Podcasting Too

The internet is great for doing quite a few things.  It’s very good for social media, where you can like pictures of kittens, or retweet angry and ill-informed comments originating from GRU bots, for fun.  It allows you to order your shopping to get delivered to you, or to research stuff like string theory or episode summaries of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Best of all, it allows you to reach out and share your opinions with others, secure in the knowledge that your views are important and will be embraced and appreciated by others, especially if you turn comments to ‘off’ so you never have to read any negative criticism, or indeed any criticism at all, of your forthright views about the casting of a woman as a female Doctor Who, or your controversial views about race and intelligence.

On the up side, for every bigot there are hundreds of passionate and positive people who want to share their knowledge, or even just their experience, about something dear to them.  Or just want to try to entertain.  And for each of these people who knock out a podcast, there are many more who engage in a positive way.

Podcasting is something special.  Technology has developed smartphones that mean we can download podcasts and take them with us, meaning that we can listen to podcasts at home, or on the move.

But the really special thing about podcasts is that the podcasts created by enthusiasts are better than the podcasts produced by professional broadcasters.

This doesn’t happen anywhere else.  A blog is very unlikely to be as good as, say, a novel or a published collection of essays from the ‘New Yorker’, because a blogger is unlikely to have the resources available to a remunerated writer, like an editor.  There are exceptions but the dross to quality ratio is high.  Likewise vlogs.  These only really succeed where they cover niche subjects and have a charismatic host.

Bringing us to podcasting.

The beauty of a podcast is that it can be high concept with a low budget, and a real labour of love.  Do you like Jane Austen?  So do I.  Do I want to hear you talk about Jane Austen for two hours?  Probably not, but I bet you can talk about her life, her literature, adaptations and legacy in fifteen minute chunks for a few episodes?  How about getting your friends involved?  How about asking listeners to contribute.  Holy shit, as Jane Austen never wrote, ‘Talkin’ Bonnets’ is number five in the podcast download charts.

The enthusiast is able to outperform the professional broadcaster for the very same reasons the blogger cannot.  They don’t have an editor and they don’t have to worry about producing to deadline to get paid.  They can craft a labour of love.  They can also interact with their community.

I love a literary podcast, two presenters knocking views about their favourite stories back and forth, it’s almost what the media was invented for.  Because while there is nothing quite like a single voice speaking directly to you, eavesdropping on a conversation is tremendous fun too.

They also provide the perfect platform for original drama.  Anyone with a bit of writing talent and some actor friends who are keen to perform, and are there any other kind of actor friends? can create an episodic drama that builds and audience and a reputation.  This is the stuff that would never have been produced by a broadcaster with a finite amount of airtime.

And of course there are the documentary podcasters.

While genre fiction may have found a more mainstream audience thanks to the Game of Thrones TV series and the MCU, podcasts are, to an extent, the fanzines of the twenty first century, produced with love by people who care about the subject for an audience who are consuming this stuff because they have a passion for it and, rather pleasingly, come to it by way of subscription, just like back in the day.

Maybe somebody should make a documentary podcast about fanzines.  Most likely, somebody already has.  So what about a drama about a fanzine, a fanzine about Jane Austen.  Now that, I’d subscribe to.

Podcasting

Arguably the greatest radio programme ever broadcast on the wireless was ‘Letter from America’.  Every week, the veteran broadcaster and journalist Alistair Cooke would speak for a quarter of an hour about an aspect of Americana.  It had that magical combination that only radio can provide, the intimacy of a single voice, broadcast to millions and speaking only to you, with a charismatic and talented speaker saying something meaningful.  Letter from America was broadcast on the BBC, to a British audience and was, as the name suggests, about life in the US.  It was on air for as long as I can remember but the episode that means the most to me, and I guess to many millions of others, was an anecdote about JFK’s rocking chair.

I heard that broadcast driving along the motorway on a wintry night, and recall Cooke’s supremely soft voice and the rattle of grit bouncing from the bonnet of my car as I passed a gritter lorry.  It seemed to me, driving through that darkness on that night that Cooke, speaking about a night-firing exercise by the US Navy being observed by the then President, was speaking directly to me.

The internet has, for good or ill, revolutionised communication.  Now, anyone who has the means and the inclination can record their thoughts on any subject and, within the bounds of anti-extremism legislation and good taste, make it available to anyone who chooses to read, watch or listen.

This revolution has grown with the bandwidth available to folk, and the sophistication of the tools at their disposal.

Back in the day when you had to plug your computer into a telephone socket and dial up the internet, text downloaded a lot more quickly than images and so the blog, or weblog, became popular.  There was a time when to have one’s diary made public would mean social mortification, but the first internet privacy shift began when people began recording what they were up to, and in some case who they were up, for public consumption.  Book deals were done as a result, legitimising the blog as the gateway to a writing career with those who had the talent and saucy content to interest a wide enough audience.

Youtube has, of course, given us the video blog, essentially a talking head or heads discussing a subject dear to them and, they hope, to others.  This can range from arguing about Star Trek, to arguing about Doctor Who, to arguing about the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Of course, it could be that there are other sorts of vlogs out there, but I know what I like and I am buggered if I am going to waste my time getting professional make-up tips that I am unlikely ever to use.

Want to make believe that you are the handsome and popular host of a television programme, trusted by millions to come into their homes every night and give your opinions about cultural matters, or talk about vegan stuff, then the vlog is the vehicle for you, and you can do it all from your smartphone.

But it is the podcast that has emerged as the greatest beneficiary of the internet’s merging with media.

Anyone of a certain age will have had the shared experience of trying to make their own radio programme, on cassette.  This was slightly different to recording the charts, where the editing process consisted of trying to press record to minimise any sound of a DJ talking over the track, or your family bickering in the background.  Rather, you would use a cassette and record and record your own links.  This would be done in a state of feverish excitement that lasted until the first time you heard your own voice played back to you.  Surely the technology must be defective, as the tinny whine emanating from the speakers was the voice of a little kid, not the smooth tones of a superstar DJ.

If you were wise, you destroyed that tape kid.

Now, we have a whole recording studio on our smartphones, our voices have broken, and we have something to say.

It’s not a radio broadcast, it’s not a cassette narrowcast, it’s a podcast.