This story was originally published in On Background with Mark Stenberg, a free, weekly newsletter that explores the key themes shaping the media industry. You can sign up for it here.
Following the Wednesday sale of New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and Vox to James Murdoch for $300 million, a key question remained unanswered: What about the rest of the brands?
The leftover titles, referred to internally as Remain Co., include the heavyweights Eater, The Verge, and SB Nation, as well as Popsugar and The Dodo. The group will be led by Ryan Pauley, previously the president of Vox Media, who is ostensibly tasked with finding a name for the newly independent company.
Officially, Vox Media has no plans to separate the brands that make up Remain Co., according to a note from CEO Jim Bankoff, who will lead New York Magazine, the VMPN, and Vox under Murdoch.
“Each [brand] will continue under its current leadership,” he wrote in a statement, “and [Pauley] will keep working closely with those leaders to deliver on every brand’s individual strategy.”
In reality, the brands are likely on their way to finding new homes, according to people familiar with the matter. In particular, Penske Media is likely to play a role in their future, as it already has a 20% stake in the business resulting from a 2023 investment.
The company, helmed by billionaire recluse Jay Penske, is likely to acquire one or more of the remaining brands, according to analysts and company insiders.
None of the assets slot perfectly into the PMC portfolio, which consists largely of Hollywood trade publications and their related events. But Popsugar, a women’s lifestyle brand with a strong social footprint, could make for a tidy addition to She Media, a network of lifestyle brands within PMC.
PMC did not respond to a request for comment. Vox Media declined to comment.
The other titles would make for awkward additions to the PMC family, as Eater, SB Nation, The Verge, and The Dodo would all be verticals of one, effectively.
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But for the right buyer, their brands and intellectual property could be attractive assets. Similar to the dynamic that unfolded at G/O Media, the individual titles could be sold to strategic fits or private equity players.
Capital One has already kicked the tires on Eater, per Puck, and Vox Media has been shopping The Dodo for the last year, according to a person familiar with the process. Unless PMC has interest in more than Popsugar, the remaining brands will more than likely be parceled out in this fashion.
One key revenue executive at Vox Media, chief revenue officer Geoff Schiller, is also set to leave the company.
Schiller did not respond to a request for comment.
The revenue leader, who boomeranged back to Vox Media following an earlier stint at Group Nine, is planning to depart June 5, according to people familiar with the matter. His departure suggests that Remain Co. is not an attractive long-term destination for the career-minded.
And who can blame him? With his $300 million acquisition of New York Magazine, the VMPN, and Vox, Murdoch made off with the crown jewels of the Vox Media empire, the fastest-growing and most prestigious components of a portfolio that had otherwise grown stagnant.
The remaining titles, unlike when NBCU spun off Versant, are neither particularly lucrative nor especially attractive. They do not throw off cash and are rooted quite firmly to the open web, which itself is cratering due to the disruption posed by artificial intelligence.
The Murdoch spinoff is a happy coda to a decades-long digital media saga, one that ensures that the namesake Vox brand, the iconic New York Magazine, and the ascendent Vox podcast network will live on. The rest of the portfolio, though, will have to find its own way.
Talking Heds
Amazon Bomb (SCOOP): Over the past few months, Amazon has been quietly restructuring its affiliate program, cutting the commission rates it pays publishers up to 50% in some instances, according to seven publishers and partners with direct knowledge of the changes. The cuts came as the result of a directive from Amazon to trim 20% of its costs from the sector, a pullback prompted by a multitude of reasons, including a strategic shift to focus on creator affiliate and the need to free up cash to fund AI investments. Between Google’s AI overviews collapsing organic traffic at the top of the funnel and Amazon paying less at the bottom, the business of converting organic search into affiliate revenue has become super challenging, one source told me.
Growing Pengs: Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng announced in an internal memo on Wednesday that she was stepping down from the role after about two and a half years. Replacing her on an interim basis will be Christian Baesler, a deputy at parent company Axel Springer. The resignation comes just days after yet another round of layoffs at Business Insider, the latest death rattle from a brand increasingly seen as in terminal decline. The news outlet, where I and half of the New York media industry once worked, has sought to retrench around core areas of coverage, but such downsizing often makes more sense on whiteboards than it does to consumers.
CTV’s Next Big Frontier Is the Home Screen (SPONORED): While traditional home screen ad opportunities last only a few moments, Telly’s Smart Home Screen offers a more persistent presence alongside the content viewers engage with most, shifting the experience from a “first moment” to an “every moment” opportunity. In one case study, a major streamer saw a 157% surge in app launches during a campaign, jumping from the 10th most opened app to the 4th, with engagement remaining elevated afterward. Telly points to results like these as evidence of shifting streaming.
Rising Kane’s: I profiled Kane Parsons, the 20-year-old director of Backrooms, the new horror film from A24, as part of a broader examination of the ways in which YouTube creators are reshaping Hollywood. Parsons, along with other YouTubers-turned-directors like Markiplier (Iron Lung) and Curry Barker (Obsession) represent a new cohort of filmmaker, who learn their craft online and develop portable followings that they can convert into ticket-buyers. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Parsons, despite his age, was exceedingly polite, considered, and serious about his craft. You can read my profile here, or check out an abridged Q&A below.
America’s Test Cuts: America’s Test Kitchen laid off 10% of its workforce on Monday, just three months after the company acquired Food52 out of bankruptcy for around $10 million, according to the Boston Globe. The cuts were unrelated to the tie-up, per a spokesperson. Last year, ATK laid off seven employees and shuttered Cook’s Country, and in 2023 it shut down ATK Kids and laid off 23 staff. ATK itself was acquired by the holding company Marquee Brands in 2023, which owns a portfolio of food brands including Martha Stewart and Sur La Table. This seems to be more of a reallocation than a sign of distress, especially given that ATK CEO Dan Seurat told me in January that the company is still actively looking to snap up other titles.
Roku Creators: On Tuesday, Roku launched a new destination succinctly called Creators, whose offering is pretty self-explanatory. The section allows viewers to browse through creator content, and it comes in tandem with a larger creator partnership on the Roku Channel that will see the launch of FAST channels like the Prof G Podcast. Sources have told me that Netflix, Tubi, and Roku are moving most quickly to bring creator content to their platforms, and this launch is further evidence of that. Paramount has recently floated a similar trial balloon as well. How long before your favorite streaming service becomes unrecognizable from YouTube?
Quote/Unquote
Kane Parsons is the 20-year-old director of Backrooms, a new horror film from A24 premiering May 29. Parsons got his start on YouTube, creating a series of short films inspired by the digital urban legend of The Backrooms.
After his series went viral in 2022, racking up more than 120 million views, A24 signed me to direct the feature film, which is projected to bring in $31 million in its opening weekend. Parsons is the latest in a growing cohort of YouTube-creators-turned-directors, alongside Mark Edward Fischback (Markiplier, on YouTube), Curry Barker (the director of Obsession), and Max Reisinger, the founder of Creator Camp.
This interview has been edited.
Mark Stenberg: How did you go from YouTube creator to director of an A24 film?
Kane Parsons: It’s a lot less calculated than it looks. I had been creating Attack on Titan animations on my YouTube when I found out about The Backrooms and started making videos related to it.
Mark: Do you consider yourself a YouTube creator or a director?
Kane: I don’t really feel like there’s a difference. The act is no different. If anything, I think we are going to see a lot more crossover like this, which is inevitable when a lot of talented people learn to make videos on YouTube. If anything, they might have a more intuitive grasp of how to capture the attention of people online.
Mark: You continued releasing Backrooms videos up until a year ago, which generated a lot of hype for the film. Why don’t more films do that?
Kane: I have no clue. I did The Backrooms for basically no cost and in a fairly short time frame, and it yielded a baked-in audience.
Mark: Do you think more studios will try to replicate this?
Kane: There will be a desire to reverse-engineer that, but it will be really difficult. It is a unique case, partially because no one knows the author of the original piece, so you can take it in so many different directions. It has had years to incubate online.
Mark: Do you want to make more films?
Kane: I like to pick a thing and get obsessed with it and build my projects with a level of meticulousness. I am biased toward the experience of working independently on YouTube and find it more creatively fulfilling. It’s where I come from and where my peers are.
Pulled Quotes
“RIP website traffic. You had a good run.”
Media analyst Evan DeSimone, on Google transforming its Search bar into a chat bot
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“This is bad and the people making it should feel bad.”
A (comparatively) positive review, on The Washington Post’s new video strategy
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“There is nothing to buy, besides a subscription, and therefore nothing to justify: you can listen to all the Drake you want, no alibi required.”
The New Yorker’s Kelefa Sanneh, on Drake’s new album(s)
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“The industry is wrestling with how to define a podcast. … And if you can’t define it, you can’t measure it, you can’t monetize it.”
SiriusXM chief advertising officer Scott Walker, on the challenges facing the satellite radio company
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