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And, as we know, iHeartMedia wound up buying How Stuff Works for $55 million dollars. The iHeart CEO tells Beasley Media CEO Caroline Beasley, on her business podcast, that he kicked the tires of a lot of podcasting companies but wound up buying How Stuff Works. Here’s Why…
The reason iHeart went with How Stuff Works, according to Pittman, was because they have an evergreen library. “You can listen to them two years from now and they are still relevant. Unlike something like The Daily from The New York Times which, by tomorrow, is out of date. They are also very good at building new contents from scratch, Atlanta Monster for example. We also thought they had a really good management and programming team and we wanted to get them into our operations.”
Pittman also said that having a big radio audience allows the company to promote its podcasts on an unparalleled scale. “We added all the How Stuff Works content to the iHeart podcast content and the next month we grew it. It was the combination of what they had, what we had, and together the capability to build some stuff that neither company could build alone.”
Pittman went into more detail about his philosophy on what podcasts are. He believes podcasts are for people who want to “read more.” It’s content for consumers who want more than just the headlines. “They want to know in-depth. They want more information. With podcasts we are able to give a consumer something very deep, much deeper than we could ever talk about on the radio or take the time to talk about. It’s a better way for us to better serve our listeners. And it’s a way for the stars we have on the radio to deepen their relationship with their listeners. From an advertising standpoint, when you add that kind of deep passion to the broad reach and impact we have with radio, I think you increase the value of radio and the value we have to marketers.”
Listen to the entire conversation between Caroline Beasley and Bob Pittman HERE.