Podcast Awards
The Podcast Awards are a scam thought up by some guy named Todd Cochrane in his mom's basement who just happened to register PodcastAwards.com before anyone else. Every year, this guy will get well known podcasters and Internet celebrities to tell their fans to go vote for them every day on his site. Eventually, voting closes and he picks whoever he likes best as winner and gives a People's Choice award to the real winner from the voting. The winners get a $1 off coupon at Yvon's Car Wash in Lewiston, Maine, a free ice cream sundae at McDonald's (with purchase of an extra value meal), and a free 2 week trial to Netflix.
2009 Scam School Nomination
When this guy read the list of 2009 nominees, he had accidentally put Scam School on his list as "Scam Schoo". Reading down the list, he pronounced it "Sam Schoo".
2010 Awards
They happened?
2011 Awards
FrogPants shows The Morning Stream, Coverville, and Film Sack won. Tech News Today won as well.
2012 Awards
TL;DR: NSFW was nominated in the "Entertainment" category and lost to a bunch of unknown podcasts. Clearly these awards are a Sam. Leo presented the awards this year during New Media Expo on January 7, 2013. After the presentation ended, he agreed to match funding for next year's awards. (Lisa likely had a panic attack at that announcement.)
Coverville won "Podsafe Music" for the second year in a row.
2013 Awards
NSFW was nominated in the "Best Video Podcast" category against iPad Today and Frame Rate. Sword & Laser was nominated in "Cultural/Arts". The Morning Stream won "People's Choice" and "Comedy" categories, Film Sack won "Movies/Films", Coverville won "Podsafe Music" for the third consecutive year, and Tech News Today (with Tom Merritt) won "Technology" and beat out Security Now and This Week in Tech.
2014* Awards
These were actually held on April 14, 2015 for some reason. Also Chatrealm decided to give a shit this time, along with the Tadpool. t2t2 made a bookmarklet that helped people vote for the Diamond Stream ticket, which consisted of Night Attack for Mature and Video, DTNS for Tech, The Morning Stream for Comedy, Film Sack for Movies, The Instance for Gaming, and Coverville for Podsafe Music (whatever that is). Diamond Stream was 7 for 7 this year. Shwood was in attendance, and Brian Ibbott wore a funny hat.
2016 Awards
I guess since they 2014 awards were so late, they decided to skip ahead a year? Whatever.
In February 2016, Podcast Awards announced that "Podcast Awards is going to need a serious re-work of the site itself, a complete revamp of the rules and awards processes." This may have been in response to complaints that certain shows and hosts appeared to dominate the awards. (Tee hee!) Go read about the amateur-ish production.
This year's awards were even more of a shitshow. Todd Cochrane (who it should be noted works for the overpriced Blubrry podcast hosting network) lost all his helpers and is back to doing it in his mom's basement. He spent a lot of time begging for money to finally redesign the stupid website, makes podcasts pay to be nominated (with no guarantee that they'll be nominated), and has a "committee" of unknowns (except for one guy who showed his face in the nomination announcement video) who get to ignore popular nominees and decide if a podcast is worthy of inclusion. (Criteria apparently places A LOT of weight on the podcast's website and if you have ID3 tags and Android subscription links...because that's important, not the actual content of the podcast, right?)
With the new rules excluding previous winners and any podcast that has won a certain number of times (which is obviously in response to our sweeping the awards last year...and not in line with professional awards which let The Daily Show win for 42 consecutive years), Chatrealm and the Tadpool teamed up for "Hatting the System" to ensure the continuation of inclusion funny hats and friends of those with hats. Nominees were taken for each category in a sort of "primary"...and then Chatrealm banded together behind that single nominee. You only had to vote for a nominee once.
In May, nominees were announced. For some reason, The Giz Wiz got nominated as a "Technology" podcast up against Hak5. (We suspect Chad's Minecraft fans were responsible.) When Todd announced it, he pronounced it "The Jizz Wiz". (His history of mispronunciations goes back to "Sam Schoo". How is this guy the face of the awards again?) Since Hak5 was our chosen candidate in that category, we stuck with it. Sorry Chad.
Chatrealm is encouraged to vote daily for our slate of nominees by using t2t2's bookmarklet. Details can be found at http://hat.t2t2.edu/
Competitor Awards
A competitor to the Podcast Awards are the Streamy Awards, which started in 2009. The 2010 Streamy Awards ceremony was, by all accounts, a horrible failure due to issues such as technical mishaps and extremely crude, self-deprecating "humor". They can DIAF.
Another competing series of awards are the Webby Awards. Those things are classy! They are usually presented in June during Internet Week in New York.