Independent, female-led podcast production company Blanchard House says it is pioneering a completely fresh approach to podcasting.
For International Women’s Day, co-founder Rosie Pye spoke to PodcastingToday about Blanchard House and some of its future plans.
The company was named after a house owned by family friends on the island of Alderney, where Rosie is originally from. She used visit the house when she was young and says it was full of stories and art, making it inspiring and creative – just like her own Blanchard House!
Rosie spent 15 years as a producer at the BBC and led the team making one of its early experimental podcasts. She joined The Economist to produce its flagship podcast, Economist Asks, leaving in 2020 to create Blanchard House. Now, she and her team create original content for clients including Google Ventures and Google Research.
While working with Google making science shows, she met Kimberly Jung, an American US army veteran and Harvard graduate.
Kimberly asked Rosie what she would do if she wanted to grow Blanchard house, which was a very small company at the time, could she do more, particularly in America?
The pair put together a plan to launch the company in the US to make narrative eight-part mini-series for the American market.
Rosie told us: “Kimberly in as entrepreneur; she really loved what we do and there aren’t many female founders out there unfortunately… yet. She saw a lot of potential of taking it further with the business, so we’re now business partners!”
Kimberly is the business side and Rosie is the creative side of Blanchard House. They have raised funding of $1million, a considerable feat, given only 2.2% of VC funding goes to women, and 2.6% to minorities. With the financing, they have now been able to hire a full-time team.
“We have five shows out this year that are partnered with big American distributors,” says Rosie. The only one announced so far is Audible. Then we have another five that we have partnered on for next year.”
As for taking a fresh approach, Rosie explained: “We don’t use freelancers, we operate as a collective, so we’re very creatively driven and only work on our own stories.
“Our composers and sound team are in-house as well, so the mix and sound is very big. It’s in the way we work with this collective atmosphere, having British producers and making shows for the American Market.”
Aside from joking that the audio industry is stale, male and pale, Rosie believes there is more to do.
“I think something needs to change,” she says. “My specific thought is that we need more diversity in the people that start companies. There’s more diversity now in hiring, but not in people that actually own the companies.”
The way to do this Rosie believes, is to inspire people in the way Kimberly did to her.
More details on the first projects Blanchard House is working on are due to be released later this month.
