Podcasting For The Brass Ring [S3E127]

Last night was the Ambies, the annual awards ceremony from The Podcast Academy, of which I am a dues-paying member. If you work in the podcasting industry, you’re probably familiar with the list of winners and nominees. But I’d wager that the average weekly podcast listener wouldn’t be able to say the same. The “screw you, big media!” mentality didn’t seem to hold true among the winners last night, with professional production houses and networks taking home multiple Ambies. Big Podcasting media, which is a lot less fractured and a lot more centralized than indie podcasting, has some pretty great chops.

I doubt it was the easy road last night’s winners traveled. And for those who might have recorded parts of their Ambie-winning podcasts in their closets, none of them sounded like they were recorded in a closet. 

That’s what originally attracted me to The Ambies: a focus on excellence in podcasting that would go beyond podcasting. But let’s be realistic: Awards ceremonies that elevate the best are a zero-sum game. When we elevate the best-sounding shows, all other shows lose. It doesn’t matter if you think a show is a winner. It doesn’t matter if the producers think their show is a winner. It doesn’t matter if the deeply engaged extant listening audience thinks the show they love is a winner. Statistically speaking, the show you or they want to win is going to lose. It probably won’t even be nominated.

So yes, we should absolutely bolster the up-and-coming, indie-minded podcaster. Without question, we should be working to bring new voices into podcasting. There’s plenty of room and we should go out of our way to make sure anyone curious about podcasting is encouraged to jump in.

But I also think we need to do our part in talking up award-winning podcasts to people outside of podcasting. 

Links Mentioned:

• My Podchaser list of the 2021 Ambie Award winners: https://www.podchaser.com/lists/ambies-2021-winners---the-podcast-academy-107aDrdG49 (https://www.podchaser.com/lists/ambies-2021-winners---the-podcast-academy-107aDrdG49) • The list from The Podcast Academy, which oddly does not link to any of the shows: https://www.podchaser.com/lists/ambies-2021-winners---the-podcast-academy-107aDrdG49 (https://www.podchaser.com/lists/ambies-2021-winners---the-podcast-academy-107aDrdG49)

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A written-to-be-read article and a full transcript of the audio of this episode can be found at https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/podcasting-for-the-brass-ring

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Evo Terra produces Podcast Pontifications four times a week to provide ideas and ask questions every working podcaster should be thinking about. Subscribe today at https://PodcastPontifications.com

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