The News
Last year, bankers for Vox Media approached media companies and investors with a series of offers. According to three people familiar with the conversations, potential buyers could take over Vox’s podcast business, a growing network of more than 30 shows hosted by personalities like Kara Swisher, Scott Galloway, Brené Brown, and others. They could buy New York Magazine, one of the few legacy print brands of the 20th century that has managed to survive the digital transition without losing its cultural relevance. Or they could buy the company in its entirety.
The most widely-circulated option Vox Media offered was around its podcast network. In November, Axios reported that the digital media company’s board had discussed spinning off the podcast business; the company subsequently sent an investor deck for the audio and video business out to investors and similarly positioned digital media companies. But the company’s previously unreported alternative proposals, marketed by the media investment bank Liontree, suggested that Vox Media was looking for a much broader transformation, if not an outright sale.
In recent months, the New York-based media company, which includes other digital titles like The Verge, SB Nation, Vox, and Eater, among others, has appeared to change its mind, though. In February, it informed some potential investors that the podcast network was no longer for sale.
A Vox Media spokesperson declined to comment.
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Max’s view
Vox is the last company standing from the long-ago era of venture-backed startups fueled by social media and vast traffic numbers: Vice declared bankruptcy, shuttered its news service, and now largely exists as a minor player focused on film, TV, and digital advertising. Gawker was sued out of existence, and its remnants were eventually shipped off to other media brands or closed altogether. BuzzFeed got out of the news business years ago and is pivoting to AI-powered gaming while fighting to stay solvent. Many of the rest are barely getting clicks that used to pour in by the millions.
But Vox is also wrestling with the big questions of this media moment. What is a digital media company in an era when everything is digital (and almost everything is media)? And what makes a media company valuable in the creator age?
Valued at $1 billion when NBCUniversal invested $200 million in the company in 2015, Vox was valued at about half that number when Penske Media took a stake in 2023. But the company’s nimbleness and success in crafting talent deals allowed it to retool its business on the fly to focus largely on podcasting, averting the worst-case scenarios that befell other digital media rivals.
The company currently has several dozen podcasts, most notably its daily news show Today, Explained, Swisher and Galloway’s shows, as well as author Brown. CEO Jim Bankoff said repeatedly in public statements last year that the company’s audio business is healthy and growing, and had yielded significant outside interest. The shows have real audiences; last week, Semafor published an interview with the hosts of Lemonade Stand, a Vox Media podcast, about the transformations in media. With little promotion on our end, the show’s superfans found us and gave our podcast feeds and YouTube channel a nice boost.
Audio competitors that looked at the company said they were interested in individual Vox Media shows, but they would rather poach talent when their contracts are up than potentially overpay for an entire network. Further, one of Vox’s advantages in the space over its audio-only competitors is that some of the shows are yoked, at least tangentially, to Vox’s publishing business, which provides additional marketing, promotion, and a funnel for some talent. Separating the podcasting business out could make the network indistinguishable from other podcast players, and less valuable.
After a series of conversations, Vox Media recently informed potential buyers that its podcast business is no longer for sale.
The future of its remaining digital assets is a more interesting question. Axios reported in November that Penske Media, Vox’s largest shareholder, was “possibly” interested in acquiring Vox Media’s digital assets — but not its podcast business, which Penske believed would fetch a higher price tag. (Vox Media’s podcast business was one of the biggest programmers again this year at SXSW, the Austin festival owned by Penske.) No doubt Jay Penske has considered that New York would be a prestigious addition to a portfolio that already includes titles like Rolling Stone and Variety.
The company has clearly been rethinking the focus of most of its remaining digital assets, selling off some and refocusing others. Eater has been vastly slimmed down, and seems largely to exist as a YouTube page and mobile app for finding nearby restaurants. PopSugar, acquired from Group Nine, rebranded as PS. The Verge and SB Nation have doubled down on their most hardcore readers and subscribers, who still visit their sites directly.
But it’s an increasingly tough business. Subscale, words-first businesses are niche and lack the distribution of the peak social media era. They’re also increasingly hard to recruit for in a world where most successful journalists and creators interested in that form have decamped to platforms like Substack.