Earwolf
Serial, NPR’s hit true-crime podcast series, was the last boost the podcasting medium needed to break through firmly into the mainstream. But NPR’s success comes on the wave of popular podcasts that have been slowly building up fanbases over the past four or five years. Shows such as Comedy Bang! Bang!, improv4humans, How Did This Get Made and countless others have all had dedicated followers since their inception, and they have all come from one company now synonymous with comedy podcasts: Earwolf.
Earwolf is the labor of Comedy Bang! Bang! host Scott Aukerman and self-described “business mensch” Jeff Ulrich. The company’s roots are in an underground weekly live comedy show hosted by Aukerman and comedian B.J. Porter called Comedy Death-Ray. What started in 2002 as a way for Aukerman, Porter, and their friends to showcase their talents and bring business to the M Bar in Los Angeles eventually turned into a huge hit in the alternative comedy scene, with Death-Ray moving to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre to accommodate its increasing popularity.
Aukerman started Comedy Death-Ray Radio, the precursor to the Comedy Bang! Bang! podcast, on radio station Indie 103.1 in 2009. This led to the creation of the company Earwolf in order to better finance the podcast and their friends’ other comedic endeavors.
Aukerman and Porter continued their partnership until 2011, when they parted ways. The live Death-Ray show was (mostly) discontinued, and the podcast became the main focus of the Comedy Death-Ray legacy, albeit with a new name, courtesy of Aukerman’s wife, comedian and Who Charted? host Kulap Vilaysack.
Things grew from there as more and more podcasts were added to the lineup. IFC picked up Comedy Bang! Bang! as a television series in 2012. With live shows around the country, huge guest stars every week, more than 50 different podcasts catering to every comedic sensibility and taste and the recent launch of a sister company, Wolfpop (itself curated by indie comedy mainstay Paul Scheer), Earwolf is an absolute titan in the world of podcasting content, matched, perhaps, only by NPR and Chris Hardwick’s Nerdist company.
Earwolf’s podcasts succeed because of the immense amount of talent they attract — Andy Daly, Chelsea Peretti, Lauren Lapkus, etc. — and the creative freedom afforded to those comedians to do, essentially, whatever they want.
With the recent success of NPR’s Serial and Invisibilia, podcasts are only becoming more and more popular. And even with that newfound mainstream credibility, Earwolf will most likely continue to be the top-quality tastemaker in the comedy podcasting world.
