The winners for the fourth-annual Publisher Podcast Awards were announced last night, including PodPod, which took home the award for Best Podcast Launch, beating other nominees including How to be a CEO from the Evening Standard, and The Telegraph’s Ukraine: the latest.
The awards were founded to celebrate the work of media owners and publishers in the field of podcasting, and are owned and operated by the team behind the Media Voices Podcast. This year’s ceremony took place yesterday at Proud Cabaret City in Central London and was hosted by co-founders Esther Thorpe, Chris Sutcliffe, and Peter Houston. Overall, there were over 200 entries to the awards this year, resulting in a shortlist of 120 podcasts.
“It's a pleasure to have put on these awards for a fourth year to celebrate all the work publishers are doing with podcasting,” said Thorpe. “Despite challenging business conditions, podcasts are proving to hold up as a high-engagement medium for building deep, long-term relationships with audiences.”
“There were so many different podcasts on the shortlist and the judges had a really difficult time deciding the winners, so a huge congratulations from the Media Voices team to all the winners and shortlisted podcasts.”
The highest honour of the night was Publisher Podcast of The Year, sponsored by Megaphone, which went to The Financial Times’ investigative podcast Hot Money with reporter Patricia Nilsson, unravelling secrets of the porn industry. The series also won the award for Best Investigative Podcast.
An individual was also recognised for outstanding work in podcasting for the publishing industry with the Publisher Podcast Hero of the Year award. This year, the title went to Jack Meegan-Vickers, head of podcasts and video for the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime. The non-profit and non-governmental organisation has launched a number of hit podcast series including the Deep Dive podcast, which explores organised crime and demonstrates the research and investigations done by the organisation.
In total, there were 18 categories announced during the ceremony across a number of genres. There were also accolades for Best Commercial Strategy, which went to The New Statesman podcast network, and a new category for Best Video Strategy, which went to the BBC’s Kammy and Ben’s Proper Football Podcast.
In addition to the awards ceremony, the event also included a discussion forum beforehand, with a number of industry experts discussing both revenue and audience growth within podcasting. The Media Voices team also announced that it will be holding its second Publisher Podcast Summit during next year’s awards in April, with sessions on podcasting for publishers, interviews with past winners, practical workshops, and other opportunities to network and share knowledge with other publishers.
PodPod is editorially supporting a number of other awards this year, which are still open for early bird entries, including the British Podcast Awards, Irish Podcast Awards, and the Australian Podcast Awards. PodPod has also been shortlisted for Podcast of The Year at the PPA Awards, as well as Best Innovation and Best Podcast at the BSME Talent Awards 2023.
