Ozy Media
Ozy Media was an American media and entertainment company founded in 2012 by journalist Carlos Watson. Headquartered in Mountain View, California, the company launched publicly in September 2013 together with Samir Rao. The company published digital news and culture content and produced television shows, podcasts, newsletters, and live events. Its stated mission was to spotlight "the new and the next."
Between 2013 and 2021, OZY produced four television series for PBS, including Breaking Big, which won the 2019 Imagen Award for Best Informational Program. The company also produced Black Women OWN the Conversation for the Oprah Winfrey Network, which won an Emmy Award for Outstanding News Discussion and Analysis in 2020. OZY's podcast The Thread was recognized by The Guardian as one of the 25 best podcasts of 2017. The company hosted OZY Fest, an annual live festival in Central Park featuring figures such as Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Malcolm Gladwell. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert credited OZY with providing early coverage of figures such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Trevor Noah, and Amanda Gorman before they rose to prominence.
In September 2021, The New York Times reported that COO Samir Rao had impersonated a YouTube executive on a call with Goldman Sachs while seeking investment, and that the company had inflated its traffic numbers. The resulting controversies led to OZY's board announcing closure in October 2021, though Watson reversed the decision days later. In July 2024, Watson and the company were convicted of securities fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, and aggravated identity theft; Watson was sentenced to 116 months in prison. In March 2025, President Donald Trump commuted Watson's sentence hours before he was due to surrender to prison.
History
Founding
OZY Media was founded in 2012 by former CNN and MSNBC anchor Carlos Watson and publicly launched in 2013, together with Samir Rao. The company was headquartered in Mountain View, California, with an additional office in New York City. Watson founded OZY with the stated goal of offering an alternative to mainstream media, targeting what he called the 'Change Generation' with coverage of under-covered stories, global trends, and emerging leaders. The company promoted itself as spotlighting rising figures before they gained wider recognition. Early team members included Suzee Han, Sean Braswell, Nancy King, and Samir Rao. The company launched publicly in September 2013 as a daily digital magazine and newsletter.Funding and Growth
OZY raised a $5.3 million seed round of funding in December 2013 backed by Laurene Powell Jobs, founder of Emerson Collective. Additional early investors included Axel Springer, GSV Capital, and Ron Conway.and Ron Conway. Powell Jobs became a board member.In October 2014, OZY announced that German media giant Axel Springer had invested $20 million in the company. In January 2017, OZY announced a $10 million Series B round of fundraising, led by GSV Capital. In November 2019 OZY announced a Series C round of $35 million, led by businessman Marc Lasry. OZY also received funding from the Ford Foundation.
Throughout this period, OZY expanded into a multi-platform media organization, producing newsletters, longform digital features, video series, television programs, podcasts, national festivals, and awards programs. Peak internal valuations cited in investor materials and media reporting exceeded $2 billion.
In January 2021, Watson stated that the company had reached profitability for the first time, reporting $50 million in revenue for 2020, though some media outlets disputed these claims. The company also disclosed that it had received acquisition offers from unnamed media companies.
Following the fraud allegations in September 2021, several advertising partners ended their relationships with the company. WPP's GroupM, which handles media buying for clients including Ford Motor, Unilever, and IBM, terminated its agreement with OZY Media.
Partnerships
From OZY's launch in September 2013 until the summer of 2014, Watson appeared in a weekly installment of NPR's All Things Considered called "The New and the Next," in which he would lay forth on "People, places and trends on the horizon" appearing in OZY articles.In 2014, the company announced a content syndication partnership with National Geographic. In 2015, OZY had a newsletter partnership with The New York Times and Wired. OZY claimed that these partnerships helped the company secure a number of new newsletter subscribers. However, former employees later alleged that the company misrepresented the scope of these partnerships and used questionable tactics to build its newsletter subscriber base.
In 2018, OZY announced a multiyear partnership with iHeartMedia to co-produce podcasts and feature OZY content on iHeartMedia's morning shows across 150 U.S. markets.
In 2019, OZY produced a television show that aired on the Oprah Winfrey Network and won an Emmy for Outstanding News Discussion and Analysis. That same year, the company produced a show for PBS that won an Imagen award for Best Informational Program.
By 2020, OZY's early identification of talent was highlighted when Amanda Gorman, a 2017 OZY Genius Award recipient, delivered a poem at the U.S. presidential inauguration in January 2021.
In 2021, the company co-created a podcast with the BBC. It had 33 episodes, the last of which aired in April 2021. OZY also partnered with Lifetime, The History Channel, and with the History Channel's channel's parent company A&E Networks.
In March 2021, OZY announced a multi-year partnership with Dentsu focused on millennial and Gen Z consumers, as well as an advertising partnership with WPP. Both partnerships were terminated following the fraud allegations in September 2021.
Products and Programming
Newsletter and Digital
OZY launched multiple daily and weekly newsletters, including the Presidential Daily Brief, Daily Dose, and The Sunday Magazine. These newsletters reached millions of subscribers at their peak.OZY's digital magazine focused on profiles of rising stars and emerging trends. The company instructed reporters to cover topics not already featured by mainstream media outlets, resulting in coverage of niche subjects.
In 2017, OZY reporters visited all 50 U.S. states for a project called "States of the Nation." The year after that, OZY produced a series called "Around the World" in which they committed to report on three stories in every country. CNN reported that both series were largely delivered as promised.
Television
OZY produced over a dozen television and streaming series. In 2016, its first television series, The Contenders: 16 for '16, aired on PBS. The company later produced three additional series for PBS: The Third Rail with OZY, Breaking Big, and Take on America. ''Breaking Big won the 2019 Imagen Award for Best Informational Program.The four-part show Black Women OWN the Conversation aired in August and September 2019 on the Oprah Winfrey Network. The episode "Motherhood" won the Outstanding News Discussion and Analysis award at the 41st News & Documentary Emmy Awards in 2020.
The show featured conversations with an audience of 100 black women.
In January 2020, OZY announced a partnership with A&E Networks to co-produce additional television shows. By September 2020, the number of titles announced under the partnership had grown to five, including Voices Magnified and Race and Resolution, a dating show, and a re-editing of the company's first TV show, The Contenders, updated for the 2020 election.
In July 2020, OZY announced The Carlos Watson Show, a daily talk show hosted by Watson featuring long-form interviews conducted via video call. The show premiered on YouTube in August 2020 and aired over 200 episodes across three seasons, later expanding to Amazon Prime Video in August 2021. Guests included Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, Anthony Fauci, and Matthew McConaughey. An accompanying podcast was distributed through the iHeart Radio Podcast Network. Brad Bessey, the show's executive producer, resigned shortly after being hired, later telling The New York Times'' that he had been misled to believe the show would air in prime time on A&E rather than YouTube.
Podcasts
OZY produced several podcasts, beginning with history podcast The Thread in 2017, an episode of which was featured as one of the 25 best podcasts of 2017 by The Guardian. The company also produced a science and technology podcast The Future of X, and OZY Confidential, an interview podcast. as well as Flashback, a history podcast exploring unintended consequences of past events, and When Katty Met Carlos, a BBC World Service co-production on American politics and society hosted by BBC journalist Katty Kay.OZY Fest
In 2016, OZY launched OZY Fest, a live festival blending music, ideas, comedy, politics, and food. Until 2018, it was held in Rumsey Playfield at Central Park in New York City. CNBC described it as "New York's answer to SXSW." The festival featured appearances from Malcolm Gladwell, will.i.am, Issa Rae, Katie Couric, Vice President Joe Biden, Samantha Bee, Hillary Clinton, Hasan Minhaj, Mark Cuban, and Salman Rushdie.The name of OZY Fest sparked a trademark lawsuit from Ozzy Osbourne's Ozzfest in 2017.
OZY Fest 2019 was canceled due to a heat wave. Former employees later alleged that the company had been unprepared for the event and had inflated crowd projections.
In 2021, OZY Fest aired a two-day virtual event to raise funds for the United Negro College Fund, featuring guests including Condoleezza Rice and Malcolm Gladwell.