Good morning! Paramount and Trump but to succeed in settlement over CBS Information lawsuit, Kathy Warden’s Northrop Grumman invests in rocket developer startup, and the highest feminine podcaster within the U.S. thinks you’d like true crime—even for those who don’t already pay attention.
– Pay attention up. In a mean week throughout the first three months of this 12 months, 6.4 million People listened to Crime Junkie. That’s the true crime podcast hosted by Ashley Flowers, who over the previous seven years has constructed an Indiana-based audio empire—and now has ambitions to show it into a real media empire.
Crime Junkie’s listener stats make it the No. 2 podcast within the U.S.—and make Flowers the nation’s high feminine podcaster. (Alex Cooper’s Name Her Daddy is No. 4.) “I’ll get Joe Rogan one day,” Flowers joked once I spoke along with her backstage at one in all her stay reveals in Seattle final month. Hundreds of followers had pushed hours to see Flowers in particular person, the place she instructed the story of an unsolved 1987 Colorado homicide and the wrongful conviction that adopted. She has even mobilized her viewers to take motion, encouraging them to contact the state’s lawyer common.
Flowers is the artistic drive behind her present, however the 36-year-old has additionally been balancing a second job as CEO of mum or dad firm Audiochuck, which has 70 staff and 20 podcasts. “I didn’t come from a media background,” says Flowers, who earlier than launching Crime Junkie did enterprise growth for a software program firm. “I was just scrappy and wore so many hats.” She sometimes arrives on the workplace by 4:30 a.m. to perform these twin roles. The onerous work has paid off with Audiochuck incomes $45 million in revenue final 12 months, in accordance with Bloomberg (Flowers credit low overhead prices in Indiana for permitting that quantity), and a valuation of $250 million. Flowers has printed two thriller novels (the second, earlier this month) and has her personal channel on SiriusXM, too, which additionally handles promoting for the Audiochuck podcast community.
She’s obsessive about true crime and says she remembers the information of each case she’s ever labored on—throughout a whole lot of podcast episodes. “It’s just human nature for us to want to make sense of things that don’t make sense,” she says. “Solving puzzles—your brain tries to fit the pieces together.”
Flowers is now bringing on a brand new CEO, Fortune is the primary to report. Matthew Starker arrived from Endeavor Streaming, the place he was chief enterprise officer. He joins Audiochuck after a $40 million funding from the Chernin Group in February—and is tasked with bringing to life Flowers’ thesis that the viewers for true crime is way greater than even the 6.4 million who hearken to Crime Junkie. Starker says the full addressable marketplace for true crime followers worldwide is 230 million. “If you enjoy someone telling you an amazing story with edge-of-your-seat twists and turns, you’re going to like Crime Junkie,” Starker says.
Audiochuck goals to maneuver into movie and tv—which prompted Flowers to carry on outdoors funding to assist her navigate new industries. “Taking the assets and the IP that they’ve built out and expanding that into video and television, there’s just so much potential,” Starker says. A few of that can nonetheless be true crime—a TV adaptation of Crime Junkie may look one thing like a modernized Dateline–however it would additionally pursue scripted content material within the thriller and thriller genres. (Underneath what title—Audiochuck? Crime Junkie? Flowers’ herself?—continues to be TBD.) “What Blumhouse is for horror, I want Audiochuck to be for mystery and thriller,” Flowers says.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
