Jottings of note:
Questionable Celebration
“Podcasts Want Their Own Version of the Oscars. Could It Be Any One Of These?” That’s the headline of a newly published New York Times examination of podcast award programs. Three well known brands are covered: The iHeartPodcast Awards,the Ambie Awards, and the Signal Awards. “Some podcasters fear a ‘money grab’“ is the subtext. Producer Jason Hoch (CEO, Wavland) is featured in this article for his perspective on the necessity, and the expense, of entering the award contests. “If you want to grow your brand, you’ve got to do these things and participate,” Hoch is quoted. “But it’s tricky. Are we all here celebrating? Or are they trying to make money?” The NYT peels back a few layers to bring perspective on how the awards work, and why the podcast industry seems to need its own Oscars-like publicity exercise. READ
The Sprawl of Achievement
The influential if ungainly Webby Awards for podcasts has been released. Within this oceanic honors program, which sprawls across a multi-layered framework containing dozens of micro categories, we find well known titles like SmartLess and Office Ladies vying for recognition across many achievement categories like websites, video, and advertising. We recommend James Cridland’s Podnews for a curated report of the podcast winners. He makes sense of it HERE. The Webby Awards site for podcasts (if you dare) is HERE.
“I listened, and it made me sad.”
That’s radio columnist (and Podnews owner) James Cridland, sorrowfully writing about a newly installed afternoon DJ on the Australian youth radio station CADA. Her name is Thy, and she/it is anAI personality, used by the station for the last six months. As AI goes, the performance is arguably good. But the station does not identify Thy as AI; that’s one issue. And Cridland describes his reaction as “more despairing of today’s radio than I have any right to be.” Listen to Thy HERE. Read James’ indictment HERE.
Tuesday, April 22
