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Mailchimp, one of the podcast industry’s best-known sponsors, recently reached out to Pineapple Street Studios about making a new show. Pineapple and Mailchimp first collaborated in 2019, producing narrative ads for Mailchimp and branded series. So given their longstanding relationship, Pineapple Street staff were shocked when management at their parent company, the radio giant Audacy, informed them at a meeting on October 3rd that the new Mailchimp contract required all work on the series to be performed by non-union workers.
Many of the producers who worked on Mailchimp projects in the past, or would take on a new branded series,…