ABC News swarms Hamish and Andy to take podcast honours
The ABC’s bite-sized news bulletins are the most popular Australian podcast in the country for the fourth month straight, according to the Australian Podcast Ranker.
ABC News Top Stories has taken the top spot in the March rankings, maintaining the position it has held since last December.
March was the first true test of its dominance, as traditional leaders Casefile and Hamish and Andy both took extended breaks from December.
Casefile has since changed distribution to Acast, who don’t opt in to Triton’s measurement system, while March saw the return of Hamish and Andy. The pair re-entered the top ten at #2.
As discussed previously by Mumbrella, although ABC has captured the most monthly downloads, this is across 406 episodes, compared to just four, for Hamish and Andy. When downloads are divided by episodes, each ABC news bulletin draws a listenership of less than 7,000.
Elsewhere in the higher reaches of the chart, Mamamia and Shameless have dropped to third and fourth, respectively, to make way for Hamish and Andy, while ABC News Daily, a less frequent news podcast from the national broadcaster, has moved from #9 to #7.
The top 20 has seen some impressive strides, with News Corp’s crime podcast Bronwyn moving from #22 to #11, Squiz Media’s Squiz Today has jumped from #29 to #14, and Listnr’s Dan Does Footy, hosted by Dan Gorringe, moving up 49 places, from #64 to #15.
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I think this data would be interesting if it was represented with an average downloads per episode column. This then allows clients to see what the potential it could be on an individual basis as opposed to looking at an aggregated level. This should also be the main metric as opposed to network aggregates as it allows other podcasts to hide in larger networks.
Picking on a few random selections:
– ABC News (not that it is sponsorable) but it looks much less impressive when you average out across the 406 episodes that only 6.9k downloads per episode.
– Hamish and Andy have an average of 373k downloads per episode (across only 4 episodes for the month) which is a much more impressive number than their total downloads. This would be far and away the most popular podcast in AU, but I don’t think these numbers to a great job of reflecting that.
– Shameless podcast’s are much more impressive than say the Mamamia network as they average 106k per episode vs. 58.6k average.
Looking it through this lens can actually start to give clients a sense of true scale and really show the publishers/creators that are able to generate HUGE audiences.