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Today, the New York Times formally announced that it will acquire Serial Productions, the studio derived from This American life directed by Julie Snyder, Sarah Koenig and Neil Drumming. You might know it as the store that houses, well, Serial, along with the success of 2017 S-Town. (The Wall Street Journal broke this story a few hours ago).
Thats not all. In addition to the acquisition, the Times announced that it has entered into “a continuous creative and strategic alliance” with This American life. This is a bit tricky, so pay close attention: while Serial Productions will now be a New York Times property, This American life It will remain an independent operation, although this “strategic alliance” means that Serial Productions and This American life will continue to collaborate creatively. This agreement is different for another reason: the long-standing public radio program and podcast will now collaborate with the Times in co-marketing and advertising-sales efforts.
And that is not all. Squeezed into the press release is the word for Serial Productions’ latest project, slated to launch on July 30: Good white parents, which features Chana Joffe-Walt examining the role white parents play in shaping public education.
Okay, back to the acquisition. This is an amazing development, even though it has been in the hopper for a while. The Wall Street JournalBen Mullin first drew attention to the possibility in January, when he reported that Serial Productions was buying a sale. the Times it was the only company he cited as a possible buyer. The possibility was raised again in a column by the TimesBen Smith himself, published in early March, reported that the study was for sale with a valuation of $ 75 million, although it was expected to be for much less. (The actual details of the deal size were not revealed at this time. Believe me, I asked.)
However, I was able to speak on the phone a few hours ago with Julie Snyder, CEO of Serial Productions; Sam Dolnick, the Times‘assistant managing editor; and Stephanie Preiss, the Times‘VP of audio and TV, to talk about development. Here’s what I learned: To begin with, the deal apparently came organically, as the Times, working on the box office hits of The newspaper, tried to figure out what heights to climb next. “We have been huge fans of This American life and Serial for a long time, “said Dolnick. He went on to say:
“Over the past year or so, as audio has become more important to the Times, we began to think: How could this be? What is the biggest twist we could take? So we started talking to Ira Glass about This American life and what kind of association could it be. He quickly introduced us to Sarah and Julie, and we started talking about possible arrangements, and from the beginning it was clear that we had a shared sense of journalistic values, a shared sense of mission, and the same kind of drive to count them. stories right now. So we tried to find the right way to tell these stories together, and this ended up being the way. “
When I asked if This American life it was always on the table as an acquisition, it was a shot no. “Ira made it pretty clear that it was his company, that it was going very well and that he was not interested in selling,” Dolnick said.
For Serial Productions, the decision to sell fits perfectly with their philosophical priorities. Snyder pointed out S-Town as a starting point in how the team thought about what they wanted to do to move forward. “It felt exactly like something we wanted to do more of,” he said. “We wanted to continue doing the Serial podcast, but we also felt that there were many different types of stories that we wanted to follow. “
But Snyder also noted that the team did not create Serial Productions with the typical intention of running it like a conventional capitalist venture. “We had no initial entrepreneurial visions to say, ‘We want to launch podcasts,'” he said. “We weren’t the kind of thing we were in, either, ‘let’s get ready to be acquired.'”
His vision was to be a top-notch company, but the managerial mechanics involved in expansion within that vision was limiting. After operating for a long time as a “one project at a time” type of team, its members wanted to organize things so they could publish more than one program every two years.
Beyond that, Snyder simply had little interest in running a company. “It’s not where I come from, you know?” she said. “I feel like I’m really good at supporting journalists and producers and helping them get the shows, but actually thinking strategically about the company was the kind of thing people suggested to me, and I would feel like it all made sense, but I always wonder : “Isn’t there someone else who might be thinking of this for us?”
Hence the decision to sell to Times, which would provide enough infrastructure so that you no longer have to worry about it.
One more time in the Times, Serial Productions will be largely independent of the rest of the Times audio operation for now. “We are thinking of serial productions as adjacent to the Times newsroom, ”said Dolnick. “Julie and her team have the next three or four projects already in flight, they have a full plate and they are moving fast, and their stories will come from This American life swimming pool. The newspaper and the Times audio equipment, on the other hand, are getting more out of the Times newsroom.
He added: “Operationally, they will be different for a while … As the partnership develops, I think we are all excited about the different types of collaborations we can do, but that’s not the first day.”
There is one more piece worth exploring: if this acquisition is part of an effort leading to some kind of new paid audio product. The possibility of this arose in Smith’s March column, when he highlighted a strategic idea among some Times executives than an acquisition of Serial Productions, along with The newspaper, could serve as the basis for something similar to the popular NYT kitchen app that generates revenue. A “podcast HBO”, so to speak. The fact that the Times He had made another audio-focused acquisition earlier this year from Audm, a subscription audio platform that produces high-quality readings of magazine articles, further justifying the possibility that we might see such a gambit.
Stephanie Preiss, the Times‘VP of audio and TV, suggested that the value of Times Audio is performing better as a free product, at least for now. “I believe that The newspaper has taught us that audio can help drive our consumer subscription business by acting as an entry point for people Times journalism … We are very interested in how we can add fuel to that fire, “Preiss said.” At the same time, the audio is a Excellent advertising business for us, and it’s a growing business. “
So there you have it: the legendary studio behind one of the greatest podcasts of all time will go to the company that publishes one of the other greatest podcasts of all time. And while it might not turn out to be a kind of paid audio product, this move, however, contributes profoundly to the Times‘increasing power in space. “We want to establish the Times as a true center of gravity for audio journalism, news and storytelling, “Dolnick said.” Our goal is not to change SerialDNA at all. Our goal is to help you do more of what you want to do … For the people you love Serial – and there are millions of them – the idea here is to have more Serials “.
I should point out: This deal comes during a year that is already rich in podcast acquisitions. In February Spotify bought The Ringer, Bill Simmons’ first podcast digital media company, in a deal that is reportedly valued at up to $ 250 million. In May, long-time celebrity channel facilitator to podcasts PodcastOne was bought by a music streaming platform called LiveXLive for $ 18 million in a stock deal. And earlier this month, Stitcher switched hands from Scripps to SiriusXM in what has been the largest podcast deal to date, at $ 320 million.
The volume of acquisitions is such that with each deal, there tends to be a wave of awkward moans and jokes throughout the podcast community about how consolidated and corporate podcasting is becoming.
But I’d say acquiring Serial Productions is perhaps the most justifiable of all the recent deals. That organization occupied a complicated place within the context of the industry. It’s a legendary creative studio in what has become an incredibly popular marketplace, and while there are increasing incentives to sell to capitalize on what may be a fleeting moment, Serial Productions has every right to take advantage of an industry which helped forge. It was also a situation where there weren’t many potential buyers who had deep pockets and a compatible publishing culture. Who else is out? Spotify? SiriusXM?
At Times, found a logical fit. The Gray Lady offered a home that is in line with the editorial and journalistic values of Serial Productions. the Times is a company that actually add to the Serial Productions brand, and perhaps the most important one, one that isolates it from anxieties wherever the Apple-Spotify podcast platform war exists, insofar as it exists, what exists, but not the way I think people traditionally assume – it’s going
Also, it is a good validation. In our American hypercapitalist society, it is an unfortunate case that we tend to overemphasize acquisitions as successful legacy sealing results for any company (whether or not it is truly valuable), while flattening the achievement of simply being successfully independent (thanks to Radiotopia). Serial Productions, creator of a phenomenon that radically accelerated the growth of an entire medium, wanted to do more than it could independently. Now you can.
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