Last year we ran a small number of the shows that were nominated for a podcast award through a site review and validation program. This year we processed all shows that were nominated for a podcast award.

I have some initial statistics to reports that should not surprise those of you that followed this information last year. It is sad to see people are still not doing some of the key fundamental things a podcaster should do to insure uninterrupted delivery of his podcast.

The amount of garbage sites out their astounded me. There were at least three services that need to examine what they are doing in their core podcast hosting business. While I am going to be respectful and not slam them publicly, podcasters would do good to really examine where they are hosting their media.

1^st 4097 shows were nominated that is up from 3281 shows nominated in 2006

2^nd Of the 4097 shows that were nominated only 2911 had a visible RSS feed link on their Page or was auto detectable.

3^rd Of the 4097 shows 3761 of them had an iTunes link on their page it was obvious that many podcasters think iTunes is the only way to consume a podcast.

4^th Of the 4097 shows nominated only 2012 had a physical link to their podcast show media on their show postings or had a media player of some sort.

5^th Of the 2911 sites that had a visible RSS feed, 82% (2387) had feed errors. The 2387 that had errors 61% (1456) of those feeds were completely invalid according to FeedValidator.org.

7^th 81% (1933) of those sites that had RSS feed errors, where being hosted on a Wordpress blog.

6^th Of the 2387 RSS feeds that had either RSS errors or were invalid 93% of the feeds were being served up by FeedBurner.

7^th The biggest RSS feed this year was a whopping 1.1 megs. The podcasters listing had not updated in iTunes in over 1 year. The podcaster received 2 nominations, yet had produced a show each week for the past 16 months. When we e-mailed the podcaster he was astonished to find his listing had not updated in iTunes and had no clue that their was feed size limitations.

8^th Their were approximately 230 feeds whose size was over 250K

9^th Of the 4097 Shows nominated only 41% had a means to contact the host where it be through a voice mail hot-line or a email contact.

I still have more data to compile but I have been getting queries to post these results. I have a pile of data here and will pull some more data that we collected. I am going to do a double validation on the above numbers but I am real close.

Todd Cochrane

The nominees for the 2007 People’s Choice Podcast Awards have been announced at www.podcastawards.com with voting to commence on July 28th.

Over 335,000 people placed 6 million plus nominations during the nomination period. A team of over 40 listeners reviewed and graded those nominations and from the feedback I received the work was quite significant. I am very impressed with the slate of shows, while no awards process is perfect we are confident those nominated have audience members who are highly engaged.

Audience engagement is a trait that makes podcasting different, and while the space is still maturing the audiences of these podcasts are definitely heavily involved with the programs.

Todd Cochrane
Founder People’s Choice Podcast Awards

I have the final list of 220 Podcast that will be on the slate. I am now awaiting verification from the folks that do the auditing. I will be posting the complete list here and on the PodcastAwards.com site as soon as I get the thumbs up.

We had a lot of shows that did not make the cut some did not meet the minimum show requirement or had started podcasting after the cut off. I was fairly impressed this year as we only disqualified 7 sites for not having RSS feeds on their websites.

One thing that is still beyond shameful is that of everyone that was nominated nearly 70% had RSS feeds that either had errors or were completely invalid. I will have some more info on that later. PodcastaAwards.com

Well now the truly grueling work begins. I have a team of 40 volunteers that have to review the 6 million plus nominations that were submitted by 335,194 listeners.

The task is made easier through some tools we have but it is still a huge job each team of 2 will spend about 8–12 hours on each category to make sure that the candidate shows are all eligible.

I am estimating we will have a slate of shows in 7–10 days. Hopefully sooner but we will be ready for round 2 shortly.

Podcast Connect would like to personally thanking Bob Heil and Heil Sound for his support of the People’s Choice Podcast Awards 2 years in a Row. This will be the third year that we have given the Top two Winners Heil PR-40 Microphones.

I personally absolutely love the PR-40. Past Winners Adam Curry, Leo Laporte use the PR-40, it is a rich sounding dynamic microphone. The perfect microphone for every podcaster. We hope that you will support Heil Sound and pick up one their microphones today.

Todd Cochrane
Founder People’s Choice Podcast Awards

We have six days left before nominations close for the 2007 People’s Choice Podcast Awards to date this is how the 2007 event is shaping up.

We have received over 2.1 million nominations with over 110,000 people having nominated their favorite shows so far!

Make sure you send your audience members to nominate your show today, as 200 of the top shows in podcasting will be competing later this month for the 22 award categories.

Well it begins, we wish we had a couple more gold sponsors but I have always said it will be what it will be. This is where podcasting companies get a chance to pay back to the podcasting community.

I want to take a moment and give a big thank you to the folks over at Wizzard.TV for coming on board to be our Platinum Sponsors this year. Their participation is greatly appreciated.

Thus far we have raised $4000.00 in cash and have about $1600.00 in prizes and trophy sponsors.

These other fine sponsors have made it possible for us to do this again this year. This is a non profit event for us as all money and prizes go back to the podcasters

• Gold Sponsor RawVoice and Blubrry.com
• Awards Ceremony Host Podcast and New Media Expo
• Prize and Trophy Sponsor LapWorks
• Prize Sponsor Plan Nine Print

This event has grown and Podcaster query me all year on this event so we are glad to finally be under way.