Review: SBS French, a podcast for the Francophile

SBS’s podcasts tend to fly under the radar, but the network’s audio team has been working in the field for more than a decade.

The SBS podcast ranges from news bulletins to arts interviews to current affairs features.

SBS tends to fly under the radar a tad with its local podcasts, but the network’s audio team has been steadily working in the field for more than a decade.

SBS French (full title SBS en français) is a great example: it’s the most successful non-English-language podcast in Australia, regularly beating the network’s own flagship bulletins for listenership.

The podcast has built a substantial audience, racking up a quarter of a million downloads each month.

In a neat sign of how consumption patterns are changing, the show was originally just an archive of SBS Radio’s weekly French broadcast, but now the radio broadcast exists as a linear collection highlighting some of the week’s podcast episodes.

Coverage ranges from news bulletins to arts interviews to current affairs features. New episodes drop two to three times a day, and average around 15 minutes each.

All of it, though, is focused on Australia. It’s a great example of how so much success in podcasting boils down to really understanding and targeting a specific audience.

The SBS French listenership falls into two camps. Many are just expats looking for local news in their own language, but a second, substantial camp is English-speaking Australians who have studied French and are looking to brush up by listening to something approachable and relevant.

Now the network has launched a second francophone podcast: SBS Easy French, targeted at that latter cohort.

SBS Easy French will release two short bulletins a week, with newsreaders slowing things down and simplifying their vocabulary. Listeners can also receive transcripts over email and follow the text as it is read.

These aren’t intended as a substitute for structured learning. There are scores of podcasts out there designed to teach beginners a new language.

But these podcasts from SBS are a really clever way to take existing broadcasts and turn them into a valuable library of informative packages.

Listen to SBS French on your favourite podcast app.