Stories of Us, a new podcast that tells inspiring true stories about locals from around Australia, has officially launched on LiSTNR.
In 2021, SCA’s innovation program, The Lab, held its annual contest which encouraged SCA staff to share ideas for LiSTNR and received more than 400 entries across 40 offices nationwide over a six-week period.
All submissions were evaluated by the SCA Leadership Team and subject matter experts. After a rigorous evaluation process, ten finalists were selected to pitch their ideas to the leadership group at the ‘Lab Contest Pitch Day’. The contest culminated in three winners for Best Idea across Product, Content, and Localism.
Stories of Us won the Best Idea – Localism and was submitted by Jason Austin and Sarah Bellato from SCA Griffith, NSW.
The first four episodes of the podcast series will be hosted by Triple M Wagga Wagga Breakfast announcer Leigh Ryan and Triple M Cairns Breakfast announcer Elliott Lovejoy, both hosts with over a decade of experience in radio.
In each episode, each host will sit down with a well-known and respected member of the community to gain an understanding of their life, achievements, and challenges, and provide an insight into what it’s like to live in their part of Australia.
The first four guests of the series are Grant Luhrs, a Golden Guitar winning musician who lives in Wagga Wagga and runs music production studio, The Flying Fox; Graham Burridge, a retired police officer of 40 years living in Cairns and the author of Piggy Tales, a book about police work in far north Queensland; Stina Constantine, a social worker and former Miss Wagga Christian; and Simon Bonetti, a former Sydney Roosters player from 1990s and 2000s who works on his family farm in Griffith.
SCA CEO, Grant Blackley, said: “At SCA we are committed to making innovation part of our DNA and The Lab is a fundamental pillar of our innovation focused agenda. It’s exciting to bring one of the winning ideas to life on LiSTNR as it continues to establish itself as Australia’s audio destination. Stories of Us has been an opportunity for different parts of SCA to work collaboratively and learn from each other to create compelling, local and original content for LiSTNR.”
SCA head of content – regional, Blair Woodcock, said: “Stories Of Us represents SCA’s commitment to fiercely local and proudly national content. The podcast demonstrates our commitment to sharing unique local stories and championing unsung local heroes and our producers and announcers and their strong connection to, and engagement with, their local communities.”
The first two episodes of Stories of Us launch on 18 February exclusively on LiSTNR and new episodes will be released weekly.