If you want to know just how much the trial of Erin Patterson has kept audiences enthralled, Erin who is accused of murdering three people with a further attempted murder charge over a dish of beef Wellington that included death cap mushrooms she served at a lunch she hosted at her Leongatha home in 2023, you need look no further than the May Triton Australian Podcast Ranker. Three different trial podcasts, from the ABC, Nine and News Corp, were in the top 50 with nearly 1.2 million monthly listeners and 4.5 million downloads between them.
This month saw Mel Robbins still No 1 as she has been all this year, Hamish and Andy were second and right behind in monthly downloads, ABC News Top Stories third and Mamamia Out Loud fourth like last month. Fifth was the ABC’s trial podcast Mushroom Case Daily, with 30 episodes and 3.3 million downloads, more than any other podcast on the ranker. This podcast featuring court reporter Kristian Silva and producer Stephen Stockwell has been running since March 2024 but this month, with all the extraordinary information revealed in the trial, it was up 136 places.
LiSTNR was the #1 podcast sales network. Executive Head LiSTNR Operations and Audience, Grant Tothill, said:
“LiSTNR’s continued strength in podcasting is driven by our investment in our podcast creation teams and premium partnerships to connect with listeners at scale. To hold the number one and number two ranked podcasts in Australia, with Mel Robbins and Hamish & Andy, along with placing 29 titles in the Top 100 is a clear reflection of that. It’s particularly encouraging to see growth in key genres like Factual over the month of May where we’ve benefited from strong audience interest with both short and long-form storytelling. From a commercial perspective, with our world class AdTech and known audience, the sales team continue to maximise the reach of the LiSTNR Audience Network to lead podcast commercialisation via programmatic and direct revenue streams.”
ARN’s iHeart was the #1 Publisher for a 61st consecutive time. Their radio talent saw improvement with Kyle and Jackie O returning to the top ten at #7 and Brittany Hockley and Laura Byrne’s Life Uncut just outside at 11.
Average weekly listenership was 7 million in May. Despite the fact that the Federal election was held May 3, society and culture was the most popular genre, overtaking news, with true crime unsurprisingly third.
The Erin Patterson trial, which is also sure to attract plenty of listeners in the June ranker, with Prosecutor Dr Nannette Rogers SC finishing her closing address yesterday, demonstrates interesting trends that we are unlikely to see again represented through several different networks. The ABC’s version looks to be the most trusted with at least triple the monthly listeners and downloads. News Corp‘s The Mushroom Cook had 58 episodes and 287K monthly listeners at No 25 and a reentry to the top 200. Nine’s The Mushroom Trial – Say Grace at No 46 had nearly 200,000 monthly listeners. The choice of imagery (see below – image supplied) is interesting as Patterson has mentioned her Christian faith and the rosary in the image usually would suggest Catholicism.
The vast amount of people who are tuning in for in depth details of the trial are a template to networks of the benefits of having people reporting on the ground, and daily, during cases such as this.
The full Triton Australian Podcast Ranker for May 2025 is below.
Jen Seyderhelm is writer, editor and podcaster for Radioinfo.