Hey! I'm talking here!

Tonight, “The Big Apple” is hosting the 60th Grammy awards. I’ll tune in for sure.

You won’t see it on TV, because it is not yet ready for prime time. But the award for “Best Podcast” will one day make it to the live broadcast. Podcasts are hot and they are getting hotter.

Shows like S-Town and Finding Richard Simmons are common water-cooler conversation topics. More people are listening than ever: 24% of Americans have listened to a podcast in the last month, and 40% have listened to at least one.

Brands are now getting in on the action. From a marketing perspective, podcasts represent a conversational (and low-cost) format to educate and entertain an audience. For example, Virgin Atlantic has a new podcast on entrepreneurship.

Podcasting continues to rise, with Monthly listeners growing from 21% to 24% year over year. The audience for podcasts continues to be predominately 18-54, and leans slightly male. Podcast listeners remains an affluent, educated consumers - and ones that are increasingly more likely to gravitate to ad-free subscription experiences.

Clicking on a podcast to listen to it immediately (either streamed or via progressive download) is the dominant paradigm for listening, though 27% do subscribe to podcasts. Subscribers tend to have been podcast consumers for longer than non-subscribers, consume more podcasts, and are more likely to use their smartphone as their primary player.

While “Home” continues to be the most often named location for podcast listening, the vehicle is a strong second.

Most podcast consumers listen to most of the podcast episodes they download, and the vast majority listen to at least most of each episode. Podcasts are the number one audio source by time of consumption among podcast listeners.

Over the years, “Books on Tape” morphed into downloadable audio books.

And now audio books have morphed into podcasts. Today, successful podcast owners have taken their audio podcast archives, and transcribed them into downloadable eBooks.

You know what I think? Media is media.

And “Mass Media” is massive and growing. Netflix continues to grow FAST. And YouTube can make anyone a video star. Amazon Prime. TED.com and “TED Talks” have become badges of honor.

OK! So, do YOU have your own podcast yet?

When my friend Adam Carolla’s career as a comedian hit a speed bump, he created his own digital media empire. Today, Adam Carolla is the Guinness Book of World Records Most Downloaded Podcaster in history with 50 Million downloads in the first year. Now Adam has launched a new online class teaching anyone how to launch and profit from their very own podcast.

So, who will win the Grammy for “Podcast of the Year” tonight? We won’t know from tonight’s live TV broadcast. But one day soon - “Podcast of the Year” will be as big as “Album of the Year”.

www.JoinNYDLA.org and attend Adam's Master Class on Podcasting for FREE.