With Its First Podcast, Newsweek Bets on Franchises as a Foundation to Subscriptions

Newsweek is banking on healthy and rigorous debate to propel it towards its subscription goals. The 85-year old publisher is developing features around its Debate franchise, which it's published online in written format since 2019. In April these debates migrated to Newsweek’s first podcast series, hosted by opinion editor Josh Hammer and deputy opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon, both at opposite ends on the political spectrum, plus two expert guests. The episodes cover topics ranging from reparations for slavery in the U.S. to the state of the Israeli-Palestinian divide; from the legalization of marijuana to cancel culture, to how #MeToo has changed the landscape of dating. But podcasts are the feature rather than the product. “We don’t want to get into podcasts for the sake of it,” CEO Dev Pragad told Adweek. “It's an important distribution channel. Beyond that, this is a runway to building a viable, meaningful subscriptions business.” Post-Trump, publishers have been bracing for a slump in subscriptions and figuring out ways to maximize retention. Alongside this, news in the U.S. has long been divisive and attention-grabbing, with titles taking political stances. Newsweek, which has gone through iterations of being especially left-leaning, is committing to hosting a diverse array of views, allowing it to discuss these topics in ways other titles with more staunch political leanings are unable to. "We want to be open-minded and truly liberal, hosting a diverse array of views. You cannot have debate if you’re not willing to listen to a particular group of people," said Pragad, adding that hiring Josh Hammer in May 2020, whose views are more conservative, gave the title more credibility to audiences who lean right. Since April, on average, 50% of audiences listen to the end of The Debate podcast. If audiences continue to grow, it's considering monetizing through podcast ads. Online, some success in the franchise is mirrored: The Debate and Opinion section on its site has an average 2.1 million unique visitors a month. The publisher wouldn’t share more exact metrics. Within three months, it plans to have daily written debates online, a podcast on the debate of the week and a live event for the debate of the month, acting as an anchor to bring audiences back to Newsweek on a daily basis. The next franchise: national security Newsweek launched a metered paywall in the summer of 2020. Pragad wouldn't share how many subscribers it has. But since ad revenue is the publisher’s dominant source—making up 85% of its total several years ago—it’s hesitant to tighten the paywall until it’s built up a loyal audience. But it estimates it will early next year. Newsweek plans more content franchises to entice subscribers to join and renew. The next will focus on national security and intelligence and will include another podcast called The Daily Break, hosted by ex-spy and Newsweek editor at large, Naveed Jamali. Newsweek has a history reporting on national security, said Pragad. Jamali was part of the team that broke the news about the raid targeting ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Another franchise option is expanding its ranking business in the U.S. Through partnerships with data companies, Newsweek ranks hospitals, which pay a marketing fee. Like a lot of publishers, the first half of 2021 has seen solid digital ad rebounds for Newsweek. Digital ad revenue for the second quarter grew 173% compared with the same period in 2020, the publisher said. Despite the pandemic, 2020 was a better year for ad revenue than 2019 due to the overall increase in audience: February saw dips in traffic to 48.7 million unique monthly users, which picked up to 62.2 million in May, in line with traffic rates 12 months prior, according to Comscore. Despite ad blocking issues and a challenged market, ad growth has been healthy. “We’ve seen page RPM (revenue per 1000 page views) levels not ever seen before,” added Pragad. Bloomberg Media Experiments With Subscriber-Only Content to Boost Retention