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The Los Angeles Times previews this weekend’s live-streaming podcast award show The Ambies from The Podcast Academy while acknowledging the problems with viewership in awards shows in general. Is it finally time for podcasts to shine?
The Podcast Academy is a group with membership from major companies Amazon, Spotify, iHeartMedia, NPR, and more, and represents a big swing for podcasts to be taken seriously to a national audience.
“It’s just a matter of getting people exposed, and that’s what the Ambies can help with,” said Rob Greenlee, vice president of content and partnerships for podcasting company Libsyn, and one of the academy’s founding members and its first chairperson. “There isn’t really a Rotten Tomatoes that exists for podcasting.”
The Academy looked at the problems of other awards shows and “hired a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant before it even settled on a logo.”
The fee for shows to be considered for an award is $100, and some independent podcasters chafe at that, but director Michele Cobb thinks the number is just large enough to keep the quality up and the number of entries down to be manageable.