From The Archives: Podcasting Killed The Radio Star
Hey everyone. It’s Aaron here. Just to let you know that I will be pulling the plug on my own site soon and old content will appear over on this site soon. Until new material comes, here is arguably the most popular article that I wrote back in January. Enjoy!
Why is it that the media is finally starting to take podcasting seriously? I mean, since three fat blokes and another bloke with an awesome beard sat in a crowded room in Stourbridge and recorded what is considered to be the very first podcast nearly six years ago now, everyone seems to finally now be taking notice and have start making their own. Stephen Fry has one, Ricky Gervais has one, and even Aleksandr Orlov (the founder of CompareTheMeerkat.com) has one. Seriously. This is slightly perplexing but is understandable considering the connotations. Making a podcast a few years ago is basically a giant sign hanging over your head saying “I am a nerd with absolutely no social life or people skills”. I should know. I was one of those nerds! You understand what I’m saying though. Whenever I told someone I was a podcaster a couple of years ago, they usually “see their friend across the room” or “have to go because they forgot they were moving to Brazil today”. People hated nerds. Luckily I’m not really much of a nerd now and I turned out alright and I seemed to have gained a sense of maturity about myself that my friend Mr. Podcast also gained at around the same time. So now the podcast is all cool and “down with the kids”, right? Unfortunately, something went wrong.
Why is it that morons have to ruin it for everyone else? We have something good that makes us well known (at least in our small communities, and in basements all across Stereotype-land) and then you have to come along and spoil it! Yes! I’m looking at you again, iTunes! Podcasts before iTunes were a sort-of underground style of thing. Podcast communities only existed in real life after the secret handshake was given (such as the mentioning of an in-joke). iTunes was the single thing that killed it by the introduction of a single library of podcasts that was powered by the very people that made this original content. Some of you may turn to me and think “I do believe that this man is a hypocrite! Where are the Simpleton Police Department?”. Just listen a second before you section me under the Mental Health Act of 1983. I do not have the problem with iTunes. I’ve already riffed on iTunes enough in my Spotify review and have gotten shouted at enough for it. Also I don’t think it is necessary to say what has already been said about it. The problem I see is that now there is a central database for every podcast on Earth. This means that we are more likely to find some good podcasts on there such as Control Point and Australian Gamer. This is a core part in reaching a wider audience and to help build a stronger community. I believe that this could constitute to an entirely new article altogether so I think the community article idea can sit in my “Magical Hat of Terrible Ideas” which I keep next to my self-esteem and my trust of Simon Cowell to make an entertaining television programme. I’m not here to talk about the essentials to building a community in here. I’m here to get you all to hate me to your very cores from the second paragraph, and then for you all to see my point in the final paragraph. But I seriously digress here. The problem I have with a central database that anyone can add to is its own premise (i.e.: it’s a central database that anyone can add to).
It is a fact of life. Anyone who is a jerk has it written in their nature that they will be jerks. If they see a child with a rubber ball, they will burst it. If they see someone driving slightly slower than them, they will cut them up. If they see someone beaten within an inch of their life on the street, they will get out their camera phones and upload it to Youtube. Why are we in an age where this is normal? This is actually quite perplexing. Now when I walk the streets, I am seen as “that guy”. You know who I mean. “That guy” who drives down the street in a crapped-out white Fiesta with terrible blue tints and horrible neon lights at two in the morning waking people up with his shit music blasting at approximately thirty-thousand decibels. “That guy” who goes to the pub and gets wasted with his “mates” on a Saturday night, comes home completely destroyed, puts on cheap porn and jerks off until five in the morning before getting up at two in the afternoon on Monday to go and collect the dole money. These are the very people who go around making life hard for everyone else, which makes the good and decent eighteen year olds look like trash. Now I know why my best friend doesn’t trust me and why I’ve never had a relationship with anyone. Sorry. Lost my train of thought. You understand what I am trying to say though. There will always be jerks that make it crap for everyone else. The same applies for the uninteresting. Now I am talking about the people who have podcasts about custard and about twentieth-century telegraph poles (yes. Thank you Red Dwarf fans for getting that reference. Good to see both of you still read this). With no type of filter to keep control over what stays and what doesn’t we get a database of podcasts where ninety percent of your time is spent trying to find the interesting ones. We will always have pure “uninterestingness” that will plague the system until the end of time.
I don’t have a problem, however, with having crap in the database. That really isn’t a problem. People are interested in different things and that is good. The problem I have is that they all think that their podcast is the most important podcast that exists. They think that because everyone is on the same database, everyone is equal. This has never been the case (with the exception of X Factor where anyone who has the whitest teeth and wears pretty dresses can be as successful as The Beatles or The Rolling Stones). This is the problem I have with celebrity podcasts. Celebrities seem to create these podcasts that flood iTunes, and their entire appeal is based upon their brand: their name. If you went onto iTunes and saw “The Aaron Fowkes Podcast” and “The Ricky Gervais Podcast”, which one would you go for? It doesn’t matter about the type of content that is being given to the actual listeners every week. It is purely based on the appearance of a celebrity’s name on a page that makes anyone zap to it. My podcast could be the funniest podcast in human history (it wouldn’t, but shut up. I’m trying to make a point here!) and Ricky’s podcast could be a bland piece of mediocrity (it probably isn’t. I don’t subscribe) but the person who would get more subscribers would always be Ricky Gervais. The problem with creating a system where everyone is equal and it is down to the content of the actual show is that Apple are assuming that everyone is unbiased and will give everything a fair try. They also trust them to be impartial. They also want magical fairies to appear from the sky and give them free blowjobs and beer. You can’t have everything, because Apple certainly don’t. They seem to think that because they designed a system for fairness that people will be fair. That is as valid as saying that if cut a hole in my neck then I will breathe better because the air gets in quicker. The idea was nice, but it was executed poorly. Good job Apple. +1 for messing something else up.
Twitter has the same problem. Despite only having updated Twitter 188 times, Ashton Kutcher is the most popular person on the site. In between not acting his own age and uploading pictures of his wife’s ass, he is apparently commanding a Tweet-Army of over 4.3 million followers. The man hardly talks but seems to still get away with being more popular than a bottle of Budweiser at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. This is what the problem is with iTunes and podcasts on iTunes. The celebrities can be thrown onto the front page to attract attention and to make themselves look unbelievably smug when they are talking to their friends at garden parties. Whilst this is going on, the Average Joes and the hard-workers stay at the bottom of the ladder hoping that one day they may be as smug as the celebrities on the front page.
I’ve already talked about the power of the media being slowly taken away by the power of Twitter and blogs, and how the dominant discourse are clawing back ground in the world of social media but podcasts seemed to be different. Emphasis on seemed. Podcasts were another way of which Mr. A. Joe could create a piece of interesting content using his own intelligence that could appeal to a mass audience, possibly leading to an uprising against the dominant discourse from the lower classes (i.e.: those people who value their object of desire to be an iPod). Any medium where dominant ideology control the masses will have some way of the lower classes trying to exploit this to stand up against them. Flipping something around and using it against them is something that is not only clever, but also the trademark of any good villain (read: The Joker). Rather than restrict the geeks and their access over this market, they have decided to declare that podcasts are now “cool” and not just for geeks, and have decided pump the directories full of their own podcasts from their own “people” (celebrities) and to have these podcasts being the most popular by force (and the power of the name). The people who wanted the power in the Web 2.0 world are back in their place. Again, a medium that gives people some kind of control over what happens in popular culture is fundamentally destroyed by the original concept: anyone can make anything.
I know I’ve overrun but I haven’t written an article since last decade so I feel I have the right to an extra few hundred words. Ready? Sit right there and let’s go.
The podcast was originally coined as the name “Internet Radio Show” because that is fundamentally what it was. It was a pre-recorded radio programme with general banter that often vaguely points toward one subject. With LUGRadio, it was Linux. With Control Point, it was Team Fortress 2. With the Best of Chris Moyles, it is the Chris Moyles show. With The Best of Youtube, it is about a twenty year old man with a voice changer being more rich than you. Before this, we had the traditional media of the FM radio. They also tended to have precisely the same type of conversations (but without excessive swearing or irrelevant in-jokes to clog up the time between records). One of these mediums is controlled by dominant ideology. The other is in the hands of the people to make their own relevant entertainment. Which one is policed? Which one isn’t? Which one is becoming more popular? Which one isn’t as much? Radio is slowly starting to die on its feet. The solution to this was to “rain on the parades” of those people who feel that having free speech is a privilege and not a right, and here come the Radio Podcasts from the BBC. This gives you the ability to clog up your iPods with stuff that you could have listened to for free with a 25p radio and an AA battery. These make it onto the front page of iTunes. The dominant discourse control the radio, so they control the radio podcasts, so they further push the independent podcasts into obscurity and have their “controlled podcasts” for all to see. Seeing the word “Free” next to your favourite podcast sounds quite oxymoronic now, doesn’t it? Mind soup fed through our eardrums and into our celebrity-obsessed minds. Think of that next time you listen to Chris Evans.
Aaron Fowkes is a freelance writer that writes for Concerned-ish, This is Not A Music Show, Public Domain Theatre and Digimon: Abridged. He also does some voice acting and general acting, but that isn’t really relevant here. His Twitter account is @aaronfowkes
