2080 The Problem with Podcasts

2080 The Problem with Podcasts

Most of them are too damn long. And they meander.  And they are usually audio or audiovisual selfies.

The quantity of podcasted drivel is fast rising to match the level of on-the-air drivel.  Since there are no time constraints, and usually no commercial breaks, podcasters can abuse the minutes of a listener at will.  They can take a 25-word idea and expanded it into a series of hour-long repetition.

This blog post will run about 500 words.  But the nub of it is in the 18-word first paragraph.  

So, guilty, your honor.  But at least I know I’m doing it.

Some are fun.  I like newsman Gil Gross’” Gross National Podcast.” The title alone is worth the time to sample.

Some are obscenely long.  One recent contest entrant posted eight hours of stories and interviews about a cold case in a southern state. Also murder for a diligent contest judge to listen to even over the course of a week.

Others are by Very Serious People interviewing other Very Serious People about… um… about something dear to their Very Serious hearts and unlikely to anyone else.

Also: failed standup comics. Example: The Jimmy Dore Show which is kind of like Howard Stern without the blue humor but still with a cast of sycophants.

It’s not all left wing stuff.  Michael Savage’s radio program, though apparently still on the air for an hour a day is available as a podcast, or as we say on TV, fade to black. He has a following, but it’s not growing.

A lot of people who do podcasts didn’t or couldn’t make it in real radio, so they do fake radio.  They wanted to be radio stars which is kind of as common today as wanting to be a mimeograph machine repair star. No call for much of that.

It’s a very small “d” democratic medium.  And it’s said to be growing rapidly.  Pretty soon, we’ll have listening on demand about how to sell your house, improve your garden, take care of your pet alligator, how to do your own auto tune-ups, treasure hunt in the mid-Atlantic.  Podcasts will provide you with recipes for sponge cake, help you make your children behave, get you to get off drugs. How to get ON drugs and how to cure what ails you.

Nothing like a half hour or so spent with “Dr. Potter’s Home Remedy Clinic of the Air” or “Sounds of the Wilderness” which treats you to weekly 20-minute trips that feature bird calls, the sound of mating buffaloes, rattlesnake rattles and porcupines trying to take bubble baths.

Maybe we’ll even have lessons in how to play such popular instruments as the euphonium, the oud, the swinette, the triangle and the bicycle horns.

When it first started, MTV trimmed our attention spans to a Marine brush hairdo.  There was an uproar among people who feel length equals depth.  Now we have depth.  Don’t drown.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Comments? Send them here: wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019