Despite its immense popularity, This American Life was facing an all-too-familiar challenge - the unreliable nature of podcast advertising revenue.

So they set out to launch a premium subscription that would:

• Create a reliable source of income, allowing them to keep making the show as intended.
  
• Engage their audience in a way that felt intimate, creative, and sustainable.
  
• Feel true to the long-standing This American Life brand.  

With those goals at the forefront, the TAL team launched This American Life Partners on Supercast, hitting their month one subscription goals in less than a week.

Here’s how they did it.

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The challenge: an unpredictable advertising market 

“The podcast industry is changing in ways that are affecting everybody’s ad revenue,” This American Life host, Ira Glass, announced across the show’s social media channels in October, 2024. “And what that’s meant at our show is that we are going to be seeing a third less in ad revenue this year compared to previous years.”

“And so we thought, what is something that we can do that could raise some money but also be kind of nice for our listeners? And that’s the thing that I’m here to announce… We’re going to be starting a premium subscription version of our show called Life Partners,” Glass continued.

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Developing a subscription that felt intimate, creative, and sustainable 

With every episode of TAL being a true labor of love, the Supercast team understood that any subscription benefits would need to come to life amid tight production bandwidth, while still offering great value for subscribers. So, with an eye on developing a low-effort, high-impact subscription befitting the This American Life brand (and their audience of loyal listeners), the Supercast team dove headfirst into developing a full promotional plan and launch strategy that included the following:

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Unlocking value from the back catalog

‍Since the show launched in 1995, TAL has released 850+ episodes, a veritable mountain of content gold, but at any given time, only the ten most recent are available for listeners on the public podcast feed. As a result, fans (new and old alike) are constantly searching for recommendations about which archive stories they just can’t miss and how they can find them:

Seeing that common thread, the Supercast team worked with TAL to incorporate a creative back catalog strategy into the subscription offering. The result? Life Partners gain access to 250 of Ira’s favorite episodes upon subscribing, hand selected and added to their “Greatest Hits Archive” for easy listening.  

To further capitalize on their incredible episode archive, the TAL team also leverages past episodes for bonus content. The show’s producers often highlight deep cuts from the past, playing them in the studio with Ira and discussing them which leads to funny, emotional, and revealing behind the scenes conversations.

This back catalog strategy made it easy for fans to dive into the classic stories they wanted, maximizing the value of the membership right from the jump, without the TAL team having to create any new content.

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Using Supercast’s built-in AMA feature to develop an even stronger audience connection

‍The debut of Life Partners also meant access to Ira like never before. Opening up AMAs to the show's biggest fans introduced a new two-way dialogue, creating a personalized feel for the show’s supporters that included their questions being answered directly by their favorite host.

AMA also serves as a sustainable piece of bonus content, creating value for listeners without taking up significant team bandwidth. 

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When their first AMA aired, Ira took to X to share his surprise over what TAL fans wanted to learn more about:

And feedback from Life Partners echoed the team’s excitement around their new AMA bonus content, too:

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Activating 3 million listeners - a strategic multi-channel launch and ongoing promotional plan

Supercast also worked with TAL to promote Life Partners with a tailored plan that included:

• A dedicated episode where Ira explained the value of the membership and its role in sustaining the show. 
  
  • Devoting a spot on their 10-episode public feed to the announcement helped convey the importance of the launch, and giving it the punchy, eyecatching title of “A Big Announcement” drove huge engagement on the episode. 

• Social media promotion, including a rare on-camera appearance from Ira. 
  
  • Ira stepping out from behind the microphone, and in front of the camera, created a memorable and compelling moment for fans of the show, many of whom had never seen his face before.

• A subscriber funnel with subscription reminders across all of their major traffic sources. 
  
  • Life Partners call outs in episode show notes, verbal CTAs, and teasing bonus content on the free feed helps drive awareness and conversion.

• A home page banner on their website directing to their landing page.
  

• Regular newsletter callouts. 
  
  • This creates great FOMO by detailing subscriber-only benefits, shares social proof with the inclusion of subscriber testimonials, and incentivizes sign ups by including easy to follow links directly in the body of the email.
    

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RESULTS

This American Life surpassed their month one targets in week one and are on track to triple those numbers over the first year.
Launching the subscription has allowed the team to continue making the show as intended while supporting their amazing in-house team. With its early subscription success, TAL is poised to continue its legacy of storytelling and build even deeper relationships with its audience in the years to come.

“From the start we liked Supercast’s energy, strategic thinking, and optimism about our potential,” said Seth Lind, Director of Operations for This American Life, “and their customers had only good things to say about them. We’re now several months into our partnership and they’ve already helped us exceed the revenue targets we expected at launch.”