The People’s Show: a Radio and Podcast Success Story

Many tout it as the most popular Australian radio show ever and after 11 years on and off Australian radio, “The People’s Show”, Hamish and Andy is drawing to a close at the end of 2017 . On top of commanding their national FM drive slot over the last 11 years, their daily podcast episodes are consistently ranked number one on iTunes. Releasing their first podcast episode in 2006, Hamish and Andy have been successful as a radio show and a podcast pretty much since the word podcast was invented. Their lasting success proves that a show can top the radio ratings and the podcast charts and have a lot of fun at the same time. In fact, having fun seems to be the key.

The first moment that Sam Cavanagh, the show’s producer, realised that they were onto something special was in their first year of national radio. Over 6000 people turned up on a Tuesday night to see a greyhound that they’d entered into a race, “All we’d done is enter a dog in a greyhound race and it was just this moment of wow, what? This is amazing.”

Also speaking with Craig Bruce on Game Changers Radio, host Hamish Blake remembered the moment well, “we all remember that as a bit of an eye-opening time but again that feeling of whoa, people are really listening to this.”

He came last in the race but the greyhound, Fred Bassett, dubbed “the people’s greyhound” was a huge success with listeners and spawned the idea of Hamish and Andy as “the people’s show”. Host Andy Lee, speaking on Game Changers Radio, put their success down to their loyal listeners, “if there’s a fun premise and fun to be had, our listeners always make it ten times funnier than we can.”

Much like most of the popular podcasts of today, the Hamish and Andy show developed a strong bond with their listeners by entertaining themselves first and inviting their listeners to join in. So what’s the secret formula? Hamish says the show has always strived to keep it honest and keep it fun, “what you’re essentially doing, doing a radio show together is saying, alright can we commercialise our friendship? Can we sell it outwardly and sell it honestly” Blake said, “you can only do what you think is funny and then from there it’s in the hands of the gods..the only formula there is, is [are] you having fun?”. Hamish and Andy’s chemistry is undeniable and their success as both a radio show and a podcast proves that they have more than just listeners, they have fans.

Thanks to Game Changers Radio, listen to the full story of Hamish and Andy with Craig Bruce below.

There are some lessons here for broadcasters looking at podcasting.

1. Catch-up radio podcast listeners are super fans of the show and should be looked after. After all, super-fans can help spread awareness of your show in the most powerful way: word of mouth. According to Edison’s latest survey of the public radio podcast “super-listener” — 96% have recommended a podcast to a friend and over half said this was their primary means of discovery. I’d argue this is the same for radio discovery as well.
2. Create a sense of community amongst your podcast listeners with podcast-only ‘easter eggs’. Hamish and Andy are currently literally giving their podcast listeners money if they see them in public have the correct change. You can only hear about this in the podcast. You don’t have to go that far, a simple podcast intro and outro would do the trick.
3. Live events are the perfect way to engage with fans of the show and are becoming very popular with punters. The Dollop (a comedy podcast focussing on stories from US history) just finished a sold out live tour of Australia for example.
4. Like “The People’s Show”, most successful podcast and radio shows build trust with their listeners by being honest, entertaining themselves and inviting their listeners to come along for the ride.
   
   

Podcasts often cater to a niche audience on a global scale while radio shows are striving for the most listeners within a geographical area. If your radio show can hit the sweet spot in the middle of that venn diagram then you’re onto a winner, and Hamish and Andy’s incredible success on both mediums proves that it is possible. Podcasts and radio are complementary mediums, and with “on-demand” audio consumption growing rapidly it’s now more of a question of when and how to repurpose your radio show for on-demand listeners, rather than why.

Visit the Hamish and Andy website here

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