Last Sunday, the 2016 winners of the Peoples Choice Podcast Awards (commonly referred to as the “Podcast Awards“) were announced. Award winners were unveiled during a live-streaming video presentation, as has been done in past years. The presentation itself went down with minimal issues. But just after the awards were given out, a bit of controversy came into play when it was determined that a specific group of podcasters had used a special web tool to encourage their listeners to vote for specific shows.
Podcast Awards winners are decided by a weeks-long voting content that asks the fans of awards-nominated podcasts to go to the Podcast Awards website and vote for their shows. There was some confusion when it was discovered that a fan of the Diamond Club podcast network had devised something called #HattingTheSystem that directed its users to vote specifically for Diamond Club shows.
All Winners are currently on hold due to live awards show voting Scandal that was exposed #pca16 See https://t.co/fgT3TecNn5
— Podcast Awards (@podcastawards) June 27, 2016
For those in doubt here is what their voting tool did. See Image pic.twitter.com/HwDeBo7RW8
— Podcast Awards (@podcastawards) June 27, 2016
Here is a second image with the bottom half of the voting tool. pic.twitter.com/avYvdDs6lr
— Podcast Awards (@podcastawards) June 27, 2016
It was unclear at first whether or not the Diamond Club’s web tool actually violated the Podcast Awards anti-cheating rules. But upon further review, it was determined that the web tool wasn’t auto-filling the Podcast Awards voting form. It was only directing voters to find the shows that Diamond Club was supporting in the different awards categories. It was then decided that all winners would be allowed to stand.
Here’s the complete list of 2016 Peoples Choice Podcast Awards winners:
- Peoples Choice: The Fantasy Footballers Podcast
- Arts: The Beerists Podcast
- Business: The Bizarre Briefing
- Comedy: Matt And Mattingly’s Ice Cream Social
- Education: Scam School
- Entertainment: We Have Concerns
- Games & Hobbies: The Angry Chicken
- GLBT: Diary of a Trans Woman
- Government & Organizations: Politics Politics Politics
- Health: Sleep With Me
- Kids & Family: Hypothetical Help
- Mature: JuRY
- Music: Joe and Meg’s Musical Adventure
- News & Politics: No Agenda
- Religion & Spirituality: Oh No Ross and Carrie
- Science & Medicine: Weird Things
- Society – Culture: The Phileas Club
- Sports & Recreation: The Fantasy Footballers Podcast
- Technology: Hak5
- TV & Film: Post Show Recaps
Disclosure: Peoples Choice Podcast Awards founder Todd Cochrane is the Executive Editor of Podcaster News.