After Spotify acquired “The Joe Rogan Experience” for a reported $100 million in May 2020, people inside and outside the company protested.
The past few months have the feel of a predictable script. When he contracted COVID last fall, he told listeners, he tried everything to fight it, including the unhelpful and potentially harmful ivermectin. Not surprisingly, Rogan has been a vocal pandemic skeptic, using his platform to spread damaging misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine, including his belief that healthy young people do not need to get vaccinated. Rogan, a comedian, actor and former “Fear Factor” host, has become a popular podcast provocateur known for his irreverent takes and wild assortment of guests, freely (some would say irresponsibly) discussing politics, culture and in some cases conspiracy theories. Many members of Netflix staffwere so outraged they staged a walkout, and just last week the streamer’s editorial and publishing manager in film, who is trans, resigned.
Last year, Chappelle’s newest comedy show for Netflix revolved, in large part, around the comedian’s anger at being “canceled” (because nothing says canceled like a Netflix special) for making transphobic jokes by - wait for it - making more transphobic jokes. Ek used the weekend to take a page out of Sarandos’ playbook by sending his employees a memo designed, one assumes, to keep his employees from taking the recent Joe-Rogan-on-Spotify controversy to a Dave-Chappelle-on-Netflix level.
But it certainly looks as though they’ve been comparing notes. Kicking things off is Spotify’s own Daniel Ek in conversation with Netflix’s Ted Sarandos. Spotify just announced its newest podcast, “Sorry, Not Sorry,” in which billionaire CEOs discuss the most effective ways to seem to apologize for profiting from content that is offensive in historically oppressive ways without actually doing anything about it.
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