Jason Bateman, Will Arnett & Sean Hayes’ Smartless Media Hires Richard Korson As President, Expands Podcast Empire For Wondery & Amazon Music

Peter White
·2 min read
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EXCLUSIVE: SmartLess, the podcast set up by Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Sean Hayes and sold to Amazon Music and Wondery in a multi-million-dollar deal, is expanding.

The trio have launched SmartLess Media and hired Richard Korson, who was previously a producer at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, as President.

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The company will expand its audio slate and has teamed up to produce a raft of new shows as part of its partnership with the Jeff Bezos-owned companies.

SmartLess Media will produce a range of weekly series as well as narrative and limited podcasts and will produce in-house as well as working with external partners.

It comes after the actors sold their show to Amazon Music and Wondery in a deal thought to be valued at between $60M-80M. As part of that partnership, Amazon Music and Wondery have first-look exclusive rights to other shows produced by SmartLess Media.

Korson has been brought on to lead all aspects of the company. The founder of audio content company Radio Point, Korson, got his start on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, before heading up Busboy Productions between 2005 and 2011, where he oversaw shows such as Important Things with Demetri Martin, Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, and The Colbert Report.

He was also showrunner and exec producer of kids sketch show, The Who Was? Show starring Andy Daly, for Netflix and is developing and producing content Penguin Workshop as producer at large.

Bateman, Arnett and Hayes launched Smartless in July 2020 and in each episode, one of the hosts introduces a mystery guest to the other two. Guests have included Vice President Kamala Harris, George Clooney, Jennifer Aniston, Adam Sandler, Ricky Gervais, Bryan Cranston, Paul McCartney, Tina Fey, Awkwafina, W. Kamau Bell, Stacey Abrams, Billie Eilish and Megan Rapinoe.

The trio, which signed the podcast to CAA ahead of its sale, are also going on tour next month.

Hayes said, “We don’t know how to run a company so we hired someone named Richard Korson and he tells us we couldn’t be happier”.

Arnett joked, “Jason could not be reached for comment.”

Korson added, “As a long-time admirer of Jason, Will, And Sean’s work, I’m thrilled to join the Smartless family and continue to build on the smartless and hilarious foundation they’ve created.”

Smartless Media is repped by CAA.

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