Karl Stefanovic racks up big audience figures for debut podcast
Pauline Hanson was on message on Karl Stefanovic's new podcast
Karl Stefanovic’s new live video podcast debuted with impressive audience figures over the weekend.
The Karl Stefanovic Show debuted live on Sunday January 25 with a 53-minute interview with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson. The episode launched at 2pm AEST, and by 9am on Tuesday morning it had been watched over 140,000 times on Youtube alone.
There have been close to 2,500 comments on the video, and Stefanovic’s Youtube channel has 12,700 subscribers to date. Other shorter clips highlighting various parts from the episode have been viewed close to 50,000 times.
The show is also available on Spotify, which doesn’t publicly reveal listening data for podcasts. Stefanovic’s show is, however, the top Australian program on Spotify’s daily updated ‘Trending Podcasts’ chart.
For comparison’s sake, the country’s most-listened-to podcast is the Hamish and Andy show. According to the Triton Podcast Ranker, the podcast had approximately 1.6 million downloads in November, across 4 new episodes. Roughly speaking, this is 400,000 downloads per new episode, although any archival downloads were also included in the count.
“No one damn well told me it was live”, Hanson joked at the start of the program.
“No one else would agree to do this,” Stefanovic countered. “So welcome to the show.” The Today host then dived straight in, asking Hanson if she wants to be the Prime Minister (it turns out she does.)
Throughout the wide-ranging interview, Hanson claimed she warned Sussan Ley she wouldn’t be the leader of the Liberal Party by the next election; mocked Anthony Albanese for complaining about growing up in housing commission accomodation, and for his “pathetic” speech about the Bondi massacre; touched on her past life running a plumbing company “up doing roofing, guttering, blockages”; and wept when detailing her 2003 stint in prison for electoral fraud.
In other nuggets, Hanson:
- Credited her upbringing for her tenacity and “compassion”
- Said Australians are currently suffering from a deficit of hope
- Spoke about Gina Rinehart’s involvement with One Nation;
- And revealed she hates one of the most Aussie of icons: a pair of thongs.
The timing of the interview — during the Australia Day long weekend, and less than six weeks after the Bondi massacre — saw the pair touch on the meaning of the Australian flag, one of which was positioned behind Hanson throughout the interview.
“They’ve got three flags on the floor of parliament,” she said, referring the the Australian national flag, the Australian Aboriginal flag, and the Torres Strait Islander flag, the latter two being introduced to the floor of the House of Representatives chamber in mid-2022.
“This country doesn’t have three flags. One flag — the Australian flag.”
The next episode of The Karl Stefanovic Show airs today. Keeping with Stefanovic’s promise to include a broad range of guests, the program will feature mixed martial arts fighter Alexander “The Volk” Volkanovski.
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ABC’s Tom Gleeson’s “Hard” Chat v Karl Stefanovic’s “Soft” chat?
Gleeson’s full on brute questions demanding answers.
Stefanovic? Stiflingly Boring… Pass.
Interested to know if you listened to the podcast or made the call based on today show?
Maybe Karl could focus a bit more on finally beating Sunrise
…..but her rise from Ipswich fish and chip store owner to the platform she has now is meteoric by any standard.