Intercepted, Mr Gameshow, The Irish Times’ Inside Politics.
With questions being fairly raised about the future of journalism and even the nature of truth, podcasts can fill a very important role in the new media landscape. Intercepted is the audio arm of the Intercept, a serious political analysis site created by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill under the banner of First Look Media, a truth-to-power organisation funded by eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar. Got that? Its a podcast hosted by firebrand journalist Jeremy Scahill. It is formatted like a proper audio magazine – three to four decent length features with some well-written and well-realised comedy pieces thrown in for good measure. We like it.
Mr Gameshow is an attempt at knowing, kitschy, post-modernity. It’s a spoof gameshow hosted by Mike Wozniak, who seems to think that a cheesy voice is a fine substitute for comedic invention. It’s recorded in front of a live theatre audience. It has silly jingles. Matt describes it as a cargo cult show, as in ‘let’s put these various elements together, however badly realised, and soon enough, success will land on our comedy runway’. When Quincy Jones offered to produce the ‘best jazz album ever’ for George Benson, George replied that Miles Davis already had that in the bag with Kind Of Blue and that maybe they should aim for best pop album ever. If the creators of Mr Gameshow had shown the same humility towards the last word in subversive surreal gameshows – Shooting Stars by Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer – they might have at least realised where the bar was set.
The Irish Times’ Inside Politics, and the rest of Irish times podcast stable , was created from a mix of digital publishing FOMO, and an adequacy of resources. Its a few talking heads talking shop, with nothing more to add than any other broadcast politics show. It’s weekly, so the lack of produced features and highly specialised guests means it has started to date even before it is published. Now that Second Captains has left the Irish Times, they need to up their game – which means bringing something new to the Irish podcast landscape.
Listen to episode 15: https://soundcloud.com/internationalradiocompany/podcast-review-show-ep-15
