Spotify Names New Heads Of Gimlet, Parcast Podcast Studios Amid Cancellations

Spotify has named new managing directors for its Gimlet and Parcast podcast studios the day after news that it plans to cancel a combined 11 original podcasts and eliminate about 5% of its podcast headcount.

Nicole Beemsterboer will be stepping up to lead Gimlet. She joined Spotify earlier this year as Gimlet’s Head of News & Knowledge. Previously at NPR, she has worked on shows like Embedded and Invisibilia with accolades that include a Peabody Award. She was also a senior producer for the NPR podcast White Lies, a finalist for the first Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting in 2020.

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Liliana Kim joins Spotify as managing director of Parcast effective November 7. She was most recently at American Public Media where she served as general manager of APM Studios. She previously worked at HBO and Viacom.

Both report to Julie McNamara, who leads the Spotify Studios operations.

Their appointments come as Spotify scrubs 11 podcasts from the two platforms over the next several months, including Gimlet’s How to Save a Planet, Crime Show and Every Little Thing and Parcast’s Medical Murders, Female Criminals, Crimes of Passion, Dictator, Mythology, Haunted Places and Urban Legends. Horoscope Today is also done. This is a rare group cancellation of podcasts, a business that Spotify has been growing rapidly and needs to winnow through.

The move is said to be designed to ensure the company enters 2023 with a strong, focused slate of O&E shows, with several new ones to be announced in the coming weeks and months. Spotify Studios and The Ringer were not impacted and the cancellations rep a small number of the company’s circa 500 offerings.

Its popular podcasts include Batman Unburied, Archetypes and The System, Call Her Daddy, The Journal and Caso 63. Others include Armchair Expert, The Rewatchables, The Ryen Russillo Podcast, The Ringer-Verse, The Bill Simmons Podcast, Science Vs, Heavyweight, Not Past It, Stolen, Serial Killers, Conspiracy Theories, Higher Learning, Solved Murders: True Crime Mysteries, Unsolved Murders: True Crime Mysteries and Cold Cases.

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