The South African Podcast Awards

Awarding the best in South African Podcasting

South Africa’s first national podcasting-specific award show.

Rewarding excellence creates excellence

The South African Podcast Awards is a showcase for the best local podcasts and podcasters. The goal of the show is to set the bar for what “good” is in SA podcasting, and then inspire podcasters to improve on that, year on year. Better audio quality, better show artwork, better content, better everything.

This will do the same job for non-podcasters. Brands, media buyers, and listeners will have a reference point for what a good South African podcast is. The SAPA will also bring great podcasts to their attention.

Details

Entries are now CLOSED.
The SAPA leadership team will make an initial cut to create a finalist list, splitting shows into their relevant genres, and considering all shows for categories like Best Podcast, Best Hosting, and Best Audio Production.
The finalists will be judged by a group of highly experienced podcast professionals. Judging will take place in September and October.
The first annual SAPA will stream live on Saturday the 2nd of November.

Eligibility &Judging Process

Eligibility

Podcast must include a South African citizen on the production team or someone with South African residence.
Podcast must have published an episode in the last 90 days [Update: This has been changed to “published 3 episodes since July 2023]
Content to be judged to be simple repurposing of radio, TV, or other channels, will be disqualified. There must be some adaptation into the podcast format.

Genre Category Scoring

Judges will evaluate entrants based on a points system, rating each show out of 100 points on the following criteria:

Production Quality
Content Quality
Hosting/Presenting
Innovation & Creativity
Cover Art

Judges’ scores will be averaged to result in a final average score, revealing the bronze, silver, and gold winners in each category.

Special Category Scoring

For the Special Categories, the judged will stack rank the top 5-scoring shows in each category (production, content, hosting, innovation, cover art).
Ranks will be assigned points, points will be averaged, and a winners revealed.

Podcast of the Year Scoring

All judges will stack rank the winners of each genre category, points will be assigned to ranks, points will be averaged to reveal the bronze, silver, and gold winners across all judges. Then the champagne or alcohol-free substitute will flow freely.

NOTE BENE: Does audience size count?

Note that listeners stats/downloads will not, in this first year, be considered. We are a community of predominantly independent podcasters, and most of us have zero budget for paid media and other tools and techniques that can help a show grow. We want to reward people who are making great content, whether they’re getting big numbers or not.