Great entries rolling in for Radio Today Podcast Awards

If you’re yet to submit your entry for the Radio Today Podcast Awards, or even if you’re still thinking about giving it a crack, Radio Today Managing Editor Peter Saxon says it’s time to get a wriggle on.

Peter says while the response so far has been excellent, there is, of course, a process involved, and a lot of people are still working their way through it.

“We’ve got a lot of starters. We haven’t finished the race yet.”

Peter notes the quality of entries to date is very high.

The cost to enter each category is $90. Once you’ve entered one or more categories, entry for your chance to win the newly-launched, state of the art RØDECaster Pro II is free. T&Cs apply.

And what a piece of equipment it is:

“It’s a whole panel. It’s a little radio station, if you like, in a small compact desk,” says Peter.

“You can have callers come in. You can have four people on microphones, give them all a headset. It’s great audio quality.”

Australians are hungry for podcasts, and Peter notes our appetite for compelling and portable entertainment continues to grow, often tackling subjects that would never have made it to air on free-on-air radio or TV.

“It’s interesting how media has evolved. People want to be able to pick and choose what they want when they’ve got time to do it. Podcasting is like that. It’s kind of taken over from talking books which were never that popular, really. It was the wrong medium for people just to read a book. It doesn’t translate to audio in the same way as a podcast that is made for the medium, with a real person that is talking to you, rather than reading from a text. It’s not even like a script for a radio play.”

“It’s a completely different animal. I think that’s the charm of it.”

“Podcasts can also be made into episodes, which are made for commutes, so that if I have fifteen minutes – that’s kind of the optimum length for a podcast nowadays, because people find fifteen minutes to listen to a podcast if they’re on a bus or a train.”

“Like radio, the difference is that you can do something else while you’re listening, like when you’re home cleaning the house, as I do!”

“Whether you have a home set up with speakers in every room, you’ve got Bluetooth headphones, or you carry your phone around listening to podcasts, that’s the portability of it. And people are getting really hooked on it.”

“I’ve spoken to a lot of people in this business, and they ARE hooked on it.”

And Peter’s advice for those still tossing up whether to enter the Radio Today Podcast Awards?

Don’t just think about it. Do it.