Meet the founders of Earios, the world's first female-led podcast network

Amanda Lund, Maria Blasucci and Prianka Mattoo were tired of being told 'no' to their ideas. So they decided to change the podcast landscape...
The founders of Earios from L-R: Amanda Lund, Maria Blasucci and Priyanka Mattoo
Amelia Heathman12 August 2019

“I saw on Twitter that there’s never been a woman on the Moon and, I was like, we need to fix this. Earios is going to fix it,” says writer, producer, director and now one third of podcast network Earios, Priyanka Mattoo.

Putting a woman on the Moon may sound like a mighty plan for a new podcast network, but Earios is already pretty groundbreaking. Started by Amanda Lund and Maria Blasucci, two actors and comedians, alongside Mattoo, their former agent, Earios is the first female-led podcast network, with all the shows created by women.

It all started when Blasucci and Lund were doing a new podcast named The Big Ones, where they discussed life’s big unanswerable questions. However, when they shopped it around to different networks, no one latched on to it. “We’d been doing it for about two years, and had a good following,” says Blasucci. “We were like, why does no one want this?”

The answer lay in launching their own network that would create the types of shows that have been left behind by the other networks and organisations on the scene.

Podcasting is a male-dominated space, in 2008, 25 per cent more men listened to podcasts than women in the US, and though that gap is closing now to a mere nine per cent, the wider market is still catching up to this idea that women can be podcast listeners too.

So what’s the benefit of being part of a network? Lund and Blasucci had been putting shows together for a few years, so why is the time right to band together? “When you’re talking about a network, you get to be a part of a community with almost a built-in fanbase and that’s what we were after,” explains Blasucci.

After announcing their intention on Kickstarter just over a year ago, the team quickly got to work pulling together the first cohort of shows to launch on Earios. Though they intended to have six to eight shows, this ended up being 12 at launch.

“We just had so many ideas,” says Mattoo. “And we come from a background of being said no to a lot because we’re women. When we pitched shows to TV networks, the response was ‘we already have a show about two girls’. We never wanted to do that to anybody again.”

Blasucci and Lund host The Big Ones podcast whilst Mattoo hosts Foxy Browns with her friend and writer Camilla Blackett
Kaitlin Parry

Shows on the roster have come from the trio’s ideas, as well as people in their wider network. There’s Foxy Browns, co-hosted by Mattoo and her friend, writer Camilla Blackett, covering beauty and wellness for women of colour (Apple and Acast). Web Crawlers follows Melissa Stetten and Ali Segel as they go down rabbit holes on the internet ​(Apple and Acast). While, comedian and actor Margaret Cho has launched a show, with the first episode featuring Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness and Katie Malia (Apple and Acast).

It’s a substantial amount of work, with Lund and Blasucci producing and editing the shows, and Mattoo handling the legal, financial and partnerships side of the business. “If we had a team and the resources, we would have double or triple that number of shows,” says Mattoo. “We’ve had to say ‘wait till next year’ because the incoming calls have been out of control.”

The interest speaks to how much something like Earios was badly needed. Acast has come on as an ad sales partner and the network will make money through advertising. “The refrain was, we have all these women-focused ads and nowhere to put them because a lot of the shows are male,” she adds.

Yet, though the network is run by women and is making podcasts by women, the content isn’t exclusively female-centric. “We’ve said from the beginning that Earios is about podcasts by women for everyone, and we’re very happy about the male support our network has gotten. On Foxy Browns, so far all our reviews are by men,” laughs Mattoo. She points to the support Apple has given the shows by promoting them in the New and Notable box on the Podcasts app, as well as the interesting icon artwork.

“We have such a wonderful graphic designer that we think the icons are so appealing that people are just clicking on them to see what they are. It’s a strange little advantage that the stuff is pretty – in addition to being good.”

The podcast networks to know

 

Gimlet Media 

Gimlet shows include StartUp, Crime Town, Heavyweight and Reply All. It was acquired by Spotify earlier this year.

Radiotopia

Hosts shows including 99% Invisible, Criminal, Song Exploder and The West Wing Weekly. 

Pineapple Street Media

The studio behind shows like Missing Richard Simmons and the recently launched The Clearing in association with Gimlet. Was acquired recently by radio giant Entercom.

The idea is that within the next few years they’ll be able to hire more producers in order to create more shows, in particular, narrative shows and investigative ones, as well as the side mission to get a woman on the Moon in the next five to 10 years.

“We’ve slotted right into a hole in the market that we weren’t necessarily thinking [about]. We are women so it wasn’t like, oh this is an opportunity, it was more let’s just make this for us,” adds Mattoo.

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