Podcasting’s Biggest Mistake

I spent some time chatting with podcasters at Podcast Movement Evolutions this week. I came back not energized, but a little disturbed.

Podcasting is increasingly being segmented broadly into two camps: “Big Podcasting” — centered around monetization and advertising attribution — and the independents, who are centered around something else. I’ll get to that.

Some of this came to a head on Friday, when a consortium of podcasting interests led by Wondery, Stitcher, NPR, and several others announced the foundation of The Podcast Academy, an entity designed to promote “awareness and excitement” for the medium. It’s called The Podcast Academy not because it is an educational institution, but rather to signal an intent to be for podcasting what the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is to the movies.

And in line with that intent, the Academy also announced that they would be putting on its answer to the Oscars, the Golden Mics. This caused some consternation in the hallways of Podcast Movement. First of all, there have been a number of award programs for podcasting, including the Academy of Podcasters Hall of Fame (now dormant) and the People’s Choice Podcast Awards, which has been in existence since 2005 (!). Those entities, and others, have served the independent podcasting community for years, and many of those independents view the…