Southern Cross Austereo formally launched its Australian podcasting network – PodcastOne in Sydney last night.

During the live beta phase, the PodcastOne network has been steadily growing with well over 2 million downloads in the first month.

With new original domestic podcasts to be released along with a consumer marketing campaign to commence in the coming days, PodcastOne is set to continue its growth in Australia.

The PodcastOne network consists of specially curated podcasts for Australian audiences with selected premium original long form domestic podcasts together with the most popular US PodcastOne podcasts.

With a focus on developing and licensing new original long form podcast content, PodcastOne can offer a range of genres and styles that appeal to Australian audiences.

Launching PodcastOne, SCA’s CEO Grant Blackley said:

“We’ve seen an explosion in consumers appetite for video on demand with Netflix and Stan and people hungry for personalised audio they can listen to how and when it suits them. The strength of podcasting is its ability to advertise to audiences who have personally selected their content and are therefore highly engaged – these are often hard to reach audiences that can be measured.

“SCA has a long proud tradition of making audio content and we are now applying our skills to move into the space of audio on demand.

“SCA is becoming a powerhouse of selecting and guiding talent, producing, technical production – ultimately podcasting is about story telling.” “Podcasts are the home of long-form narrative where stories told, and issues explored and discussed over a number of hours.”

Jim Berk, PodcastOne US says the Australian PodcastOne team “has done and extraordinary job creating a network with such a diverse line-up of high quality, entertaining podcasts that traverse every genre. “It’s evident that SCA is serious about podcasting and the quality of the content they are producing is well validated by their download numbers.”