Perel will maintain ownership of the Where Should We Begin? IP and continue working with the production company Magnificent Noise, while Vox Media handles ad sales and distribution. Now at home with Vox Media, Perel will switch her seasonal podcast into a weekly, “always-on” show with bonus content via an Apple Podcasts subscription beginning this summer. “We always wanted a partner that would come to the table with creative ideas that maybe we hadn’t thought of ourselves, and so we were looking for an organization that would surprise us and also have the infrastructure to scale what we had been doing,” Courtney Hamilton, who oversees special projects (including podcasts) for Perel’s team, said. In the case of Perel, the franchise pitch absolutely worked. “What we want to do is build a big media franchise, and so we’re not limited by the medium to say, ‘Hey, we’re only gonna support you in the audio world.” “We’re not just an audio company,” Chao said. With that structure in place, the company can now pitch its franchise-building capabilities to top talent seeking opportunities across formats. Of course, we’re not immune to a lot of those challenges, but this is a moment that will pass and we will get through it, and we’re really proud of the foundation we built.” “I don’t think we’ve felt that volatility in the same way that other companies have felt. “We’re in podcasting and audio for the long term, so we’re not thinking about this in terms of this boom-and-bust cycle,” Chao said. Though Vox Media made its share of deals, including for Cafe Studios and Criminal Productions, the company’s top podcast executives say the audio business has remained profitable during a cooler market due to Vox Media’s focus on building infrastructure like an in-house advertising and marketing team and on diversifying revenue outside of advertising alone, such as with podcast subscriptions and live events with podcast talent. But the media company’s more sober approach to podcasting comes as a stark contrast to the so-called “ dumb money” era of podcasting, when companies like Spotify plopped down hundreds of millions for talent deals and acquisitions that compelled other buyers to up the ante to compete. That isn’t to say Vox Media as a whole has isolated itself from the turbulence of digital media’s advertising reliance, as the company laid off 7 percent of its staff at the start of the year in response to “the challenging economic environment,” as Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff described it at the time. “Growing things correctly, it can come off sometimes as cautious or really smart, right? And so I think we were aggressive in investing in and, at the same time, not nuts - everyone doesn’t get a podcast, that kind of thing,” Swisher told THR. Since then, the network has gone on to acquire companies like Preet Bharara’s Cafe Studios and Phoebe Judge and Lauren Spohrer’s Criminal Productions, as well as attract talent like Perel, former NPR host Sam Sanders and tech journalist and podcaster Kara Swisher - the latter of whom left The New York Times last year to host a new podcast, On With Kara Swisher, for Vox Media. The audience figures, which Vox Media is releasing for the first time, represent a measured approach to growth for the media brand’s podcasting business, which began in 2011 with the launch of Vox’s first podcast but didn’t become formalized until 2017 with the debut of the standalone Vox Media Podcast Network. (To note: In February, Penske Media, the owner of The Hollywood Reporter, made a minority stake investment in Vox Media.) with more than 5.9 million unique monthly audience members and 33.3 million unique monthly downloads and streams during the month of April.įor the full year of 2023, Vox Media is forecasting that its podcast network will reach more than 500 million - or half a billion - total global downloads, according to Ray Chao, Vox Media’s svp and gm of audio and digital video. With a total of 59 active shows - compared to the 809 of leading publisher iHeartMedia - Vox Media has landed as the No. This Friday, Vox Media is making its debut on Podtrac, the industry measurement tool that releases monthly rankings of the top 20 publishers and podcasts in the U.S. 'Rocky Horror' Creator Richard O'Brien Reveals Gender Struggles: "I Have So Much Girl in Me"
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