0:00

Hi everyone, this is Katya Rogers, OTM's

0:02

executive producer, just popping in here to update

0:05

you on how our full fundraising is going. And

0:07

I have great

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news. We set the challenge

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a couple of weeks ago at 250 donors, and

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have pledged to support this show. We

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New challenge, do you think we can get to 800

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We appreciate you. To

0:53

the extent that there was a message in the polling, it

0:56

was a message to the editors

0:58

of our largest news organization saying, the

1:00

American public seems to be confused about

1:02

a lot of stuff. What the press is still

1:05

getting wrong in its reporting about Donald

1:07

Trump. From WNYC

1:09

in New York, this is On the Media. Also

1:12

on this week's show, how Apple was there

1:14

at the creation of, and remains

1:16

vital to, the podcast ecosystem.

1:19

The first inflection point was iTunes. The

1:21

second big inflection point was when

1:23

the iPhone was released. And then the third

1:25

inflection point is not serial, it's iOS 8

1:28

going native on the iPhone. Plus,

1:31

we take a close look at podcasting's

1:33

first boom and bust cycle. What

1:36

happened to you at WNYC is not what happened

1:38

to Pushkin. It's not what happened to

1:40

Gimlet, right? Everybody comes in from a very

1:42

different category, but everybody's depressed

1:44

by the same larger macroeconomic conditions.

1:47

It's all coming up

1:48

after this.

1:57

Listener supported. WNYC.

2:00

studios.

2:02

This week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, a government

2:04

lawsuit calls Amazon a monopoly,

2:07

and the chair of the FTC won't rule out breaking

2:09

up the company. I'll talk with Lena Khan

2:11

on the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you

2:13

listen to podcasts.

2:19

From WNYC in New York, this is

2:21

On the Media. I'm Michael Loehlinger. This

2:25

week, a mixed bag of narratives

2:27

about the GOP and its presumptive

2:29

nominee. On Tuesday, Republicans

2:32

suffered a raft of defeats at

2:34

the polls. Overnight Democrats

2:36

celebrating a series of key victories with

2:38

Ohioans voting to guarantee abortion

2:41

access and shroting that right into

2:43

the state's constitution.

2:45

Meanwhile in Kentucky, incumbent Democratic

2:47

Governor Andy Beshear, bending off

2:49

a challenge from Republican Attorney General

2:51

Daniel Cameron.

2:52

The Democrats won decisively

2:55

in Virginia, even flipped a

2:57

chamber in an off-year election.

3:00

That's unheard of.

3:01

Last night, all four candidates endorsed

3:04

by Moms for Liberty in one Minnesota district

3:07

lost to Democrats. In North Carolina,

3:09

the candidate the group supported in a contested

3:11

district also lost to a Democrat.

3:14

In Iowa, 12 of the 13

3:16

candidates backed by Moms for Liberty were

3:18

wiped out. Both banning is unpopular.

3:21

Who knew? Meanwhile, the Republican

3:23

presidential front-runner Donald Trump

3:25

spent his week back in court. He's

3:28

there a lot these days, although he hasn't

3:30

exactly gone quietly.

3:31

Trump took a combative stance on

3:34

the witness stand yesterday, attacking the judge,

3:36

the prosecutors and the case itself.

3:38

There was an extraordinary moment in that courtroom

3:41

yesterday. The former president bringing the grievances

3:43

heard from him so often on social media

3:46

into live testimony from the witness stand. At one

3:48

point, Judge Ngorin reminded Trump, this

3:51

is not a political rally. This is

3:53

a courtroom.

3:54

The former president has racked

3:56

up 91 felony charges

3:58

across four criminal cases. in New

4:00

York, Florida, Georgia, and Washington,

4:03

D.C. Not that all those hours

4:05

in court, or under gag orders, has

4:07

toned down his talk of 2024. 2024 is

4:10

our final battle. Stand

4:14

with me in the fight. We

4:16

will finish the job that we started so

4:18

brilliantly. And that job, as

4:20

reported by the Washington Post this week, consists

4:23

of a plan to fill the swamp. Trump

4:25

and his allies are mapping out ways to fill the Justice

4:28

Department with lackeys to investigate

4:30

Trump critics, working on plans to potentially

4:32

invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office

4:34

to allow him to deploy the military against

4:36

civil demonstrations. Despite

4:39

all that, according to a much-discussed

4:41

poll from Siena College and The New York Times

4:43

this week, if the election were

4:45

held today, Donald Trump would win.

4:48

The bottom line is that The New York Times has Joe Biden

4:50

down in five and six swing states that he

4:52

won in 2020 to Donald Trump. The poll

4:54

also shows that nearly one quarter of black voters

4:57

support President Trump. That's an unheard of number.

5:00

We've said this so many times on the show,

5:02

but it bears repeating. General election

5:04

polls a year out are not

5:07

reliable.

5:08

The thing to keep in mind is that polls are like

5:11

candy for reporters. They can't

5:13

get enough of them, and they love

5:15

gorging on them, whether or not they're really

5:17

significant. Dan Frumkin is the editor

5:20

of PressWatchers.org, an independent

5:22

nonprofit site about political journalism.

5:25

He's been writing about how the press are

5:27

failing news consumers. To

5:29

the extent that there was a message in the polling, to

5:31

me, it was a message to the editors

5:34

of our largest news organization saying, the

5:37

American public

5:38

seems to be confused about a lot of stuff, because

5:42

practically speaking, if they think that Donald

5:44

Trump could do a better job with the economy than Joe

5:46

Biden, they're probably under the impression

5:49

that the economy is in the toilet right now, and it's not.

5:51

I guess I do have trouble on this

5:54

point, though, that there is a disconnect

5:56

between, quote-unquote, how the economy is doing

5:58

and how that is.

5:59

relating to people's expenses

6:02

the amount of money they have in their bank account You

6:05

know we live in a country with deep

6:07

income inequality a lack of social safety

6:09

net is it possible that both are

6:12

true

6:12

Yeah, no, I think you raised a very good point I'm not

6:15

saying the economy is great for everybody, but

6:18

what's happened is that the Republican

6:20

talking points that the

6:22

economy is in the toilet that Inflation

6:25

is destroying people's lives

6:28

is an exaggeration and yet it gets picked

6:30

up by the press and certainly doesn't get disavowed by

6:32

the press

6:33

On press watch your site you wrote

6:36

about some recent reporting from the New York Times and the

6:38

Washington Post looking into

6:40

Trump's intention to select

6:42

political appointees who will unquestioningly

6:46

follow his orders and turn

6:48

the prosecutorial power of the Justice

6:51

Department against his political opponents this

6:53

was essential reporting of What

6:56

he plans to do on day one

6:59

if he's reelected, but at the same time you

7:01

felt that something was lacking from this coverage

7:04

These two articles were fantastic

7:06

in some ways in that they really looked at how

7:08

would Trump govern How would Trump be the president

7:11

which is something that is too often overlooked in

7:13

the data and down incremental horseman coverage

7:16

But what you're seeing is that elite journalists

7:19

at our top Institutions lack

7:21

the vocabulary and the mechanics that

7:23

are really necessary to accurately cover Trump right

7:25

now that they can't bring themselves to

7:27

say That he's delusional

7:30

They can't bring themselves to say that he's a would-be dictator

7:32

these articles if you read them to

7:34

a discerning reader Described Trump's

7:37

plans pretty alarmingly They're

7:39

getting rid of any obstacle to the abuse of power

7:42

gearing up to throw political opponents

7:44

in prison Preparing to unleash the military

7:47

on peaceful domestic protests using

7:50

the insurrection act using the insurrection act But

7:52

the language was so understated in

7:55

journalism We often look for what's called nutgraph

7:57

was sort of like the summary paragraph and

7:59

in this case the end of the nutgraph was, and

8:01

I have it right here, quote, critics have called

8:04

such ideas dangerous and unconstitutional.

8:07

That's the construction of a story

8:09

that has two sides that are equally valid. And

8:12

one is, person A says this, and

8:14

critics say he's wrong. That's

8:16

no longer adequate construction for what's

8:18

going on in this political climate.

8:21

How do you do a better job writing that story?

8:23

Well, I did, in Press Watch. I actually

8:25

literally rewrote the tops of both of those stories.

8:28

And you write things like, close allies

8:30

of Donald Trump are paving the way for dictatorship.

8:33

Should he win a second term in office in 2024?

8:35

You don't think that's too strong.

8:37

I don't think it's too strong if you then back it up. What

8:39

I'm looking for is not hysteria,

8:43

it's not hyperbole, it's accuracy.

8:45

And I don't think it's accurate to say

8:48

that it's just critics who have slight concerns over

8:50

what Trump is doing. What is accurate

8:53

is that what he's talking about doing would

8:55

close 250 years of history, would

8:58

violate 50 years of standards

9:00

that we've established since Watergate. These

9:03

are absolutely essential facts that are

9:05

hidden when the language is tame

9:08

and the criticism is meek.

9:10

I want to ask you about the coverage of Trump's

9:13

civil fraud case this week. For

9:15

those who haven't been following it, the

9:17

New York Attorney General has already proven

9:20

fraud that Trump knowingly overinflated

9:22

the value of his properties to get loans from banks,

9:25

and what is being decided now

9:27

by the judge is how much

9:30

he will pay in penalties. And on

9:32

Monday, he took the stand under oath.

9:34

This was a historic event. How

9:37

was the coverage? If you were following it

9:39

in like the live blogs on social media,

9:42

what you heard was an astonishing story

9:44

of somebody who was completely unhinged, who

9:46

was completely delusional, who was smirking,

9:49

who was making faces, who was being provocative,

9:51

who was taunting the judge. But then

9:53

the articles all came out and they said things like, Trump

9:56

defends himself and attacks judge.

9:59

What's essentially. happening is these articles

10:01

cover up for Trump's

10:04

unhingedness. They basically

10:07

summarize a lot of things that were crazy

10:09

into a few sentences that aren't crazy. And

10:12

so I think it's very deceptive. I

10:14

think that people who read the main story the next morning

10:16

had no idea what really happened that day.

10:19

On one hand he gets to put on a show,

10:21

make it seem like it's a witch hunt, rile

10:24

up consumers of the right-wing media

10:26

who would be happy to see that he

10:30

was barking like a mad dog at

10:32

the judge and at the Attorney General.

10:34

But for the legitimate

10:36

press it kind of just seems like

10:39

well yeah if you're a defendant then you're angry

10:41

and you make a case for yourself right?

10:44

I mean I remember watching the coverage of

10:47

the COVID pandemic under Trump

10:49

and he'd get up and he'd say something completely nonsensical.

10:52

Reporters would follow themselves trying to sort of make

10:55

sense of it and explain what he just said as opposed

10:58

to reporting Donald Trump just

11:00

said a bunch of stuff that made no sense. My

11:02

take right now is that

11:05

people are less interested

11:08

in covering his unhinged statements because they're afraid

11:10

that they'll be giving him publicity.

11:12

They'll be helping him spread disinformation and misinformation.

11:15

But that was one of the lessons from the Trump era

11:17

right? Like don't just cover everything

11:20

he says.

11:20

Amplifying him does reward him and does

11:23

risk even further radicalizing his supporters. But

11:25

you can't ignore it when this guy who could be the

11:28

president is saying things that are just nuts.

11:31

I have a proposal here which I've made in my

11:33

website which is that when he's

11:35

unhinged yes you report what he said. What

11:38

you do that is you go and you talk to his

11:40

supporters. You go talk to the Republican

11:43

leaders and to his base and the people who support

11:45

him and say do you agree with what he just said?

11:47

How can that be? What's going on there? Is

11:50

there no limit to what he could say and you'd still support

11:52

him? The news value to me

11:54

of an incremental unhinged statement by

11:56

Donald Trump is he said this and

11:59

the Republican party still supports him, because

12:01

that's astonishing.

12:03

Dan, this feels like deja vu all over again.

12:05

I mean, we've been hearing warnings from press critics

12:07

for years now about how

12:09

to cover Donald Trump in the right way. Just

12:12

this week, Margaret Sullivan published a piece in

12:14

The Guardian titled, The Public Doesn't

12:17

Understand the Risks of a Trump Victory.

12:19

That's the media's fault.

12:21

Great piece.

12:22

I agree that we have culpability

12:24

here and that we could do it better. But

12:27

it's also the case that facts

12:29

don't seem to change minds like

12:31

they used to. There have been warnings

12:34

of his dangers to our democracy.

12:37

And you could argue there aren't enough,

12:39

but perhaps they're just not sticking.

12:42

The press critics have been saying stuff like this for

12:44

years now. That's absolutely correct. And they've not

12:46

been heard. But I think that at some

12:49

point, it may sink in. We

12:51

may have to wait until the next generation of editors.

12:54

The leaders of our newsrooms have just gotten used

12:56

to still covering what is basically

12:58

an asymmetrical political climate

13:01

as if there are two equal parties involved in the

13:03

discussion. My feeling is at some

13:05

point, one of these editors is going to

13:08

wake up, look in the mirror and say, wait a minute,

13:10

we're not doing this right. We need to reset

13:12

because we are not successfully

13:15

informing the American electorate. I

13:17

felt this way back when two-thirds of

13:20

Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was behind

13:22

9-11. News organizations

13:24

at some point need to say, whoa, what we're doing

13:26

isn't working.

13:28

That's what I think people like Margaret Sullivan

13:31

and Jay Rosen and I

13:33

and a whole bunch of other people who have been saying

13:36

this for a while are saying, stop

13:38

what you're doing. Realize that it's

13:40

not actually getting the job

13:43

done of informing the American people and

13:45

figure out how else to do it. Stan,

13:48

thank you very much. Thank you. Stan

13:50

Frumkin is the editor of Press

13:52

Watch, an independent nonprofit site

13:54

about political journalism.

14:00

first boom and bust cycle.

14:02

This is On The Media.

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On The Media is supported by NetSuite.

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15:23

I'm Alex Schwartz. I'm Nomi Frey. I'm

15:25

Vincent Cunningham, and this is Critics at

15:27

Large, a New Yorker podcast for the culturally

15:30

curious. Each week, we're going to talk about

15:32

a big idea that's showing up across the cultural

15:34

landscape, and we'll trace it through all the mediums

15:36

we love. Books, movies, television,

15:39

music, art. And I always want to talk about

15:41

celebrity gossip too, of course. We

15:44

hope you'll join us for new episodes each Thursday. Follow

15:46

Critics at Large today wherever you

15:48

get podcasts.

16:00

So great. NPR claiming to lay off

16:02

about 10% of his current staff due to

16:04

the soft ad market. It's a wrenching

16:06

time here in the newsroom due to what NPR's

16:09

chief executive calls an existential

16:11

threat. Those layoffs and marks

16:14

were followed in the fall by a string

16:16

of cuts at WNYC,

16:18

our producing station. On

16:20

the media's team shrunk. Many

16:23

great shows across the industry have been canceled

16:25

altogether, which we'll get to. It's

16:28

a depressing reversal of an extraordinary

16:31

boom in podcasting that

16:33

saw the expansion of meaningful deep

16:35

dive reporting, a generation

16:37

of new celebrities, and for a select

16:40

few, staggering payouts.

16:42

Podcasting is a

16:44

rich and varied part of the media

16:46

industry nowadays. But we wanted

16:48

to take stock of where our particular

16:51

slice of the industry is today and

16:53

how we got here. Because podcasting

16:55

transformed our sleepy world of

16:57

public radio. And we transformed

17:00

podcasting. But first, we're

17:03

going to take a look at the unlikely story

17:05

of how the medium became a thing in the first place

17:08

and the company at the center of it all. Producer

17:11

Molly Rosen has the story.

17:13

It's impossible to tell the story of how podcasting

17:16

came to be without Apple. And

17:19

about a month ago, the company rolled out a new

17:21

operating

17:21

system. iOS 17 for iPhone

17:23

is now out for everyone.

17:25

And some of the updates might have an impact

17:27

on how you're listening

17:28

to this show right now. And

17:30

there's actually huge changes to the Apple Podcasts

17:33

app. You can now create custom episode artwork

17:35

that's prominently featured on the Listen Now and

17:37

your show page. There's updates to how to do that.

17:38

The update to the Apple Podcasts app also

17:41

includes a tweak to how podcast downloads

17:43

work. It's a small change that might

17:46

mean fewer automatic downloads of a podcast

17:48

back catalog. As a podcast

17:50

user, you're free to shrug and move

17:52

on. But for podcast creators,

17:55

this could be a big deal. Lower numbers,

17:58

while a more accurate reflection.

17:59

of listenership

18:01

could translate into less ad money. Less

18:03

ad money means fewer podcasts. We'll

18:06

get to that later in the show. But

18:08

I wanted to know how a small change in Apple

18:10

software is capable of sending ripple effects

18:13

across an entire industry. The

18:15

story starts in the early 2000s. The

18:17

same year the iPod launched

18:19

in 2003, one of us still working on Apple, there

18:21

was this group doing audio blogging. Kevin Marks

18:24

is a software engineer.

18:25

He worked at Apple from 1998 to 2003. He was trying

18:28

to solve the problem of streaming

18:30

audio and video on the internet. The

18:33

problem being, it didn't work. The

18:35

files were too big. They needed too much bandwidth.

18:38

More than early 2000s internet could handle.

18:41

So he became very interested in what those

18:43

audio bloggers were doing. The power

18:46

of your intellect. They'd

18:48

record a radio show, put that on

18:50

their blog as an MP3 file, and then twit from the blog.

18:53

Dominating world leaders. Welcome to The Daily Source

18:56

Code. I'm Adam Curry. Coming to you from Amsterdam,

18:59

The Netherlands. The Daily Source Code,

19:01

hosted by the DJ Adam Curry, was

19:03

one of the first podcasts ever made. The

19:06

term itself was coined by a Guardian journalist,

19:08

mashing up iPod and broadcast podcast.

19:12

Adam Curry with Dave Weiner, a software

19:14

engineer, came up with the idea of sending sound

19:16

files like a blog post down

19:19

in RSS feed. In the early

19:21

days you'd listen to these podcasts on the computer,

19:23

like reading a blog. But then in October 2003,

19:25

the programmer and blogger

19:27

Kevin Marks wrote

19:29

a script that would download podcasts,

19:32

copy them to iTunes, and sync them to his

19:34

iPad so he could listen

19:35

on the go, like people do today.

19:38

He demoed the script at a blogger conference at Harvard.

19:41

I mean, there was a dozen people in the room. They were

19:44

like, oh, that's a good idea. Yeah.

19:46

And

19:47

then in 2005, Apple

19:50

launched integration of podcast into iTunes. Podcasting

19:53

started off as Wayne's World

19:55

for Radio. This

19:56

is Steve Jobs on a stage at the All Things

19:58

Digital Conference in May, 2003.

20:01

2005. He's in his trademark look,

20:02

jeans and a black long-sleeve shirt, brimming

20:05

with founder energy.

20:07

He pulls up iTunes. And there's

20:09

a little thing called podcasts right here. You click that

20:11

and we've got a page full of podcasts. All

20:13

these things sync up with your iPod every

20:16

time you sync your iPod. And remember,

20:18

this has been really hard to do so far. You've got

20:20

to download this third-party app and already

20:23

millions of people are subscribing to these

20:25

podcasts. And I think this is just going to send it into

20:27

orbit. Can you tell me about your experience

20:30

before

20:30

Apple really got in the game and then

20:32

how Apple changed things?

20:34

There was no guarantee that

20:36

podcasting was going to succeed before Apple got

20:38

into it. Rob

20:39

Walsh is the VP of podcast relations

20:41

at Libsyn,

20:42

one of the first hosting

20:43

platforms.

20:44

I always say there's three inflection points in

20:46

podcasting. The first inflection point was

20:49

September 2005 and that was iTunes.

20:52

The second big inflection point was due 2007,

20:55

which would have been when the iPhone was released.

20:58

And then the third inflection point is

21:00

not serial.

21:02

It's iOS 8 going native on

21:04

the iPhone. When you

21:05

say native, what do you mean?

21:07

You buy a phone, what's on that phone?

21:10

Native. What apps are on there? iOS 8 went

21:12

native about a month before serial came out.

21:15

And you can look at the numbers of where

21:17

podcasting grew. It grew

21:19

on the iOS side. It didn't grow on the Android

21:22

side. If it was serial, it would have grown on both sides.

21:24

But it grew on the iOS side. Android

21:26

has never had a native podcast

21:29

app. They still don't have a native podcast

21:31

app. Apple Podcasts app, this

21:33

past week 56%, 57% downloads

21:37

directly across all Libsyn's platforms

21:40

went directly to Apple Podcasts app.

21:42

Spotify was 15% number two. And

21:46

then there's YouTube.

21:47

More and more podcasters are posting their interviews

21:50

to YouTube as videos. And

21:52

more and more listeners or viewers

21:54

are finding them there.

21:56

But whether YouTube videos actually count as

21:58

podcasts depends on who you want to be.

21:59

ask. People don't like it, but my definition

22:02

of a podcast is you have

22:04

an RSS 2.0 compliant feed

22:06

and it is in Apple

22:09

podcasts. Because if you're not in Apple podcasts,

22:11

then you're not in all those different apps.

22:13

He's referring to Apple's directory, which

22:16

they made public back in 2005.

22:18

It's like a centralized podcast

22:21

library. As long as you meet Apple's

22:23

specifications, you can submit your

22:25

podcast to it. And then the podcast

22:27

is there for any potential listener to

22:30

find in any app.

22:32

Without Apple, none of that would be possible.

22:34

Now, I'll say this, Steve Jobs

22:36

and Apple had an ulterior motive and people

22:39

don't realize why Apple did support

22:41

us. And that was because they wanted to sell iPods.

22:43

If you're going to sell an iPod in all these countries

22:46

around the world, you have to have something to put on it. Well,

22:48

in a lot of the countries, they didn't have rights yet. And

22:50

here is this medium called podcasting, which

22:53

has universal global rights. So

22:55

they can have iPods for sale in

22:58

Albania and have an Albanian iTunes

23:01

store

23:01

that has nothing but podcasts because they don't have the rights

23:03

yet for music. I hear what you're saying that

23:06

overall, with

23:07

Apple's role, it's generally been

23:09

a very open ecosystem. And

23:11

they've been good custodians of the medium,

23:14

you would say, yes, does it ever concern

23:16

you that

23:17

things could go a different way in

23:19

the future? And that one company has this

23:22

kind of power over the standards of the medium.

23:24

I'm not concerned that it's Apple. What I'm concerned is other

23:26

companies haven't been able to move up.

23:29

And I felt that Google Podcast was

23:31

going to be the next inflection point. Once Google made

23:33

that native, I felt we would see

23:35

a bump like we saw with iOS. And I

23:37

was obviously dead wrong.

23:39

So Apple's going to continue

23:41

to be that dominant player in the space. And people

23:43

have to remember, podcasting ecosystem

23:46

is such a tiny percentage

23:48

of Apple's revenue. The amount of revenue that Apple makes

23:50

from podcasting,

23:52

even with the subscriptions, is

23:54

less than the interest they earned while

23:56

we've been talking for this hour.

23:58

I that is part of what's interesting. to

24:00

me though, because I don't necessarily see it

24:02

as a bad thing, but I do see this imbalance.

24:05

How much

24:06

podcasting matters to Apple? In

24:08

terms of making money, it's just not

24:10

that important, I think. But how much Apple

24:13

matters to podcasting is a lot.

24:15

I would be more concerned if Apple

24:18

cared about making money from podcasting. That

24:20

would be my concern. As long

24:22

as Apple goes with podcasting

24:24

is a great thing for our consumers, and

24:27

we like podcasting because people

24:29

that own iPhones like podcasts,

24:32

I think we're fine.

24:34

And Apple's been a really good steward in this space,

24:37

and I believe they're going to continue to

24:39

be a very good steward in the space, as long

24:41

as they don't want it to become a profit center.

24:43

Now, in 2023, podcast

24:46

technology works pretty much the same as

24:49

when Kevin Marks wrote the first code to feed

24:51

podcasts onto iTunes 20 years

24:53

ago. You

24:54

have a feed and the feed links to a file on

24:56

a server, you download the file.

24:58

Do you feel like its development was a

25:00

little bit random, and then it just stuck?

25:03

Or do you think there was a

25:05

logic to why

25:07

the RSS MP3 combination

25:09

is still what we use today? It's a little

25:11

bit random, yeah. I think the point was

25:14

it fitted neatly with the episodic nature

25:16

of blogs anyway. And there was a huge,

25:19

ridiculous standards war between different

25:21

kinds of feeds, and

25:23

you could make a serial length drama about that. Standards

25:26

do tend to persist, and a big chunk of that

25:28

is that they become harder to change

25:30

when you've got lots of people both writing and reading them.

25:33

We've interviewed Corey Doctorow

25:35

on the show, somewhat recently, about his

25:38

theory of the en-de-ification of

25:40

the internet, which we always have to bleep because it's public

25:42

reading.

25:44

He said that there's

25:46

one part

25:47

of the internet that it's en-de-ification

25:49

resistant. Well, I've got some good news

25:51

for you, Brooke, which is that podcasting has

25:53

thus far been very en-de-ification

25:56

resistant. Really? Yeah,

25:58

it's pretty cool.

25:59

Which isn't to say that people aren't trying.

26:02

Do you agree with that? And why do you think it's remained

26:04

such an open ecosystem?

26:06

Yeah, it was this fairly simple standard

26:08

that anyone could adopt. So there was a large ecosystem

26:10

of people doing different bits of it. And every now

26:12

and then somebody does try and privatize it.

26:15

And there's been lots of attempts

26:17

to replace the feed formats with new feed formats. But

26:21

they're still there and they still work.

26:23

The same thing that's made podcast

26:25

technology a little wonky and

26:27

a little random has also kept it

26:29

on this different path than other digital

26:32

media. It was coded by techies

26:34

to solve a delivery problem and

26:36

then given a home by Apple to sell hardware.

26:39

And for listeners, well, we

26:41

can subscribe to a gazillion podcasts

26:44

for free from the app of our choice.

26:45

What could possibly

26:48

go wrong?

26:49

For On The Media, I'm Molly

26:51

Rosen. Coming

26:53

up, what went wrong? This

26:56

is On The Media.

26:59

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slash OTM to get your own KPI

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checklist. Netsuite.com slash

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OTM.

28:15

This is On The Media, I'm Michael Ellinger.

28:18

Now we dive into podcasting's

28:20

first boom and bust cycle.

28:24

Fun fact, OTM was among

28:26

the first public radio shows to release

28:28

entire episodes as a podcast back

28:30

in 2005. By 2014,

28:33

when this story begins, all the cool

28:35

kids were doing it. This

28:38

American Life had been publishing as

28:40

a podcast in addition to a radio show for many

28:43

years by that point. This is Nick Kwa,

28:45

he's basically the podcast

28:47

critic. He writes for New York Magazine. As

28:50

Nick points out, This American Life was still

28:52

very much radio first. The form

28:55

and content were limited by the radio

28:57

listening experience. Because when you behold

28:59

into the classic broadcast radio model,

29:02

it's hard to tell a serialized story because

29:04

if you were a radio listener and you caught

29:06

an episode in minute 22 without the context

29:09

of the 22 minutes beforehand, it's a little bit difficult

29:11

to get to be sticky. You probably see

29:14

where he's going with this. In 2014,

29:17

the team released Serial, hosted by

29:19

This American Life reporter Sarah Koenig.

29:22

A 13 episode season investigating

29:25

the murder of Hae Min Lee and her convicted

29:27

killer Adnan Syed, then just a high

29:30

school student. It showed that you could

29:32

use a podcast to do serious

29:34

in the weeds investigative journalism and

29:36

attract an enormous audience. Serial,

29:39

the most successful podcast ever.

29:42

It averages more than 2 million visitors per episode.

29:45

It's a real life murder mystery that

29:47

has those millions of fans hanging

29:49

on every clue. Audio is hot again

29:52

thanks to the smash success of a series called Serial.

29:54

The more and more people are listening, binge

29:57

listening even to pod serial show

29:59

that this kind of stuff.

29:59

as possible and that was an appetite for it.

30:03

But the question has always been like,

30:06

can you make a real business out of it?

30:08

Probably the most famous attempt was

30:11

Gimlet.

30:11

I watched Gimlet starting.

30:13

I was like, this is a new kind of company.

30:16

This is a company that makes public radio

30:18

style podcasts that

30:21

isn't sort of in the system.

30:23

Alex Sujang Lachlan produces

30:25

the podcast Normal Gossip and

30:28

recently wrote about the early days of Gimlet

30:30

for Defector. But back in 2014,

30:33

she was one of a wave of journalists

30:36

entering the industry who were inspired by

30:38

serial and long form narrative shows on

30:40

Gimlet. It

30:41

really expanded the world of podcasts

30:43

that made the world a lot bigger. Started

30:45

by This American Life alum Alex Bloomberg

30:48

and co-founder Matt Lieber, Gimlet

30:50

burst onto the scene with a list of plucky

30:53

shows.

30:54

Reply All, which was a spinoff of

30:56

a WNYC show.

30:58

And On the Media show, no less. And

31:00

On the Media show. Yes. Oh my God.

31:02

TLDR.

31:03

TLDR, yes. So

31:05

yeah, Reply All was the big one. It

31:08

was a podcast about the

31:10

internet and internet culture. There's

31:12

Mystery Show hosted by

31:14

Starley Kine, which was a quirky,

31:18

weird show where Starley played a

31:20

detective trying to solve really

31:23

mundane mysteries. And it was incredibly

31:25

charming. God, I sound like such a fangirl.

31:28

And then you had

31:29

Startup, Alex Bloomberg's meta

31:31

podcast about starting Gimlet.

31:33

The

31:34

first episode of Startup called

31:36

How to Pitch a Billionaire. It was him

31:38

pitching Chris Saka, who's a

31:40

tech VC guy

31:43

billionaire.

31:43

If I were calling an Uber right

31:45

now and it said it's going to be here

31:47

in two minutes, and that

31:49

was all the time you had, what

31:51

are you doing? So I'm

31:54

making a network of digital

31:57

podcasts that

31:59

we will monitor that.

31:59

that will that will that is going

32:02

to meet. He was

32:04

willing to make himself look bad on the show,

32:06

I think, because it made him a more compelling

32:08

protagonist

32:09

that warts and all honesty, hooked

32:12

listeners and investors. I

32:14

don't know what it is, but somehow a podcast about

32:16

me failing to generate FOMO and potential

32:18

investors generated a lot of FOMO

32:20

and potential investors. They raised over 28

32:23

million dollars and you could hear that

32:26

influx of cash on its shows.

32:28

There is an episode of reply all

32:30

where Alex Goldman called

32:33

back a telemarketer and

32:35

then hunted him down like flew

32:37

to whatever country he was

32:38

in. It was India. Yeah.

32:39

Yeah. I went to the building where his

32:42

office was. I know

32:43

where your front door is.

32:46

I wanted to know who was the person who called me and tried

32:48

to scam me and I figured it out. I

32:51

want you to admit that you guys are

32:53

scammers and that

32:56

you steal money from people.

32:58

And I remember being so enchanted

33:00

with that episode because it took an everyday

33:03

thing and took it to the furthest

33:05

degree possible. And I think that

33:07

was only possible because of the budget, the money

33:10

that they had.

33:11

Audible, I Heart Media, Pineapple

33:14

Street, Sony, Pushkin Industries,

33:17

companies new and old jumped

33:19

in to get a piece of the narrative podcast

33:21

boom. There was a succession of shows during

33:24

that 2014 to I want to see 2017, 18 stretch

33:27

where there was a string of hits,

33:29

right? That was the signatures at Simmons. Revisionist

33:31

history from Malcolm Brabell. You could argue actually

33:34

I kind of felt that Death, Sex and Money for you

33:36

guys had a little bit of heat when it came out even

33:38

though that's a weekly show. I will tell you Micah,

33:40

it was so fun.

33:43

Anna Sale is the host and creator

33:45

of Death, Sex and Money, a show made

33:47

by WNYC Studios.

33:49

When I started the show I was 33 years

33:51

old. I was

33:54

a single woman living in New York City.

33:56

I wasn't the demographic profile

33:59

of most people.

33:59

public radio with established shows.

34:01

In May 2014, the first

34:03

episode of Death, Sex and Money dropped. Who

34:06

in the world would come up with a title

34:08

like this? The musician

34:10

Bill Withers was her first guest, and

34:12

it was the kind of offbeat probing

34:15

conversation Anna would become known

34:17

for. It's all the essential stuff, right?

34:19

Yeah, yeah. The third episode

34:22

of Anna's show featured a painful

34:24

dilemma. Her relationship with

34:26

her on-again, off-again boyfriend,

34:28

Arthur.

34:29

We'd broken up because we didn't live

34:30

in the same place, and then my ex

34:33

wanted to get back together, and I was like,

34:35

how do we do this? Arthur knew that

34:37

Anna loved interviewing Wyoming Senator

34:39

Alan Simpson during her days as a politics

34:42

reporter on the campaign trail.

34:44

And Arthur was like, I

34:46

have an idea. If I write Alan Simpson a letter,

34:49

maybe he'll call Anna and it'll make her laugh.

34:52

It's such a funny premise. So what did the

34:54

letter say? He said, help me get this

34:56

woman back? Basically.

34:58

Here goes. The love of my life, Ms.

35:00

Anna Sale, lives in New York City. A

35:03

month ago, Anna stopped believing I would

35:05

ever close the distance to be with her, and

35:07

she cut me loose. I don't

35:09

blame her. I was being a fool, and I took her

35:11

for granted.

35:12

And what he didn't know was that

35:15

Al Simpson is also married to this incredible

35:17

woman named Anne Simpson, who when

35:20

Al Simpson did in fact

35:21

call me, I heard Anne talking in the

35:23

background. This is just the

35:25

sweetest letter. And I said, well,

35:27

what's Anne think I should do? And she got on. So

35:30

it is like a weird story. And it worked.

35:33

It worked.

35:34

It definitely worked. You're such a mark. I

35:36

know. I know. Anna

35:39

and Arthur have been married since 2015. They

35:41

have two children together. That story,

35:43

by the way, was picked up by This American Life and

35:46

helped make death, sex, and money a hit.

35:48

It was just like

35:49

having your wildest dreams

35:52

constantly expanded because

35:54

not

35:54

only were listeners hungry

35:57

and showing up, but also

35:59

as a make-up. It was just like blowing

36:02

up all of my ideas

36:04

of what was possible. WNYC

36:06

was jazz too. Public radio

36:09

stations had long been limited to just

36:11

three ways of bringing in the dough. Sponsorship,

36:14

what we call radio ads. Membership,

36:17

donations from listeners. And grants

36:19

from foundations. WNYC's

36:22

a little different. We also have a distribution arm.

36:24

And we collect syndication fees for nationally

36:26

distributed shows like OTM.

36:29

Now WNYC could sell podcast

36:31

ads without having to jostle for a slot

36:33

on the crowded radio schedule. It

36:36

was an electric time for the podcast

36:38

industry. It felt like a new form

36:40

of art and journalism was being built

36:42

in real time. And Hollywood

36:44

was paying attention. Tomorrow is my

36:47

first official day as the boss of my new

36:49

podcast company. This is Alex

36:51

Inc., a 2018 ABC TV

36:53

show based on startup, the podcast

36:56

based on the founding of Gimlet. Alex

36:59

Bloomberg is played by Zach Breath. There

37:12

were a bunch of these TV shows based on podcasts.

37:16

Dirty John on Bravo, Two Dough

37:18

Queens on HBO, Doctor Death on Peacock,

37:20

Song Exploder on Netflix. Podcasts

37:23

were shiny. And those of us making them

37:25

were suddenly in demand. The podcast

37:27

boom was kind of crazy for us because all of a

37:29

sudden people that work for us were just getting

37:32

offered $150,000 a year or whatever. This

37:34

is Jesse Thorn, host of Bullseye, speaking

37:37

here with reporter Emily Russell for

37:39

her audio piece for Columbia Journalism

37:41

Review. One of her big revelations,

37:44

the math on these beautiful serialized

37:46

shows just wasn't working. Here's

37:50

Emily.

37:50

For a narrative audio documentary project,

37:53

budgets from the major buyers,

37:56

such as Audible Iheart and

37:58

Sony could range from a

38:00

quarter to half a million dollars,

38:03

but projected revenue during a show's

38:05

release might be closer to $200,000.

38:09

And that's for the rare show with

38:12

a million listeners.

38:13

The fact is, Gimlet's specialty, our

38:16

business model basically, had been to make

38:18

a kind of podcast that costs a lot of money.

38:20

Alex Bloomberg again in a 2019 episode of Startup, in

38:25

which he's reflecting on how five

38:27

years after Gimlet's launch, the company

38:29

was in dire financial straits. A

38:31

lot of the things we assumed would happen

38:33

didn't.

38:34

We assumed audiences would grow, but instead they plateaued.

38:37

Our launches had not done as well as they had in the past.

38:40

And some of our biggest shows with the largest audiences

38:42

still weren't making money because we couldn't sell

38:45

ads on them.

38:46

There was another kind of show that was getting more and more popular,

38:48

a kind of show that wasn't what we specialized in. Shows

38:51

like Pod Save America and My Favorite

38:53

Murder and The Dax Shepard podcast. These

38:56

shows rely on a charismatic host connecting

38:58

with fans, and they're much cheaper to

39:00

produce. And the audiences for these shows

39:03

are huge,

39:04

way bigger than the audience for any Gimlet podcast.

39:07

He's describing the Always On

39:09

podcast. They release consistently

39:11

without breaks, unlike a seasonal narrative

39:14

like Serial that takes months to make

39:17

and only runs for a handful of weeks. Those

39:19

Gabfest type podcasts are fun

39:21

to listen to because you feel like you're hanging out with a group

39:24

of friends just shooting the breeze. It's

39:26

a part-time job for me and for my co-hosts.

39:29

We come into the studio, we

39:32

chat to each other for an hour. We have

39:34

a producer who edits it and puts it up. Felix

39:36

Salmon is a financial journalist at

39:39

Axios and a co-host of the

39:41

Slate Money podcast. The amount

39:43

of work that goes into Slate

39:46

Money every week is absolutely tiny

39:49

compared to the amount of work that goes into a super

39:51

produced and edited and

39:53

scripted in many ways podcast

39:55

from WNYC or Gimlet. Despite

39:58

the apparent troubles with Gimlet's business,

39:59

this model, in 2019, this

40:02

crazy thing happened.

40:03

By

40:17

exclusively

40:18

hosting Joe Rogan, Kim Kardashian,

40:21

and Gimlet shows like Reply All and

40:23

Heavyweight, Spotify thought it could differentiate

40:25

itself from other music streamers. Others

40:28

of Gimlet stood to make millions. It

40:47

was the last burst of hot air

40:49

in the prestige podcast bubble. Within

40:52

just a few years, Spotify appeared

40:54

to change its mind as financial

40:56

uncertainty swept the tech industry.

40:58

Spotify is laying off 200 workers

41:01

or about 2% of its employees worldwide.

41:04

The cutbacks will be in Spotify's podcasting

41:06

unit. In addition to another round of layoffs at Spotify,

41:09

the Gimlet brand is being sort of hoover into

41:11

a larger Spotify Studios banner. Ne

41:14

qua. So functionally, Gimlet

41:16

media as a brand doesn't

41:17

quite exist anymore, which is kind of like

41:19

the symbolic end of this era. And

41:22

then this year, NPR sent

41:24

layoff notices to about a tenth

41:27

of its employees this week. The network

41:29

also announced the cancellation of four podcasts.

41:32

Some of them are pretty familiar to a lot of folks in Visibilia,

41:35

louder than a riot about hip hop. You

41:37

have rough translation. And there

41:39

will also be layoffs at the satellite

41:41

radio company SiriusXM. They're

41:44

eliminating 475 jobs. That's 8%

41:47

of its staff. Pushkin Industries,

41:49

Malcolm Gladwell's podcast company, cut 30%

41:51

of its staff. LAist,

41:54

formerly known as KPCC, got

41:56

rid of some of its podcast-only shows. So

41:59

did OTM's producing station WNYC,

42:02

which canceled More Perfect and LaBrega

42:04

and cut staff members from Radiolab

42:07

and the New Yorker Radio Hour and OTM.

42:10

The company may also sunset Anna

42:12

Sales' Death, Sex and Money. We are

42:14

continuing to produce the show with our

42:16

current team as New

42:17

York Public Radio employees through the end

42:19

of this year.

42:21

And then something has to change.

42:23

The show will stick around, she says, if

42:25

the company can find a financial partner

42:27

to support its costs, which could

42:30

be seen as part of a wider reshuffling

42:32

of public radio podcasts, like

42:34

how the New Yorker bought In the Dark,

42:36

the investigative podcast from American

42:38

Public Media, or how Mother Jones

42:41

is reportedly in talks to buy reveal

42:44

from the Center for Investigative Reporting.

42:46

WNYC and I are talking

42:48

to lots of people about new partnerships

42:51

and potentially a new production home for

42:53

the show.

42:54

What went through your mind when you found

42:57

out that the future of Death,

42:59

Sex and Money was up in the air?

43:01

I didn't feel

43:03

angry. I

43:05

felt like, okay,

43:07

the status quo is changing.

43:10

That's like kind of scary and

43:12

sad. It

43:14

was interesting to me that

43:17

for like the first couple of weeks when I would like

43:19

be talking about it, it's like I

43:21

would just get this like catch in my throat and I'd start

43:23

crying whenever I talked about my

43:26

team. And when

43:28

you're making me do it, my team and

43:31

our listeners,

43:33

and I don't want to let them down.

43:35

Do you think

43:37

the team will stay intact? Like, do you think they'll be able

43:39

to come with you wherever you go next?

43:42

I don't know.

43:44

This has been the most

43:46

challenged year for the podcast industry

43:48

of at large, the podcast ecosystem since

43:51

I started covering it, which is 2014.

43:53

When I asked Nick Kwa what accounted for

43:55

this flurry of layoffs, he quoted

43:57

Leo Tolstoy. Happy families.

44:00

families are all alike. Every

44:02

unhappy family is unhappy in

44:04

its own way. What happened to you

44:06

at WNYC is not what happened to Pushkin. It's

44:09

not what happened to Gimlet, right? Everybody

44:11

comes in from a very different category, but

44:13

everybody's depressed by the same larger macroeconomic

44:15

conditions. As I was speaking with Nick

44:18

Kwa, a podcast expert, and

44:20

Felix Salmon, a financial journalist,

44:23

about what was happening in our industry and

44:25

in public radio, I came up against

44:27

three contradictions. Prediction

44:30

one,

44:31

prestige podcasts are shrinking,

44:34

but podcast sting is growing.

44:36

The podcast ecosystem, just looking

44:39

at it from an economic point of view,

44:41

is still growing at a really quite

44:43

objectively impressive rate. We

44:45

are going to surpass $2 billion of podcast ad

44:50

revenue in 2023. That's billion with a B. And in 2025, it's going to

44:52

hit nearly $4 billion. The

44:58

water sounds really warm.

45:00

Why are my friends getting

45:02

laid off? Why are some of my favorite

45:05

shows getting shut down? It doesn't

45:07

make a lot of sense. Really good question. The

45:10

only real explanation for it is that the water is very

45:12

warm, but it's not quite as warm as people

45:14

thought it would be. According to the Interactive

45:17

Advertising Bureau's latest report, overall

45:20

podcast ad revenue has never

45:22

been better, especially for sports and comedy

45:25

podcasts. But news podcasts

45:27

saw a small drop in ad revenue in

45:30

the past year. Podcasts are

45:32

still being made and making money, but

45:34

it's only a certain kind of podcast that's making the

45:36

biggest sums of that money. Nick Kwa, we're

45:39

talking primarily

45:39

about personality-driven talk

45:42

shows, the Joe Rogan's, the Call Her Daddies,

45:44

the Mark Maron's, that is just an engine

45:46

that keeps printing money. It's a very

45:49

efficient business model. Whereas

45:51

the long-form narrative podcast format

45:54

that I love, it's not dead. The

45:56

dream of it has become harder.

45:59

Number two, advertising for news shows

46:02

is going down because the economy is weird,

46:04

but actually the economy is doing

46:07

okay.

46:08

The economy is doing great. We just had the

46:10

third quarter GDP figures come out. We

46:12

grew at 4.9%, which is

46:14

crazy, like super fast economic

46:17

growth. There was a little

46:19

bit of a pullback

46:21

towards the end of last year where

46:24

people were worried about a recession.

46:26

I talked about that with Brooke on the story

46:28

show. And in

46:30

anticipation of

46:32

this expected recession,

46:34

a bunch of advertisers said, well, the

46:36

first thing we want to cut is our advertising.

46:38

We saw a $7 million

46:40

drop in sponsorship sales

46:43

between our fiscal year 22 and FY23.

46:47

This is LaFontaine Oliver, New York Public Radio's

46:50

president, speaking last month on

46:52

WNYC's daily call-in show hosted

46:54

by Brian Lehrer. Oliver declined

46:57

OTM's request for an interview. For

46:59

us as a nonprofit, that is significant.

47:03

We've had to, unfortunately, take steps

47:06

in saying goodbye to some of our

47:08

wonderful colleagues. We are focusing

47:11

on the shows that can

47:13

serve both our radio and

47:15

our podcast audiences, our

47:17

multi-platform

47:17

shows, our national

47:19

shows like On the Media

47:21

and The New Yorker Radio Hour.

47:25

My rights program, Notes from America

47:27

and Radio Lab.

47:28

LaFontaine Oliver's multi-platform

47:31

audio strategy brings us to contradiction

47:33

number three. Radio is becoming

47:35

more important even as its listenership

47:38

declines. Look at The New York Times,

47:40

which has begun syndicating two of its popular

47:43

podcasts, The Daily and Ezra Klein

47:45

Show, on public radio. Vox

47:47

has done the same with its show Today Explained.

47:50

I think of it as just

47:52

very

47:53

sensible business, which

47:55

is you want to maximize the

47:58

number of revenue streams.

47:59

associated with any piece of, and I'm going

48:02

to use a terrible term here, IP, right?

48:04

If you just have a podcast, really

48:07

the only way you can monetize that audio

48:09

is by selling ads against the podcast.

48:12

But what if I said to you, you can just take exactly

48:14

the same piece of audio and get

48:16

two more revenue streams from it. You

48:19

can sell ads on the radio.

48:22

And as you say, you can syndicate

48:24

that show to other radio stations who pay you cash

48:27

to put your show on their air.

48:29

So that's now three different revenue streams

48:31

from the same piece of audio. And that's got

48:33

to be a much more attractive business than just

48:36

only having one. But

48:39

the radio listenership tends

48:41

to skew older, tends to skew

48:43

less diverse. The numbers

48:46

for the radio listenership are

48:49

depending on what market you're looking at,

48:51

steady, but

48:53

pretty clearly trending downward.

48:55

It's no TikTok, right?

48:57

Radio is

48:59

orders of magnitude larger than

49:01

podcasting. It reaches millions

49:03

of people at all times of the day or night. It

49:05

is a massive business. There is a trend

49:08

there. It's probably downwards, but

49:10

it's slowly downwards and it's predictably

49:12

downwards. And what we've learned

49:14

over the past couple of years in podcasting

49:17

is that it's much less predictable

49:20

than radio is. Nick Kwa feels

49:22

that by cutting much of their podcast

49:24

only shows, NPR and

49:27

WNYC are setting themselves

49:29

up for future failure. It feels

49:31

like

49:32

both organizations are receding deeper

49:35

and deeper into itself when it should be

49:37

unfolding wider and expanding and

49:40

trying to really reinvent itself

49:43

for the changing media landscape

49:46

demographic and the world that it exists

49:48

in. If you are not reaching

49:51

new people where they are, you

49:53

will not be here in 20 years. It

49:56

is as simple as that.

49:58

I'm sorry, I feel like I'm very.

49:59

I'm coming up very angry and

50:02

I am, but it's like, boy, nobody's asked

50:04

me about this stuff for a while. And I'm like,

50:06

I'm really pissed about this. Why are you pissed?

50:09

Because I value public radio. I really

50:11

value the enterprise of producing journalism

50:14

and creative work that is for

50:16

the public that is

50:19

to a meaningful extent, this

50:21

entangle from a pure for-profit,

50:24

carpalistic structure. You are in

50:26

the position to produce more interesting and better

50:28

work. A lot of media is like one of the greatest shows of all

50:30

time. If nobody is out here being

50:32

angry, trying to defend it and think

50:34

about its future, then what the f*** are we doing?

50:36

NPR, WNYC,

50:38

LAist,

50:41

these guys have been in the podcast game for a long

50:43

time, right? They didn't just dip their

50:45

toes.

50:46

And they're saying 10 years

50:49

on

50:50

of experimenting with podcasts,

50:53

they're really expensive to make. You

50:55

got to pay those hosts so much money. You got to fly them all around the place

50:57

to report these fancy stories.

51:00

It didn't work. So

51:03

why are we chasing a unicorn

51:06

when we've got old reliable over on 93.9?

51:10

Two things. One, old reliable is not

51:12

going to be reliable forever. Something

51:14

feels different about how fast things are changing

51:16

in a way that we're moving today. And the second

51:19

thing I'll say about it is that, did it fail

51:21

because of

51:23

the theory or did it fail because of the execution?

51:26

I would argue the execution.

51:28

I'll say it out loud. It does feel to the logic set

51:30

like budget mismanagement, right? You're

51:34

focusing on all the executives that

51:36

you want to pay lucrative salaries to, right, in relation

51:38

to your newsroom. The model works

51:41

within the context of an organization

51:44

that's able to support it. According to public

51:46

data from 2021, keep in mind

51:48

there's a two year lag for nonprofit

51:50

tax records. New York Public Radio's

51:53

last president made $749,000 a year, including bonuses

51:55

compared to

51:59

NPR's. president at the time, who made $466,000

52:01

a year. NPR

52:04

is around twice the size of New York Public

52:07

Radio, and yet our last president

52:09

made $280,000 more. So

52:11

back in June, even before we

52:14

started talking about the possibilities

52:16

of layoffs, I made the decision to cut executive

52:18

bonuses for the year. Current New

52:21

York Public Radio president LaFontaine Oliver,

52:23

explaining to WNYC host Brian

52:26

Lehrer why he chose not to

52:28

reduce executive base salaries

52:29

in response to our $10 million

52:32

deficit. We did not feel

52:34

some executive roles to keep our overall

52:37

executive salary pool lower.

52:40

And as there's been turnover, we've hired

52:42

people at lower salaries than their predecessors,

52:45

myself included.

52:46

And how did you decide to not cut

52:48

our local news team? Local news

52:52

is our stock and trade. And

52:55

going into an election

52:57

year and also thinking

53:00

about the legacy and the history specifically

53:03

of WNYC, going

53:05

back 99 years,

53:08

being focused on serving the local

53:11

news needs of New Yorkers,

53:15

that was just really important

53:16

to us.

53:17

After years of incubating and

53:19

betting on the podcast economy, New

53:22

York Public Radio appears to be changing

53:24

course.

53:25

But Nick Kwa believes that podcast

53:27

fans should remain hopeful. The sort of fact

53:29

remains that like podcasting is here to say,

53:32

right? People want this stuff. People

53:34

want to make this stuff. It's becoming a

53:36

bigger part of a lot of people's media

53:38

habits, media diets. This is something

53:40

that every television studio has already known,

53:42

every film studio has every note, every music label has

53:45

already known that there are ups and there are downs. This

53:47

is podcasting's first big down. And

53:49

I think there's going to be a generation of talent that's going to come

53:51

out of the site,

53:52

all the stronger for it. And maybe all

53:54

the smarter, hopefully.

53:56

One of the big lessons of the podcast

53:58

industry and digital media in general is that we're general

54:00

is that if you think you can get rich off of journalism,

54:03

you will either

54:04

fail or cash out at other

54:06

people's expense. When

54:08

it comes to public media, the challenge

54:10

we face is experimenting sustainably,

54:13

taking risks and giving new

54:16

shows space to grow while balancing

54:18

the books. Good audio

54:20

journalism takes time. It's also

54:22

expensive, which is not a bad thing,

54:25

just a fact. It's what our

54:27

listeners pay to support. The

54:30

profit centers of the podcasting world will

54:32

zoom past public media, past

54:34

hard news, past radio. Their

54:37

water is hot. Hours

54:39

is lukewarm. But

54:42

it's actually kind of fine once you

54:44

get used to it.

54:54

That's it for this week's show. On the Media

54:56

is produced by Eloise Blondio, Molly

54:58

Rosen, Rebecca Clark Callender, and

55:00

Candice Wong, with help from Sean

55:02

Merchant. And our show was edited

55:05

by Katia Rogers, our executive producer.

55:07

Our technical director is Jennifer Munson.

55:10

Our engineer this week was Andrew Nerviano.

55:13

On the Media is a production of WNYC

55:15

Studios. I'm Michael O'ONGER.