Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello. Mike here with a very important
announcement. As of today, Wednesday, March 19, Never Post
is joining the Radiotopia Network of Shows. And I wanna
explain what that means for us, hopefully a lot. What it means
for you, hopefully not much at all, and whether it
fundamentally changes anything about Neverpost, how it works,
and what kind of show it is.
The short answer there is, it does not. If you don't know
Radiotopia, you probably know its shows. Hyperfixed, Normal
Gossip, Song Exploder, Articles of Interest, The Memory Palace,
Wait For It, and a bunch more, including now this one. Does
this mean Never Post is no longer an independent podcast?
No.
Absolutely not. It does not mean that. We remain independent and
employee owned. Radiotopia is a network of individually produced
shows who team up to share resources and to fundraise
together. And we're gonna talk more about what fundraising
means in a few minutes.
But the long and short is Radiotopia has not purchased,
does not own, and is not paying us to make Never Post. It
remains ours and no money has changed hands as a direct result
of this deal. So why would we do it? First, the folks who run
Radiotopia and the other folks who have shows on it are great.
They're an amazing, smart, thoughtful group of people.
I mean, you heard that list of shows up at the top of this
announcement. It's just I mean, what better company could we be
in? And many of them are already pals. So this solidifies and
expands our relationship with that crew in a way that's it's
just nice. You know, we're all in a slack together.
It's cozy. It's good. Second, Radiotopia organizes network
wide cross promotional placements for their shows,
which can result in hundreds of thousands of impressions. That
means if you listen to some of those other Radiotopia shows,
you may now start to hear ads for Never Post. And you're also
gonna start to hear ads for other Radiotopia shows on Never
Post.
This is great for us. It means getting in front of new
listeners, and probably the largest single marketing push
that we've ever had. And third, Radiotopia is gonna help us
broker and place ads. Right now, every ad that you have heard has
been arranged and placed by us, the team. And it's a lot of
work, and we're really thankful to have some folks on our side
whose job it is to think about that stuff, and I really cannot
overstate how much that rules.
It's probably also worth here, being explicit that Radiotopia's
ad ecosystem is huge and complex. We are plugging into a
really big machine, and there's a way that they do things. This
probably represents the biggest change for you, our listeners,
if you are not members listening on the ad free feed. You're
gonna start to hear more stereotypically podcast y ads.
We are able to approve every ad, so that's really exciting, and
we're gonna try to be thoughtful about what we allow to run on
Neverpost.
But of course, if you hear something that is just truly
heinous that you don't think we should be running ads for,
please let us know. It probably slipped through the cracks, and
we're gonna do everything in our power to make sure that we're
like, you know, that you're listening to things that are
actually useful to you. But broadly speaking, I hope that
this context helps you stomach them, and it helps you know that
like, in general, the ads are very good for us, and they're
gonna help us pay to continue making the show. Which now,
maybe is causing you to wonder if membership is gonna change at
all. The answer to this is very simple.
No. Membership is not gonna change in any way. If you're a
member, you're gonna get the same things in the same places.
You don't have to move anywhere. If you become a member, you're
gonna join all the other great folks already supporting the
show, and you're gonna get the same things that they're
currently getting.
A % of that membership money goes right to us to never post.
We do not split it with Radiotopia. We do not give them
any of your information. Nothing like that. Our members are our
members.
The end. So why then would Radiotopia do this? NeverPost
gets a community of great shows, cross promotional placements,
and ad infrastructure. What do they get out of it? Well, they
get us and I don't know.
I think we're pretty great. We know a lot about the Internet
and, audio and all kinds of stuff, and we're excited to be a
resource for other shows in the same way that they're a resource
for us. Radiotopia also gets our show, which they like, and
they're excited about having us associated with their
organization as much as we're excited about being associated
with them. Radiotopia get a cut of our ad sales, and also they
get the ears of the audience on our public feed to tell about
Hyperfixed and Ear Hustle and the recipe with Kenji and Deb.
And they also get our help fundraising.
I told you we'd be back to this. Radiotopia is a project of the
public media organization PRX, the public radio exchange, and
so its funding model depends in part on donations. Every year,
as you'd expect from a public media based org, there's a
fundraiser, and we'll ask you as will all the other shows on the
network to contribute to the fundraiser. The money that gets
donated by listeners to Radiotopia gets split between
the shows and Radiotopia. Cash is doled out to shows based on
their audience size, and I feel pretty comfortable saying that
if we are not the smallest show on the Radiotopia network, we
are very close.
Now, this is important. Joining Radiotopia isn't a panacea.
We're still gonna have to work really really hard to continue
making the show. Joining this network of independent shows is
amazing, and it's great for us, but it does not mean by any
stretch that we've made it, and we can sit pretty knowing that
the show can continue indefinitely, that it will
become our jobs, anything like that. I wanna tell you this
because we owe it to you as the folks who ultimately have the
greatest impact on making it possible for us to make this
show now and going forward.
And also, of course, so that you understand it, and so you
understand that this doesn't change what Never Post is. We
remain an independent show. We remain employee owned, and we
are now in partnership with a bunch of other independent
employee owned shows. Membership remains far and away the best
way to support us. We may make a few more ad dollars here and
there, but it is vanishingly likely that ad income ever gets
close to equaling member support in both amount and impact.
Regardless of how small or big Neverpost is or becomes,
membership is always more sustainable, more reliable, and
mutually beneficial than any other economic arrangement for
the sustainability of the show. I also wanna tell you, because
you've listened to this far, so you must be a real freak for the
podcast details, what I think about this, honestly. We've been
working on this and negotiating with the folks at Radiotopia
since last summer. So this took a long time. All the really fine
details, like stuff that's not really worth going into here,
like how do we factor in derivative works of Neverpost,
who can cancel this arrangement, for what reasons, and with how
much notice.
My ability to be making this announcement explaining these
very details to you in explicit terms right now, both the
Neverpost team and the Radiotopia team came away
feeling like we got a really good deal. We really liked where
we landed. We're working with really rad people, and I it's
I'm really excited, for the next chapter of the show. If you have
any questions about any of this, please send them our way. You
can call us, leave a voice memo in the air table, email us,
comment on the website.
We're gonna answer those questions in our next mailbag.
We are happy to talk about any and all of this. And finally, at
the end of this long, probably over long explanation, I I also
just wanna say thank you. As if it isn't already clear, this is
a big deal for us, and we could not have done it without our
listeners and especially our members, showing us that this is
a show that people like, they appreciate, they want more of
it, and it's worth continuing to invest all of this time and
energy into. So I just wanna say thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, right. And one other change.
At the end of every episode, you'll also start to hear a
sound which, for as long as I've been listening to podcasts, has
meant that the show you've just heard has been lovingly created
completely independently, and now and in the future will
absolutely be worth your time and your energy and your
thoughtfulness. To say that we are proud and excited to end our
shows this way now would be an understatement. Radio Tokian
from PRX. Okay. We'll see you in the main feed next week.
Stay safe out there.