Talking Heds
Vox on Substack: On Tuesday, Vox launched its first newsletter on Substack, a weekly series called The Midterms, Actually, written by politics reporter Astead Herndon. Today, Explained, a long-running daily newsletter from Vox, is also joining the newsletter platform. Together, the two series are the latest in a growing number of email products from traditional publishers, alongside similar efforts from The Economist and New York Magazine, to treat Substack not just as another social graph, but perhaps the greatest concentration of newsletter-consumers on the open web. There can be branding, monetization, and operational challenges inherent in this strategy, but the exposure to such a desirable readership is apparently proving worth the headache.
Podcasting Identity Politics: On Monday, a committee composed of leaders from across the podcasting ecosystem, called The Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting (AMP), released a 48-page report with the ambitious aim of answering one of the most vexing riddles in modern media: What, exactly, is a podcast? The infusion of video into the space has breathed new life into podcasting, but it has also complicated a once simple set of terminology. According to the so-called AMP Accords, “If it works with your eyes closed, it’s a podcast.” The tagline is intentionally concise, of course, as all good mnemonics are, but the project aimed to tackle the ambiguity because historical data suggested that the absence of a lingua franca risked keeping critical ad dollars on the sideline.
The Peacock Portmanteau: What do you call a partnership between YouTube and Peacock? In the interest of keeping On Background a family-friendly media newsletter, I will let you try combining the constituent brand names yourself. Whatever the terminology, the deal, which was announced Monday, is the first sign that YouTube is beginning to position YouTube Premium as a fledgling streaming service in its own right. Could this be the response the industry has been waiting for from YouTube? As other streamers poach its top talent, YouTube has sat idly by, insistent that it has no issue acting as a farm league for the entertainment industry. But following its Upfront efforts, which saw the streamer package and promote its top series as television-grade programming, it stands to reason that YouTube might soon begin acting like a streamer itself.
Saylor Creator (EXCLUSIVE): The social-first agency Saylor, founded in 2021 by Will Trowbridge following his time at Disney and Netflix, on Wednesday launched a new creator studio, called Fleet. The offering, which is really a formalization of a preexisting service, will be led by the newly appointed Nneka Eura Lee. The studio is yet another indication of the rising primacy of the creator, whose influence is rapidly expanding beyond the social platforms themselves. Audiences now follow creators across nearly every relevant surface—social feeds, YouTube pages, podcast platforms, streaming services—and brands want in. To hear Trowbridge talk about it, to run a social agency nowadays without a creator studio feels almost like an oxymoron—what, anymore, is the difference?
Penske Pruning (SCOOP): As anticipated, Penske Media laid off a number of Vox Media commercial employees last week, the early stages of what promises to be a complex merger between PMC and the Vox Media brands it acquired in June. The cuts affected staff in the business development, human resources, and sales teams, according to two people familiar with the matter. PMC did not respond to a request for comment. The cuts come on the heels of a recent bloodletting at BuzzFeed, which saw around 180 staff let go earlier this week as that property joins the Byron Allen cinematic universe. Just when you thought there were no more jobs left to cut, the media industry finds a way.
