Iheartmedia

iHeart Media owns 850 radio stations. When podcasting exploded, traditional radio companies panicked. iHeart leaned in. The company already had studios, talent, sales teams, and local relationships that podcast startups spent years building. Instead of treating podcasting as a threat, iHeart treated it as additional inventory on existing infrastructure. The podcast network launched hundreds of shows using existing radio hosts. A morning host with 200,000 listeners recorded the same show as a podcast reaching another 100,000 on demand. Incremental production cost was near zero. Podcast advertising commanded $30 to $50 CPMs compared to radios 5 to 12.