Q&A with Kerri Hoffman, CEO of PRX
This week, The Idea caught up with Kerri to learn how PRX — a nonprofit that helped launch the Radiotopia network and RadioPublic and distributes shows like This American Life — is responding to the pandemic and how it uses technology to serve public radio broadcasters and independent producers. Subscribe to our newsletter on the business of media for more interviews and weekly news and analysis.
Tell me about PRX.
PRX was founded the same year that podcasting came into being, in 2003. At the time, in public media and in public radio, lots of great content was created, but it would air once and then never see the light of day again. If you were running a public radio station, you only had two choices: either content that was nationally syndicated by NPR, or you made it. That was it: there was no middle.
PRX was created with the intent to make that marketplace. So, we built a platform, we opened it up to independent producers, and it was instantly successful. We also had to build an economy on top of it. We had to create a way that independent producers could be paid and that we could reduce the friction between licensing and rights and money. That was the first incarnation of PRX.
Public radio then gave birth to shows like The Moth and Snap Judgment, which came out of the ability for stations to think differently about how they might serve their audiences.
Flash forward a number of years, we created a lot of products out of that big catalog that we had amassed over this time. We would license out of our own catalog to create 24/7 streams for Sirius XM, etc.
You recently launched TRAX — a network of original podcasts geared towards reaching younger listeners. How does PRX aim to grow the overall number of podcast listeners?
The latest from Edison research is that 51% of Americans report listening to a podcast in the last month. Once you hit the halfway point, the adoption rate accelerates pretty significantly.
The impetus for TRAX is that we could clearly see that public media has done an amazing job super-serving kids under the age of eight. What happens as kids become nine and ten, they get a phone and then they literally go from Sesame Street to YouTube. There’s just not a lot that serves these kids to guide them into that next phase of media literacy of being good citizens and adhering to good online behavior.
Our timing was fortuitous: the pandemic has increased the number of listeners to every single kid podcast we have by double digits. So, we’re very quickly calling our friends at The Moth and Snap Judgment and other places saying, “Can you curate for kids?”
What else has changed for PRX since the pandemic?
I feel like I have a pretty good handle on, let’s say the next three months. After that, it’s pretty hard. For right now, there are some things that are very good indicators for us. Our downloads actually haven’t gone down very much, and I think part of that is because we have content that is in that zone of comfort and community, which I feel like people are looking for.
Our sponsorship revenue has remained stable. We also have an enormous amount of listener support because we have such deeply dedicated fans. We’re right in the middle of an Ear Hustle fundraiser right now. The things that people write to us about why they feel it’s still important to support Ear Hustle would bring you to tears. It’s so moving.
Those are the positive indicators. The biggest impact for us has been on the production. We have a podcast studio, a training facility, a community studio. All of that’s turned digital. Our workshops and our training sessions have always been sold out, but we are able to accommodate more people, who don’t have to be in Boston to attend. We’ve increased programming and more people are attending.
Because PRX is also a broadcast distributor, those early roots remain. That’s what is most uncertain for us. The local stations in hundreds of communities around the United States are seeing 20% and 30% financial drops, and that’s our customer base. That remains the thing that we are wringing our hands about because public media is a really important network throughout the country. We want to make sure that stations can make it through this.
PRX has built several tech products, like Dovetail, an ad-serving platform. What role does technology play in your mission?
For us, the technology isn’t just about the technology. We think of the technology as part of our overall content strategy. That manifests itself in our values of supporting independence. Part of that is you build your own highway. You build your own mechanism by which you can offer others the ability to succeed when gatekeepers may not let them. In many organizations, the technology is sort of the bricks and the wall. For us, the technology is the mortar that holds up the wall.
In the early stages of Radiotopia, we noticed that about 35% of the listening was not on the most recent episode, and we realized that we had no way to monetize the entire catalog. We knew that was a lost opportunity to monetize that content. At first, we just built a script to take an ad in and out using technology and stitch the audio together. Once we did, our sales went up and then the shows got more successful. Then we thought, now we’re going to build out this whole audio ecosystem that supports the needs of producers and the needs of producers.
What we’re doing now is we’re improving Dovetail so that we’re able to sell into the future better. When you have a portfolio across a lot of shows like we do — daily shows, biweekly shows, some monthly shows — the sales team is limited in how much prediction they can do over such a big variety of schedules. You get This American Life for the month, which is the door opener, but now a lot of podcasts buyers are like, “What are all the shows you have on science?” They don’t want one show. They want a collection. So our technology will allow us to more thematically group things. We’re so excited about this because every podcast company out there is looking for a way to solve the predictive problem of inventory and nobody has really cracked it.
Just to tie this to COVID-19: This is a moment for innovation, because if we go with the assumption that all buying will be a little bit down, how do we make sure that we’re efficient in all ways that we use the inventory, because that will help small shows survive the pandemic. If you think about ad technology like water running over rocks, it means that we can help smaller shows because we can fill them in a little bit better.
It’s been a year and a half since the merger with PRI — what has and hasn’t changed since becoming a materially bigger organization?
Somebody on our staff described PRI and PRX as siblings born a generation apart: PRX had a lot of the digital prowess, and PRI was a really respected journalist organization, so we were able to put those two things together. The values of openness, of supporting new talent, creating opportunities and monetization, serving stations, all of that has remained the same, but we have a lot more capacity to do that.
We’ve had to be really nimble in a merger, and all of that experience with change and disruption that comes with a merger has prepared us pretty well for where we are today.
I think the really important thing that we’ve been able to do is we’ve leaned hard into what we really consider to be the future of public media. How do we use our training, our brand, our power for good, in thinking about all the good mission part of public media, how could it be better than what it is? We can help improve the open door for new voices and new talent. We can train that talent and continue to grow the ecosystem. The audience is younger and more diverse — is public radio set up to serve that audience? Not entirely. So what’s the role we can play in pushing that forward? How do we help stations redefine themselves from being broadcast centered institutions, into being more a service to their community, in whatever that looks like.
That’s one of the most exciting things about the merger is it gave that combined power which allows to be more consequential and throw that weight around behind those values.
PRX helped found Radiotopia, a network of independent producers. What was the impetus there?
We created Radiotopia because we were watching as Roman Mars, the host of 99% invisible, and other podcast producers, stalled: they couldn’t break through to the next level of audience. The audience still had to work really hard to find a podcast that they loved.
We created a way that we could pull in a couple of independent producers who we knew well and maybe push through together that stall period. We launched Radiotopia with seven shows six months before Serial. At the time, people were scrambling to even make a show, so out of those seven shows, I think four or five of them were monthly. You can’t raise audience on a monthly podcast now, but that was a different time.
Serial came out and Apple made the podcast app better and more accessible, which just lined up so that Radiotopia took off like a rocket ship. We started raising money from our listeners so that we could expand the network in the next year, when we added five shows. The next year, we held a contest and that’s how we found Ear Hustle. Now there’s roughly 23 properties in Radiotopia. It’s not intended to be massive in terms of the number of shows. We think of Radiotopia like an indie label.
How does Radiotopia go about choosing its next show? In particular, how much is that decision influenced by serving existing audiences as opposed to reaching new ones?
There’s a couple of things. We always try to be open to things that we don’t think of ourselves. It’s actually how we Ear Hustle came to us through an open contest. Sometimes we just like to be surprised, but having said that, there’s a couple of things that are special about Radiotopia that we try to preserve. What are the stories that will have impact to a particular audience and how do we expand the audience that we currently have? So for example, a show like adult ISH is for a much younger audience, and it creates a good halo in that way, but it also brings some of those listeners who are finding podcasts for the first time.
The other thing is that we try to work with individuals. We work with This American Life and The Moth, and we have big shows, like TED. The thing about Radiotopia is we’re supporting independent makers.
What are your thoughts on whether the historic openness of podcasting will survive in the future?
I feel very bullish on the openness of podcasting. Even though it gets coupled with radio, podcasting is more like the internet — built on the backbone of the concept of an open platform. I believe that is how it will be stronger. It’s too young to start walling things off. We have not seen the talent nor the audience that we will have — just think of all the mobile phones globally.
I’m so worried about so many things. I’m so worried about the country and the economy, but one of the things I feel very good about for PRX is that when you bet on openness and when you bet on new talent, it’s a good bet.
How does PRX approach listener privacy concerns?
All digital media has really gone to the lowest common denominator of tracking people. The thing about podcasting is, because you download a file and you listen to it on your phone, there’s no interaction with a listener to say, would you like to share this or would you not? We believe that the industry has a responsibility to protect users’ privacy until they indicate that they would like to engage with us on a different level. Sometimes that happens: people say I would like to donate to you, so therefore you have to have my information, and I’m good with that.
The idea that you would be tracked through your podcasts listening, wherever you go is really problematic. Data on your IP address down to your home is really invasive, particularly when you talk about kids. We don’t think it’s necessary cause we’re very successful without doing it. We like to think about contextual advertising. Advertisers will say, we love that show or that show, but we really want to just talk to people who are interested topically around healthcare. Whether it’s an episode or at the show level, we can kind of use the technology to aim people that way.
What is the most interesting thing you’ve seen in media from an organization that’s not your own recently?
Hearken. [You can read our interview with Hearken’s CEO and co-founder here.] They are transforming newsrooms by engaging with the public. I think they are doing a great job affecting internal culture, engaging communities to make sure the right topics are assigned to reporters, and, lastly, they think a lot about how money and investments can be improved for more equitable outcomes.
Rapid Fire Questions
What is your first read in the morning?
The New York Times.
What is the last book you read?
Utopia for Realists.
What’s the last podcast you listened to?
Ear Hustle.
What would you be doing if you weren’t in your current role?
I would be a judge.
