SCOOP: Netflix and iHeart Near Podcast Deal; Videos To Be Pulled From YouTube
Sources tell me the pact would cover about 20 shows, including Charlamagne tha God’s ‘The Breakfast Club’ and ‘Stuff They Don’t Want You To Know’
I cover the creator economy at Like & Subscribe, a standalone newsletter that’s being sampled today for all subscribers to The Ankler. I wrote about Patreon’s strategy to poach Substack creators and Netflix’s missteps as it moves to recruit top podcasters, and I interviewed two Gen Z media founders about how to win young audiences. I’m natalie@theankler.com
Netflix has notched a victory in its battle to take on YouTube — and no, I’m not talking about its winning bid to acquire Warner Bros., which we all know is far from a done deal. The subscription streaming giant is nearing a deal to bring a slate of iHeartMedia video podcasts to its subscribers, according to multiple sources familiar with the agreement. As part of the deal, I’m told, those shows would not distribute full video episodes on YouTube.
The agreement would include around 20 shows, per my sources, including Charlamagne tha God’s popular radio show-turned video podcast The Breakfast Club and Stuff They Don’t Want You To Know, a podcast that iHeart acquired in 2018 as part of $55 million deal for Stuff Media.
A representative for Netflix declined to comment, and a rep for iHeart did not respond to a request for comment.
Netflix has been on the hunt for video podcasts to bring to its subscribers for the last several months and in October announced a partnership with Spotify that will see it distribute video episodes of 16 sports, culture and true crime shows including The Bill Simmons Podcast, Rewatchables, Conspiracy Killers and The Dave Chang Show. That deal is expected to kick off early next year and like the iHeart arrangement includes a stipulation that video episodes of the shows under the pact not be uploaded to YouTube.
The podcast industry is making a pivot to video that, as I detailed earlier this year, is completely resetting the hierarchy of top platforms for podcast listening — and viewing. As the world’s largest streamer, YouTube is a natural place for many podcasters to distribute their shows and in recent years became the No. 1 podcast platform. As YouTube viewing increasingly shifts to the living room, it’s become a direct threat to Netflix and now consistently boasts the largest share of television viewing, per Nielsen (12.9 percent to Netflix’s 8 percent in October).
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Earlier this year, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos described YouTube as a platform for “killing time” even as he also told Wall Street that he expected to see video podcasts eventually “find their way to Netflix.” (YouTube CEO Neal Mohan retorted in a Cannes Lions conversation with Ankler Media CEO Janice Min, “I think that’s frankly just the industry kind of talking to itself.”) YouTube has come up again as Netflix executives make the case for why it needs to acquire Warner Bros. studio and streaming assets — and why the deal shouldn’t be a regulatory issue. “If we buy Warner Bros., we go from 8 percent of viewed hours today in the United States to 9 percent,” co-CEO Greg Peters argued at the UBS 2025 Global Media and Communications Conference on Dec. 8. “We’re still behind YouTube at 13 percent.”
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It’s a big reason Netflix has been quietly pursuing deals with top creators and podcasters over the last year. In addition to Spotify and iHeart, the company has also reportedly been in talks with SiriusXM. (Its non-podcast deals include agreements to license videos from Ms. Rachel and Mark Rober, who’s also making a new show with Netflix.) A deal with Netflix could help a podcast reach new global audiences and brings an association with a platform that has won Oscars and Emmys. But when I talked to podcast industry sources last month, they told me Netflix’s pitch could be a tough sell with podcasters who already have big audiences on YouTube and who generate a healthy amount of advertising revenue there. Complicating matters is the question of who owns the video rights to a podcast — the podcaster or the podcast distributor, which varies.
Netflix’s podcast push is still in its infancy. These early deals will teach the streamer a lot about what its subscribers want to watch, and podcast sources say they expect Netflix to continue to iterate on its strategy throughout the next year.