Dave Slusher makes a comment about podcasts and "slick" production values:

It’s interesting that the only people I ever hear talking about how the public won’t listen to anything but slick programming are people that produce slick programming.

Depends on what you mean by "slick". I don't like "I turned the mic on to see what would happen" podcasts. If there are dogs barking in the background, or drifting music, or people coughing - it's just annoying. Do you need studio quality stuff? No, but a broadcast filled with extraneous noise is just irksome.

Amateur audio doesn't have to mean "whatever noise happened" audio. Which reminds me - I need to buy a real microphone for my periodic screencasts :)