Ad-free access to the full catalog, early episode drops and subscriber Q&As — with hundreds of hours of archival audio as the core inventory
Key art: ABC News '20/20 True Crime+' subscription at a glance (K-EnterTech Hub)
TV news archives are moving from advertising inventory to subscription inventory. On July 28, ABC News launched "20/20 True Crime+," a paid true crime channel on Apple Podcasts.
It costs $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year, with a seven-day free trial.
Two conditions make the product work. The first is how podcast money is distributed: U.S. podcast ad spend is on track to pass $3 billion in 2026, yet subscriptions and premium memberships account for roughly 9% of total podcast revenue, and ad deals cluster around the top of the charts. The second is the nature of the inventory. Decades of newsmagazine audio can be packaged with no incremental production cost, and true crime listeners consume a single case across multiple formats.
Jung Han
Product structure: opening the archive, gating the premieres
Subscribers get ad-free access to new and past "20/20" episodes and narrative series. The offering spans landmark reporting from co-anchors David Muir and Deborah Roberts through award-winning narrative podcasts, and includes subscriber-only Q&As with Roberts, who hosts "20/20: The After Show." Hundreds of hours of archival "20/20" audio unavailable elsewhere were unlocked at launch, while trailers for the new series remain free on every podcast app.