Netflix Hires Steve Wilson to Lead Podcast Content Acquisition

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Netflix has hired Steve Wilson to head its podcast expansion, Variety has confirmed.

Wilson will lead the company’s podcast content acquisitions on a contract basis. Before heading to Netflix, Wilson spent 15 years at Apple, where he worked across editorial, marketing and partner relations for the network’s shows. He left Apple in Dec. 2020, and spent nearly six years at QCODE as chief strategy officer before joining Daylight Media in the same position.

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As reported in Sept., Netflix now offers more than 60 video podcasts on its service, and has continued to lean into expanding its catalog. The streamer’s original lineup of video podcasts currently includes true-crime show “Murder With My Husband”; talk show “The Pete Davidson Show” hosted by the “Saturday Night Live” alum; pop-culture interview show “Shut Up Evan” hosted by Evan Ross Katz; “The Puzzle Room With David Kwong”; and “Allegedly,” a true-crime podcast from NBC News correspondent Ellison Barber.

Wilson joins Netflix at a tumultuous time, just weeks after the company announced layoffs of 6% of employees, equating for about 1,000 jobs. The cut was the biggest to date, and primarily affected workers in Netflix’s product, technology, legal and HR teams, according to an email to employees written by co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters.

“Our mission — to entertain the world — is ambitious, and delivering on it requires us to be disciplined about where we prioritize our people and resources,” the co-CEOs said in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by Variety.

Amid the layoffs, Netflix also ousted a number of chief executives, including chief content officer Bela Bajaria, head of film Dan Lin and his top lieutenant, Doug Belgrad, as well as director of original series Carolina Garcia. Veteran TV exec Peter Rice was tapped to replace Bajaria.

When asked about the leadership change on the content side during the streamer’s Q3 2026 earnings call, co-CEO Ted Sarandos said, “I know that we could do better, and we want to build on that momentum.”