Jason Kelce and Travis Kelce’s New Heights won the Podcast of the Year Award at the iHeartPodcast Awards Monday at SXSW in Austin. The fan-voted category was the biggest prize as iHeart honored podcasts across 29 categories. The brothers also picked up the prize as the Best Ensemble for their hosting style.
Heading into the 2024 iHeartPodcats Awards, one of the questions was what role Taylor Swift fans would play in the podcast awards. New Heights is cohosted by Swift boyfriend Travis Kelce, and his brother and cohost Jason urged Swift fans last month to vote for the series. On winning, Jason acknowledged their role. “This is an incredible honor – this is beyond humbling. And we would be remiss if we didn't immediately thank all of the 92 percenters out there, aka Swifties, who voted for us to win this award,” he said during the iHeart ceremony.
Added Jason, “We truly do have the best fan base in the entire world.”
New Heights has been one of the breakout podcasts of the past year, and Travis said the iHeart award helps make it worthwhile. “We absolutely love making this podcast each and every week. And it is beyond rewarding when we get to find out that it resonates with so many people out there and that they get joy out of it because we sure put a lot of that into,” he said.
The hour-long award show included some emotional acceptance speeches, like from Shannon Sharpe, the three-time Super Bowl champion and member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, who now hosts The Volume’s Club Shay Shay series that won Best Sports Podcast honors. Sharpe said he was initially reluctant to host a podcast. “This award means so much to me because I finally won something that I wasn’t good at, or I didn’t think I was good at – I did it and we are winning Best Sports Podcast,” he said.
Among some of the show’s other highlights was Black Effect founder and Breakfast Club host Charlamagne tha God opening the show and presenting Best Overall Host Award to Laci Mosley, host of Scam Goddess. While Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat, whose Crime Junkie won Best Crime Podcast, encourage future podcasters, said winning an award was once their dream as podcast fans. “We were fans like before anything else, so to like every small-town kid with a dream, this one for you,” Flowers said. Other winners, like Scott Galloway, cohost of Vox Media’s Pivot, offered a selection of jokes that perhaps had producers reaching for the bleep button for the show’s radio simulcast.
Some winners also used their time in the spotlight to take on industry issues. That included The Sporkful host Dan Pashman, whose show picked up the Best Food Podcast Award. “I just want to I want to say is video podcasting is an oxymoron. What's got pictures is not a podcast. Long live audio – down with a pivot to video,” he said.
CBC vet Jonathan Goldstein, the winner of the 2024 Pioneer Award for Spotify Studio’s Heavyweight, also shared a story that reflected what has happened during the past year.
“Going into the studio and speaking into the microphone felt like a holy vocation and all these decades later, it still feels that way. It's a very lucky thing to be able to turn the thing that you love as a kid that you would do for free into a job,” Goldstein said. “And then on top of all that, to lose that job and your health insurance and as a young Canadian boy, I never would have dreamed such a thing was possible. But just a few months ago, my show Heavyweight was canceled. And I'm looking for a new home.”
The 2024 Social Impact Award went to reporter and producer Maggie Freleng and music executive and activist Jason Flom for their work at Lava for Good. Its podcast Wrongful Conviction features cases from the Innocence Project.
“As we stand here at this ceremony, there are over 100,000 people wrongfully convicted in the United States. This is a huge issue. And we are so thankful we are here getting this award to shine light on that problem,” said Frelang.
Flom said that since Wrongful Conviction podcast debuted, over two dozen people have been helped in their cases to get their convictions reversed.
“I hate bullying and I hate injustice. And that's why we do this work. There are over 100,000 people who didn't commit a crime or sitting in a steel and concrete cage, five by nine, suffering day in and day out for crimes they didn't commit. And we can turn that around. But first we have to raise awareness,” Flom said. “Our goal is to help prevent these things from happening in the future and to help as many innocent people as we possibly can get out of prison.”
Here are all of the winners of the 2024 iHeartPodcast Awards:
Podcast of the Year:
New Heights
Best Business & Finance:
How I Built This
Best Comedy:
This Is Important
Best Crime:
Crime Junkie
Best Pop Culture:
Watch What Crappens
Best Food Podcast Award:
Sporkful
Best Wellness & Fitness:
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Best History:
Revisionist History
Best Kids & Family:
Good Inside with Dr. Becky
Best Music:
Popcast
Best News:
Pivot
Best Fiction:
The Mantawauk Caves
Best Sports:
Club Shay Shay
Best Science:
Radio Lab
Best Technology:
Hard Fork
Best Ad Read:
SmartLess
Best Overall Host:
Laci Mosley (Scam Goddess)
Best Overall Ensemble:
New Heights
Best Political:
Pod Save America
Best TV & Film:
How Did This Get Made?
Best Spanish Language:
Leyendas Legendarias
Best Advice / Inspirational:
We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle
Best Beauty & Fashion:
Lipstick On The Rim
Best Travel:
Atlas Obscura
Best Green:
Climate of Change
Best Spirituality & Religion:
Woman Evolve with Sarah Jakes Roberts
Best Branded Podcast:
Symptomatic (Novartis)
Best Emerging:
The Really Good Podcast with Bobbi Althoff
Best International:
The Imperfects (Australia)
After pivoting to a virtual event during the pandemic, this year’s show returned to an in-person event at the SWSW conference in Austin. It also aired on iHeart owned radio stations round the country and live streamed on YouTube. Watch a replay of the show HERE.