'Serial,' buoyed by popularity, raises enough funds for a second season
It's working. It's crazy, but it's working. The weekly nonfiction podcast called Serial, that is. In its debut season, it has become, we're told, the podcast with the biggest audience ever. So its makers launched a fund drive, asking listeners for cash - and they coughed up, and now there's going to be a Season Two.
It's working. It's crazy, but it's working.
The weekly nonfiction podcast called Serial, that is. In its debut season, it has become, we're told, the podcast with the biggest audience ever. So its makers launched a fund drive, asking listeners for cash - and they coughed up, and now there's going to be a Season Two.
Starting last week, executive producer Sarah Koenig, whose voice has become among the most recognizable in media, began episodes this way: "Before we get to today's episode, I have a question for you. Do you want a Season Two of Serial? If so, I'm going to ask you for money. Maybe you saw this coming. I'm only going to ask you to do it one time, and that time is now. . . . "
That's how you do today. It's a KickStarter, GiveForward, IndieGoGo age. Crowdfund, baby. Want money to do your art? Ask your followers to help out.
"If you like the show so far and you want us to do another season," Koenig says, " ... please send us whatever you can. It doesn't have to be a lot. Twenty bucks. Ten bucks. Five bucks. If enough of you do it, it'll add up." Very NPR-like.
It paid off. On Wednesday, coproducer Emily Condon wrote on the Serial website: "Today, we have good news: between the money you donated and sponsorship, we'll be able to make a second season." No one's saying how much has rolled in. But my, that was fast - a breathtaking sign of the podcast's popularity.
Growing obsession, triumphant whisper campaign, hipster icon, true tale that haunts, Serial is heard by about 1.2 to 1.5 million listeners, thought to be the biggest podcast audience ever. Since it kicked off in October, it has been downloaded or streamed on the iTunes Store more than 5 million times. Heady indeed, for such a fugitive entertainment genre. Podcasts are popular - a frequent figure (no exact figures exist) is that up to 50 million folks listen to at least one each week.
David Carr of the New York Times rightly says that an episode of Serial draws an audience as large as a cable TV hit like Louie. Not bad for a show scripted and edited largely by a lady - Koenig - working from home in State College. She and a small band of other producers, including Life's Ira Glass, Condon, Dava Chivvis, and Julie Snyder, work on savage deadlines each week, from the sound of it just about killing themselves. "We are running around a little bit," deadpans Snyder.
In an interview for an earlier piece on Serial, Snyder told me, notable anxiety in her voice, that "we've got to find a way to make Serial financially viable." Season One does have a main sponsor: MailChimp, which has made a cottage industry of sponsoring popular podcasts. Even MailChimp's 19-second ad, the first thing heard on each episode of Serial (after Koenig's pitch), is a hit. Recorded by Chivvis, it captures folks on the street saying the word MailChimp. One lady totally butchers it. It's funny, earning that sincere if lefthanded compliment: Web parody. According to the Guardian, MailChimp's Twitter mentions and business have ticked up, and two other sites, SquareSpace and Audible.com, have signed on to sponsor Serial.
At Thanksgiving dinner, I heard someone moan. They wished Serial, published by the makers of the syndicated radio show This American Life, had dropped an episode on Thursday (the day new ones usually debut). But no: Like a lot of big TV shows, it skipped Turkey Week, leaving those 1.5 million listeners cliffhanging.
"We don't know yet what the story will be or exactly when we'll be airing Season Two," Condon wrote on Wednesday, "but we'll be working on it as soon as this season ends." Serial will reboot with a new nonfiction story. Meantime, about 1.5 million obsessed followers are exhausted by the wait between episodes. The producers need a few weeks off from the exhausting deadlines. But then we do it all again - and face yet another novelty, the media world talking about a season of a podcast, comparing it to last season, for all the world as if it were Homeland or 24 or Game of Thrones. It's some serial, that Serial.
215-854-4406 @jtimpane