J. Clara Chan
·1 min read
Morbid Network, the podcast network behind Morbid: A True Crime Podcast, has struck an exclusive ad sales and one-week windowing deal with Wondery and Amazon Music, hosts Alaina Urquhart and Ashleigh Kelley said Thursday.
Similar to other licensing deals Wondery and Amazon Music have inked with Exactly Right Media (My Favorite Murder), SmartLess and How I Built This, new episodes of Morbid and all other podcasts in the Morbid Network (That’s Spooky, Cult Liter, Seven Deadly Sinners, The Strange and Unusual Podcast, Obitchuary, Alone at Lunch, Mostly Horror Movie Night and Scream!)will release one week early on Wondery and Amazon Music before being distributed widely on all major podcast platforms. Amazon and Wondery will also have exclusive rights to the network’s ad sales, merchandising, distribution — including simulcasts on YouTube — and to future shows created for the podcast network.
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Morbid listeners will also get an extra episode each week, bringing the total to three episodes released a week under the deal with Wondery and Amazon Music, Urquhart and Kelley said in a video posted to Instagram. The two hosts are also expected to host their own solo shows about astrology and “old timey” murder cases. “You’re going to be swimming in content, and we couldn’t be [happier],” Urquhart said in the video.
Morbid is currently Apple Podcasts’ top comedy podcast and the fourth most-popular podcast across all categories in the U.S., according to Chartable. The show first launched in 2018 and features Urquhart, an autopsy technician, and Kelley, a hairstylist, discussing true crime cases.
The deal, brokered by UnJu Paik and Jenn Cron for Wondery, will begin June 1. Morbid Network is managed by Seth Jacobs at Brillstein Entertainment Partners and represented by Marissa Hurwitz at WME.
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