A couple of weeks ago, we got the incredible news that The Blog Era was up for four Signal Awards, which (according to their website) “represent the best of the industry: those who are pushing boundaries, telling important stories, encouraging laughter, and reaffirming the overall power of podcasting and its ability to connect to listeners all over the world.” It’s one of the most prestigious judging tables for an ever-growing industry of people who bought their mics at Best Buy: Michelle Obama, Kevin Hart, Jon Stewart, Snoop Dogg and 2000 others were up for consideration.
We’ve never been nominated for anything in the 16 years of our professional career, but this past weekend - in between the close of voting and the announcement - we were unbelievably stressed over the whole thing. And for what? We made something special that we were super proud of, we knew it was good, it had been well-received by the very people we wanted to love it. What could an award give us that hadn’t already been received?
Cut to: yesterday morning, 9:18 on the dot, when my brother and I each got emails saying that the winners had been announced. We fucking bolted to our phones, and then to our computers. Only problem: the Signal Awards website was overwhelmed. Okay, well, join the club! Minutes are ticking by, we can’t access any of the winners’ lists and we were getting texts from a ton of people who were similarly confused.
That’s when our Aunt texted:
Our Aunt, I should tell you, is not great with technology and saw a press release saying Michelle Obama, Kevin Hart and Jon Stewart had won, which she assumed meant we had lost. Honored to be mentioned in the same sentence, let alone nominated in the same category (which we were not).
Moments later, we found out the good news: we won 4 awards.
And that’s super meaningful, not just to be recognized by the judges, but also to get both Listener’s Choice awards against some incredibly worthy products: NPR’s Louder Than a Riot and iHeartMedia’s Bone Valley to name a couple.
We want to thank everyone who voted for us - thank you for supporting the product, thank you for supporting the people who made it: us, our partners at OTHERtone, Steve Carless, our story editor Timmhotep Aku, our fact-checker Brandon Callender, Greg Mayo who did all the music, sound design and editing, and Steven Salcedo on the sax.
We also want to send along this new video Eric made last night, which recognizes the Signal Awards honors, and which we think you’ll enjoy:
Thank you as always, and sorry to Jon Stewart: better luck next time in those four categories.
Shout out to The Project That Never Ends ending and shout out to Best Buy. 🏆
LFG