The winners of the 2023 British Podcast Awards have been announced, including A Positive Life, My Dad Wrote A Porno, Today In Focus and many more.
This year’s ceremony took place this Thursday evening at the HERE at Outernet venue in central London, and was attended by around 500 figures from the podcasting industry. The night was hosted by Zoe Lyons and Stephen Bailey, comedians and co-hosts of the Let's Talk About the Husband podcast. Partners for the event included BBC Sounds, Global, Audible, Amazon Music and Wondery, and Nomono with each sponsoring a different category.
Judges from this year’s British Podcast Awards received over 1,000 submissions across 22 categories. The Podcast of The Year award, which is considered the highest honour of the night, was chosen by the judges from the Gold winners and went to BBC Radio Wales’ A Positive Life: HIV from Terrence Higgins to Today on the stories of people in the UK with HIV over the last 40 years.
The podcast, which is presented by singer and songwriter Sam Smith, also won the Best Factual Podcast award, with silver and bronze going to BBC Sounds’ You, Me and the Big C and ITV News’ Partygate: The Inside Story - respectively.
“I think it’s just so important that a podcast about HIV which is still such a relevant subject today and still has stigma has been awarded this podcast award so I just think it’s brilliant and it means everything,” said the podcast’s assistant producer Emma Goswell.
Following the night of the ceremony, a number of promotional efforts for the winners have been launched, including a playlist on Spotify with episodes from the winners and a banner that will go live later today, as well as a hub on the platform with a selection of the winning shows available for the next three days. A Positive Life also now has a live banner to announce its win as Podcast of The Year in London's Leicester Square, Glasgow St Enoch's and Central Station, and Cardiff Super Motion. Apple Podcasts has also created a collection featuring the event's winners, signposting it within the app's Browse tab.
Click here for the full list of winners.
There were also several categories which were selected by the BPAs team, including the Specialist award for niche podcasts, won by Persevering: Grief As Told By Young People, and the Spotlight award for shows with high listenerships, sponsored by Global, which was won by Partygate: The Inside Story. My Dad Wrote A Porno was also awarded the PodPod Hall of Fame award for outstanding achievement within long-running shows, while My Therapist Ghosted Me’s Vogue Williams and Joanne Mcnally were named as this year’s Podcast Champions, sponsored by Audible.
The Listener’s Choice Award, which received over 232,000 votes from podcast fans, went to true crime podcast RedHanded for the third consecutive year. The hosts of the podcast, Suruthi Bala and Hannah Maguire, were shortlisted against hit comedy podcasts Help I Sexted My Boss, Live, Laugh, Love - Ladbaby, and Staying Relevant, and gossip and girl-chat podcast The Girls Bathroom.
This year’s Rising Star award went to the host of The Guardian’s Pop Culture podcast, Chanté Joseph, who was also recognised as one of the winners of PodPod’s inaugural Faces To Watch programme. This award category was sponsored by Nomono, and as part of her win, Joseph was awarded with a free Sound Capsule kit worth over £2,000 to take home.
“I listen to 20 podcasts a week, I listen to different ones, I subscribe to all of them, I put my hard-earned money into the podcasting industry because I love it,” said Joseph. “I just feel like this is amazing because I love it. I love my podcast, it’s amazing. I love The Guardian. I love doing it every week. I just love podcasting so much.”
Other winners from this year’s awards included independent production companies such as Unedited whose podcastSounds of Black Britain won Best History Podcast, The Tennis Podcast which won Best Sport Podcast, and Crowd Network which won Best Wellbeing Podcast for Go Love Yourself. A number of broadcaster and publisher-made podcasts were recognised as well, including Global and Persephonica’s The News Agents which won Best Daily Podcast, The Guardian’s Today in Focus which won Best News & Current Affairs Podcast, and Tortoise Media’s Pig Iron which won Best Documentary Podcast.
