Compiled by Trent Thomas and Tess Connery
How MG scratched an itch with his new podcast
LiSTNR, in conjunction with Triple M, has announced that Mark Geyer and Liam Flanagan will host a new mid-week NRL podcast. The show sees the pair re-united after the conclusion of their Triple M Sydney show The Rush Hour.
MG’S Rugby League Rundown will feature a preview of upcoming NRL rounds, Geyer’s tips, discussion, and healthy debate about the big issues facing the game as well as exclusive stories and tales from Geyer’s illustrious league career.
Podcast Week‘s Trent Thomas caught up with Geyer to talk about the new show and reuniting with the man that he considers the Robin to his Batman.
Geyer joked take there was a simple reason why he decided to do the podcast.
“Because it’s in my contract! That’s one reason.
“When Liam and I both had our career changes towards the end of last year with him going to Queensland and me going to brekky, I didn’t want to waste the four years that we compiled together on the Rush Hour. I thought a good way to keep that synergy would be to do a midweek NRL podcast together. We picked up where we left off last year.”
Geyer said that the other reason he wanted to do the show was that it gives him an outlet to exclusively talk about rugby league every week.
“The Rush Hour was a bit of a buffet with 80% being the main meal of rugby league and 20% was a little entree of other sports. I don’t call the footy anymore and I’m not involved in the magazine shows on Triple M, but I still wanted to talk footy for 45 minutes to an hour a week and what better way to do it than this.”
While Geyer has always been the rugby league aficionado of the pair, he said that Flanagan has come on in leaps and bounds with his knowledge of the sport.
“I must confess when we started in 2018, Liam’s knowledge of rugby league was minimal but he was a very quick learner. When I say minimal, I had to get words out of his vocabulary. I had to tell him that we don’t call it the flag in Sydney and we don’t have boundary umpires, they are called touch judges, brother.”
Geyer said that the podcast also allows him a greater balance with what he is doing in the breakfast slot.
“The last few years, the brekky show has been a comedy show and I’m not a comedian. I have to play to my strengths and my strengths are rugby league and being a random Westie. Because I have had a bit more of an influx on the brekky show, now the podcast is something that I can use to scratch two itches – one being full-on rugby league and the other is teaming up with my Robin again in Liam Flanagan.”
Triple M Breakfast
In an interview with Mediaweek earlier this month, Geyer’s former co-host on Triple M breakfast Matty Johns joked that Geyer would look in the mirror after a month of returning to the time slot and think ‘what the fuck have I done?’, Geyer jokingly agreed with him before explaining his decision to return to breakfast radio.
“I worked with Matty for eight and a half years and an integral part of what we had was that we had so much fun together. In the end, the reason for me leaving the brekky show was because I wanted to spend more time with my kids. I didn’t think I’d be back on the radio in the foreseeable future but things happen in the media where you can never say no and they made a great offer.”
Triple M Sydney’s breakfast lineup now has its first radio ratings survey under its belt, but Geyer said that he isn’t as concerned with each individual ratings report as he used to be.
“Now we are talking about unique listeners and downloads, and that was never in the vocabulary when I did a breakfast show before. Once you wake up the day after the ratings it’s game on again. It’s brutal if you let it be. I’m not a ratings indulging man at the moment, I used to be when I was on the brekky show. The climate has changed a bit it’s not the be-all and end-all these days. It’s the peripheral that you bring to the show to counts as well. If we can put our heads down and ass up and soldier on, we should be okay.”
[Listen to MG’s Rugby League Rundown here]
Premium drama and footy: New podcasts this week from Mediaweek Studios
This week, Mediaweek Studios is celebrating the kick-off of the AFL season – it’s Fox Footy Week.
Mediaweek’s Andrew Mercado and James Manning also debate the latest shows that should be on your “must watch” list (and a few you could afford to miss)!
New from Mediaweek Studios:
• Mediaweek Fox Footy Mini: Gillon McLachlan and Patrick Delany
• Mediaweek Mini: Fox Footy’s Jonathan Brown
• Mediaweek Mini: Fox Footy’s Kath Loughnan
• Mediaweek Mini: Fox Sports’ Steve Crawley
Mediaweek’s TV podcast: Mercado and Manning
Andrew Mercado on The Teacher
Listen online here, via the LiSTNR app, or your favourite podcast platform.
S-Town’s Brian Reed returns to podcasting with The Trojan Horse Affair
Known best as the host and co-creator of 2017’s S-Town, which clocked up 10 million downloads in the first four days after release, Brian Reed is returning to people’s headphones with his new project, The Trojan Horse Affair.
In 2013, an anonymous letter was sent to the council of Birmingham, England, detailing a plot by Islamic extremists to infiltrate UK schools. Even though the letter was a hoax, the plot – named Operation Trojan Horse – caused widespread national panic, the ripples of which were felt for years afterward. So who wrote the letter?
For Serial Productions and The New York Times, Reed and his co-host Hamza Syed spend four years investigating. The Trojan Horse Affair is the result.
[Listen to The Trojan Horse Affair here]
Wil Anderson and Charlie Clausen address 2 Guys 1 Cup’s move to LiSTNR
Earlier this month it was announced that 2 Guys 1 Cup, hosted by Wil Anderson and Charlie Clausen, is making the move to become an exclusive LiSTNR podcast. Until now, 2 Guys 1 Cup has been available through tofop.com.
Anderson has long been transparent about the fact that they hadn’t moved ahead with any other offers to become exclusive partners with a major platform because it was important to them that the podcasts – be it 2 Guys 1 Cup or any of the other TOFOP podcasts – can be accessed for free. LiSTNR is free to download and access on the web.
When Mediaweek reported on the new deal, concerns were raised from the community about how it would affect people’s listening habits and where they would be able to continue tuning in to 2 Guys 1 Cup.
“We wanted the show to continue and this is the only way we could keep doing it,” Anderson said on Twitter.
One of the major concerns raised was the availability of the show for people outside of Australia, especially with some listeners being unable or unwilling to download a VPN.
“I know it’s not ideal, but the last two years have been incredibly hard for people in my industry and the show would have been over without this. So it’s a few people miss out on the show or everyone did,” said Anderson.
For those following 2 Guys 1 Cup to LiSTNR however, there will be a major advantage.
“The LiSTNR app is free and easy to install. Plus, this means you’ll have actual professionals producing our show instead of Wil and I using tin cans and length of string!” joked Clausen.
Triton Digital Podcast Ranker released for February 2022
Triton Digital has released its Podcast Ranker of Australia’s most popular podcasts for February 2022.
The Ranker provides insight into the Top 100 Podcasts as well as the Top 10 Publishers in Australia from 1 February through to 28 February 2022, as measured by Triton’s Podcast Metrics measurement service.
It was a big month for LiSTNR who rose had the biggest rise on the list of top publishers, jumping two places to become #2 overall. ARN/iHeartMedia remains the top publisher however, with 4,029m monthly listeners and 18,018m monthly downloads.
The top 20 podcasts overall were made up of podcast from nine publishers:
ARN/iHeartMedia: 4
NewsCorp Australia: 4
LiSTNR: 3
Audioboom: 3
NOVA Entertainment: 2
Schwartz Media: 1
audiochuck/Stitcher: 1
Stitcher Media: 1
Wondery: 1
Entering the top 20 overall this month were Schwartz Media’s 7am which shot up #17 places to land at #5, and NewsCorp Australia’s From The Newsroom which rose 8 places to finish at #20.
See More: Podcast Ranker February 2022: Stitcher and News Corp have highest ranking debuts
LiSTNR and Commbank launch The Penny Drops podcast with Matty J
LiSTNR has announced the launch of a new podcast: The Penny Drops, a show that follows former reality star and father of two, 34-year-old Matthew ‘Matty J’ Johnson in his quest to understand the world of finance.
The series is sponsored by CommBank and aims to take millennial audiences along for the ride on Matty J’s initiative to become more financially savvy.
The Penny Drops’ main objective is to help Matty J and his audience finally understand money – the one thing that makes the world go around. Across the six episodes, experts will appear on the show and unpack essential topics such as money personalities, financial planning, budgeting, juggling finances, investing and superannuation.
Matty J will talk to experts from CommBank, as well as experts in particular fields, like financial commentator Effie Zahos, financial planner Adam Montana, and Elisabeth Shaw, CEO of Relationships Australia.
New episodes will be released weekly.
[Listen to The Penny Drops here]
Casefile announces The Detective’s Dilemma to launch on Spotify
Consistently owning the top spot on the Australian Podcast Ranker, Casefile has announced the launch of a new project. Casefile Presents: The Detective’s Dilemma, will be launching exclusively on Spotify.
The series is told from the point of view of lead investigator Steve Fulcher and takes listeners through a crime-in-action kidnap investigation, which later became a murder investigation, and eventually also a serial killer investigation.
In March 2011, Sian Emma O’Callaghan, a 22-year-old woman disappeared from Swindon on her way home from the nightclub. Her body was found a few days later, nearly 20 kilometres away. Killed by her taxi driver, he later confessed and on 19 October 2012 was sentenced to life in prison.
Without Steve’s unorthodox methods it is unlikely a confession would have been extracted, though this would later cost him his career and reputation for breach of Police Conduct.
This is the fifth Spotify exclusive in partnership with Australian true crime podcast, Casefile Presents, following the successful launches of The Vanishing of Vivienne Cameron, Pseudocide, The Labyrinth, and Searching for Sarah MacDiarmid.
[Listen to The Detective’s Dilemma here]
