Life Uncut’s Laura Byrne and Brittany Hockley sign with SCA
Brittany Hockley and Laura Byrne launched their podcast in 2019 (Life Uncut)
Laura Byrne and Brittany Hockley have signed with Southern Cross Austereo (SCA), bringing one of the country’s top-ranking podcasts into the Listnr stable, Mumbrella can reveal.
The duo’s podcast, Life Uncut, remained at number seven on today’s Australian Podcast Ranker, with 386,342 monthly listeners, and 855,719 monthly downloads in September.
Byrne and Hockley had been with ARN since 2020, off the back of an independent podcast launch in July 2019.
They re-signed a multi-year deal in 2023, the same year that they also began hosting an early drive show across ARN’s Kiis Network. The show was then known as The Pick Up with Britt, Laura and Mitch, alongside Mitch Churi. Churi was let go from ARN last year, and now hosts The Mitch Churi Chat Show via Acast.
It’s not yet clear how Byrne and Hockley’s new deal with SCA will factor in radio, however insiders say the company plans to include them on the Hit Network lineup in the future.
A similar mystery surrounded Abbie Chatfield when her successful podcast It’s A Lot moved from Nova Podcasts to Listnr.
At the time, it was widely speculated Chatfield’s deal also included radio. It eventually emerged she would be hosting the Hot Nights with Abbie Chatfield program across the Hit Network. Hot Nights ran from 2022 until late 2023.
There are no immediately obvious gaps on-air for Byrne and Hockley to fill on the Hit Network – which includes the likes of 2Day FM in Sydney and Fox in Melbourne – however it’s understood there are more talent and lineup shuffles to happen across all three major commercial radio companies before the year’s end.
An SCA spokesperson told Mumbrella: “The Listnr team are always in discussions with the biggest and best podcasts from Australia and around the globe. Any announcements about new signings will be made at the appropriate time.”
Byrne and Hockley’s defection from ARN and iHeart to SCA and Listnr only adds further fuel to speculation about what will be announced at ARN’s much-hyped Upfronts next week.
Mumbrella understands Kent ‘Smallzy’ Smalls will be joining ARN, since ending his long run at Nova earlier this year.
Elsewhere in the Australian Podcast Ranker for September, Listnr’s Hamish & Andy remained on top, according to the monthly listeners metric, with 813,500. Its monthly download number was 1,559,923.
The top five podcasts in Australia for September (Triton Digital)
Its next closest competitor was ABC News Top Stories, which had 767,032 monthly listeners. Due to the sheer volume of content put out by the news podcast, however, it had 2,333,116 monthly downloads. The ABC’s Conversations podcast had a mammoth 2,801,414 monthly downloads, off the back of 390,800 monthly listeners, placing it sixth.
Rounding out the top five were Mamamia Out Loud in third with 563,785 listeners and 1,596,745 downloads; Shameless with 537,803 listeners and 1,085,211 downloads; and Sky News Australia Update with 484,254 listeners and 839,731 downloads.
The Australian Podcast Ranker is an opt-in metric, which is commissioned by Commercial Radio and Audio.
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