WNYC to Open New Podcast Division

WNYC, the public radio powerhouse in New York, is about to grow even bigger through a new division that will develop programs for the expanding podcast market.

The division, WNYC Studios, is to open this week with a plan to raise $15 million for new programming. Among the shows being developed at the studio will be “The New Yorker Radio Hour,” a partnership with the magazine; a spinoff of WNYC’s popular “Radiolab” program coming next year that will focus on the Supreme Court; and “Only Human,” a health program.

In addition, the division will allow WNYC — which has used NPR to syndicate many of its shows — to distribute its programs to other radio stations around the country, a move that could help WNYC make more money and raise its profile in markets outside New York.

“This is the way we will become a much, much bigger content company, period,” said Dean Cappello, WNYC’s executive vice president and chief content officer.

The move is being driven by the popularity of podcasts, which public broadcasters have seized on as a way to expand their programming portfolios and build greater loyalty from listeners. The most popular podcasts, like “Serial,” attract tens of millions of fans and have begun to penetrate the cultural mainstream. In June, for example, President Obama was a guest on the comedian Marc Maron’s show “WTF With Marc Maron,” which Mr. Maron tapes in his garage in Los Angeles.

WNYC says that its podcasts, which include “Freakonomics Radio” and Alec Baldwin’s “Here’s the Thing,” are downloaded at least 20 million times each month.

Among the shows that WNYC Studios is developing in pilot form are a partnership with Vice News; a program with the author Roxane Gay; “Two Dope Queens,” with Jessica Williams of Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” and Phoebe Robinson; and a scripted fiction series with the comedian Sara Schaefer.

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Credit...Matthew Septimus

WNYC Studios will operate as a separate division, but some of its programs will be heard on the radio, like “The New Yorker Radio Hour,” which will begin broadcasting on Oct. 24 and will be hosted by David Remnick, the magazine’s editor.

The establishment of a new studio may also help WNYC prevent the departure of top hosts and producers as investment begins to pour in to private podcast outlets like Gimlet Media — co-founded by Alex Blumberg, a former producer on the radio show “This American Life” — and Audible, an audio company owned by Amazon.

“The public radio system is losing a lot of its talent to podcasting,” said Larry Rosin, the president of Edison Research, a firm that has studied the popularity of podcasts.

Podcasts are also attractive to public broadcasters because they are not subject to the Federal Communications Commission’s strict rules about corporate sponsorship that govern the public airways. That means that more sponsorship segments can be included in a typical podcast program than on the air, an issue that has raised concerns about editorial independence; in one episode of the Gimlet Media show “StartUp,” for example, a reporter from the show interviewed engineers at Ford, an advertiser.

Mr. Cappello said that WNYC was still being cautious about how to carry out sponsorship — often called underwriting in the public broadcasting world — into podcasts.

So far, WNYC Studios has raised $2 million of the $15 million it plans to use as seed money for the new shows. That contribution has come from a single philanthropist, and the station says it has received interest from various investors for the fund. The fund will be replenished as new shows establish themselves and become supported through WNYC’s standard operating budget.

Last year, New York Public Radio, the nonprofit group that controls WNYC and WQXR, had nearly $70 million in revenue, including $28.9 million in contributions from individual members and $16.7 million in corporate underwriting, according to the organization’s latest annual report. Its expenses included $38.5 million for radio programming.

“What the donors like is that it’s kind of a double whammy,” said Laura R. Walker, the president and chief executive of New York Public Radio. “They get to give money to new shows and know it will be managed well, and it’s not going to disappear.”
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