Podcast Reports From Ear Worthy — Golden Globes Goof Up Again!

 

A well-known proverb goes, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

Golden Globes, I’m on to you.

In January, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which administers the Golden Globes, announced that, for the first time, it was including podcasts in its awards process.

Kudos to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Podcasts deserve to be feted, since they are a global phenomenon. After all, an estimated 584 million to 600 million people worldwide listen to podcasts globally, representing roughly 7% to 8% of the global population.

There were numerous “mistakes” in that first nominations process. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which administers the Golden Globes, said that the original list of 25 podcasts was compiled by Luminate and reflected the “depth, diversity, and creativity thriving in the podcasting world today,” and the Globes are “proud” to be the “first major entertainment award to recognize this medium.”

Let’s recall how the Golden Globes established its first podcast award.

In effect, eligibility was decided by the downloads, listens, and views of individual podcasts. Therefore, only the 25 most popular podcasts were even considered. That decision essentially disqualified 99% of all podcasts. It would be like if the Oscars decided to only include films that grossed over $500 million domestically.

The Globes even have a category for films that do well at the box office — Cinematic and Box Office Achievement — and the winner was Sinners. Yet Best Motion Picture, Drama went to Hamnet, which grossed $17.1 million worldwide and didn’t even cover its costs, projected at around $30 million.

Similarly, Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy went to One Battle After Another, which reportedly lost Warner Bros. over $100 million.

Somehow, lack of popularity with moviegoers didn’t disqualify the two movie winners, yet in its only podcast award, the Golden Globes decided popularity was the exclusive price of admission to even be considered.

In January, Amy Poehler’s Good Hang won. In her acceptance speech, Poehler said her podcast was “an attempt to make a very rough and unkind world fill with a little more love and laughter — and laughing with people, not at them.”

Not taking anything away from Ms. Poehler and her beacon of conviviality in a trash can of hate, grievance, and corruption, that first podcast award was needlessly flawed.

It was as if the Hollywood Foreign Press Association were so pleased with itself that it included podcasts in the award process that it switched off its prefrontal cortex and let the podcast category run on autopilot, as if the pilot had been legally impaired.

Last year, in an op-ed by Abbie Ruzicka for The New York Times, which operates a paywalled podcast network, she lodged objections to the award process for podcasting. In effect, Ruzicka argued that the Golden Globes treated podcasting as a genre, when it’s an industry, stating, “mashing together news, interview shows, celebrity-driven conversations and self-help monologues doesn’t make much sense.”

She goes on to recommend that the Globes could implement a simple fix by including podcast categories, such as narrative nonfiction, interview shows, scripted fiction, and limited series.

Indeed, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association received both congratulations on including podcasts in its award process and critical articles containing helpful feedback on how to improve the podcast award process in the second year.

Just last week, the Golden Globes announced the 30 podcasts eligible for consideration in the Best Podcast category for the 84th Golden Globes, as compiled by its data partner Luminate.

Did the Hollywood Foreign Press Association learn anything from their first year and consider the constructive feedback?

No.

Here are the eligible podcasts for the 2028 ceremony:

Bad Friends Behind the Bastards / Call Her Daddy / Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend/ Crime Junkie / Dateline NBC / Good Hang with Amy Poehler / Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang / Love Trapped / Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast / Morbid MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories / My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark / New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce / Pardon My Take /Pod Save America / Revisionist History / Rotten Mango / SmartLess Stuff You Should Know / The Bill Simmons Podcast / The Daily / The Joe Rogan Experience / The Megyn Kelly Show / The Mel Robbins Podcast / The Shawn Ryan Show / The Toast / The Tucker Carlson Show / This American Life /This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced: “The criteria used by Luminate are detailed in the Golden Globes Awards Rules. Eligible podcasts have until October 30, 2026, to submit in order to appear on the nominations ballot for Golden Globes voters. Submission is mandatory to be considered for the ballot.”

Nominations for the 84th Annual Golden Globes will be announced on Monday, December 7, 2026. Emmy®-nominated comedian and actress Nikki Glaser will again host this year’s show, airing live on Sunday, January 10, 2027, on the CBS Television Network and streaming on Paramount+. Dick Clark Productions will plan, host, and produce the annual Golden Globes, which has been viewed in more than 185 countries and territories worldwide.

What can we learn from this list of eligible podcasts for a Golden Globe Award?

First, they're ignoring feedback from Abbie Ruzicka at The New York Times and other credible organizations that the Golden Globes treat podcasting as a genre, not an industry, stating, “mashing together news, interview shows, celebrity-driven conversations and self-help monologues doesn’t make much sense.”

Second, it’s a popularity contest AGAIN. After all the work the AMP Measurement Taskforce and IAB have done to disconnect the download as the exclusive metric in podcasting, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association effectively said, “Yeah, we don’t care. We’re going with downloads.”

Third, it’s again as if independent podcasts do not exist. Keep in mind that independent podcasts represent 99% of all podcasts and 90% of all downloads/views/streams. Mid-tier, niche podcasts are ignored. Limited-series podcasts, which often win a sizable number of podcasting awards, are invisible, and if you are not a celebrity, you are persona non grata on the list of eligible nominees.

Last year, the 83rd Annual Golden Globes averaged 8.66 million live + same-day viewers on CBS and Paramount+ on January 11, 2026, down 7% from the previous year’s 9.27 million viewers. Actually, Nicki Glaser’s opening monologue pulled in more than 14 million views within 36 hours.

Last year, I only watched when the podcast award was announced. This year, I will be watching a rerun of Tracker or a Netflix action movie where a former wrestler stars as a mercenary dropped into some war zone. A high body count, a rescue of a child, and another example of the bad guys not being able to shoot straight ensue.

Here is my shortlist of nominees for the 84th annual Golden Globe Award in the podcast category: Ex Appeal / Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever/ The Buzz / Congressional Dish / Distillate / Famous & Gravy / From Beneath The Hollywood Sign / In And Around Podcasting / The Life Shift / No Such Thing As A Fish / Open To Debate / Podnews Weekly Review / Science Vs / Short History / Sportly / Sweet And Savre / The Town / Tracing The Path / Verbal Diorama.

Rather than some celebrity handing out the award, I would choose one of these podcast champions instead: James Cridland, Freddy Cruz, Dan Kendall, Arielle Nissenblatt, Lauren Passell, Sam Sethi, and Tom Webster.

Despite the inevitability that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will crown a winning, undeserving podcast on January 11th, there is no doubt that while podcasting may have gained another crumb of respectability, it will lose a little bit of its soul again this year.