Don Receives Film & Media Institute Innovator Tribute at Gotham Awards

Don received the Gotham Film & Media Institute Innovator Tribute at the 32nd annual Gotham Awards Ceremony in New York City on November 28, 2022. Academy Award-winning actor Julianne Moore introduced Don, praising not only his founding a company that redefined the digital media revolution but also sharing that “Don’s commitment to redressing structural inequality is reflected in his stated corporate purpose to make Audible a company that pursues meaning in ways that transcend what it does.”

Don reflected on Audible’s evolution from creating the first original podcast with Robin Williams in the late 1990s to the invention of Audible Theater and the Words + Music music series in his remarks. Don also stated that he was '“proud that Audible has inspired well-performed words that approach art and the artful telling of stories that are so distinctive that so many listeners want to pay for Audible.”

For Julianne Moore’s introduction and Don’s remarks, you can watch the video above. You can find a transcript of the remarks below.

Being here with so many of the culture’s most profound talents and seeing my much younger self in those clips, I recall how many renowned movie and TV stars over the years have told me that beyond embracing the creative liberation of working with Audible, the nonexistent need for tight closeups or hair-and-make-up added to the allure.

Our repositioning of books as scripts allowed actors and directors to create to an Audible aesthetic that inspired nuanced decisions about how to bring words to life as straight shots into peoples’ imaginations.

Today, many millions of Audible customers across 46 different languages no longer clarify that when they say they have read a book – they have in fact listened.

Audible Originals – to act and direct AND WRITE to the intimate Audible aesthetic beyond books – also required artists to imagine outside the media status quo from the beginning.

That clip of Robin Williams you just saw was from 1999. The term podcast was five years from entering the lexicon.

The internet was still the phone lines and few people knew what Robin and I were talking about.

Robin was emboldened to create a bi-weekly Audible original show in exchange for warrants in a tiny company with big dreams, in part because his mentor, the great Jonathan Winters, said he ought to do it.

Jonathan said, “You have become too dependent on physical schtick, Robin. When we left vaudeville and went to the earliest days of radio, we found out who was truly funny.”

I have told this story, and described the many “golden ages” of explosive creativity enabled by emergent technologies often to creators used to writing scripts dependent on visual expression.

Julianne Moore was part of the brainstorming that became Audible theater.

What if we could engage underemployed playwrights and stage actors to create powerful performances that could be heard by millions of people beyond a theater’s four walls?

One Audible Theater invention, the Emerging Playwrights’ Fund, has achieved 50 commissioned new one- and two-voice plays, including many global Audible Original hits.

If you’ve checked out any of the 31 Audible Words & Music Originals – with John Legend’s fascinating story just released – I think you’ll agree that these powerful soliloquies punctuated by music portend a new future for the memoir.

I am proud that Audible has inspired well-performed words that approach art and the artful telling of stories that are so distinctive that so many listeners want to pay for Audible. Even when around 5 million free podcasts enable anyone with a phone or a PC to have a talk show.

I feel lucky tonight to have been a non-fiction book and magazine writer for 20 years before Audible during a historical high point for those modes of expression.

I also came of age amid the immoral inequalities of Chicago in the 1960s and an immoral war in Southeast Asia. The unique depth of our commitment to Black voices and other marginalized voices from the beginning, and our embrace of Newark, were results.

I am indebted tonight to so many people here, and to many thousands of colleagues who have embraced Audible as a cause over the years, and to my ever-supportive wonderful family.

I am elated by this honor and will relish this moment for a long time to come.