According to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times is planning on putting podcasts behind a paywall:
The publisher is exploring making only the three most recent episodes of “The Daily” available to nonsubscribers, and making new episodes of its “Serial” show exclusive to subscribers for an initial period. The plans are still evolving and might change…
The Times is expected to gradually move more shows behind the paywall with the goal of eventually tying most, if not all, to a subscription service. It has also discussed making archives of its shows available only to subscribers, though those plans are fluid.
This is a bad idea, but I’ll walk through what the Times must be thinking before returning again to why this is a bad idea.
Currently, the Times makes a huge amount of money on podcast ads, because a) shows like “The Daily” are among the most listened-to shows around, so advertisers can get big scale, and b) the Times‘ affluent and well-educated demographic is highly desirable for many advertisers. The latter means that even shows with less-broad reach than “The Daily” can get premiums relative to their audience size, or similar programs at the same audience size, because they’re Times properties. They can also be used as fill-ins when advertisers can’t get access to “The Daily” (it’s very popular for ad placements, so highly competitive), or can’t afford a long run there given its large size.
Putting shows behind the paywall will lead to the Times making substantially less money on ad sales for two reasons: 1) fewer downloads, and 2) downward pressure on ad rates over time, because of 1). The current plan seems to be that the three-most-recent episodes of “The Daily” will be free to air and then all others behind the wall; this will lead into some drop-off but less than with other shows, as most daily podcast episodes get most of their listens in the week of release, and have relatively small (compared to evergreen shows) long tails. But there will be an impact, and it will mean that “The Daily” will almost certainly move down podcast charts (which are not absolute measures but are one of the few public signals). The move of “Serial” to a delayed-release strategy will have a similar effect on chart placement and overall downloads, but moving any other shows behind the paywall will be pretty disastrous. The Times‘ full catalog has good-not-great listenership – as ad sales go, they largely ride on the coattails of “The Daily” and “Serial,” along with a few others (e.g., “The Ezra Klein Show”). Over time, as the main properties get fewer downloads and move down the charts, the ability to sell the rest of the catalog along with them will decline – let alone trying to do so if those smaller shows are moved behind the paywall, too.
So why do it? Clearly the thinking is that the shows will be able to make more money for the Times by way of inducing subscriptions and/or lowering churn of current subscribers, while still holding their own on ad sales. The Times clearly has great internal data on subscriber behavior, so maybe this is true – but I don’t think so, and I think this will end up being walked back like every major podcast paywall initiative (see Rogan, Joe). The idea that’s central here is that people need the specific content of the Times‘ podcasts so much that they’ll subscribe, or not unsubscribe, at high rates to make sure they still have it. And I just don’t think that’s true – “The Daily” has been able to ride the reach of the Times as a platform company for journalism to a high perch on the charts, but there are plenty of other (very good, imo better) daily podcasts. “Serial” was a breakthrough hit and important for the medium, but it’s been years since it’s been culturally central, and the delayed-release strategy would make sure it becomes less so. Ezra Klein is a popular Times personality but nobody is paying hundreds of dollars a year to listen to Ezra; beyond that, the Times’ podcasts are good but explicitly not branded by the personality of the hosts, just as augments of the paper generally – these are not driving subscriptions, either.
If you want to have people pay for specific content the places where it works are either a) absolute gotta-have-it stuff, or b) content where the producers and audience have a more direct connection, and where it’s clear that it exists because of audience support. Networks like Maximum Fun survive because of the latter, as do many Patreon-supported shows (either those behind the paywall fully, or in a more public radio-style voluntary support model). The Times definitely isn’t b) – it’s a century-plus-old multi-billion-dollar corporation that’s in no small way in the business of putting other smaller newspapers out of business, at this point – and I don’t think its audio offerings are enough a) to make this any more than, maybe, a break-even proposition. Spotify couldn’t make it work with maybe the world’s biggest podcast, and a cheaper subscription program that also gives you access to all the music in the world; I don’t think the Times will make it work with shows that, while they have broad reach, are perfectly replaceable with other similar shows.
Jacob Kramer-Duffield thinks 