The News
The venerable podcast This American Life is poised to reduce staff for one of the few times since its founding in 1995, Semafor has learned. In recent weeks, host Ira Glass has quietly discussed the likely cuts with the show’s top leadership.
This American Life has been a beacon of success for its popular but labor-intensive style of storytelling, and the show’s fortunes have long been seen as a bellwether for the health of quality audio journalism in the industry as a whole. And while the show remains one of the most popular weekly podcasts and radio programs in the country, it recently split from The New York Times, which sold its ads for several years following the Times’ acquisition of Serial.
TAL was one of many that faced a significant drop in downloads when Apple stopped automatically downloading new episodes of podcasts to the devices of subscribers who hadn’t listened to several episodes. Last year, the show quietly changed its “about” page, revising its listenership from 4 million each week, broken out into 1.6 radio listeners and 2.6 million podcast downloads, down to 3 million between radio and digital, a shift in line with industry-wide declines. TAL did not respond to multiple requests for comment.