SHOULD PUBLIC MEDIA FEAR AN UPSTART COMPANY LIKE “LUMINARY”?

Matt Sacks (Image by Rong Xu for The NY Times)

“We want to become synonymous with podcasting in the same way Netflix has become synonymous with streaming. I know how ambitious that sounds. We think it can be done.”

This is the way entrepreneur Matt Sacks described his new podcast company Luminary [link] to The New York Times in early March [link].

Sacks has 100 million reasons to crow about Luminary. Sacks raised $100 million in investment capital for the startup. Sacks has spent freely assembling what many people consider to be the best lineup of star talent in the pod biz.

Luminary is offering 40 exclusive shows featuring people you’ve heard of like Conan O’Brien, Malcolm Gladwell and Trevor Noah. Plus, Luminary is adding new shows (but not the current hits) from Guy Raz, Leon Neyfakh, the creator and host of “Slow Burn” and Adam Davidson, one of the producers behind “Planet Money.”

Any and all of the 40 shows can be accessed at Luminary for as low as eight dollars per month. Best of all, the shows contain no commercials. As we have written before, research shows that most people don’t like commercials (but might tolerate them in certain situations).

So far, the podcast industry has relied on revenue from commercials embedded into podcasts. This funding model includes podcasts from non-profit media entities such as NPR, WNYC and PRX. The prevailing wisdom is that people want podcasts to be free (with ads) and will balk at paying a subscription.

Sacks is betting that star power with no clutter can convert free listeners into subscribing listeners. Though Luminary’s menu is glamorous, it isn’t Netflix. So, consider this project to be a big-dollar gamble.

IS LUMINARY A THREAT TO PUBLIC MEDIA PODCASTING?

Andrew Ramsammy

Andrew Ramsammy thinks big-money companies like Luminary are a potential threat to public media’s leading position in the podcast business. Ramsammy said so in an op-ed – How public media should read the Luminary news – in Current [link], published in early March.

Ramsammy has impressive credentials. In 2016 he founded UnitedPublic Strategies [link], an organization that consults public podcast publishers, producers and creators.

Prior to UnitedPublic, Ramsammy was the Director of Content Projects & Initiatives at Public Radio International (PRI) and Executive Producer of the PBS series The Daytripper.

We feel Ramsammy’s op-ed has merit, and we urge people to read it. But, we feel Ramsammy’s analysis lacks some important factors and it assumes some things as facts that might not be facts. Consider:

• Ramsammy correctly chronicles the big money pouring into the already crowded podcast industry. But he misses the powerful one-two punch that public radio has when the two platforms work together to provide reach and depth.  For instance, The Daily, has become a hit both as a podcasts and on-the-air.  Since APM began distributing The Daily, downloads have doubled and station carriage grows each month.

• He downplays the power of the “NPR” brand.  Podcast and public radio have such similar DNA – some people call it “the public radio sensibility.”  Plus almost all of NPR’s podcasts are also heard on NPR member stations.

• In his op-ed, Ramsammy implies that Luminary’s subscription model will cause fewer people to donate to public radio stations. Actually, they are two very different things.  The motivation to contribute to an NPR station is not similar to paying a Netflix monthly fee.

• Ramsammy says in the op-ed “…how do we convert the more than 99 million people who listen to public radio into…supporters of new ventures like podcasting?”He based this number on a press release from which you can see hear [link].

The NPR press release says 99 million is the number of estimated people who hear NPR on all digital platforms. I read the "99 million" stat as incorrect because to most people (including me) would think you were referring the number of people listening to public radio on public radio stations.
Ramsammy did not say that the "99 million" included kisteners other than people listening to the radio. Ken 6pm CT 3-15-19

• Ramsammy says “We need a plan. In the public media collective, we have the lead, but we’ll get behind if we don’t strategize and act with intention.”

Who is “we”? Is it CPB, NPR or Ira Glass? It is hard to motivate a collective. Ramsammy needs to be more specific to get results.