From Puck, April 15:
The Approval Matrix Revolutions
News, notes, and all the scuttlebutt pertaining to Jim Bankoff’s admirable, atom-splitting attempt to sell off Vox Media in parts: ‘New York,’ its various digital assets, and the podcast network that powers the business.
In the coming weeks, I’m told, Vox Media C.E.O. Jim Bankoff is likely to agree to multiple deals to sell various assets of his company, including the Vox Media Podcast Network, New York magazine, and the portfolio of digital brands that includes The Verge, Eater, and SB Nation—a tidy but somewhat anticlimactic end to one of the great media roll-ups of the 2010s. “There’s not onedeal, there are deals,” a source familiar with said deals told me. Another source close to the matter suggested that negotiations on all fronts were “positive,” but cautioned that they were still “far from conclusion.”Jim and the bankers at Aryeh Bourkoff’s LionTree have been shopping the assets since late last year, as Semafor first reported in March. The podcast business, which has been marketed to prospective buyers as TalentCo, could include the podcast network as well as Vox.com, according to a source who has seen the pitch deck. Jim has also positioned the podcast business for this spinoff by establishing separate sales teams and operational structures. (He declined to comment for this story.)The podcast network, which is financially and creatively anchored by Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway and a couple of other hosts, is indeed the most profitable and high-growth part of the business. Sources familiar with the company’s numbers say it did around $60 million in revenue last year and north of $20 million in profit. By contrast, New York did more than $100 million in revenue but drew a profit of around just $6 million. In an appearance on The Grill Room last year, Jim touted podcasts as the company’s central growth engine, declaring it a “more lasting and durable medium … than social or even websites at this stage.”Still, the podcast business has some notable key-man vulnerabilities. The network includes 40-some shows, but the vast majority of revenue comes from about a half-dozen, including the Pivot podcast and the rest of the Kara–Scott Cinematic Universe. Vox boasts a broad roster of talent that also includes Esther Perel, Brené Brown, Andy Roddick, and, as of this week, Maria Sharapova, but the business itself is really quite dependent on two 60-something thought leaders and a few others. To his credit, Jim locked Kara and Scott into a four-year revenue-share deal that incentivizes performance and will keep them in-house until at least 2029—presumably a prerequisite to any signed term sheet....
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