Midroll Media

Stitcher has a Brand New Look

~ jen

Stitcher announced that they have a new look. They are no longer using their previous logo, and have replaced it with one that has new colors. Stitcher has also been investing in its app, and has become the primary brand for E.W. Scripps Company’s podcast operations.

The new look embodies our history and where we’re headed in the future. The bars are reminiscent of sound. The colors are meant to be energetic and exciting, and together they demonstrate our commitment to all listeners, all creators and all types of podcasts. Used as mirrors of one another, they can create a “window” that opens up into the podcast world.

Stitcher has been investing in the Stitcher app. Their newest iOS release literally moves the app’s navigation options to your fingertips, making it easier for you to get what you want with fewer taps. Similar updates are on their way for Android.

Midroll Media announced the following on the Midroll blog:

Stitcher, a leader in podcast content creation, distribution, and advertising, today unveiled a new logo and brand identify, reinforcing its place as a leading player across the podcast ecosystem as it becomes the primary brand for The E.W. Scripps Company’s podcast operations.

The same blog post says that Stitcher is now the parent company to Midroll and Earwolf. Other networks of original content also fall under the Stitcher umbrella. Stitcher is a wholly owned subsidiary of The E.W. Scripps Company.

Midroll Media Seeks Production Coordinator

~ jen

Midroll Media is the world’s largest pure-play podcast media company. They started out as Earwolf, a pioneering comedy podcast network. The Midroll brand distributes and monetizes major podcasts such as WTF with Marc Maron, The Bill Simmons Podcast, The Nerdist and Star Talk Radio. Midroll Media is seeking a Production Coordinator.

We’re hiring a Production Coordinator to oversee studio operations and ensure recording logistics run smoothly. In this position, you’ll coordinate the efforts of the production and ad sales teams in creating great content and getting it into the ears of our fans. You’ll be the regular point of contact for many of our hosts and the first face guests see when they arrive at our studios.

Some responsibilities include:

  • Oversee studio operations and act as concierge to incoming guests and hosts
  • Booking shows in Earwolf Studio Calendar
  • Update official Earwolf release calendar each week
  • Perform various housekeeping and administrative duties including: Keeping office and studio tidy; well-organized and professional-looking; set-up and breakdown of studio between sessions; offering water and coffee to guests & hosts.
  • Work with engineers and producers to upload air checks, backup files and other admin duties related to show production
  • Take photos during and after recordings, archive and edit them for use on our website and social
  • Work with content team to assist hosts with ad copy, ad sales, ad inventory, scheduling, promotion, other projects

Some qualities that Midroll is looking for in applicants include:

  • A knowledge and love of Earwolf podcasts
  • An understanding of audio production
  • Strong project management and organizational skills
  • The ability to prioritize quickly based on changing priorities and business needs
  • Willing to work non-traditional hours when necessary

Please visit the Scripps website to read more details about the Production Coordinator position.

Midroll Media Notable New Hires

~ jen

Midroll Media announced that it had added three leaders to its growing team. The notable new hires include an executive producer for Midroll’s award-winning content group, Midroll’s first-ever head of marketing, and a new leader for Midroll’s financial operations.

Amy Fitzgibbons joins Midroll as vice president of marketing. She will be responsible for driving significant consumer growth and engagement for Midroll. Previous to joining Midroll, Amy Fitzgibbons was vice president of marketing at PhotoShelter. She also led PhotoShelter’s customer acquisition and retention efforts, as well as social media and public relations.

Laura Mayer joins Midroll as an executive producer. She will be responsible for the development, production, and launch of new podcasts for Midroll’s comedy-focused Earwolf network, as well as its Stitcher label. Previous to joining Midroll, Laura Mayer worked at Panoply, where she launched dozens of shows and led the production of the first season of Revisionist History.

David Murray joins Midroll as vice president of finance and strategy. Previously, he held the role of finance business partner and helped oversee the financial organization of E.W. Scripps’ local and national digital businesses.

Midroll Media Partners with Intelligence For Your Life: The Podcast

~ jen

Midroll Media has partnered with a new podcast that was recently released. Intelligence For Your Life: The Podcast features names you might recognize. It appears to be a collaborative work.

Intelligence For Your Life: The Podcast is based on the hugely popular syndicated radio program “The John Tesh Radio Show” and “Intelligence For Your Health with Connie Sellecca”. Those two programs are heard on more than 350 stations nationwide by 23 million listeners per week.

Intelligence For Your Life: The Podcast is hosted by John Tesh, Connie Sellecca, and Gib Gerard. The podcast is a new program created specifically for the podcast audience. The hosts share their experience and wisdom on personal development, along with the latest cutting-edge tactics, tools, and routines for health and wellness, relationships, career, and fitness.

In addition, the hosts interview scientists, doctors, authors, and world-class performers to provide listeners with actionable intelligence on topics like brain hacks for better memory, effective morning routines, the latest research on sleep, job-hunting strategies, and more.

Midroll Media will be helping produce and distribute Intelligence For Your Life: The Podcast. The podcast is availble on iTunes, Stitcher, and all major podcast platforms. New episodes are released every Tuesday.

ART19 Launched a Podcast Platform

~ jen

Art19 logoART19 has launched a podcast platform with enhanced advertising and measurement capabilities. Midroll Media, DGital Media and Wondery are leveraging the platform’s advanced capabilities for dynamic ad insertion, audience targeting and listener measurement.

ART19 was founded by software entrepreneur Sean Carr and podcast producer Matt Belknap. ART19 is emerging from beta following eight months of extensive testing with more than 350 shows.

Midroll Media has begun using ART19 and Midroll will make ART19 its third-party hosting preferred provider. DGital Media is an audio engagement company whose partners include UFC, Recode Media, The Vertical Podcast Network, and more, has partnered with ART19 to host most of its content. Wondery specializes in mobile and on-demand audio story telling and has partnered with ART 19 for all of its scripted and unscripted shows.

New data from Wondery and comScore shows that people prefer ads in podcasts over any other digital medium. ART19’s targeting and measurement capabilities are helping brands leverage this engagement.

ART19’s benefits include:

* Dynamic Insertion of Host-Read Spots: ART19’s proprietary WarpFeed technology enables publishers to update back catalogs with fresh advertising; back catalogs comprise more than 50 percent of listening on some podcasts.

* Ad Targeting: ART19 enables delivery of different ads to different listeners of a podcast episode, even in iTunes

* APIs for Improved Audience Measurement: ART19 players and APIs offer vastly improved listening data relative to what is available in RSS, the distribution format that still dominates the space.

E.W. Scripps Seeks Executive Producer for Earwolf

~ jen

Earwolf logoE.W. Scripps acquired Midroll Media in 2015, a move that made Midroll Media a wholly-owned subsidiarity of the E.W. Scripps Company. They are currently seeking an Executive Producer for Earwolf.

Midroll is the parent company of Earwolf, a comedy podcasting network. It has more than 35 shows that are produced weekly. Some of those shows include: Seth Godwin’s Startup School, Maltin on Movies (with Leonard Maltin and Baron Vaughn), With Special Guest Lauren Lapkus (hosted by Lauren Lapkus), Rhona & Beverly (hosted by Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo), and The Longest Shortest Time (hosted by Hillary Frank), to name just a few.

The Executive Producer will lead Midroll’s network of weekly shows. He or she will work closely with their talent and the production teams in LA and NYC to launch great new shows, improve the content of existing Earwolf productions and engage and grow the audience. The Earwolf Executive Producer “will have a strategic vision for the network, prioritizing audience growth and content excellence”.

The position is listed as “full-time”. Midroll has a strong preference for candidates who are experienced in working in the comedy genre. If this is something that interests you, it would be a good idea to read the full job description over at E. W. Scripps.

E.W. Scripps Buys Stitcher

~ jen

Stitcher RadioE.W. Scripps has acquired the popular podcast listening service Stitcher. Those of you who have a podcast on Stitcher may have received an email about this acquisition.

Stitcher is one of the most established and popular streaming audio listening brands. It is accessible via free iPhone and Android apps, on the dashboard of more than 50 car models, and at stitcher.com Stitcher facilitates discovery and streaming for more than 65,000 podcasts to 8 million registered users.

Both E.W. Scripps and Stitcher have stated that Stitcher is now part of Midroll Media. The Stitcher announcement states that Midroll is a podcast production company and advertising network. It is the parent company of the Earwolf network, the Howl premium subscription service, and the Midroll advertising network (which is owned by E.W. Scripps).

Stitcher states that Stitcher listeners will continue to have access to audio through Stitcher’s apps. Email that was sent to podcasters who have their podcasts available on Stitcher states that those podcasts will still be available via the Deezer platform. The E.W. Scripps press release states that Scripps and Deezer agreed to a $4.5 million cash purchase price.

The email sent to podcasters who have podcasts on Stitcher states that there are no plans to shut down the Stitcher service. Instead, they plan on accelerating improvements to the Stitcher platform as well as launching new content partner services in the coming year.

The Wall Street Journal says that a person familiar with the acquisition called it an “acquihire”. Stitcher’s dozen employees will join Midroll.

Midroll Drops Latest Listener Survey Stats

~ Shawn Thorpe

PMidroll Logoodcasting production and advertising company Midroll has published the findings from its latest listener survey. “Podcasts By The Numbers,” as the survey data is called is described by Midroll as “the industry’s largest ongoing survey of podcast listeners.” The objective of the survey is to gather information on the audience consuming Midroll’s shows so the network can help its advertisers make informed choices about shows they choose to run ads on. The survey was conducted between June and October of 2015 and includes results from over 168,000 surveyed listeners.

Here are some highlights from the survey:

  • 22% of listeners have an annual household income of $100,000 or more.
  • Half of the listeners have a bachelor’s degree or higher education degree, 53% spend at least $132 a year on printed books and e-books.
  • 61% report buying a product or service they heard about on a podcast ad.
  • As the audience grows, it diversifies, looking more like the demographics of the United States as a whole.
  • 88% listen to most or all episodes of the podcasts they subscribe to.

Midroll typically only works with shows that have significantly large audiences. So, even tho the company was able to gather its survey results based on a large sampling, it’s still not necessarily representative of all podcast listeners. The two biggest takeaways that small or independent producers may want to focus on are the “61% report buying a product or service they heard about on a podcast ad” and “88% listen to most or all episodes of the podcasts they subscribe to” stats. The first one could be useful to anyone seeking sponsorships for their own shows and the second one shows that there really is value in a show’s back catalog, and that it’s important to make that easily available to subscribers.

The full survey report can be found here.

Scripps Acquires Midroll Media

~ jen

Midroll LogoThe E.W. Scripps Media Company has acquired Midroll Media, a Los Angeles based company that has been around for five years. Midroll Media creates original podcasts and operates a network that generates revenue for more than 200 shows.

One of those shows is WTF With Marc Maron which is an incredibly popular podcast, even before he interviewed President Barack Obama. Other shows include Startup and StarTalk Radio, a podcast that is hosted by Neil Degrasse Tyson.

Midroll Media’s name is derived from the term for commercials placed mid-way through a podcast. It is the largest podcast sponsorship network. It has more than 240 advertisers. In addition to creating revenue streams, Midroll Media has always been a “content first” company. It creates and distributes 35 original podcasts via its owned-and-operated comedy and pop-culture driven networks.

Midroll Media recently launched an app called Howl. It gives people an easy way to access every episode of Earwolf and Wolfpop. The app also lets people view the latest tweets from the hosts and listeners of those podcasts, view behind-the-scenes photos, and discuss shows in their forums. It combines photos and community elements for each podcast.

Scripps is one of the nation’s largest independent TV station owners, with 33 television stations in 24 markets and a reach of nearly one in five U.S. households. It owns 34 radio stations in 8 markets.

Scripps also runs an expanding collection of local and digital journalism and information businesses, including mobile video service Newsy and weather app developer WeatherSphere.

You can hear more about this acquisition in a special episode of The Wolf Den. The episode features Scripps’ Chief Digital Officer and Senior Vice President of Digital Media, Adam Symson, and Vice President of Digital Strategy and Business Development, JB Kropp.

Hollywood Reporter reports that Midroll will remain based in Hollywood and will continue to be led by Midroll Media CEO Adam Sachs. Midroll Media has been acquired for an undisclosed price.