SCA podcast chief departs: Listnr’s Grant Tothill on why he’s leaving now and what’s next

The key executive who led the podcasting team for the last decade at Southern Cross Austereo, Grant Tothill, is walking away from his role as executive head of Listnr operations and audience.

As Mumbrella recently reported, Tothill, formally executive head of Listnr’s audience and growth had his role tweaked earlier this year. That expanded his remit to cover content, commercial, and operations.

Tothill reported to SCA chief operating officer Stephen Haddad, who oversees the Listnr operation.

Tothill explained to Mumbrella — in his only interview about the big move — that his decision to pull the plug was all his own. He denied it was linked to the recent SCA/Seven West Media merger proposal.

“The real reason [I’m leaving] is I’m at a different life stage. As you get a little bit older, things change a little bit.

“I’ve had a fantastic journey with this particular chapter of my life.”

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Most of his working life was spent at SCA across three tours of duty, the current stint lasting 15 years.

Although Tothill is stepping back, he won’t be too far away. He will remain a consultant to Listnr.

Tothill said he felt the on-demand audio and streaming platform had achieved its initial aims – “We are number one, in a very good position and we’re profitable.”

What’s next for Grant Tothill

“Part of what would fulfill me is working with international companies that want to go through a transition – helping them achieve their outcomes.

“That could be something local as long as they are not competitors of SCA, or international. There’s a lot of companies throughout Europe and the US that are going through their own transition.”

When former SCA chief executive Grant Blackley and his then COO (and now CEO) John Kelly first put their toe in the water with the PodcastOne brand, Tothill was the SCA head of podcasting.

The company launched PodcastOne in 2017 with a stable of just 22 different Australian series and 22 international offerings.

“I’m very fortunate that both Grant Blackley and John Kelly believed in a digital audio future and in podcasting. At the time podcasting was still a cottage industry. There was no marketplace. There was no data.”

Mark Howard’s Howie Games podcast was one of the originals. The deal with Hamish and Andy to podcast wasn’t completed at launch and they were announced a year later.

Tothill is leaving Listnr

PodcastOne becomes Listnr

“The thing that eluded all of us initially was commercialisation. Everyone boasted, ‘I’ve got an audience’,” said Tothill.

“But how do you make money? The game changed for us when we became Listnr and we created a digital ecosystem of streaming together with podcasting. We looked at how we could commercialise that content in a different way.”

As Mumbrella reported across the years after the launch of Listnr, SCA slowly moved the rebranded platform toward profitability.

Although there were initial audio landgrabs from podcast platforms to get scale, Listnr has been careful not to sign just anybody. It currently boasts over 800 series from Australian and international creators.

“With every 10 proposals we get, we would say ‘no’ to nine,” Tothill noted.

“We learned along the journey that you spend the same amount of time for a podcast that doesn’t perform, to the time you spend for a top level podcast.

“We tried a lot of different things in the early days but we learned pretty quickly what works and what doesn’t. Before that, we were making it up in 2016 when planning PodcastOne.

“We’ve learned a lot more about users now with the audience profiling that we can do.”

Not everything worked at Listnr

SCA’s audio platform wasn’t afraid to fail. Sometimes they did.

Tothill: “One thing that is tough to swallow is how we went into drama. We spent a lot of money, a lot of time and effort. The work was outstanding but unfortunately not many got to hear it. We gave it a red hot crack but it was a bit of a stretch for people.”

Tothill did have some advice for aspiring podcasters.

“Probably 80% of podcasts are all chat-based formats,” he noted. “You have to do something different if you want to cut through.” Just maybe not drama!

Listnr’s “secret sauce”

The platform that Tothill and the Listnr team built is attractive for a number of reasons. One being they own the IP and don’t have to licence it. That was one of the attractions for ARN when it wanted to merge the iHeart and Listnr platforms. A move which was part of ARN’s proposed acquisition of the Triple M network.

Tothill said there’s not much to say about that because it never proceeded. He noted the two businesses had different models and strategies.

“We’ve always been pretty firm on strategy and it is paying off,” he said.

“Owning our own future was central at Listnr so that we can adapt to the Australian market as it changes.

“Part of our secret sauce is that we’re Australian made, we’re Australian focused, we know how to create and curate and we understand Australian advertisers. With investment in ad tech and personalisation and everything else, we think we can keep on moving to ensure that we keep a leadership position.”