“There are two kinds of people in the world,” a big-time Hollywood talent agent once said to me. “Those who watch television, and those who are on television.”
His point was, when it comes to media and fame, there really are only two categories. But on a more annoying level, what he meant was that it’s better to be in the latter classification. Be a be-on’er, not a watcher.
He was wrong, of course. In the first place, it’s pretty clear to anyone paying attention to American culture that appearing on television is about the lowest form of celebrity. America will put practically anything on camera, and there’s nothing too weird or odd or sad or creepy that someone in Los Angeles isn’t trying to put front and center in a new television series. You can trust me on that, because often that person is me.
In the second place, watching television is now a very complicated enterprise. Gone are the days of lying on the sofa, flipping through the channels. To watch a television series in 2020 is to make an active and often annoyingly complicated choice. You need to know which show is appearing on which streaming service — there are at least seven major services, with more on the way — and then there’s finding the HDMI input and the special remote, which is … somewhere? The coffee table? Under the cushions with the crumbs and four pennies?
Put it this way: I know a comedian who recorded a stand-up performance recently and managed to get it carried by one of the large streaming platforms. It’s harder for me to find his show and connect to the service than it was for him to record it in the first place. So complicated, in fact, that when he asked me if I saw it, I cheerfully shouted, “Yes! Loved it!” But the truth is I gave up when Apple TV needed me to log in to Amazon Prime for the 10th time, which I did, only to discover that his comedy special is on Hulu, which for some reason demanded a password reset, at which point I tossed the remote away (still not sure where it is) and shouted, “I’m out.”
Television, these days, is a terrible way to distinguish between those who are in and those who are out.
A more up-to-date version of the agent’s aphorism might be this: There are two kinds of people in the world — those who have their own podcasts and those who are about to start their own podcasts.
I appeared on a podcast last week, and part of the conversation was devoted to the three other podcasts that I regularly appear on and the podcast network that I co-founded. We talked about politics and the economy, sure, but mostly, we talked about other podcasts. That’s what podcasts are best at. And later that week, I appeared on my own weekly podcast and talked about what I said on the other podcast with my co-hosts.
Let me be clear: I love the podcast form. The podcast network I co-founded, Ricochet, offers some of the sharpest, funniest, and most engaging political and social conversation around. And my weekly commentary on Los Angeles-based public radio station KCRW reaches people all over the country, and the world, thanks to the magic of the podcast universe.
But, you know, there are drawbacks.
The podcast is perfectly emblematic of modern American cultural discourse: I’d like to talk, directly into your ears, about the things I’m interested in and the thoughts that I have, and I’d prefer to have this conversation be entirely one-way. In America, in 2020, we prefer talking over listening and have developed and nurtured technology to make that happen. Recording a podcast is now so cheap (it’s pretty much like recording a very long voicemail) that not only can anyone do it, but everyone does. The result is that we’re all the stars of our own talk-radio show, but one without a lot of annoying and interrupting callers.
“I feel like I’m basically the Rush Limbaugh of New England,” a podcaster once told me, to which I replied, “Oh great!” but inside, to myself, I thought: You ain’t no Rush Limbaugh, buddy. Rush is a broadcasting legend.
Although even Rush has cut way, way down on the call-in portion of his show. Or maybe that happened naturally, because so many of his listeners now have their own podcasts to record.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
