Wondery’s CEO on making mega hits like Dirty John, bringing Hollywood to podcasting
This week on KindredCast, we spoke with Hernan Lopez, the Founder and CEO of Wondery. In just three years, Hernan has built Wondery into the largest independent podcast publisher, with mega hits like Dirty John, Dr. Death, and Business Wars, to name a few.
As podcasters, it’s no surprise that we wanted to see inside Hernan’s mind and understand his success. Here’s what we learned:
- Serial was what started it all.
In the fall of 2014, This American Life released a new investigative crime drama and changed the game forever. Though podcasts have been around since the mid-2000s, creators and listeners alike have cited the rise of Serial as the defining moment for podcasting as a rising industry. Like many others, Hernan caught the Serial bug, not just by listening to the show, but by paying attention to its fans. As he listened, he realized that people were craving more content like Serial. “Every time that you’re in any industry and you meet a small group of consumers who are deeply passionate about a product and they wonder why isn’t there more of it, you need to pay attention,” Hernan said.
But replicating the success of Serial proved to be a challenge. In the early days of Wondery, Hernan learned from what didn’t work. “We created a number of what I thought were…very good audio dramas. But we found that this ceiling of popularity of audio drama was far lower than what it needed to be in order to make the numbers work. People want to hear true stories, like Serial, like Start Up.” Noting the challenges of creating a nonfiction work like Serial, Hernan opted for more scripted dramas.
2. Success in podcasting is about distinctiveness, not just quality.
Wondery has produced over 70 podcasts since 2016. We marveled at this number, noting how the network hasn’t forsaken quality in the name of quantity. Surprisingly enough, Hernan values one thing more than quality: distinctiveness. “You can argue that the shows produced by Gimlet, by Pineapple Street are every bit as good as the Wondery shows,” Hernan said. “It’s just that our shows sound very much like a Hollywood movie in a way that I believe most other podcast publishers don’t sound like.”
The “Hollywood movie” concept is best observed through Wondery’s greenlighting process. “When somebody’s pitching a story to us, we think about the protagonist, the antagonist, we think about the stakes, we think about how we’re going to keep people’s attention from beginning to middle to end,” Hernan said. “We think about the cliff hangers. We think about…what’s the ending? We think about all the things that people in the television world must think, especially in the serialized character-driven drama. They wouldn’t greenlight a show unless all those questions are answered ahead of time.”
3. Podcasting will become a billion-dollar industry sooner than you think.
As the former President and CEO of Fox International, Hernan had a bit of a “Who do you think you are?” moment when transitioning into the podcasting industry. But as he predicted, what was once an indie record club is growing into a media giant. Hernan estimates that the industry will reach $700 million in the U.S. alone this year, then $1 billion by 2020, surpassing the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s projections by one year.
And as for the rest of the world? Well, Hernan is just getting started in the podcasting world abroad. “There are so many big opportunities in Germany, in France, in China, in Brazil, to essentially start a company like Wondery, and we are taking that opportunity,” Hernan said.
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To listen to our interview with Hernan, check out Episode 56 of KindredCast, embedded below, and available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
