Media company E.W. Scripps Co. has continued its push into podcasting with the acquisition of Stitcher for $4.5 million in cash.
Stitcher is a free app that streams more than 65,000 podcasts from publishers ranging from NPR to MSNBC to The Wall Street Journal. It will operate under Midroll Media, the podcast advertising company that Scripps acquired last year for $50 million, plus $10 million more over three years if the company hits certain milestones.
Adam Symson, chief digital officer at Scripps is quoted as saying:
We certainly have the ad sales force and the connections that make us a leader in the space, but today we depend almost exclusively on distribution into other channels. This puts in place, with a very strong brand, another piece of the puzzle in the ecosystem play.
In many ways, this seems like a pretty simple thing to understand. Having a distribution platform gives Midroll some space to play. I can see a future in which all shows on Stitcher are “powered” by Midroll ads. While I’m sure that’s good business for E.W. Scripps, it sure doesn’t seem the open future I think podcasting deserves.1