Il Pod – l’Italian Podcast Awards, the first national award dedicated to the best Italian podcasts, will be held in Piacenza on July 7, 2024. This morning, the presentation press conference was attended by the mayor Katia Tarasconi, the vice president of the Piacenza and Vigevano Foundation Mario Magnelli, the curator of the Festival del Pensare Contemporaneo Alessandro Fusacchia, the curator of Il Pod Andrea Colamedici and the director of the Piacenza Theater Foundation Cristina Ferrari.
The Pod is not just an award, but a day of meetings and insights and will be entirely dedicated to the most exciting form of communication in recent years. For the first time the event will be in Piacenza, thanks to the support of the Piacenza and Vigevano Foundation, the Municipality of Piacenza and the Piacenza Theater Foundation, together with the entire Piacenza Culture Network. And with Amazon Music and Iren as official award partners and the partnership of Audible and Spotify. Piacenza is actually a candidate to become the permanent home of the award which is a sort of premier of the Festival del Pensare Contemporaneo which will be held in September.
The spaces of the Laboratorio Aperto – Ex Chiesa del Carmine and the courtyard of the Palazzo Farnese in Piacenza will welcome the protagonists of this edition, organized by the philosophers and writers, founders of the cultural dissemination project Tlon, Maura Gancitano and Andrea Colamedici, with the artistic direction of the author and podcast producer Fabio Ragazzo. This year too, the event confirms itself as a reference for the consolidation of the professional podcasting network and an opportunity for the podcast audience, which is increasingly growing, to meet and be inspired.
There will be 18 podcasters awarded, one for each of the categories in the competition. In addition to these, 4 super prizes will be awarded: the Podcast of the Year, the Amazon Music Audience Award after the great success of the last edition, the Green Award supported by Iren, the one for the best Indie Podcast 2024 and, new for this edition, the Piacenza Award, established by the city called the Primogenita which is hosting the event for the first time and awarded by the Municipality to the Podcast Revelation that has had the most impact during the year.
Not just an award ceremony but a day of celebration of the most interesting contents that aims to enhance and contribute to the growth of this medium. During the event, in fact, there will be spaces entirely dedicated to podcasters and the story of their content creation work, through talks, workshops and presentations, events in which journalists, writers, actors and comedians such as Stefano Nazzi, Chiara Tagliaferri will take part , Nicola Lagioia, Debora Campanella, Pablo Trincia, Daniele Tinti and Stefano Rapone, Francesca Zanni, Rossella Pivanti and many others.
Among the new features for 2024, there is also a session organized in collaboration with Spotify, a partner of the event, dedicated to all those who want to learn how to make the most of the platform, from how the charts work, to interactive tools and monetization.
Mayor Katia Tarasconi underlines: “Podcasts are a form of art, culture and entertainment in which the richness of the content is combined with immediacy and freedom of use which make them an extremely contemporary dissemination and in-depth tool. . There could not have been a better preview, therefore, for the second edition of the Festival presented just yesterday in the Council Commission. Being the venue for the Il Pod awards event means, for Piacenza, having an extraordinary opportunity to listen and discuss with authoritative personalities, intellectual and creative figures of the highest profile, in a day that will involve citizens and visitors, giving the city another special stop in a summer to remember”.
“Hosting the third edition of the national award dedicated to the best Italian podcasts in Piacenza – emphasizes Roberto Reggi, president of the Piacenza and Vigevano Foundation – is the best way to officially kick off our journey towards the second edition of the Festival of Contemporary Thinking. Statistics tell us that podcast users are mostly from the new generations, but that the older audience is also growing, in line with the ever-increasing spread of this medium. With the Italian podcast Awards we can contribute to the spread of the podcasting network, offering the city a structured event with which to learn more about a tool that gives us the opportunity to inform ourselves, study, reflect and experiment with new content and perspectives. In short, another space for culture and discussion, which are indispensable tools for the growth of the territory”.
For Andrea Colamedici, “rewarding the best Italian podcasts means recognizing the great cultural value of an art form that fascinates an increasingly wider audience, thus contributing to strengthening the community of listeners and podcasters”.
I PREMI
There were 864 podcasts registered for this third edition of Il Pod – Italian Podcast Awards. Among these, 136 finalists were selected, divided into the 18 thematic categories in competition. Each category – Wellbeing, Business, Comedy, Culture, Diversity, Documentary, Host, News, Indie Information, Indie Entertainment, Indie Narration, Green, Talk, Sound Design, True Crime, Science, Script and Sport – will have its winner who will compete for the most prestigious award of all: that for Podcast of the Year, awarded by the jury to the best podcast published in 2023. Other super awards will also follow: among the new features the Piacenza Award and the Green Award supported by Iren; the Amazon Music Audience Award is also back, selected by the community of listeners who will be able to vote for their favorite podcast online; and the Indie Podcast of the Year dedicated to the best independent podcast, chosen from the winners of the 3 categories dedicated to Indies (information, entertainment and narration).
To select the finalists and winners, an exceptional jury, composed of representatives of the podcasting industry, accompanied by the winners of the previous edition, starting from Alicia Fasser Audible Original Producer for Italy up to the Head of production of VOIS Andrea Maltagliati; passing through the journalist and head of RaiPlay Sound Andrea Borgnino, the editor and producer of Emons Paolo Girella, the journalist of Radio24 Alessandra Scaglioni. And again, the Head of editorial content of Chora Media Sabrina Tinelli, the Podcast Director of One Podcast Antonio Visca, the Head of Operations of Will Media Riccardo Bassetto, the founder of Storielibere.fm Rossana De Michele, the Head of content strategy of Gli Ascoltabili Eleonora Chiomento, the journalist and founder of Piano P Carlo Annese, the Artistic Director of LifeGate Radio Giacomo De Poli, the director and producer Michele Rho, the writer and coordinator of Fandango Podcast Vins Gallico, the podcast producer Rossella Pivanti, the journalist and podcaster Francesca Zanni, the writer and podcaster Loretta da Costa Perrone, the podcaster and producer Amedeo Berta, the author and podcast producer Johnny Faina, the photographer and podcast producer Silvia Longhi and the president of the Italian Podcasting Association Giulio Gaudiano.
THE PROGRAM
The day of July 7 will open at 9 am with 2 workshops dedicated to those who want to learn something more than how to actually create a podcast. Followed by a speech by Nicola Lagioia (10:15 am) who, starting from the most ancient forms of narration and orality, will lead us through the potential of the podcast as a communication tool, capable of conveying complex content in a simple way and fully responding to our human need to tell stories. Afterwards, at 11 am, the writer Chiara Tagliaferri, together with the founder and CEO of the storielibere.fm platform Rossana De Michele and the philosopher Maura Gancitano, will discuss the genesis of the Morgana podcast, telling anecdotes and listening again to excerpts of the show that has now become a cult. This will be an opportunity to remember the co-author of the podcast and writer Michela Murgia. It will then be the turn of the workshop by Spotify (12:00), dedicated to “Spotify for Podcasters” the tool that allows audio content creators to edit, publish and create a community around their podcast. A meeting dedicated to those who want to discover the best strategies to launch their audio content in the current competitive landscape.
For the first time, this year, some selected students of the La Content Academy school will be able to present a pitch of one of their podcast projects in front of the main decision makers in the sector: a unique opportunity to see their long-held dream come true (12.45 pm ). The afternoon will be entirely dedicated to the celebration of some of the winning podcasts of the last edition, with exclusive interviews, panels and live shows with the protagonists who were most able to catalyze the public’s attention and win the appreciation of sector professionals with their exclusive stories or their captivating formats. At 4pm the dialogue between Maura Gancitano and Valeria Montebello, author and narrator of the audacious The Sex of Others, winner 2023 in the Wellbeing category. Afterwards, at 4.45 pm, we will be able to attend a talk with the journalist Francesca Zanni, voice of the self-produced investigative podcast Rumore (Best Indie Award 2023), together with Riccardo Noury, spokesperson for Amnesty International Italia.
Not to be missed, at 5:30 pm, the presentation of the Audible Original podcast Dalla parte sbagliata, with the author Debora Campanella and the journalist and podcaster Pablo Trincia. At 6:15 pm we will be able to listen to Daniele Tinti and Stefano Rapone, iconic protagonists of Tintoria (winner of the 2023 Audience Award). At 7 pm the live show Io ero il milanese by the actor Mauro Pescio, author of the podcast of the same name, winner in the Best Documentary 2023 category, will be performed.
Finally, we will move to the courtyard of the historic Palazzo Farnese for the long-awaited final awards ceremony, which will be introduced by the exclusive opening masterclass of Stefano Nazzi, journalist and well-known voice of the viral podcast Indagini. The evening will be hosted by Marco Carrara and Maura Gancitano. Accompanying all the meetings with live music is the multi-instrumentalist and musical artist NAIP, born Michelangelo Mercuri, who will create the basis for each intervention.
The entire program can be consulted on ilpod.it and on tlon.it
