The beleaguered podcast network, development and production company Kast Media has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, telling a California court that it owed nearly $6.4 million to dozens of creditors while its assets are worth $700,000. The list includes millions owed to podcast creators, including Jess and Evan Ambrose, host of the Your Mom & Dad podcast, who are owed $478,185, This Past Weekend host Theo Von, owed $456,399; and Jason and Carissa Weiser’s Bardic Enterprises, creators of the Myths & Legends podcast, due $381,666. The list also includes comedian Sarah Silverman, owed $293,333 for The Sarah Silverman Podcast and TV’s “Bachelor” turned-podcaster Nick Viall, owed $257,387 for work on The Viall Files podcast.
Kast also owes money to The John Campea Show Podcast ($88,950), Richard Maclean Smith’s Unexplained ($70,513), and Alyx Weiss’ Revealing Your Secrets ($68,750). Nearly all the show creators that are owed money work with UTA.
Kast also owes money to vendors, such as Adswizz, Chartable, and Pineapple Street Studios, as well as smaller players including Arcadian Vanguard, Goofball, and Nugget Productions. Kast says it also owes $71,578 to the IRS.
According to a financial accounting provided to the court, Kast Media has been bringing in money in recent weeks. The company says it had $24,000 in ad revenue during January and February. It even turned a small profit of $75,000 during the two-month period.
During the past year Kast Media has been under fire from several podcasters for allegedly not paying what it owed the creators. Industry grumbling spilled into the open when Von took his allegations public in an episode of This Past Weekend in which Von says he was offered to move from Kast Media to PodcastOne and would be paid the six-figure total that he was owed with shares of the newly public company. Von said he rejected the offer.
Then podcast host Alyx Weiss filed a lawsuit against Kast Media claiming the company failed to comply with the termination agreement it signed when it pulled the plug on her Revealing Your Secrets series in 2022. She is seeking at least $68,750 in damages, plus interest. The case is still pending in a federal court in Los Angeles.
LiveOne last year struck a deal to buy Kast Media, but rather than buy the company outright it wound up picking up several of its shows which have since moved to LiveOne’s PodcastOne. But it took a pledge that Kast CEO Colin Thomson would not join PodcastOne to get some creators onboard.
Thomson launched Kast Media in 2016 as a production company for the creation of premium podcast content. In an interview with Bloomberg last year, Thomson said that Kast Media had been doing well since launching, growing to $16 million in revenue in 2021. But he said they saw ad dollars “head off a cliff” in July 2022. That led to layoffs and a salary reduction for him.
Kast Media’s future is unclear. It has not yet filed a reorganization plan with the court detailing how it plans to move forward. The company’s website currently features a single message: “under construction.”