As Podcast Audiences Grow More Diverse, Nielsen Reveals Listening Choices Of Various Audience Groups

Jamie Lang DAZN , the world’s leading dedicated sports streaming platform, has amped up its 2022 global original content slate launch with the news that the U.K.-based outfit is launching a new, bespoke production wing dedicated to original content. Accompanying the news, DAZN has also given Variety exclusive access to the international trailer for the streamer’s most ambitious original play yet, Eva Longoria Bastón’s directorial debut “La Guerra Civil,” playing at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.“La Guerra Civil” documents the epic rivalry between all-time great boxers Oscar De La Hoya and Julio César Chávez in the 1990s, which ignited a cultural divide between Mexican nationals and Mexican-Americans on both sides of the border.

EXCLUSIVE: La Coctelera, the multilingual podcast studio, has signed with ICM.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorSpotify is boosting its audio lineup for kids and families, including a new story-time show under an exclusive multiyear agreement with CoComelon, the YouTube children’s content powerhouse.The new “CoComelon Story Time” podcast — CoComelon’s first spoken-word original programming — will premiere Jan. 24 exclusively on Spotify.

The White Lotus star and SAG Award nominee Murray Bartlett has boarded Hulu’s limited series Immigrant, which hails from Pam & Tommy creator Robert Siegel. He joins star and executive producer Kumail Nanjiani.

American Idol isn’t planning to replace mentor Bobby Bones directly and will instead lean on a number of alums of the talent contest.

In Tre’vell Anderson’s L.A. Times piece “There is room for everyone: 14 film critics on making media more inclusive,” he states, “Those who work for the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, the Hollywood Reporter and Variety, among others, receive preferential treatment for talent interviews and screening access. And traditional publications tend to have traditional critics. The result is a community of discourse around film and art that is fairly homogeneous and ignores many members of the filmmaking and filmgoing communities across all demographics.”

EXCLUSIVE: Gravitas Ventures has acquired North American rights to the WWII-era romantic drama I’ll Find You from director Martha Coolidge (Valley Girl, Real Genius). The Anthem Sports & Entertainment company plans to release the title starring Adelaide Clemens (To the Stars), Leo Suter (Sanditon, Beecham House), Stephen Dorff (Old Henry, Deputy), Connie Nielsen (Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Wonder Woman 1984) and Stellan Skarsgård (Dune, Chernobyl) in theaters and on demand on February 25.

EXCLUSIVE: Dominick Montiglio, who was at the center of one of the most vicious mafia crews in history, is telling his mob story.

She said yes! Josh Duhamel and girlfriend Audra Mari are engaged, the actor announced on his new fiancee’s 28th birthday.

Kai Ryssdal, host of public radio show and podcast Marketplace, has signed with CAA.

On this episode of the Deep Focus podcast, my guest is none other than Alana Haim from the rock group Haim, but more appropriate for this conversation, she is the star of Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, “Licorice Pizza.” Anderson’s latest film is a nostalgic, shaggy return to his San Fernando Valley roots, but it’s really nothing like “Boogie Nights” or “Magnolia” and actually is more in line with George Lucas’ “American Graffiti”—a hangout movie— as if it were made by Lucas, Hal Ashby, and