Public Radio Organizations Buy Pocket Casts

The podcasting app would give public media additional toehold in a sector dominated by Apple

The headquarters for National Public Radio, or NPR, are seen in Washington, DC, September 17, 2013. (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Photo: Getty Images

A coalition of public media organizations have purchased the podcasting app Pocket Casts, part of a plan to exercise more control over the distribution of their content and give them an additional consumer-facing channel alongside major players such as Spotify and Apple.

NPR, WNYC Studios, WBEZ Chicago and This American Life announced on Thursday the purchase of the podcast player, which is owned by Australian mobile app developer Shifty Jelly.

Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

Owen Grover, previously the executive vice president and general manager at iHeartRadio, has been named chief executive of Pocket Casts. The founders of Pocket Casts, Philip Simpson and Russell Ivanovic, will remain at the company in leadership roles, the public media organizations said.

To date, public radio organizations have produced some of the most widely listened to podcasts — hits like “This American Life,” “Serial,” “Radiolab” and “TED Radio Hour” — but the content has largely been consumed over platforms that aren’t owned and operated by those organizations.

Apple’s podcast app, which comes pre-installed on every iPhone, remains the dominant distribution channel for podcasting, accounting for 60% of the downloads and streams of podcasts, according to Podtrac, a podcasting analytics company.

Pocket Casts accounts for about 2% of the downloads and streams of podcasts, according to Podtrac. Both NPR and WNYC said that Pocket Casts accounted for a larger share of podcast listening than PodTrac’s estimates, but declined to provide specifics.

“We see Pocket Casts as a complement to public radio’s healthy and ongoing relationships with other audio delivery platforms,” said Thomas Hjelm, NPR’s chief digital officer. “We are fully committed to our partnerships with Apple, Google, Amazon and other leading distribution platforms, and to ensuring that public radio continues to thrive there.”

Pocket Casts, which costs $3.99 to download, will refine its business plan under Mr. Grover’s direction in the coming months, said Nathaniel Landau, chief digital officer at New York Public Radio, who declined to provide more details. He said that the coalition of public media organizations wants to create a platform for independent creators to distribute and monetize their work, adding that they’re interested in applying the public radio membership model to podcasting writ large.

Each of the organizations that are purchasing Pocket Casts have their own distribution apps. NPR in 2014 launched NPR One, an app that allows users to listen to content from the public radio network, its member stations and other podcast producers. “This American Life” recently released a new website and app, and both WNYC and WBEZ each have similar offerings.

But unlike those apps, which offer a curated selection of podcasts, Pocket Casts is an open platform that distributes about 300,000 unique shows. That gives the public media organizations involved with the deal a toehold in the broader world of podcast distribution and an opportunity to gather more data and insights on the market.

“We need multiple shots on goal to address this delivery/distribution/discovery challenge,” NPR’s Mr. Hjelm said. “And I see this as another shot on goal.”

NPR, WNYC Studios, WBEZ Chicago and This American Life are the second coalition of media organizations to invest in a podcasting app in recent years. RadioPublic, which has been backed by PRX, McClatchy, the New York Times and Boston’s WGBH, launched in 2016 and has raised slightly more than $3 million in seed financing.

Podcasting is a relatively small but growing industry. About 73 million Americans age 12 and up listen to podcasts at least monthly, according to a 2018 survey by Edison Research. That’s about 26% of the population over the age of 12, up from 17% in 2015. And ad dollars are starting to follow. An April report from eMarketer estimates that advertisers will spend $326 million on podcasts in 2018.

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