had three jobs now: daily talk show producer at KCRW, local news reporter at WWNO (New Orleans Public Radio), and Marketplace reporter, where I just wrapped up a yearlong contract.
Every job, I’ve chased good editors above all. It’s the key ingredient; I don’t know how else you get better. And when my editors are stretched thin, I’ve leaned on my peers. I have a crew of ~10 trusted radio friends who, whenever one of us needs an edit, or to talk through a pitch or we’re drowning in tape, we just throw up the bat signal and whoever’s available hops on a call to discuss. They save my life, like, once a week.
But I don’t know — opportunities have knocked, and it’s hard to sniff at a salary and benefits…we’ll see. Also, re: longform, I’m pretty scared of trying and failing, which is a distinct possibility. I have working hard on my side, but a lot of the longformers I admire are just more talented than me, I think.
At some point I think I’ll have to cut bait from public radio though; no amount of 4-minute news features will prepare me to do what TAL does. To do what they do, I have to practice doing what they do, somehow.
But you asked about the industry. It’s good. I’m glad it exists. I’m glad people are getting paid. I’m glad WNYC is paying interns (shout out Mickey Capper). And I’m glad for all the new shows — especially the ones that aren’t for me. Great! Let there be shows for everyone under the sun.
You know, in public radio, it’s like all the young guns are waiting for the old guard to step aside, so they can finally be in charge, finally make radio they way they think it should be made. In podcasting, nobody has to wait. For better or for worse : )
Thanks, buddy. You can find Ryan on Twitter here.
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