Podcasting with the Treasurer: Sarah Grynberg on working with Josh Frydenberg
Last month LiSTNR landed a coup by announcing a podcast featuring the Treasurer of Australia and the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, the Hon Josh Frydenberg MP.
Josh Frydenberg Podcast with Sarah Grynberg will release episodes on LiSTNR each month with the aim of answering questions that the Australian community would like to know more about – beyond the media scrums and soundbites.
Frydenberg is one of the first sitting politicians to launch a podcast. For the first time, he will sit down and answer questions in informative conversations.
Podcast Week‘s Trent Thomas caught up with his co-host Sarah Grynberg to talk about what listeners can expect from this unique podcast.
“It’s been great,” said Grynberg. “I’ve enjoyed it immensely. He’s got a wonderful team of people that work for him. And working with him has been a great opportunity and I’ve enjoyed every moment of it.”
The pair are two episodes into the series, the first was about Frydenberg himself while the second was on youth mental health. Grynberg said that when choosing topics a lot of it will be decided by the news cycle.
“It depends on what’s going on within Australia. It is guided by what kind of news comes about and what we think is important to discuss. We may have some other people you know such as Professor Patrick McGorry who was on our last episode. But it’s guided by what we think would be interesting for our fellow Australians to listen to and get something out of. It’s a podcast for the people.”
Grynberg said that her role on the show is as a neutral voice that is the voice of Australians, and that she saw this opportunity to help contribute during a tough time.
“These times have been challenging with Covid, so to be able to help out people in a different way through the podcast, who wouldn’t want to do that? It’s long-form content, which is great. I love podcasting for that reason. And to be able to spend that time and to be able to really go quite deep into certain topics is also interesting. I don’t know if a sitting MP has actually ever done a podcast, a lot of them do it when they leave. So, to be able to get that opportunity was fabulous.”
A Life of Greatness
Grynberg also hosts her own podcast, A Life of Greatness, where she interviews people from different walks of life on how they achieved greatness in their own way. This is a project that Grynberg said is going from strength to strength.
“I find myself blown away by every interview, there’s not one that I don’t learn so much wisdom from. The guests I’m getting are amazing. A few weeks ago I had leadership expert Simon Sinek and he was fantastic.”
The Hamish & Andy Podcast
If hosting two podcasts wasn’t enough, Grynberg is also the executive producer for the #1 podcast in Australia, Hamish & Andy. When asked what producing that podcast is like, the keyword Grynberg used was “energy”.
“One thing which is so incredible with that team is that it never loses energy. There’s so much energy in the team. There’s so much happiness. I think everyone that works on the show just absolutely loves the time that we spend together. ”
Andy Lee and Sarah Grynberg
Grynberg said that she thinks three podcasts is more than enough for herself at the moment.
“It’s the most bizarre thing if you find someone who’s the executive producer of Hamish & Andy, a comedy podcast, and then does a self-improvement podcast and then also a politics podcast. There’s never a dull moment in my life. I can tell you that.
” I feel like I’m working on three podcasts that in a different way are able to give back to the community and that’s what fulfils me.”
[Listen to Josh Frydenberg Podcast with Sarah Grynberg here]
Wil Anderson on what it would take to sign with a major podcast platform
As one of the country’s most prolific podcasters, Wil Anderson has always made sure to keep his work freely available to everyone. With new podcast platforms being launched all the time, Podcast Week’s Tess Connery spoke to Anderson about being independent and why TOFOP Productions hasn’t signed with any of the major players.
“It’s very much just a shared little project that Charlie [Clausen] and I have, in a particularly fun corner of the podcast universe,” Anderson said. “We’re not connected to any of the big players – it’s not our jobs, it’s just something that we do for fun. Once every three months we get a cheque of not very much for the amount of work that we put into it, but it always feels like a bonus.
“We just do what we want to and we’re lucky enough that there is an audience big enough that we’re in almost the perfect position. There’s enough of an audience that you can just do exactly what it is that you want to do, and you don’t have to make any compromises other than doing it regularly.”
For Anderson, even though his podcasts aren’t signed with any major platforms, that doesn’t mean that he’s completely against it.
“We’ve had offers,” he says. “Some of them have been compelling – the stumbling point is always that I want the shows that we have to be available to everybody, regardless of where they listen to podcasts. If at some stage there was somebody – let’s use Spotify just because they’re the biggest name in the game, but this is a completely fictional example – but if Spotify came to me and said, ‘Hey, we love Two Guys One Cup, we think it is really funny. We want you to do another show in that universe that is a Spotify original. Everyone can still listen to the regular one the same way as they still can now, but there’s an extra piece of content that would be for us and us only’, then yeah, sure.
“If you are looking to monetise things and if the situation is right, then fine. I have no problem with specifically doing something for someone, but where it always becomes a bit of a stumbling block for me is I don’t want to put any of what we have already behind someone else’s paywall or in someone else’s universe.”
[Listen to Wilosophy here]
[Listen to Tofop here]
[Listen to Two Guys One Cup here]
Podcast Ranker for September sees movement outside the top three
The September 2021 Podcast Ranker chart sees the top three publisher rankings unchanged – ARN/iHeartMedia, LiSTNR (SCA) and Audioboom.
The same top three podcasts also are unchanged in both the Top 100 Ranker and Top 100 All-Australian Ranker, including Hamish & Andy (LiSTNR – SCA), Casefile True Crime (Audioboom) and Life Uncut with Brittany Hockley and Laura Byrne (ARN/iHeartMedia).
Two new podcasts found their way back into the Top 100 – iHeartPodcast Network’s She’s on the Money at #9 and LiSTNR’s The Howie Games at #10.
Lockdown has again been good news for podcast volume. Total downloads of all shows by all participating publishers in the month of September is 52m, the second-biggest month ever after 52.2m in May this year.
The top podcast for each publisher
LiSTNR (SCA): #1 Hamish & Andy
Audioboom: #2 Casefile True Crime
ARN/iHeartMedia: #3 Life Uncut with Brittany Hockley and Laura Byrne
Nova Entertainment: #4 The Update
Schwartz Media: #5 7am
News Corp Australia: #8 Sky News – News Bulletin (Google Home)
Stitcher Media: #15 My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
DM Podcasts: #21 Chat 10 Looks 3
Nine: #31 The Ray Hadley Morning Show
Sports Entertainment Network (SEN): #32 SEN Breakfast
Equity Mates Media: #43 Equity Mates Investing Podcast
Hidden Brain Media: #47 Hidden Brain
TOFOP Productions: #56 WILOSOPHY with Wil Anderson
The Chaser: #60 The Chaser Report
West Australian Newspapers: #80 The West Live
Podshape: NA
Wavelength Creative: NA
Kinderling Kids Radio: NA
New Zealand Podcast Ranker coming later this month
Triton Digital and the Radio Broadcasters Association of New Zealand (RBA) have announced the forthcoming launch of Podcast Reports in New Zealand, powered by Triton’s Podcast Metrics measurement service. The Rankers will provide a ranking of the top podcasts and networks in New Zealand, as measured by Triton. Reported metrics will include Monthly Downloads and Monthly Listeners, in accordance with the latest IAB Podcast Technical Measurement Guidelines.
AFR goes behind the rich list with How I Made It
Australia’s most prominent entrepreneurs will reveal how they built their fortunes and the secrets to their success in a new podcast series How I Made It, from The Australian Financial Review.
Financial Review Rich List co-editor Julie-anne Sprague will talk to Australia’s top business builders about their backgrounds and how they turned their dreams into realities. Among the interviews are fast food king Jack Cowin, women’s fashion retailer Jane Lu, Flight Centre’s Graham “Skroo” Turner, software developer Tony Walls and former NRL player Wes Maas.
Episode one features Jack Cowin, who introduced Australians to KFC and Hungry Jack’s, and built Dominos into a $12 billion giant. Worth almost $5 billion and ranked 17th on the Rich List, Cowin opens up about his childhood and what it takes to make a business empire.
[Listen to How I Made It here]
Powershop to Power Season Two of A Positive Climate
After partnering with Nova Entertainment Podcast Network (NEPN) to launch a successful first season of A Positive Climate, clean energy experts Alex McIntosh and Nick Zeltzer have returned with a new season. This season the show also has a new sponsor in greener energy retailer Powershop.
In the new season, McIntosh and Zeltzer will interview some of Australia’s most innovative companies and inspiring individuals and showcase some of the key topics in the fight against climate change including super seaweed that can reduce the emissions from agriculture such as cows, the renewable energy transition, sustainable packaging and more.
The first episode includes an interview with Vow co-founders Tim Noakesmith and George Peppou. Vow, a Sydney based start-up, creates meat grown from cells known as “cultured meat” that could pave the way for emission-free steaks that are better for both the planet and the animals themselves.
Season two of A Positive Climate launched on October 12 with new episodes available every Tuesday.
[Listen to A Positive Climate here]
Meet the teenage prize pig
Long-time Ace Radio announcer, and now co-host of the 3MP Melbourne breakfast show, Jon Vertigan, has started promoting his new podcast I Was a Teenage Prize-Pig.
Vertigan, who’s been in radio for 29 years, phoned Melbourne radio stations persistently as a teenager and won prizes on air. Records, CDs, cash, holidays and much more.
Vertigan recorded his winning calls as they went to air in the late 80s. On the podcast, he plays some of that audio and catches up with the announcer that gave him the prize to formally apologise for being a ‘teenage prize-pig’.
Episode 1 features veteran Melbourne radio announcer, and now prolific podcaster, Kevin Hillier and will be dropped this Friday.
[Listen to the new series from Friday here]
Kara Swisher takes over Succession podcast
HBO’s Emmy-winning show Succession is back for a third season, with the first episode dropping locally on Foxtel next Monday. After each week’s episode airs, the official Succession Series 3 podcast will be hosted by tech writer Kara Swisher with guests that will include critics and members of the cast.
On each podcast episode they will unpack how the real world is reflected in the world of Succession on screen. Swisher will dive into family dynamics, capitalism run amok, and power unchecked with some of the top thinkers, as well as some of the people who made the show. The official Succession podcast is produced by HBO in conjunction with Pineapple Street Studios.
Watch the Succession HBO podcast trailer.
Finder launches its first podcast- Two Broke Chicks
Finder has announced the launch of its first podcast series, Two Broke Chicks, in partnership with Nova Entertainment’s Podcast Network.
The weekly podcast, released every Wednesday, will be hosted by Finder journalists Sally McMullen and Alexandra Hourigan and will explore money and life lessons through the lens of two twenty-somethings in the midst of a global pandemic. From landing full-time jobs, to getting dumped and getting on top of your finances, the hosts and their guests will authentically share – and overshare – their mistakes and musings to help other Gen Z and Millennial women to live their best lives.
Each 30-minute episode promises to be packed with relatable stories and, importantly, finishes with actionable takeaways. Over the season, the show will feature the likes of Sarah Davidson (entrepreneur and host of Seize The Yay podcast), Chantelle Otten (sexologist and author) and Allira Potter (Spiritual Healer & Psychic).
[Listen to Two Broke Chicks here]
ABC pandemic podcast wins national science prize
ABC podcast RN Presents…Patient Zero has won a national prize for outstanding science journalism for exploring the origins and impacts of pandemics such as COVID-19.
The win marks the second year running that an ABC audio series has won the Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Science Journalism, following the success of Radio National’s Coronacast in 2020.
Executive Producer Joel Werner described the series as “true crime but for disease outbreaks”. “The Eurekas are Australia’s most prestigious science awards and we’re still pinching ourselves that Patient Zero won the prize for science journalism last night,” he said.
The Australian Museum Eureka Prizes, established in 1990, honour excellence across the areas of research and innovation, science leadership and engagement and school science.
[Listen to RN Presents…Patient Zero here]
