Two Major Podcasting Initiatives Get Canceled — Can the Industry Monetize?
Monday, October 01, 2018
Podcasting is supposed to be the innovative initiative that will help transform and sustain media. However, two major initiatives have been canceled — raising questions about the viability of the industry.
The Boston Globe and WBUR announced in September 2017 a major sports podcasting initiative, claiming, “Boston sports fans, get ready for your newest obsession: The Boston Globe and WBUR, Boston's NPR News Station, today announced that they will collaborate to produce Season Ticket, a new daily sports podcast. Hosted by Boston Globe award-winning sports columnist Chris Gasper, the podcast will take listeners for a deep dive inside Boston sports and beyond.”
Less than one year later, the podcast has been shuttered. “They thought they’d be able to reach a large, passionate audience with compelling coverage that wasn’t available from other outlets. It didn’t quite work out that way. The Globe and WBUR decided to end Season Ticket February after a four-month run. This week in Solution Set, we’re going to take a look at what worked and didn’t for Season Ticket and examine the challenges of producing a locally focused podcast,” reported the Lenfest Institute.GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST
The Globe and WBRU have not given up. In September, they launched Last Seen, "a true-crime podcast about the most valuable — and confounding — art heist in history: the theft of 13 irreplaceable artworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston."
Providence, RI gained some notoriety via the podcasting series Crimetown which chronicled the Patriarca crime family, drug kingpin Wolf Kennedy and Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci. In its second season, it moves to the Midwest. "Crimetown heads to the heart of the Rust Belt: Detroit, Michigan. From its heyday as Motor City to its rebirth as the Brooklyn of the Midwest, Detroit’s history reflects a series of issues that strike at the heart of American identity: race, poverty, policing, loss of industry, the war on drugs, and our universal desire for a savior," says the producers at Gimlet Media.
Industry Growing, But Profitable?
While the industry’s revenue is growing — so is the number of podcasts. Most importantly, revenue does not guarantee profitability. The emerging U.S. podcasting industry had a record year in 2017, reaching $314 million in revenue.
The 2017 numbers are an 86 percent increase from the $169 million in 2016, according to a new study out this morning from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and jointly conducted by IAB and PwC U.S.
The report also found that U.S. podcast advertising revenue is expected to grow more than 110% by 2020, to $659.0 million.
That number marks a tiny fraction of digital media advertising dollars. By contrast, total U.S. digital ad spend reached a record-setting $88 billion in 2017.
BuzzFeed Cuts Podcasting
The bigger setback for the podcasting industry may be the announcement by one of digital’s most important large innovators.
Just this month, BuzzFeed shuttered its internal podcasting division and is canceling most of its podcast shows.
As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed will end podcasts including, “See Something Say Something,” “The News,” and “Reporting To You.”
BuzzFeed News will continue to produce podcasts, but only via third-party companies. The company is shifting internal resources toward longer-form video projects.
“We’ve decided to move to a production model that is more like our TV projects — that is, treating shows as individual projects, with teams brought on as needed,” Shani Hilton, BuzzFeed News VP of news and programming, wrote in a memo to staff Thursday reported by Variety.
The move will result in only a “handful” of employees getting dismissed, per the Journal. But BuzzFeed News employees reacted to the cutbacks with deep dismay, according to CNN’s Oliver Darcy.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the news team this collectively sad and upset, which speaks so clearly to how everyone feels,” one BuzzFeeder wrote in an internal email chain after the decision was announced, per Darcy.
It is not BuzzFeed’s only business challenge. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Like other digital-media firms, BuzzFeed has struggled to keep pace with investor expectations amid a difficult digital advertising market. Last year, BuzzFeed missed its revenue targets of about $350 million by some 15% to 20% and laid off about 100 employees on its advertising sales and business operations side. In a recent interview with Adweek, BuzzFeed chief revenue officer Lee Brown said the company was on pace to notch “double-digit” revenue growth.”
New York-based Panoply Media, the sister company to Slate also found that podcasting was not economically sustainable. Panoply laid off its entire editorial and direct-sales staff in a move to focus on podcast ad-serving technology.
“At the same time, Slate chairman and editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg announced that he will leave the company to form a new podcasting venture with author Malcolm Gladwell, reported the WSJ.
Radio Investing in Podcasting
Bankrupt iHeart Media, the largest radio group in America has purchased podcasting company Stuff Media for $55 million. In the press announcement, “Stuff Media is one of the nation’s largest podcast publishers, with more than 61 million global downloads and streams per month. Its “Stuff” franchises have attracted a dedicated following for more than a decade, with signature podcast Stuff You Should Know surpassing 500 million downloads this year -- the first podcast to surpass half a billion downloads.
iHeart is still working through restricting $16 billion in debt.
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