(Bloomberg) — Inside the Mayan Theater in downtown Los Angeles, journalist Sam Sanders gazed down at the trophy in his hands. “It looks like an Oscar,” he said, grinning.
It was a Tuesday night in March, several days before the 94th Academy Awards, (year of the slap, edition) and in the shadows of Hollywood’s biggest, self-congratulatory spectacle, a lesser known gathering was trying to take root. At the outset, around 5 p.m., a crowd of some 300 guests strolled down a mini red carpet and into the kitschy theater.
The occasion was celebratory. They were there to fete and be feted at the Ambies, the podcasting industry’s latest, and likely greatest, attempt to build something akin to an Oscar’s for audio. Due to the pandemic, it was the first time the ceremony had been held in person.
Over the course of 90 minutes, a procession of podcasters took turns on stage, accepting awards across a range of categories, including history, business, fiction, comedy and true crime. The winners gave acceptance speeches. The mood was jubilant, if a bit awkward, as a profession unaccustomed to formality found itself half-pantomiming the glossy Academy Awards, albeit with much less celebrity wattage.
After years of torrid growth, podcasts are now entering a crucial, evolutionary stage. The business has crawled out of the muck of amateurism and claimed a spot at the table of mass market, big money storytelling. Even so, as with any new medium, everyone’s status still feels somewhat in flux.
In search of still greater cultural legitimacy—and, ultimately, more money from big brand advertisers, sponsors and investors— the industry is attempting a trick that other media industries have gotten a lot of mileage out of over the years. It’s looking to create a high-end, heavily branded awards presentation that, year after year, effectively confers greater status on its recipients. Newspapers have the Pulitzers. Magazines have the Ellies. TV has the Emmys. Movies have the Oscars.
The podcast industry is scrambling to create something similar.
Instead of live coverage on national television like the Oscars, the Ambies offered a live feed on Twitch. Instead of tuxedos and wildly expensive designer gowns, people wore sneakers and off-the-rack cocktail attire. Instead of a starlit Vanity Fair after party, there was a brief open bar with various desserts.
“God this is so ridiculous,” said Eli Chen, a senior editor for “Overheard at National Geographic,” during her acceptance speech.
Despite the occasional eye-rolling, people for the most part stayed on message and played up the significance of the moment. On stage, Sanders—a former NPR host who recently decamped to Vox Media—held up his Ambie for best podcast host of the year. It was about the size of an Oscar statuette, and consisted of a human figure reaching into the sky, holding a microphone aloft with both hands, in a worshipful, yoga-like pose. “I f—ing love it,” Sanders said.
Whether the rest of industry will eventually share the sentiment remains to be seen.
The Ambies are the brainchild of a new industry group called the Podcast Academy, which was founded in 2020 with a mission, in part, to “advance the cultural merit of the medium.” Its board of governors is packed with a cross section of industry heavyweights, including representatives from Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Spotify Technology SA.
Michele Cobb, the academy’s executive director, says that so far 1,000 members have joined, typically paying $100 annually. Since last year’s awards show, which was held virtually due to the pandemic, submissions have increased from 1,100 to over 1,400. Cobb said she’d like to see the academy’s membership double.
“Success is having a diverse and large membership over time and really pushing the medium of podcasts forward so that it’s a recognized part of the entertainment cycle,” Cobb said. “You’ve got television, you’ve got movies, you’ve got podcasts.”
To become the Oscars of the industry, however, the Podcast Academy will have to outmaneuver a handful of competitors. Recently, podcasting laurels have been proliferating with nearly the same relentlessness as podcasts. IHeartRadio has hosted an annual podcast awards show since 2019. That same year, the Webby Awards introduced new categories specifically for podcasts. Last year, the Quill Podcast Awards premiered, celebrating achievement in more than 20 categories, ranging from “Best Finance Podcast” to “Best Podcast Advertising Software.” In 2021, the Sports Podcast Awards also debuted, ensuring that tennis, rugby and cricket podcasters would no longer be overlooked on the awards circuit.
In January 2023, the crew behind the Webby Awards plans to launch the Signal Awards, dedicated entirely to podcasting.
Amid the proliferation of prizes, skepticism of podcast judging remains rampant. In 2019, a bunch of podcasters pointed out on Twitter and in newsletters that iHeartRadio’s awards gala had nominated its own shows in nearly every category, raising concerns about fairness and self-dealing.
“A lot of people, and rightly so, say they don’t believe in awards anymore,” said Maribel Quezada Smith, the co-founder of BIPOC Podcast Creators. “We have this conversation a lot in the BIPOC community. Stuff like this, it’s always pay to play, it’s always who you’re with, who you know.”
There are also concerns about the growing costs of submissions. For the Ambies, entries cost $100 each for members or $175 for nonmembers. At the Ambies this year, the networks with the most wins were Pineapple Street Studios, which is owned by radio giant Audacy Inc., and Wondery, which is owned by Amazon—two deep-pocketed companies that can afford to spend liberally on submissions.
Amazon, under its Wondery and Audible brands, sponsored the awards at the two highest tiers, which the Podcast Academy advertises as costing a combined $95,000. This budget meant they also could run video trailers for their podcast between a couple of award categories.
Fatima Zaidi, CEO and founder of Quill, which hosts the Quill Podcast Awards, said the Ambies feel unattainable to indie podcasters. Her awards show, now in its second year, allows people to enter for free and has received thousands of submissions.
“We find it really inauthentic and a little bit dubious that the big corporate sponsors are the same ones winning the awards,” she said.
Recently, Juleyka Lantigua, CEO and founder of LWC Studios, started the Podcasting, Seriously Awards Fund to raise money that independent creators, particularly BIPOC, trans and queer people, can use to submit their shows. So far, the team has raised $48,000. It aims to give away $20,000 annually.
Lantigua points out that beyond the spectacle and the intra-industry jockeying for status, award shows can wind up having a real economic impact on the individuals who participate. Podcasters who win prestigious awards and nominations are likely to get paid more, produce higher-quality work and be better positioned to extract concessions from big media companies during contract negotiations.
“If it didn’t matter, the gatekeeping wouldn’t be so profound,” Lantigua said.
Back in Los Angeles, inside the Mayan Theater, the Ambies were winding down. Despite the best efforts of the Podcast Academy, clearly, not everyone in the industry felt the urgency, just yet, to make a night of the show.
Multiple nominees and winners opted to call in virtually, including “Serial” co-creators Sarah Koenig and Julie Snyder, who were receiving a top award in recognition of their overall contributions to the industry. Actor Paul Scheer also called in remotely to accept the award for best comedy podcast.
Toward the end of the ceremony, the hosts announced that Pineapple Street Studios’ “9/12,” had won podcast of the year. As the crowd applauded, its creator, Dan Taberski, climbed up on stage, picked up his Ambie and looked back out wearily at the packed, darkened theater.
“Thank you,” Taberski said, chuckling as he prepared to launch into his acceptance speech. “This is a nightmare.”
(Updates with Amazon sponsorship in 20th paragraph. In an earlier version, Quill corrected the number of submissions in the 21st paragraph.)
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