Study Hall Digest 5/4/2020

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

While Other Digital Media Is Falling Apart, Podcasts Are (Relatively) Thriving

Pandemic media trends, it seems, are pre-pandemic media trends on an accelerated timeline. Ad-based revenue models, already tenuous, are failing, and consumers’ pivot from pay-TV to streaming is happening faster. A global disaster tends to deepen the cracks that were already showing.

Podcasts are no exception. Audio content is faring quite well during the coronavirus pandemic while where other forms of media are falling apart, which was already more or less the case. As alt-weeklies fold and staff at digital media companies are being furloughed, new podcasts are still making their debut. In fact, whole podcast studios are making their debut: longform journalists Josh Dean, Vanessa Grigoriadis and Matthew Shaer have formed the new podcast studio Campside backed by the production group Sister, which produced HBO drama Chernobyl. Kara Swisher’s Pivot podcast joined New York Magazine — shortly before NYMag furloughed several staffers, including tech writer Brian Feldman — and two weeks later, the New York Times announced that Swisher would be launching a new podcast with its Opinion section. (Swisher has a lot of podcasts.)

I spoke to Nick Quah of the podcast-industry newsletter Hot Pod and he pointed out a few trends in the podcasting sphere:

— Download numbers are up on the whole, though this is subject to change week to week. This came as a bit of a surprise, since many podcast fans listen on their commute, and now everyone is working from home. “I fully expected a big drop just because of the near non-existence of the daily commute right now,” said Quah. “We saw a drop, then a steady sort of flattening out, and now it seems like it’s back up again.” Download numbers spiked at the end of April for the first time since early March.

— Not all kinds of podcasts are up. Downloads for true crime podcasts, once a reliable staple of the medium, are down. Quah had previously written that he’s heard of networks pushing back launch dates for true crime podcasts. More general pop culture and comedy podcasts are faring well. Apparently there’s less of an appetite for murder when mass death is a reality.

— The relative success of podcasts is in part due to the fact that advertisers are more willing to invest in podcasts over other forms of media. The Myers Report, which projects ad spending across media, shows downturns in nearly every category, except for podcasting, which anticipates an 8% bump in ad spending. Quah said this was because podcasts are relatively durable — unlike television, production won’t be halted due to inability to travel, for instance. “There’s no real supply chain shock to podcasting in the same way you can think for sports or movies,” said Quah.

— For this reason, we can expect to see a spike in podcast production. There will likely be a surge in independent podcasts, and it seems like a likely outlet for Hollywood talent who can’t safely shoot for film and television for the foreseeable future (for example, Community stars Joel McHale and Ken Jeong launched a podcast at the start of the pandemic called The Darkest Timeline). Also, it’s obviously a good time to launch a pandemic-specific podcast.

— Not every podcast that launches in this moment will survive, especially since we were already seeing a podcasting bubble. What seems likely, said Quah, is that companies like Spotify (which is on a podcast-buying tear, having acquired The Ringer for its sports podcasts earlier this year) will make off fairly well while more indie productions will fall to the wayside. “If you’re a brand or advertiser a little wary about money, you’re going to put money into a corporatized bucket as opposed to something that feels bespoke,” he said.

But why are people still listening to podcasts in a post-commute world? Maybe people are extremely isolated right now and looking for something that makes them feel connected. Podcasts are uniquely suited for that. “My thinking is, podcasts offer a sense of community,” observed Quah. “I don’t think you get that watching a TV show.”

This Week in Layoffs

— ViacomCBS, the result of the December merger of Viacom and CBS, is carrying out mass layoffs amid the integration process. The newly-formed company had already begun laying off staffers shortly after the merger, but the pandemic has kicked them into high gear. Over 100 workers were laid off this past week across MTV News, Paramount Network, Nickelodeon, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and Smithsonian Network — including some top executives.

The layoffs include:

• Smithsonian Network president Tom Hayden
• Comedy Central head of content and creative enterprises Sarah Babineau
• MTV News reporters Christianna Silva, Ella Ceron, and Madeline Roth
• LogoTV editorial director Matthew Breen

ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish says this is all part of the plan to streamline operations as the integration continues, which was already in place before the pandemic. Mergers usually come with consolidation, which might get more intense with this downturn. Remember when Vox merged with New York Magazine and we were assured it wouldn’t really impact editorial operations all that much? About that…

— Curbed, which is now officially under the banner of New York Magazine, has been paused during the three-month furlough period for a number of its city sites: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, and Detroit. Publishing frequency has been cut at sites for New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. About half of Curbed’s staff was furloughed just a few weeks ago. Hopefully it truly is just a “pause” — I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.

— Not all pop-culture podcasts are thriving right now. The Slate Culture Gabfest, which has published weekly for over 12 years, will now be biweekly due to cost cutting measures at Slate.

— The New York Post, which had already furloughed part-time workers and reduced its freelance budget, laid off about 20 staffers, citing the sharp decrease in advertising spending. “The paper is dying,” one laid-off staffer told The Daily Beast. This puts the Post in the same category as just about every other local newspaper, but there is a key difference: the Post is owned by News Corp, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who is worth $16.3 billion.

Tara Reade, Joe Biden, and the Online vs. On-Air Divide

On Friday, Joe Biden went on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to deny allegations that he sexually assaulted Tara Reade in 1993 while she was an aide in his Senate office. The on-air denial came 19 days after The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and NBC News published investigations into Reade’s account, and has exposed a divide between the kind of news cycles that exist online and on the air.

After reporting by these outlets failed to confirm or refute Reade’s allegations, the Biden campaign focused on amassing ringing endorsements from the Democratic elite and former rivals. Even as new details emerged and corroborating witnesses came forward to support Reade’s allegations online, national news channels glossed over the allegations. According to media watchdog group NewsBusters, of the 77 questions directed at Joe Biden in interviews on ABC, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN from March 25 to April 27, “not a single one asked [Biden] about Reade’s charges.” The lack of on-air coverage prompted NYT media columnist Ben Smith to talk to Reade for his April 30 report, “Why Won’t TV News Book Tara Reade,” in which she said that only conservative Fox News host Sean Hannity had asked to interview her.

Biden published a written statement with Friday’s on-air denial calling for “responsible news organizations [to] examine and evaluate the full and growing record of inconsistencies in [Reade’s] story.” In the days since, a new slate of op-eds from publications like USA Today and CNN have cast doubt on Tara Reade’s claims, while the NYT editorial board called for the Democratic National Committee to investigate the claims further. The problem isn’t that “responsible news organizations” aren’t examining the allegations: it’s that a divide has formed between what narratives are worthy of investigation and what makes it onto network news. — Chris Erik Thomas

Q&A With ¡Hola Papi! Columnist and Twitter Power User John Paul Brammer (full interview here)

Study Hall has a syndication partnership with the daily media newsletter Deez Links, by writer Delia Cai. Each week we’ll highlight one of Delia’s posts.

Delia Cai: Tell me about your path into writing and New York.

John Paul Brammer: It all feels like such a fever dream now. When I was in Oklahoma, my thinking was kind of, “Okay, your path into the writing world is probably going to be through social media, so invest there.” I wanted a platform that couldn’t be snagged out from under me and that didn’t have a whole lot of institutional hurdles in place to access because I couldn’t, like, intern in New York for a news outlet and I hadn’t gone to an Ivy League or anything. I told myself just read, write, and share. Read, write, and share.

DC: My last question is about your amazing Twitter presence @jpbrammer. No doubt, most media types would kill to have your following and “viral” batting average — but I’m wondering if there’s a hidden side to ~Being Extremely Good on Twitter~ that comes with all of that.

JPB: Sometimes people say “I love you on Twitter,” and I thank them, but it doesn’t move me much because I genuinely feel like I’m not the one tweeting. There’s a weird room in the back of my brain where some hideous creature is cranking a giant bingo cage and calling out words, and I have to type them out or the creature will eat me.

Everything Else

— Bustle Digital Group, which recently laid off about two dozen staffers (including the entire staff of The Outline) and instituted pay cuts, was approved for a $7.5 million federal loan to help them through the economic fallout of the pandemic. A spokesperson for the company told WWD the money will go towards undoing salary reductions and expanding hours for part-time and freelance workers. BDG isn’t the only media company to get a loan — Axios, Newsday, The Seattle Times Co., The Tampa Bay Times and the Chicago Sun-Times have also received loans, which all come from the Small Business Administration’s Payment Protection Program. Is BDG a “small business”? Apparently any company with 500 or fewer employees can apply, and BDG employs about 300.

— The Vox Media Union has launched a GoFundMe for furloughed workers. As of this morning, it’s raised a whopping $82,325 of its $100,000 goal.

— Speaking of that pandemic podcast boom, the hosts of Gimlet Media’s Reply All are launching a new limited-run spin-off podcast called The Scaredy Cats Horror Show, which is “a podcast about scary movies for people too scared to watch them.” Great concept, tbh. Except a small YouTube creator was already using the name “Scaredy Cats” for their similar niche show. Reply All editorial director PJ Vogt addressed the conflict and pointed out that it’s a pretty widely-used idiom, which is true!

— Forbes Science, like every other publication and independent journalist, is struggling to find its niche during the pandemic. So it’s understandable that it would run a story about lava’s potential to kill the coronavirus. (Lava, we should note, also kills everything else.)

— Just weeks after The Outline was folded by BDG, Jezebel has snatched up former Outline editor Brandy Jensen’s popular advice column “Ask a Fuck-Up.” The column will run every two weeks at its new home. This is a smart move on Jezebel’s part, imo. Along with podcasts, advice columns don’t seem to be in any danger of vanishing.

— NYT’s new media columnist Ben Smith still has stock options in BuzzFeed, Smith admits in his latest column. Smith was BuzzFeed’s founding and longtime editor-in-chief; his stake is likely to be significant, at least compared to any other editorial employee. NYT is usually utterly puritan on the appearance of conflicts of interest for its reporters, including its freelancers, who can’t take press junkets or write sponsored content for brands (in theory). Not in this case! 🤔🤔🤔 The deal is apparently that he has to get rid of his options by the end of the year, but why wait?