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Knight Foundation invests $1M in podcast collective Radiotopia
- xb 11y agoThis is great news. 99% invisible is an excellent podcast. I love seeing podcasting becoming more embraced as a legitimate form of media.
- icebraining 11y ago99pi is great. I've also been really enjoying The Allusionist: http://www.theallusionist.org/ http://www.theallusionist.org/
- encoderer 11y agoHistory buffs, check out http://www.dancarlin.com/hh-55/ http://www.dancarlin.com/hh-55/
- pchristensen 11y agoAll the upvotes for Hardcore History. Even if you're not into history, the story telling is amazing.
- dublinben 11y agoPodcasting has been an accepted form of media since at least 2011 with the success of The Adam Carolla Show.
- fowkswe 11y agoThis sounds very similar to the Gimlet Media (http://gimletmedia.com/ http://gimletmedia.com/) / Startup story (http://gimletmedia.com/show/startup/ http://gimletmedia.com/show/startup/). I wonder if we're going to start seeing lots of VC investment in podcast production companies. I sure hope so! Edit: add links
- chrisrhoden 11y agoI hope so, too, but in this case we're talking about a grant rather than a VC investment.
- TylerE 11y agoI kinda hope NOT. VC money is the exact opposite thing that most podcasts need. Podcasts have sprung up as a wonderfully organic medium precisely because, unlike basically all other media, they aren't beholden to corporate interests that try to water them down, tell them what they can't say, or wedge them into some round peg shaped hole.
- replicatorblog 11y agoI think it's unlikely for a while. Content businesses are historically tough sells for VC investment. They've become more common in recent years, e.g. Vox, Bustle, etc. That's in large part due to the maturity of the advertising technology ecosystem which has made content more scalable/programmatic. We're no where near this point with audio yet. Podcast ads still sold by human agents, burnt into episodes in the form of live reads. It makes for attractive lifestyle businesses and some companies have bootstrapped impressively, but it's hard to see sightlines to a billion dollar plus startup. I think you could see investments in platforms, a la Sound Cloud, or podcast AdTech, but we'll need to see more growth in the medium on the scale of Serial to make it a reality. Full disclosure, I work for a VC firm that was featured on the first season of the Startup Podcast.
- darkroasted 11y agoThat is almost the opposite of I would expect. Podcasts have a clear analouge in radio, and radio made lots of money for advertisers for many decades. It is much more difficult to tune out ads when listening. Although, perhaps the profitability of radio was an artifact of supply restriction. Podcasts are easy enough that anyone can do them, and when you have more supply much harder to stand out and make money. But has anyone really figured out web advertising on random content yet (sites on which there is no purchasing intent, and no logged in user)? Is there information out there on how a site like Vox is really doing?
- shopinterest 11y agoI thought the Knight Foundation was working on highly intelligent Drone Auto Vehicles with AI - Project KITT and a mysterious guy called Michael Knight, no?
- happycube 11y agoThey've had a slight setback with the prototype.
- meggar 11y agoThey had the first smartwatch too.
- rmoriz 11y agoKnight-Rid(d)er? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Ridder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Ridder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Rider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Rider
- kookster 11y agoyou can see all the podcasts here: http://www.radiotopia.fm/ http://www.radiotopia.fm/