Kast Media was founded in 2016 and has grown to feature several prominent podcasts before seeing some of its assets acquired by podcasting giant Podcast One earlier this year. However, several podcast hosts have now publicly alleged they haven’t been paid by the company.
Earlier this year, professional wrestling podcaster Jim Cornette alleged that Kast Media, and its founder and CEO Colin Thomson, had failed to pay him for advertising sold on his programs.
“The commission off of our advertising just last year alone was six figures for him,” Cornette said in July. “But what this alleged weasel does is he takes our money that our advertisers paid for the advertising on our shows and invests it back in another part of his company that is helping produce other people’s programs… This was a minor bump in the road. Let me put it this way: This guy owes me and (co-host) each a brand new Ford Expedition.”
Cornette claims that he was then offered a deal by LiveOne, the parent company of PodcastOne that acquired portions of Kast Media in May, that would pay the program two-thirds of what it was owed in cash, and a third of its outstanding balance in stock options.
The professional wrestling personality then claimed the entire sales team at Kast Media departed the organization due to the situation.
The latest development comes after popular comedian Theo Von shared a similar story about his podcast through Kast Media on Wednesday.
“Our podcast was defrauded. We were stolen from,” Von said. “We were taken advantage of. The company that did it is Kast Media, and the man that did it is Colin Thomson. We’re part of a larger group of podcasts that were stolen from. In total, just between talking with folks, there’s up to $4 million that I know of that people were taken advantage of. We’re in the six figures. I know podcasts that are in the seven figures.”
Von shared a similar story to that of Cornette, alleging that PodcastOne offered the same two-thirds cash, one-third stock option plan. However, he took issue with the offer, claiming it was a ruse to push the company’s stock price higher.
“It felt like, to me, they’re trying to leverage our podcast and other podcasts to then make their stock do well,” Von said. “And then if that happens, then we’ll get a share of our money. It just the whole thing to me felt really seedy.”
He then said he shared his concerns with PodcastOne about its business dealings with Thomson, but it remained unconcerned.
“They said, ‘We feel like he’s done a good job’, and that he would be part of the team still. So that’s just — I know some of this is a lot of inside of baseball man, but to me, it just f—ing felt real dirty. And it felt like just no respect for podcasting, no respect for the work that we had done.”
PodcastOne’s stock was slated to go live earlier this year, but was pushed back after a Nasdaq audit of the company. PodcastOne is scheduled to ring the opening bell Friday as its stock is prepared to hit the open market for the first time after it was spun off from parent company LiveOne.
Neither Kast Media, PodcastOne, or LiveOne have commented publicly on the allegations.
