Video is a big part of the Pop Sugar website. Now audio will be too. The female lifestyle brand owned by Group Nine has inked a deal with iHeartMedia to produce the Not Over It podcast. The celebrity and entertainment-focused series is the first for Pop Sugar and a fifth for Group Nine, which in 2019 struck a deal with iHeart to work to bring its digital brands into the audio realm.
“In 2021, we know audio-first platforms will continue to be an important way to stay connected to our massive loyal audience of modern women,” said Lisa Sugar, the founder and President of Pop Sugar. “It’s why we are so excited to launch our first iHeartRadio podcast and extend our editors’ pop culture expertise in a new, engaging format,” she said in a statement.
The Not Over It podcast will be released weekly. On the series, hosts Becky Kirsch and Zareen Siddiqui will take on the week’s biggest moments in celebrity and entertainment news, offering their analysis, banter, and theories. Each episode will run 30 to 40 minutes. New episodes will be published on Tuesdays.
Group Nine – which also includes such twentysomething-targeted digital brands as Thrillist, NowThis, The Dodo and Seeker – entered into a podcast deal with iHeartMedia in October 2019. It struck the deal after it said it surveyed its audience and discovered at the time that two-thirds of its audience were already listening to podcasts, a figure that has likely grown larger during the past 16-months.
There is also be a promotional component to the alliance with iHeart agreeing to promote Group Nine’s shows on other podcasts, through social media, and on the radio—including having some of its writers appear on local iHeart radio stations.