Cameron Stack
This issue covers new awards launches in the UK, a six-year look at The Podcast Academy, the uncertain future of Third Coast, a podcast documentary now at 30,000 feet, and what rewatch podcasts mean for the Signal Awards
The News Podcast Awards 2026 have officially launched in the UK. Winners will be announced at a dedicated awards lunch in London this June.
Categories include News Summary, Investigative, True Crime, Political, Business and Economy, and Podcast of the Year. Entries are judged on editorial impact, depth, and storytelling quality.
The Independent Podcast Awards 2026 are also open for entry, with 28 categories focused on small-scale, non-corporate productions from the UK and Ireland.
Podnews editor James Cridland published a detailed look at The Podcast Academy, six years in.
The piece covers membership, revenue, a largely unexplained leadership change, and where the organization may be headed.
Our article focuses on the ceremony itself, what the Ambies look like up close and what a win actually means for a show.
Together, the two pieces offer a fuller picture for anyone tracking the awards space.
Editor’s note: Six years in and there are still questions worth asking about The Podcast Academy. Cridland asks some of them. If you are considering the Ambies or TPA membership, read this first and go in with your eyes open.
Frank Racioppi covered the rewatch podcast space this week on Forbes. My analysis on the niches within the format and how the awards world treats them, or doesn’t, is in the piece. Signal Awards is the one program that has made a real attempt, though their recent category shift complicates things.
After dropping its recap category, Signal Awards left rewatch creators with four imperfect options: Fan Podcast, Companion Podcast, Television and Film, and Pop Culture. None are built for the format. The choice is situational.
The Third Coast International Audio Festival, founded under Chicago’s WBEZ in 2001 and first held in 2004, is facing serious challenges.
A November message to the community cited a difficult financial reality. A decline in grant funding since the pandemic led to the layoff of all paid staff at the end of 2025. The Driehaus Foundation, a key sponsor since launch, withdrew funding in 2023.
The organization is also a year behind in announcing winners for its 2024-25 competition. Volunteers are now focused on completing the current cycle. No public decisions have been made about what comes next.
Editor’s note: Longevity is not a business model. Third Coast has been around long enough to be considered a legacy organization by some corners of the audio world, and it is still facing collapse. The space keeps shifting, and no organization is exempt from having to prove its value, adapt, and earn its place. This is a useful reminder of that.
Shaun Michael Colón’s documentary Age of Audio is now available on select United Airlines flights, a meaningful achievement for an independent film about audio storytelling and podcasting.
Colón has been screening the film for a while, including at Podcast Movement in Dallas in August 2025 and at Podfest earlier this year. Both screenings ran up against scheduling conflicts. At Podfest, the screening conflicted with the Podcast Hall of Fame ceremony. We covered that night here.
While the film offers an affectionate look at podcasting, it ultimately feels like an unbalanced telling of the medium’s history. The documentary gives space to voices that express dismay over the word “podcasting” itself. What’s missing is any real pushback or deeper examination. A natural follow-up question, “If podcasting is so problematic, what should we call it instead?”, is noticeably absent. Critiquing a term that has already become culturally embedded is relatively easy. Offering a practical alternative is much harder.
There is also a meaningful difference between debating what is and isn’t a podcast, a useful conversation about standards, quality, and the soul of the medium, and simply criticizing the word “podcasting” itself. The film leans heavily into the latter while giving less attention to the former.
Age of Audio is worth watching, but it leaves you with more questions than the filmmakers seemed willing to ask.
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