Amazon cuts Wondery: 110 jobs to go

One of the biggest and most successful podcast producers, Wondery, is to be restructured by Amazon, laying off a reported 110 people including the company’s CEO, Jen Sargent. Wondery was bought by Amazon at the end of 2020 for $300mn, then doubled its staff. It currently has around 360 published shows.

Wondery’s narrative podcast studio will be combined with Audible. Marshall Lewy, Wondery’s Chief Content Officer, will also join Audible. The company’s creator-led shows (New Heights, Armchair Expert, etc) will be merged with the existing Talent Services team, rebranding to Creator Services. ~~Ads and sponsorship will merge with a team at Amazon Music.~~ Ads and sponsorship will create an entirely new team that includes the existing ad-sales team at Amazon Music.
The story was broken by Bloomberg in a paywalled article. (Podnews readers can save on a subscription). Business Insider carries the memo from Steve Boom explaining the changes, and noting that podcast revenue has grown by 4x since the company was bought by Amazon.

Why the change? Video killed the owl, it seems. The memo reads: “The podcast landscape has evolved significantly over the past few years. As video podcasting has grown in popularity, we have learned that creator-led, video-integrated shows have different audience needs and require distinct discovery, growth and monetization strategies compared to audio-first, narrative series. The rise of video has also blurred the lines on what it means to be a podcast creator.”

Amazon’s decision should be read alongside the performance of its other podcast acquisitions. Amazon bought podcast hosting company ART19 in June 2021, which has never achieved more than a 1% share of total episodes published, and currently hosts 3,900 shows (other enterprise hosts like Megaphone, Simplecast or Triton/Omny each host around 20,000). Amazon splashed $80mn on the SmartLess podcast: but that deal only lasted three years. Last year it spent $100mn for New Heights, promising international audio adaptations (which haven’t happened) and live events - there hasn’t been a live event for the show since Amazon’s ownership. Amazon Music started slowly adding podcasts in 2020; it has a 13% market share for music in the US, but achieves just a 1.6% share of US podcast downloads.

If you’re affected by recent layoffs at Wondery, Pineapple Street Studios or public radio, Podcast Movement is offering a limited number of complimentary passes for its event in Dallas later this month. Email support@podcastmovement.com to get connected with the team.

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