"Between the money you donated and sponsorship, we’ll be able to make a second season"
Serial, the most popular podcast in the history of podcasts, will return to give listeners one story, told week-by-week, with its just-announced second season.
“This American Life funded the bulk of Season One, but for Serial to continue, it needs to pay for itself,” staffers wrote on their website Wednesday, about one week after first asking listeners to donate. “Today, we have good news: between the money you donated and sponsorship, we’ll be able to make a second season.”
Reporter and executive producer Sarah Koenig told TIME earlier this year that her team “want[s] to keep it going and the idea is that we will, if people seem interested in it.”
The producers don’t know when the season will air, nor what that story will be, probably because they still don’t know how their first story will end. The inaugural and current season of Serial is investigating the 15-year-old murder of Maryland teenager Hae Min Lee.
“I’m still reporting,” Koenig recently told the New York Times. “I said it’s not my responsibility to make a perfect ending. I do want a solid ending that is based in my reporting. But I don’t feel a responsibility to make it the kind of entertainment that you would get on some TV drama.”