Public voting has officially opened for the Listeners' Choice category at this year’s British Podcast Awards, allowing podcast fans to submit their favourite shows for consideration.
Entries are free and listeners can submit their vote via the British Podcast Awards website. Only podcasts that have been made available by 1 June 2023 and have been listed in the Apple Podcasts directory can qualify for the award. Voting closes 05 September.
Over 220,000 individuals submitted their votes to the Listeners' Choice Award category last year, which went to independent true-crime podcast Redhanded with Suruthi Bala and Hannah Maguire for the second year in a row.
“We have been doing it for five [or] six years now and we cover a different case every single week - and we try to pick cases that maybe other people don’t cover and it’s very well researched but it also has a lot of tangential details about our lives and a lot of social commentary,” said Bala at the British Podcast Awards last year. “Obviously we’re doing something right, because our listeners love us - so thank you to them.”
The rest of the award categories for this year range from genre-specific ones including newly added categories Best History, Kids, and Parenting podcasts, as well as awards for different formats such as Interview or Fiction podcasts, and special recognition awards like Best Network or Rising Star. The highest honour of the night is the Podcast of The Year award, which will be chosen by the judges from Gold winners across other categories that night. The winners will be announced at this year’s British Podcasts Awards ceremony which is taking place on 28 September at immersive entertainment space HERE at Outernet in Central London.
Elizabeth Day, host of award-winning podcast How To Fail,has been announced as the Chair of Judges for the event. The position was held last year by Emily Maitis and Jon Sopel, co-hosts of Global’s current affairs podcast The News Agents, and George The Poet, Dr Rangan Chatterjee, and Miranda Sawyer in the years prior to that.
This year’s event is powered by PodPod, under Haymarket Media Group which acquired the event in June 2022 as well as its sister events - the Irish Podcast Awards and Australian Podcast Awards - from its co-founders Matt Hill and Matt Deegan. Entries for both the Irish and Australian awards are currently still open and advice on how to apply and win can be found through PodPod’s miniseries featuring Hill and Deegan.
