What will Office Ladies do when it runs out of Office episodes?

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsl...sxm-for-audacy

By Ashley Carman
June 20, 2024 at 12:00 PM PDT

But first, here’s what I’m reading:

• TikTok appears to be preparing to invest in music catalogs, according to job postings spotted by Music Business Worldwide.
  
• I always love Nick Quah’s podcast stories, and he blessed us with two this week. The first is a who’s who of the most influential podcasters of the moment, and the second is a trend story on how chat shows have, once again, become the most important format in the industry.

The Office Ladies find a new home

When Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey first announced in 2019 that they’d be reuniting to co-host a podcast about the show that made them famous – The Office – it was fair to wonder if many people would bother listening. At the time, the hit TV series had been off the air for more than half a decade, and the now ubiquitous format of podcast rewatch shows was still largely unproven.

Five years later — in a world in which seemingly every significant TV show, past and present, has a complementary podcast — Office Ladies is among the most popular.

On Spotify, more than a million people currently follow the show, which regularly pops up on Edison Research’s list of the top 50 podcasts in the US. During the first quarter of this year, it reached the 22nd spot.

Now, the hit show is moving to a new home.

According to people familiar with the plans who asked not to be identified discussing nonpublic information, Office Ladies will be leaving SiriusXM Holdings Inc. in favor of a new deal with Audacy Inc.

Why the transition?

Both Audacy and SiriusXM declined to comment. A lawyer for Fischer and Kinsey didn’t respond to an interview request.

But a recent episode offers a potential clue.

In March, co-hosts Fischer and Kinsey voiced their unhappiness with how SiriusXM was treating Earwolf, the production company behind their show, which became a part of the satellite radio’s portfolio in 2020 via its $325 million acquisition of Stitcher.

During the episode, Fischer and Kinsey interviewed their former audio engineer, Sam Kieffer, who they said had been laid off in a recent round of cuts at SiriusXM. Along the way, they questioned the company’s treatment of Earwolf’s staff, noting that they had only learned of Kieffer’s dismissal via text message.

Three months later, the show’s run with SiriusXM is over.

The deal raises some questions and themes that intrigue me. For one, this will obviously be a big announcement for Audacy, which for the past year has been slogging through bankruptcy proceedings. Taken with their renewal of Glennon Doyle’s We Can Do Hard Things, Audacy continues to show signs of aggressive dealmaking in podcast land.

In fact, it just signed another rewatch show to its network – The Golden Girls Deep Dive Podcast.

Leah Reis-Dennis, Audacy’s vice president of podcast content strategy and business development, told me they pursued the project because of the “super cult, niche audience for that show.”

While rewatch podcasts have proven to be popular, these shows do eventually run out of TV episodes to discuss. In our conversation about The Golden Girls deal, Reis-Dennis told me that older TV shows are a “better bet” for the format because “the volume of episodes was so much higher back in the days of network TV.”

A show with only, say, 10 episodes over three seasons is not a great starting point for a long-term business. The Golden Girls, a sitcom that originally aired on NBC from 1985 to 1992, produced 180 episodes.

For months now, Office Ladies has been staring down the end of the 201 episodes of The Office, which they are on pace to exhaust sometime this summer. Clearly, they plan to keep hosting the podcast. But what exactly they’ll be talking about remains an open question.

Reddit fans have recently wondered this same thing. The group has tossed out several ideas, such as watching the UK-version of The Office, or recapping US episodes for a second time but with more questions from fans — or maybe transitioning into a chat show anchored around the chemistry and friendship of the hosts.

So far, Fischer and Kinsey have kept mum about their plans. But now at least we know the show will continue.