Stitcher Purchased By E.W. Scripps For $4.5 Million

The E.W Scripps Company has scooped up major podcasting platform Stitcher for $4.5 million. Back in October 2014, Stitcher Radio was purchased by Paris-based music streaming company Deezer and while the platform did see growth in the amount of shows it provided, some show hosts have reported a decrease in quality in that time with missing and out of order shows in listings.

Stitcher is a solid purchase for E.W Scripps. In the same fashion that it served Deezer in being the news, documentary and entertainment companion to its own mainly music-oriented direction, E.W Scripps—a broadcasting and news company—will benefit from the platform’s wealth of podcasts and expansion beyond mobile and browsers. Scripps will also be picking a platform with a strong listener base at roughly 8 million registered users.

Stitcher will become part of E.W Scripps’ Midroll Media podcast advertising network, which Scripps picked up last year. Prior to picking up Stitcher, Scripps continued to strengthen its online media presence by purchasing former humor magazine/current humor site Cracked.com in April.