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On Wednesday night it was announced that The New York Times Company will be purchasing Serial Productions, the company that produces “Serial.” In addition to the acquisition, The Times also announced that it had entered into an ongoing creative and strategic alliance with “This American Life” that will enable it to continue to collaborate on long-form audio stories with Serial Productions and to collaborate on marketing and advertising sales with The Times.
The Times itself reported the price tag.
Serial Productions is led by Julie Snyder, Sarah Koenig and Neil Drumming. Each episode of “Serial’s” first season was downloaded 20 million times on average and is credited with igniting the current podcast boom.
“This American Life” is the long-running, weekly public radio program, founded by host and executive producer Ira Glass.
Meredith Kopit Levien, chief operating officer of The New York Times Company said, “We’ve seen the power that audio can have in building deeper connections with our audience and we’re committed to bringing listeners the best audio journalism in the world. What better way to show that commitment than by acquiring ‘Serial,’ the most celebrated and innovative podcast series ever produced and by partnering with ‘This American Life,’ a program that quite simply transformed the genre. We launched ‘The Daily’ in 2017 and it has quickly become the most listened to news podcast in the country. Our goal is to continue to evolve our audio offerings and to chart a sustainable course for high-quality, immersive audio journalism.”