Our daily commute to and from work is the ideal moment to dive into our favourite podcasts.

So when countries went into lockdown around the world during the coronavirus pandemic, and people started working from home, with it went one of our central podcast routines - or so we thought.

In this week's podcast, Kellie Riordan, podcast strategist, reflects on record-breaking months for ABC podcasts, where she worked at the time. Contrary to the idea that audiences will be dropping off, the public broadcaster is seeing that home listeners are more engaged than ever.

Even in new recording situations, its staple show Conversations was downloaded millions of times in June, while special coronavirus episodes for its shows Parental as Anything and Short & Curly performed over-average by a "couple of thousand" listens.

Riordan said that "low-fi" is acceptable right now, and "slipping into the zeitgeist" is crucial to maintaining audience's interest and finding new listeners. The Australian public broadcaster has also achieved this by launching new shows and podcast round-ups, resurfacing old shows that seemed timely, and making sure the favourites are still meeting the deadline.

This article was updated on 16 October 2020 to recognise Kellie Riordan's new position as an independent podcast strategist. At the time of recording, Riordan was the managing editor at ABC


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