Another domino fell in the takeover of the podcast world by large companies. Consolidation continues unabated and the basement podcaster is slowly being silenced by the corporate podcasters, resplendent in their wealth of financial and technical resources.
"My ears can't take much more."
On April 27, SiriusXM announced that it has acquired Roman Mars' production company, 99% Invisible Inc., which publishes the 99% Invisible podcast and What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law, the project Mars started with the law professor Elizabeth Joh in 2017.
The company will be sorted into the Stitcher brand, which SiriusXM acquired from E.W. Scripps last year for around $300 million.
Stitcher operates a wide portfolio of podcasts like Freakonomics, The Sporkful, and Office Ladies, along with a few genre-specific content divisions, including Earwolf, the long-running comedy umbrella, and Witness Docs, its recently established documentary unit.
This acquisition ends Roman Mars’ relationship with Radiotopia, the non-profit podcast collective he co-founded with PRX in 2014 that publishes 99% Invisible and Trump Con Law.
According to the press release, the acquisition brings Mars and the entire 99PI team into Stitcher, where they will continue to produce 99% Invisible and Trump Con Law and develop new podcast projects. It also notes that their podcasts will continue to be available across all platforms in addition to SiriusXM-owned and -operated services, which includes the Stitcher, SiriusXM, and Pandora apps.
The terms of the acquisition were not publicly disclosed, however PRX CEO Kerri Hoffman noted that Mars will be personally donating $1 million from the sale to Radiotopia over the next four years.
Stitcher operates a wide portfolio of podcasts like Freakonomics, The Sporkful, and Office Ladies, along with a few genre-specific content divisions, including Earwolf, the long-running comedy umbrella, and Witness Docs, its recently established documentary unit.
This acquisition ends Roman Mars’ relationship with Radiotopia, the non-profit podcast collective he co-founded with PRX in 2014 that publishes 99% Invisible and Trump Con Law.
According to the press release, the acquisition brings Mars and the entire 99PI team into Stitcher, where they will continue to produce 99% Invisible and Trump Con Law and develop new podcast projects. It also notes that their podcasts will continue to be available across all platforms in addition to SiriusXM-owned and -operated services, which includes the Stitcher, SiriusXM, and Pandora apps.
The terms of the acquisition were not publicly disclosed, however PRX CEO Kerri Hoffman noted that Mars will be personally donating $1 million from the sale to Radiotopia over the next four years.
In an interview with The New York Times, Mars tried to put a positive spin on his decision to sell.
"I’ve been devoted to independent podcasting for a really long time, and I still believe that there’s a role for that in the world… But my role right now is something different, which is to spend more time on the show and on making things that I love."
In his own Twitter thread announcing the move yesterday, Mars seemed to preempt this read. “Whatever cliche you have in your mind about what happens in an acquisition with shows moving to other networks, this isn’t like that,” he wrote. “A bunch of people from the PRX and SiriusXM/Stitcher teams worked together with good intentions to transform a show that needed to evolve for the sake of its creator, and I am grateful for that.”
But the decision to sell to SiriusXM is surprising because the satellite radio firm is the model of an antiquated media company with all requisite corporate management snafus.
Let's see if after a year with SiriusXM, 99% Invisible remains just that -- invisible to its loyal followers who don't recognize the show in its new, corporatized form.
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