
Knight Foundation invests $1M in podcast collective Radiotopia - samsolomon
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/05/knight-foundation-invests-1-million-in-creator-driven-podcast-collective-radiotopia/
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xb
This is great news. 99% invisible is an excellent podcast. I love seeing
podcasting becoming more embraced as a legitimate form of media.

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icebraining
99pi is great. I've also been really enjoying The Allusionist:
[http://www.theallusionist.org/](http://www.theallusionist.org/)

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encoderer
History buffs, check out
[http://www.dancarlin.com/hh-55/](http://www.dancarlin.com/hh-55/)

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pchristensen
All the upvotes for Hardcore History. Even if you're not into history, the
story telling is amazing.

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fowkswe
This 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

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replicatorblog
I 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.

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darkroasted
That 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?

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replicatorblog
You hit the two most important themes. It's a great biz, but not necessarily a
venture scale biz. The supply restriction is really important. If there are
only a few dozen frequencies in any metro, you can capture large numbers of
people, and there are few substitutes (e.g. no iPods) and the cost to
broadcast on is prohibitive, you become quite a bit more valuable.

Web advertising has a lot of problems, but it does have scale and plenty of
sites are making great revenues. Even then, content is still a relatively
tough business to get VCs excited about.

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kookster
you can see all the podcasts here:
[http://www.radiotopia.fm/](http://www.radiotopia.fm/)

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shopinterest
I thought the Knight Foundation was working on highly intelligent Drone Auto
Vehicles with AI - Project KITT and a mysterious guy called Michael Knight,
no?

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rmoriz
Knight-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)

