Businessweek Extra- Wondery COO Jen Sargent

what Wondering is learning about their customer. And we should say uh right at the top, and we've alluded to this that we do have a business relationship with Wondering in part because one of the best friends that we have at this show, Joe No Sarah, he was on our air earlier. He of course hosted The Shrink next Door, the Runaway Hit. I believe it's fair to say of twenty nineteen. So we there's your disclaimer. Jen. Really nice to have you with us. Thank you, Jason, thank you,

Carol Um. I'm pleased to be here, so tell us about the podcast podcast business right here. In July, I listened to a ton of podcasts I'm are always saying to Carol, like, you gotta listen this, you gotta listen to this. I drive for insane on that. But it does feel like podcasts are having a bit of a moment here in the pandemic. What's going on? Yeah, I

say more than a moment. I mean this has been a movement for for years now, with UM technology making it easier for consumers to access great content and that being combined with so much amazing podcast content coming into

the market. But what we've seen during the pandemic is actually people really leaning into listening to podcast And I think as we've all been social distancing and changing our habits and spending more time at home, UH, consumers have found all these different ways to be listening to podcast, whether it's cooking or gardening, or walking the dog, UM or just cleaning around the house. Podcast are a great piece of kind of media to take with you on the go and and really be able to kind of

multitask something else around your house. And as a result, UM, we we've really seen UM some some great list in listening UM recently, and we've also seen shifts in behavior where you know, prior to the pandemic, it was all about commuting and your time at the gym, and and those were two of the big use cases for for podcasts. But now we see listening throughout the day and on the weekends and and just um, you know, we can

see consumers really um listening in a different way. And I have a lot of series of of why that's happening right now. But UM, it's been a really positive time for podcasts. I'll also say that, you know, just on the production side of things, UM, we've been able to keep producing podcasts during the pandemic. And I think you know, UM, I mean, I don't know about YouTube, but I've kind of caught up on my Netflix and my Hulu and and and with TV production on hold

right now, UM, it's this source of new content. So uh for wandery but but all the podcasting UM publishers out there, most of us have been able to adapt and to really um keep keep things moving with new content. We've seen interest from talent who would otherwise be busy with TV production getting involved in podcasts. So for the whole ecosystem, I think we've we've seen a great list.

That's so funny that you said that because just before just it was like, you gotta watch this because and I said, you know, I've been running out of things to watch. What's interesting is I'm curious you said that kind of the trends are change changing. It's not just people commuting obviously anymore, but they're listening at all different times.

What are people listening to? Jen? Yeah, so, UM, well, especially when the stay at home where orders first happened, we saw a lot of people UM listening to news, UM, listening to UM, to a current information UM. But then we also it's all that balanced with UM comedy and entertainment and things that would give people kind of a

break in an escape UM, which is not surprising. UM. Now we're seeing that that pretty much all categories are you know, receiving a lot of listenership at this point, but but definitely at the start of the pandemic it was news, entertainment and and personal growth is the other diner category self help personal growth. So you know, it's interesting,

Jen Um. I was thinking about you guys in terms of the type of content you create, and I'm almost thinking to some extent it feels like a little bit like a Disney approach where content can ultimately have multiple revenue streams online, podcast streaming, etcetera. And I do wonder how you approach it. How do you look at when you're you know, thinking about either acquiring or producing some content, are you thinking about, Okay, how can we spread this

out as much as possible? Yes, and that has absolutely been evolving as as we've grown. Um. You know, we're known for our immersive, character driven storytelling. We really try to put you the listener, in the middle of the story and get you completely you know, enveloped in it. UM. And we we think about it now as um more than just a podcast. We really think about developing a

story that then can take on a life of its own. UM. I mean, our our broader goal is really to be the first place consumers think of when they think of high quality, immersive storytelling. And today that happens to be with podcasts. But we know in the future it is very likely that a consumer could encounter us first as a TV show or a book, um, and then make their way back to the podcast UM. And so UM.

You know, as we think about different revenue streams, I mean, advertising is certainly our bread and butter, and was one of the earliest UM, you know, revenue streams to emerge for us and everyone else in podcasting. UM. But as we started to create hits like The Next Door, like Dr Death, UM, we saw this opportunity to develop the I P into television shows. And at this point, sixteen of our projects are in various stages of TV development. UM. We have one of our projects UM that is on

its way to becoming a book. UM. And and this licensing side of it is is not just real but to your Disney analogy, I mean I I think we absolutely see it expanding that way. So when we green light stories now we think, oh, could this be a TV show? Could? I mean we certainly didn't. Um. You know, when we were working with joannas Sarah first right next Door, we weren't thinking, oh, this would be so perfect for Paul Rudd and Harold but you're doing it. But but

after the fact, yeah, it totally makes sense. It makes a lot of sense when you think if you've listened to The Street Next Story and you're like, yep, that absolutely checks out. I can see that on the screen absolutely. So talk to us about the subscription model, because I feel like that's something that a lot of podcast publishers have been wrestling with and you know, we've seen the Spotify model, we've seen Luminary, We've seen others sort of go for this Stitcher I believe as well as a

premium product. Tell us about the conversations to sort of get one dree to that point and how you think about it. Yeah, I mean, part of our motivation UM was really that our listeners were asking for an app.

They were asking for a better way, an easier way to access wondering shows and content, to be able to binge content, especially mini series, to be able to listen to add three and UM particular to our style of storytelling, we do a lot of serialized mini series and serialized always on shows and UM for many of our shows like a Business Wars or or Tides of History, UM, etcetera, that were we have dozens of seasons at this point, and your average podcast app doesn't allow you to navigate

elegantly between seasons. And so even just tracking down the season of Business Wars that you want to listen to is it's hard in a general market app. And when we looked around at the market, we felt like that's that's what that's what was out there. I mean, Stitcher, Luminary, Apple, They're all great apps, but their general market one size fits all apps, and we really wanted to create a

curated experience. We wanted it to be on brand, we wanted it to feel immersive and premium like our our shows do, and we really just wanted to super serve that that wandering listener. UM. That was a big part of it. UM. The other piece of it, which is you know, was a challenge for us, and I think

it's a challenge for for most publishers out there. Is that we we but but by by distributing our content through these third parties, we missed that direct connection with the listener and we don't get data back that really helps us. And without the data, we're kind of flying blind when we're when we're making the next piece of content or we're trying to market it. So having some first party data that UM that we can use to inform our marketing and content decisions is really game changing. UM.

So that was another part of it for us. UM As we thought about creating creating an app like this, is it only going to be? And I don't mean only, but I mean will it be exclusively wondering content or will you open it up to others that kind of fit within the wondering world. Yeah, so it will be both wondering content and wondering partner content. But we're not an aggregator. We're not trying to be the Netflix of podcasts,

and it won't be everything under the sun. It will only be podcasts where we have a partnership, whether we've partnered with Bloomberg or or someone like UM like uh, you know, all Things Comedy or The Athletic, whoever we're partnering with that might be within the app, and then all of our wondering originals. And we felt like now was the time to do this because we had the

breast and depth of content. We have a beloved catalog, we have these big hits UM we had enough UM brand equity and listeners to tap into UM to be able to launch this type of app. Now, Jen only about a minute or so ago. What was something that you thought, you know, this may be okay and then it just caught fire. Was there was there a specific either type of content or a specific piece of content

that really surprised you on the upside um? You know, one that I was recently surprised about was Blood Ties. So we had Blood Ties as an audio drama that we launched right before the holidays um this past year. And we had dabbled in audio drama when Wadrey first launched, and for whatever reason, the market wasn't mature enough, maybe there wasn't enough demand, but you know, they did okay, but we weren't really able to get a blockbuster hit out of out of the fiction side of things, and

Blood Ties was a game changer. It completely um surpassed our expectations. We were able to get some great talent um Uh Gillian, Jacob, Josh gad Um to voice some of the main characters. But it gave us this confidence that podcasting is mature enough to support fiction and and audio drama, and that opens up a whole new world.

So we're actually launching Blood Tigh season two this week um By you know, it's kind of backed by popular demand, and we're now putting a lot more audio drama into productions. So that was one that we've been just very pleasantly supported with. That was wondering Chief Operating Officer Jen, Sergeant Jason, this is an important time for them they launched their app last month. They are definitely tapping into people who want to listen to new material right because productions have

been shut down. People aren't making movies, they're not making new streaming content, and so folks are looking to podcasts to listen to new things. It's a golden age to some extent. I loved that you and she joked about the fact that you had watched everything on Netflix, even listening to Bloomberg Business Week Extra. We started doing into Bloomberg Business Week Radio live Monday through Friday at two pm Lall Street Time. I'm Blue Broke Radio, I'm Carol Massar,

and I'm Jason Kelly. This is Bloomberg