Mushroom Case Daily was the third most listened to podcast in June with 670,000 listeners, according to the June Triton Australian Podcast Ranker released today.
ABC Head of Audio on Demand Jessica Radburn said: “It demonstrates again that when there are high public interest stories, Australian audiences turn to the ABC to understand them.
“Sensing the strong audience interest, months before the trial started the team developed a clear strategy for how the show could produce daily episodes during the court proceedings.
“It was important to cover this story in a way that balanced the undeniable public interest with respect to the tragic human impacts at the centre of the trial.”
The ABC had four out of the top 10 podcasts in the June Triton Australian Podcast Ranker with ABC News Top Stories taking No 1 spot, up two places from the May list. Mushroom Case Daily was No 3 with an additional 46,000 listeners from last month, ABC News Daily No 6 and Conversations No 9.
The ABC had 3.1 million listeners across its podcast slate in June and had 44 titles in the expanded top 300 podcast ranker.
Mushroom Case Daily follows the case of Erin Patterson, who this month was found guilty of three counts of murder and one of attempted murder for deliberately poisoning her lunch guests’ food with death cap mushrooms.
Throughout the trial court reporter Kristian Silva, producer Stephen Stockwell and journalist Rachael Brown kept audiences up to date with highlights from court, breaking down the legal process along the way.
“The biggest surprise for the team was how engaged the audience was in learning more about the minutiae of daily court processes and jury logistics, as well as following Stocky, Kristian and Rachael’s daily lives as they were reporting on the case,” Radburn said.
“We’ve had more than 8000 emails to the Mushroom Case Daily inbox from engaged audience members in Australia and around the world, which the team incorporated into the show to ensure the audience’s questions were responded to daily.
“There’s still more to come for the program, with the team continuing to dissect the verdict and respond to audience questions. They will also cover the sentencing.”
Since it began producing daily episodes, Mushroom Case Daily has become the ABC’s most successful podcast in a decade. It is the No 1 podcast on Apple Australia’s podcast chart, No 2 on Spotify’s Trending chart and has broken into the Spotify Top 20 –a first for an ABC podcast.
Mushroom Case Daily has also been featured on The Washington Post, The Project and Mamamia. Audiences can enjoy every episode of Mushroom Case Daily for free and ad free on ABC listen.
The Australian Podcast Ranker is a regular monthly snapshot of Australia’s most popular podcasts. The Ranker has been reporting podcast listening in Australia since 2019 and includes a wide cross section of Australian podcast publishers, from both radio and non-radio backgrounds.
The full Triton Australian Podcast Ranker can be found here.