Oprah Heads to Amazon as Video Podcasting Goes Viral
Oprah Winfrey will soon start recording a twice-a-week video pod after signing a multiyear deal with the tech giant Monday.
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“Video podcast” sounded like an oxymoron not so very long ago. Now, talk show royalty Oprah Winfrey’s doing a deal with Amazon, suggesting this may be more than a fad.
Winfrey will soon start recording a twice-a-week video pod after signing a multiyear deal with the tech giant on Monday. “The Oprah Podcast” will hit Amazon’s suite of services (Prime Video, Music, Audible and Fire TV) in July. Amazon will also get its hooks into Winfrey’s popular book club and her talk show.
The initiative has a head start since Winfrey already gets millions of views per episode on her podcast’s YouTube channel, which she started in late 2024.
Everybody Gets a Podcast!
Winfrey, whose 25-year show included everything from provocative topics to Tom Cruise jumping up and down on a sofa and a meme-spawning car giveaway, could bring serious cred to Amazon’s push into creator-led podcasting. Last summer, Amazon took a sledgehammer to Wondery, the podcast company it acquired in 2020 for $300 million:
- Wondery’s audio shows, like “Dr. Death,” were shoved into Audible while its video pods, like Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert,” were spun into Creator Services. Then Amazon struck a deal, reportedly worth $100 million, for Travis Kelce’s show to come to Creator Services.
- Amazon has since activated around Kelce’s “New Heights” pod in ways that show podcasting’s potential for the e-commerce leader, which has sold show-themed merchandise on its main site and featured Kelce’s promotion of the “Harry Potter” series on Audible. Amazon also hosted a brand-sponsored Super Bowl party for the show.
Another Video Pivot: Podcasters beat their platforms to the punch by posting video versions of their podcasts on YouTube, which last year said video pods brought in more than 1 billion monthly viewers. Audio streamers are playing catch-up. Spotify, which reports earnings tomorrow, said last year it had more than half a million video pods watched by nearly 400 million users. Apple recently updated its app to support video podcasts, too, only six years after Spotify. There are risks, though: A Reddit search reveals Spotify users begging for a way to turn off videos. The platform rolled out a setting to do just that earlier this month.
