SCA & News Corp pods rise up Australian Podcast Ranker

The latest edition of the Australian Podcast Ranker sees podcasts from News Corp and Southern Cross Austereo rise significantly into the Top 5.

The Sky News – News Bulletin is now the second-ranked podcast in the country, rising seven frames, while PodcastOne’s The Howie Games rises 12 places to #3.

PodcastOne’s Hamish & Andy remains at the top of the chart.

The latest edition of the ranker follows claims by The Daily Talk Show‘s Josh Janssen that the chart is not a true reflection of the most popular podcasts in the country and “confuses advertisers”.

Janssen and partner in crime Tommy Jackett were joined on their podcast last week by former Hit92.9 host Ryan Jon, who has also expressed his concert with the ranker recently.

“When the ranker first came out I thought… Commercial Radio Australia has made a list that only includes commercial radio podcasts, which is like 2% of podcast listening,” said Jon.

“It’s fraudulent. The whole point of it is to go ‘look how powerful we are we’ve got this many listeners, and it’s not correct so it’s lying.

“As someone who has worked there and seen all the twists they do, it’s remarkable.”

Janssen then mentions that his criticism of the ranker has been written off.

“The whole idea of ranking this podcast stuff is flawed,” he said.

“It would be really interesting if Commercial Radio Australia released the ranker, then gave us the downloads plus the amount of individual pieces of content associated with that feed.”

The latest ranker also follows news that Spotify has hit 124 million premium subscribers, citing a 200% growth year on year in podcast consumption hours as one of the reasons behind the growth.