I began my career as a producer for news and talk radio, so I have a lot of thoughts about what makes an audio-only medium work, as well as what makes it distinctive from other types of media. Radio can generate an intimacy that you don’t get anywhere else, often simulating the illusion that someone is talking one-on-one, directly to you. Beyond a platform to deliver the news, it’s also a way to tell stories and interview people about their work. It’s an art form, like any other, requiring a certain set of skills and talents.

But many of these qualities have fallen away with the advent of the podcast. A portmanteau of “iPod” and “broadcast,” its evolution is really the de-evolution of not only radio but TV as well.

The best radio shows — and some podcasts — understand that audio cues and production values can be used to give shape and texture and definition to a show. Crafting something tight but thoughtful takes a lot of work on the backend, and some of that is dictated by the experience of everyone involved.

Programming slots in radio (specifically the duration) are fixed. Outside of the morning zoo format, there isn’t time for faffing around on the air, lest you risk losing your listeners, who won’t hesitate to change the channel. 

By contrast, podcasts generally don’t have any time constraints, which has led to … well, a lot of faffing around. They are cheaper and easier to launch (all you need is a mic and some software) and the difference is noticeable. 

On TV, daytime and late-night talk shows have lost their pop cultural hold, and podcasts have stepped into the breach by sticking cameras somewhere in the vicinity of hosts and guests who are just … sitting in front of microphones talking. That this has become standard for podcasts — or at least expected — is as baffling as it is pointless, because not one of these filmed podcasts is doing anything with their visuals that justifies the presence of the camera. 

It’s no surprise streaming platforms — which, in their short, decade-long existence, stopped innovating and have reverted to reinventing the wheel — want a piece of the action. Which explains this recent announcement in The Hollywood Reporter:

Netflix is launching a slate of original and exclusive podcasts, as it makes an aggressive push into the format. The streaming giant on Wednesday announced that former ‘Saturday Night Live’ star Pete Davidson and former NFL star Michael Irvin would host new video podcasts for its platform. Davidson will host ‘The Pete Davidson Show’ every week, featuring “no-holds barred conversations” filmed mostly in his garage.

Oh, his garage, you say? Gee, that sounds familiar.

At least Marc Maron, whose podcast “WTF” (recorded in his garage-turned-studio and ended last fall after a 16 year run) produced an actual podcast in the traditional format of what might have once been a staple on the radio, resulting in often-probing conversations. Very few performers (like Maron, who is also both a comedian and actor) have been able to switch as seamlessly into the role of host, though that doesn’t stop them from trying. Or even succeeding.

Davidson’s show — I refuse to call it a podcast — premiered its first episode last week and, perhaps not surprisingly, it’s doing exactly what you would expect.

In contrast to most video podcasts, his set (his garage) is dark as opposed to brightly lit, which I suppose could create an intimate and private setting if it were executed better. But the overall effect is musty and dank.

The musician Machine Gun Kelly is his first guest and they sit in half shadow, chain smoking on mismatched reclining easy chairs. The set is little more than a backdrop reminiscent of the kind used for school photos, only darker, and two stacked paint cans between them serving as a sidetable for their ashtray. Davidson looks like he just rolled out of bed, but the overall effect isn’t a shrugging effortlessness, but a lack of ideas.

Machine Gun Kelly — Colson (his given name) to his friends — begins with a nothingburger of a story about his flight in that day. It’s the kind of non-anecdote wouldn’t have passed the pre-interview muster on a TV talk show because any producer worth their salt wouldn’t have allowed it.

What’s the opposite of raconteur? Because that’s what both men are, which means neither can shoulder the weight of guiding the conversation somewhere interesting, or at least somewhere funny or unexpected. It’s a lot of “remember when” that’s fine for two people who lived these memories, far less so for anyone else.

Davidson acknowledged his lack of interview/hosting skills recently when he appeared as a guest on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon”:

Your job is hard, dude … you have to pretend to care about people everyday. It’s fun when you have your friends. Like, this is easy. Or when you have people that you work with. It’s like, you know, you’re just talking. But you have to interview people that you don’t know.

It’s hilarious that

a) he is ascribing interviewing talent to Fallon, who might the worst late-night talk show host in terms of interviewing technique

and

b) he is, with zero self-awareness, describing an interviewer’s job and then acknowledging that not just anyone can do it

“You have to pretend to care” is really just another way of saying “You need to bring a curiosity about your guests to each show.” That’s all it is.

The stuff about it being easier to talk to people you know isn’t necessarily true. The easiest people to interview are, in fact, naturally talkative and understand how to tell a story.

It’s everyone else — be they shy or awkward or reticent or just unsure of themselves — who present a challenge. But it’s not a deal-breaker; a good host understands how to help people relax into the interview. Everyone requires a different approach. Sometimes that means the job is to simply give the guest enough prompts to do their thing. Sometimes it requires more work from the host in order to draw out something meaningful. That’s why interviewing is a professional skill. It takes practice. And a fundamental interest in who people are. Just because you’ve had some measure of success on camera doesn’t mean you have any facility for this.

(As an aside, there are plenty of podcasts that are non-fiction but scripted and premised around an extraordinary amount of research, and I have a lot of respect for a lot of them. What I’m focused on here are the looser efforts, mostly from celebrities but also people who think you can just sit down and talk and somehow that will create a show.)

On a recent episode of SmartLess, the popular but weirdly uneven podcast hosted by Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes, the guest was Charli xcx. When the conversation turned to the subject of children, Bateman stuck his foot in his mouth.

First, he assumed she wanted to have children:

Would you love to have more than one kid or would you like to have a kid that has the same experience as you, the only child, and then you get to nurture and protect?

Her response:

I actually don’t really want to have kids. That could change. I love the fantasy of having a child. Like naming it — it sounds so fun — but I’m like, that is exactly assigned to me as to why I should not have one, the fact that [picking a name] feels like the coolest part about it.

I don’t know how open she was to this line of questioning, but her response is pretty self-aware! Instead of asking thoughtful questions in response, Bateman seemed intent on convincing her that yes, she might in fact change her mind if she met the right guy.

“Well, I’m married,” she told him.

The thing is, I could imagine a TV talk show host saying something just as cringey as Bateman. Martin Short’s Jiminy Glick character is premised on satirizing exactly this kind of thing!

But it seems almost standard on too many podcasts. Moreover, you wonder if these hosts are even listening to what their guests are saying and picking up on the subtext. Or looking for opportunities to play.

Johnny Carson was so good at that. I wouldn’t describe him as a great interviewer, but he was sensitive to whatever was happening in the moment — the energy his guest was giving off — and able to respond in kind.

There’s a famous interview he did with Charles Grodin in 1990 that’s fascinating because of how each man is figuring out, in real time, just what the hell this interview is even going to be. Grodin’s intensity was always kind of electric because you never knew if it was authentic or just a bit, which creates all kind of delicious tension. His interview on “The Tonight Show” is awkward and uncomfortable — a rare instance of Carson occasionally being pushed back on his heels — and therefore funny:

Guests on TV talk shows also understand they are there to give a performance in addition to shilling whatever they’re shilling — to bring interesting stories or at least an interesting energy to the proceedings — and that’s rarer on podcasts, where things tend to be more relaxed, for better or for worse. If some TV talk show appearances feel too pre-rehearsed or careful, an equal number of podcast appearances feel undercooked. Podcasts tend to lean into “this is just like listening to someone talk over drinks at a bar,” without taking into account that you need to do a lot of work ahead of time (and probably some time in post-production) to actually pull off that illusion.

On a recent appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Ian McKellen performed a speech that is largely believed to be written by Shakespeare for a bio-play of Thomas Moore, who was one of Henry VIII’s senior advisors. It’s about the evils of xenophobia, timely as hell and such a pointed way for McKellen to get some thoughts across about this moment we’re living in by using his specific toolkit — his incredible strengths as an actor — to do it.

The segment begins about 20 minutes into the interview:

“All right,” McKellen says. “Live theater.” He sets the stage:

It’s all happening 400 years ago in London and there’s a riot happening. There’s mob out in the streets and they’re complaining about the presence of strangers in London, by which they mean the recent immigrants who’ve arrived there … and the authorities send out this young lawyer, Thomas Moore, to put down the riot, which he does in two ways. One by saying you can’t riot like this, it’s against the law. Shut up. Be quiet. And also, being by Shakespeare, with an appeal to their humanity.

I don’t know why this performance was what made the dam break for me, but I was weeping by the end:

You’ll put down strangers? … Your mountainous inhumanity.

It was an effective way to illustrate how artists can make an impact. And I don’t know if most podcasts create a similar kind of opening.

Maybe it’s not fair to put Davidson’s efforts in the same category. Though his career was built on his ability to be funny, those instincts are nowhere to be found on his Netflix show. He simply doesn’t know how to incorporate them.

But he seems uninterested in doing something entirely earnest, either. So the show is neither fish nor fowl.

In the first episode, there’s a moment when Colson talks about his efforts to be more comfortable revealing who he really is behind the celebrity persona: “You’re so open about your story,” he says to Davidson, “and I’m so closed — like, no one wants to hear this. I’m trying to get out of the caginess that I’ve cemented myself in.”

He sounds contemplative and you sense, if he were asked more, he would say more. But instead, Davidson responds with a quip, which short-circuits any opportunities for Colson to go further. You see the problem inherent with friends interviewing friends; there’s a protective instinct that may or may not be necessary. Colson is an adult and his words were an invitation: Ask me more.

There’s no one way to do a talk show. It just has to be compelling. Even if the end goal is nothing more than entertaining chatter, there needs to be some substance or artfulness there, because the best conversations never just glide across the surface.

These are TV talk shows masquerading as podcasts

It’s funny, because Larry King pioneered this. He first gained prominence with an overnight syndicated radio show. When he added a TV version, called “Larry King Live,” it was barebones as these things go: A version of the radio show, simply done in front of the cameras, on a set. But at least there was some production value involved. And King was a skilled interviewer, and — importantly — one with his own style. He wasn’t worried about broaching touchy or uncomfortable subjects.

I’m not the only one to point out that these filmed podcasts are really just low-rent TV talk shows. Reality Blurred founder Andy Denhart said as much recently: 

Celebrities talking to each other or interviewing other celebrities, while sitting in a furnished, designed, well-lit studio, filmed with multiple cameras, available to watch on video platforms …

… is a talk show, not a podcast.

Hosting is a specific skill that requires a lot of self-disclipline and sharp instincts. Don’t step on the guest’s toes, but keep the flow moving. The best are able to create a spontaneous sense of pacing and understand when to either push or abandon a conversational thread.

It’s hard to do well, which is why most actors (though not all) have struggled when given the opportunity to host a TV talk show, so it’s no surprise this is true of celebrity-hosted podcasts, as well. 

Amy Poehler has styled herself as a “good hang” (also the name of her podcast) where everything is cheery and smiley and upbeat, but not especially interesting. Sometimes a celebrity who hosts their own podcast will be a guest on another celebrity podcast and it becomes a nesting doll of celebrity podcast appearances, but the conversations rarely go anywhere worthwhile.

Sometimes celebrities style themselves as pseudo-journalists and inevitably flounder when a topic is beyond their skill set. There’s always a seemingly unspoken pact to not do or say anything that would jeopardize their personal relationships (or future ability to book jobs). So instead, everything has the whiff of PR and is filled with superlatives. “You’re great.” “No, you’re great.” Great.

By the way, Netflix podcasts (sorry, “podcasts”) are apparently not available on actual podcast apps. Meaning, the only way to access them is by watching them through your TV/iPad/laptop.

That’s not a podcast, then.

This is likely all about money

Most (possibly all?) celebrity podcasts are non-union, and therefore much cheaper to produce.

SAG-AFTRA has something called a Network Television Code contract which covers appearances on “non-dramatic” TV, which includes variety shows, award shows, game shows and, yes, talk shows.

IATSE is the union that represents most TV crew who work behind the scenes.

I reached out to SAG-AFTRA, IASTSE and Netflix to ask if the streamer’s “podcasts” were union and got no response from anyone.

Take from that what you will.