Scripps Completes Sale Of Stitcher To SiriusXM

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

https://tvnewscheck.com/article/top-news/254768/scripps-completes-sale-of-stitcher-to-siriusxm/

The E.W. Scripps Co. closed today on its sale of Stitcher to SiriusXM for $325 million.

The sale price includes $265 million of cash up front, with an earnout of up to $30 million based on 2020 financial results and paid in 2021 and an earnout of up to $30 million based on 2021 financial results and paid in 2022.

The Stitcher company includes the Midroll advertising rep firm; owned-and-operated podcast networks including the comedy-focused Earwolf; and the Stitcher podcast listening platform.


An early entrant into podcasting, Scripps acquired Midroll in 2015 for $55 million and the Stitcher app in 2016 for $4.5 million. Since then, Stitcher has been a leader in the fast-growing podcast industry, growing revenue at a CAGR of 52% from 2016-19. Stitcher’s 2019 revenue was $72.5 million.

EW Scripps has now divested from Stitcher completely and SiriusXM now owns this podcasting outlet.

 

[Kelly A]

EW Scripps has now divested from Stitcher completely and SiriusXM now owns this podcasting outlet.

Just as it was with Pandora; SXM shows up late to the dance again.

 

[CTListener]

Just as it was with Pandora; SXM shows up late to the dance again.

I nearly always get that sense with any moves SXM makes, on the business side or the programming side. It's kind of like listening to a great new song being played in Buffalo or Boston in the '60s or '70s but having to wait two or three weeks to hear it on WABC because the NYC station was so reluctant to pull the trigger on anything its programmers saw as risky. Think of SXM as the overcautious WABC of new media.

 

[Marcos_C]

I nearly always get that sense with any moves SXM makes, on the business side or the programming side. It's kind of like listening to a great new song being played in Buffalo or Boston in the '60s or '70s but having to wait two or three weeks to hear it on WABC because the NYC station was so reluctant to pull the trigger on anything its programmers saw as risky. Think of SXM as the overcautious WABC of new media.

Your WABC analogy is an accurate description of large US radio corporations such as iHeartMedia and Entercom when compared to European radio corporations. If you were to spend one hour listening to one of iHeartRadio's CHR stations and then spend another hour listening to BBC Radio 1, then you would notice a huge difference between the two. Radio 1 plays a much greater variety of music, including new music that often doesn't make it to the US airwaves until weeks later, if at all. That is why I listen to BBC Radio 1's Top 40 countdown show for new music.

 

[Kelly A]

I nearly always get that sense with any moves SXM makes, on the business side or the programming side. It's kind of like listening to a great new song being played in Buffalo or Boston in the '60s or '70s but having to wait two or three weeks to hear it on WABC because the NYC station was so reluctant to pull the trigger on anything its programmers saw as risky. Think of SXM as the overcautious WABC of new media.

Mid September, SXM announced that 'Diamond Jim' Meyer was going to be "retiring" as CEO at the end of 2020, to be replaced by Jennifer Witz, former Head of Sales and Marketing. My guess is that Diamond Jim had been working this deal for Stitcher for a while, and now that it's about the close, Jim takes his $18M and runs to the South of France.

To be fair, SXM was backed into a corner. Satellite radio is an incredibly expensive-to-run business model that never really broke 2% of the total radio audience. Diamond Jim, with his limited understanding of tech businesses, saw an opportunity to expand SXM into streaming turnkey with Pandora. Problem is; Pandora was/is old hat. But, the streaming technology Pandora developed has value. Value that could ultimately cut operational costs of SXM. So next Jim starts hearing podcasts were a thing. How can they break into that market? Buy an existing pallet of podcast programming. Problem is; there are several podcast aggregators that have long passed Stitcher as it relates to numbers of shows and subscribers.

 

[CTListener]

Mid September, SXM announced that 'Diamond Jim' Meyer was going to be "retiring" as CEO at the end of 2020, to be replaced by Jennifer Witz, former Head of Sales and Marketing. My guess is that Diamond Jim had been working this deal for Stitcher for a while, and now that it's about the close, Jim takes his $18M and runs to the South of France.

To be fair, SXM was backed into a corner. Satellite radio is an incredibly expensive-to-run business model that never really broke 2% of the total radio audience. Diamond Jim, with his limited understanding of tech businesses, saw an opportunity to expand SXM into streaming turnkey with Pandora. Problem is; Pandora was/is old hat. But, the streaming technology Pandora developed has value.

Microsoft found itself in a similar corner when it spent $450 million on WebTV in the late '90s. The set-top box had just been introduced less than two years earlier, and while initial sales were encouraging, the service quickly struggled to keep up with rapidly changing internet standards. Microsoft rebranded it MSN TV, but ran into a barrier it could not break down when Sun Microsystems refused to allow arch-rival Microsoft to incorporate Java into the boxes. This corporate warfare effectively hamstrung MSN TV by rendering thousands of popular websites incompatible, and the service just limped along for about a decade afterward. I assume Microsoft got some value out of the technology, but probably not $450 million worth.