Ozy is an international media and entertainment company launched in September 2013 by former CNN and MSNBC news anchor, journalist, and businessman Carlos Watson and Goldman Sachs alum Samir Rao. Ozy describes its mission as to help curious people see a broader and a bolder world. Its headquarters is in Mountain View, California, and it also has an office in New York City. As of 2018, Ozy claimed an audience of 3 million subscribers and a monthly reach of over 40 million. Ozy has branched out since its inception as an online magazine to become a producer of podcasts, television series and events. Ozy has major partnerships across its business lines with legacy media industry leaders such as A&E Networks, iHeart Media and Live Nation. The company sponsors an annual festival of "music, comedy, food and ideas" called OZY Fest, held in New York City's Central Park; both the 2019 and 2020 events had to be cancelled, first due to a dangerous summer heat wave in 2019, and then due to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
Content
Ozy's digital magazine focuses on profiles of rising stars and trends. for Ozy in 2014. Ozy's daily newsletter produces the Presidential Daily Brief and the Daily Dose. In 2014, the company began a content partnership with the National Geographic Society, which publishes National Geographic. Ozy's own reporting includes its flagship series States of the Nation, with stories from every U.S. state, and Around the World, with stories from all 200 countries. Ozy produces a daily news podcast based on the Presidential Daily Brief, as well as multiple intermittent feature podcasts, covering topics including history, science and technology. Its podcasts are hosted on the iHeart Media podcast network. Ozy has also produced a variety of non-fiction television shows for networks including Hulu, Amazon Prime, PBS, BBC Worldwide, the Oprah Winfrey Network, A&E and History, largely focused on the bio-documentary, talk-show and town-hall formats, all hosted by Watson. Notable editors include editor-at-large Eugene S. Robinson, lead singer of post-punk band Oxbow; senior writer Sean Braswell, host and executive producer of OZY podcasts The Thread and Flashback, and executive producer of several of OZY's TV shows; senior adviser Jana Bennett, from A+E's History Channel and the BBC; and former managing editor Fay Schlesinger, formerly the youngest and first female Head of News at The Times. Ozy's current deputy editor is Tracy Moran, formerly of USA Today.
History
Ozy was launched as a digital magazine and daily newsletter in September 2013, with a seed round of funding reportedly for $5.3 million in December 2013 backed by Laurene Powell Jobs, founder of Emerson Collective, widow of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs and now majority owner of The Atlantic. Other early investors include Louise Rogers, Ron Conway, Larry Sonsini, David Drummond and Dan Rosensweig. In October 2014, Ozy announced that German media giant Axel Springer had invested a $20 million stake in the company. In January 2017, Ozy announced a $10 million Series B round of fundraising, led by Michael Moe's GSV Capital. In November 2019, Ozy announced a Series C round of fundraising of $35 million, led by businessman Marc Lasry. In 2020, Ozy launched an e-commerce initiative called the OZY Store.
Television
In 2016, Ozy's first television series, The Contenders: 16 for '16, aired on PBS. It has since produced three additional series for PBS: Third Rail With OZY, Take On America and Breaking Big, the latter of which has subsequently been aired on Amazon Prime and featured interviews with prominent figures across entertainment, politics and sports including Trevor Noah, Gretchen Carlson, Lee Daniels, Michael Strahan, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Christian Siriano. The season finale featuring the Mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Carmen Yulín Cruz, was awarded an Imagen Award for Best Informational Program. Four-part Black Women OWN the Conversation aired in August and September 2019 on the Oprah Winfrey Network, hosted by Carlos Watson. The show featured Watson in conversation with an audience of 100 black women — a similar format to previous Ozy show Take On America, which featured audiences with 100 black men, 100 white women, 100 Latino families and 100 Asian-American millennials. Celebrity panelists on Black Women OWN the Conversation included Winnie Harlow, Kym Whitley, Dulcé Sloan, Nicole Byer, Monica Brown, Stacey Abrams, Angelica Ross, Brittney Cooper and Nadine Burke Harris. In January 2020, Ozy announced a partnership with A+E Networks to co-produce at least two additional television shows, the first of which was a remotely filmed discussion about race relations in America hosted by Watson in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. On March 2020, a series of bio-documentaries hosted by Watson featuring the stories of individuals who have struggled on their paths to success, premiered on Hulu, called Defining Moments With OZY. Early episodes featured Pose star Dominique Jackson, Paralympian Amy Purdy, hip-hop star Sophia Chang and first openly gay NBA player Jason Collins, before filming was halted during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Ozy produced a number of remotely-filmed TV specials during the that have aired on the Oprah Winfrey Network, A&E, HISTORY, Lifetime, Vice TV and FYI. In July 2020, Ozy announced a new daily talk show airing on the OZY YouTube Channel called The Carlos Watson Show.
Podcasts
In September 2017, Ozy launched its first podcast, history show The Thread hosted by Ozy's Sean Braswell, which was featured as one of the 25 best podcasts of 2017 by The Guardian. Braswell is also the host of Flashback, another history podcast from Ozy launched in May 2020, which peaked at number three in the Apple Podcast history charts. In 2019, Ozy launched two seasons of science and technology podcast The Future of X, with rotating hosts including Carlos Watson and Fay Schlesinger, as well as OZY Confidential, a podcast hosted by Eugene S. Robinson featuring a series of personal interviews with "everyone from a world-renowned Nietzsche scholar who left behind a Ph.D. for life as a crack whore, to Boston Irish Mafia’s Kevin Weeks". In 2020, Ozy and iHeart Media announced a partnership to co-produce and promote a slate of original podcasts to be distributed through the iHeart Podcast Network.
In 2018, Forbes described Ozy's journalism as "a non-traditional approach to delivering news that matters to multicultural millennials." Popular leftist podcast Chapo Trap House dedicated a segment of their 230th episode to Ozy. During the episode the hosts strongly criticized the company, referring to it as "the Phish of news" and "MSNBC live". In addition, the hosts criticized the company's reading of the Percy Shelley poem "Ozymandias" as incorrect. OZY Fest 2018 was also criticized as a "neoliberal nightmare" by Rolling Stone, a "sizzling hot festival for folks who love Coachella and neoliberalism" by GQ, and "a progressive alternate reality" by The Washington Post.
