Congratulations to all the nominees at this year's British Podcast Awards. There are undoubtedly some interesting shows in the mix, and I hope that they use the nomination as a big professional springboard. But... By my - back of a fag packet, admittedly - calculations, 30% of this year’s nominees at the British Podcast Awards were produced or distributed by the BBC (48 of 162 show nominations). A single publisher representing almost a third of nominations is monolithic, and this is without most of its radio shows which are repackaged as podcasts. That's a massive bloc for most creators to compete with, and that's before even thinking about what Global, Sony, Amazon etc are doing in the marketplace (spoiler alert: taking up a lot of the remaining 114 nominations). The awards are under no obligation to recognise creative diversity. I wouldn't want them to patronise smaller podcasters or networks. And it's hard to know whether the homogeneity of the list is a product of jurors lack of omnivorous consumption, or the fact that independent publishers are not submitting to the awards (possibly a function of the very steep increase in the costs). There are some omissions from this list that are so glaring that I have to assume that the shows/companies didn't submit for consideration. Maybe I'm being too jaded. Full disclosure: Podot only submitted one show this year, and it wasn't nominated (we submitted into the Wellbeing category, which is a bad fit anyway). But inevitably the British Podcast Awards will come to represent a Best in Class list of UK podcasting, especially for those outside the narrow industry walls. I have to say, I look at some of those categories and I struggle – as a critic and consumer, rather than creator – to believe that these shows really represent the best of the business.
Harry Morton
7mo
It’s partly a problem in the business model of awards, right? I’m a big fan of the BPAs and have been a judge twice, so I’m not knocking them here - they have to be able to pay to put them on! But in an ideal world, they’d be funded in another way than submission fees and shows would be independently sourced purely based on merit. That said, you’d probably still see a huge proportion - maybe fewer maybe not - of the nominees come from the BBC and big publishers. The fact is they have the scale to make bigger shows with larger teams behind them. There a bunch of definitions of ‘best’ but if we want to hold up the very best in podcasting, the big players will always be big players. Wonder what we need to do to get those glaring omissions included. Is it a money issue, an awareness issue, or something else do you think?
Luke Moore
7mo
I agree with this, Nick. The BPAs has been a really odd representation of the podcasting industry since its inception, and has been wracked with conflicts of interest. Stak didn’t choose to enter at all this year after last year’s ridiculous entry requirements and fees. I know several indies feel the same. Good on you for sticking your head above the parapet on an important issue for the industry - many others aren’t so brave!
Tom Whalley
7mo
this is what i wanted to say so i'm glad you said it.
Jazz Gandhi
7mo
Start your own awards for the underrepresented
C&IT editor
7moHey Nick, thanks for the share. Just wanted to flag that this year, 43% of the submissions came from small organisations (almost double what we had last year). I appreciate that it can seem like the BBC dominates the list, but this includes nominations from across the multitude of sub-divisions that make up the corporation, including Radio 4, 6 Music, 5 Live, BBC Asian Network, BBC Scotland and the World Service, just to name a few. I tend to look at these as effectively individual organisations, since they often have their own budgets and priorities. In addition, it’s worth bearing in mind that many shows produced for the BBC were submitted by the production companies that created them, which are often small outfits themselves. In fact, the BBC itself submitted less than 30 entries to the awards (again, down by 10% from 2023). We do our best to ensure the list is balanced, but the BBC is an extremely prolific organisation doing outstanding work, so I’m not surprised that it’s well-represented.