Compiled by Tess Connery
Recognition for Disclosed: The Children in the Pictures
LiSTNR’s Disclosed: The Children in the Pictures has picked up several accolades, winning Podcast of the Year at the Australian Commercial Radio & Audio Awards (ACRAs) in Sydney, silver in the True Crime Category at The Signal Awards in New York, and was shortlisted as one of three finalists in the Australian Walkley Awards for Audio Long (over 20 minutes).
This follows the podcast being recognised earlier this year with a Gold at the New York Radio Festival Awards for best narrative documentary, taking out Best Documentary at the Radio Today Podcast Awards in July and being announced as a finalist in the prestigious 2023 Kennedy Awards in Audio Journalism: Outstanding Podcast.
The podcast goes inside Taskforce Argos, a team of Australia’s best detectives dedicated to infiltrating global criminal networks and rescuing children from online sexual abuse, continues to win critical acclaim in Australia and abroad.
Podcast Week’s Tess Connery spoke with LiSTNR’s head of factual and drama, Jennifer Goggin, who said “it was a very big week for us, but it was a very exciting week.”
Jennifer Goggin
Reflecting on the impact of the podcast, Goggin said that “The series came a little under a year ago, and we’ve been very much embedded in our latest investigation for the last year. So it’s nice coming up for air from the current investigation and realising where the last one travelled.
“What’s really important to us is the social impact capabilities of the storytelling that we’re doing. The more recognition the podcast gets, the more awareness that can be raised by just how prevalent child abuse material online is. Also, that there is somewhere for people to go and engage with this material in a safe and educational way, understanding the scale of this problem, how it manifests itself, and its impact on its victims. For us, every time anyone else engages with something that might help them protect children in their life, that’s a really big win for us.”
As for what’s next, Goggin hints that there will be more content from the team on the horizon, with new investigations coming soon.
“This podcast is evergreen, it’s a story in time – we’ve finished that series, and we have an upcoming series that is on a different topic, in a different area. But it still has a social impact purpose behind it, it’s still within the crime category, and it’s still involving very high levels of investigative journalism. We’re still using our audio production craft to sound design something that is engaging enough. I can’t tell you what our next investigative series is about, but we have three of them in the works – some of them take as long as three years to fully investigate and cover before they ever come to life.”
One thing is certain, however. Goggin says that the team will be treating all future crime podcasts with the same level of care as The Children in the Pictures.
“Crime has a very specific connotation of murder. That’s not where we’re going, we’re really looking at injustice, we’re looking at where there are loopholes in the law that are allowing for victimisation. They’re the types of stories that we’re telling. We’re not interested in making true crime content in a trope-based way, we want to demonstrate how stories of crime reveal systematic injustice in our legal system in our world.
“At a time where media is very fractured, we want to make sure that there is a podcast destination where there is a collection of investigative journalistic stories about crime in Australia and how that crime has global impacts.”
[Listen to Disclosed: The Children in the Pictures here]
Podcast Ranker September 2023: Hamish & Andy continue time on top
Commercial Radio Australia has released the latest Australian Podcast Ranker tables for performance in the month of September 2023.
Still enjoying top spot is LiSTNR’s Hamish & Andy, with 940,095 monthly listeners and 2,014,123 monthly downloads this month.
Second place is still held by iHeart’s Casefile: True Crime with 804,408 monthly listeners and 2,172,928 monthly downloads.
There has been a shake up in third place, with Mamamia Out Loud dropping to fourth place, and Shameless lifting a spot to round out the top three. September sees Shameless record 630,940 monthly listeners and 1,542,942 monthly downloads.
The biggest lifter of the month was News Corp’s The Teacher’s Trial, as the podcast follows the case of Lynette Dawson’s murder. The Teacher’s Trial jumped 75 places, landing at #47.
LiSTNR’s Watts Under the Bonnet returns as EV interest surges
LiSTNR and carsales have announced the return of Watts Under the Bonnet: The Electric Vehicle Podcast, after its debut season.
In the first half of 2023, electric vehicle (EV) new car sales jumped to 8.4%, a 120% increase on 2022, with one EV model now Australia’s best-selling passenger vehicle.
Watts Under the Bonnet delves into the world of electric vehicles as sales and consumer interest in Australia are at an all-time high. Co-hosted by motor racing journalist, commentator and host of LiSTNR’s Rusty’s Garage, Greg Rust, and carsales’ Consumer Editor, Nadine Armstrong, the podcast series will keep listeners up to date with the latest developments in the world of electric vehicles.
The new series will air 28 episodes – double the number of season one. The subjects covered will run the gamut from the hottest EV releases and common EV myths busted to what it’s like swapping the bowser for the battery. With expert insight into electrified motoring, the podcast will provide listeners with a no nonsense look at Watts Under the Bonnet.
[Listen to Watts Under the Bonnet here]
Game For Anything podcast launches to tackle everything gaming and more
Game For Anything is a somewhat frenetic weekly podcast taking on everything from indie games to new VR peripherals and anything in between.
Having launched on October 17, hosts Angharad ‘Rad’ Yeo and Paul F. Verhoeven delve into the ever-evolving world of gaming.
Yeo is the former host of technology podcast Queens of the Drone Age, as well as an award-winning television presenter, video game critic, technology journalist and host of Double J’s Weekends. Her other credits include ABC ME’s Good Game Spawn Point, ABC Science’s Elevator Pitch and Rad Experiments, and ABC Listen’s How Games Play Us.
Verhoeven, meanwhile, is a critically acclaimed broadcaster, journalist and bestselling author of Loose Units and Electric Blue, out through Penguin Publishing, and co-hosts the hit spin-off Loose Units: The Podcast.
[Listen to Game For Anything here]
Monash’s What Happens Next? podcast wins gold in global awards
Monash University’s What Happens Next? podcast series has been recognised in the second annual global Signal Awards alongside other podcast creators including Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and production companies such as Netflix, Warner Bros. and iHeartPodcasts.
Hosted by Monash academic and commentator Dr Susan Carland, What Happens Next? won a gold award in the Sustainability & Environment (Best Individual Episode) category for its 77th episode, “Is Food Insecurity Getting Worse?”. The award recognises individual episodes focused on any facet of sustainability, ranging from climate and environmental issues to greener cities and housing.
The podcast also won the Listener’s Choice Award in the same category.
This is the second consecutive win for What Happens Next?, which won a gold and bronze award in the 2022 Signal Awards.
[Listen to What Happens Next? here]
