The Podcaster's Dilemma. Nolan Higdon

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Introduction

      Having a radio meant seriously going to war.

      Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism (1965)

Broadcasting from Oakland, California, “the center of the known universe,” Alicia Garza’s podcast Lady Don’t Take No! begins with the pronouncement: “This show is pro-Black, pro-Queer, proudly Feminist, and pro-Do-Whatcha-Like. Every week, you are going to get the best of what goes on in my head, what we’re lovin’ on, what we’re hatin’ on, what we might be and what we aint gon’ do.”¹ Garza, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement along with Patrisse Cullers and Opal Tometi, brings unfiltered community-based perspectives on everything from pop culture to politics. With broadcasts that elevate the voices of local and national Black activists, thinkers, and artists (e.g. Erika Huggins, W. Kamau Bell, Davey D., Lateefah Simon, Angela Rye, Laverne Cox), Garza’s broadcast, “recorded with whatever was lying around,”² embodies the spirit of media freedom. Opening against the alternative hip-hop beats of the Bay Area-based duo Latyrx, every broadcast sounds like a paradigm shift. Emerging in a summer of protest that followed the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the midst of the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic (“’rona and rebellion”), Lady Don’t Take No! is an audio brick thrown at the plateglass window of corporate misinformation, as Garza and her guests take back the narrative. Speaking as a member of the loving communities that she advocates for, Garza urges her listeners: “We do it for the culture, so the podcast is free 99 because we know, with the country in chaos, the least we could do is keep you from putting your money anywhere else than where it’s needed.”³

Garza’s Lady Don’t Take No! is emblematic of the hundreds of podcasts that we have undertaken to review and critique in this book. We are interested in understanding how contemporary voices in digital media are built upon the legacy of post-World War II revolutionary radio in places such as Algeria, Cuba, and Angola. We pay attention to the seamless flow between the home studios where so many of these broadcasts are recorded and the communities of voiceless and underrepresented people, who now have a public forum where they can express the unadulterated truth of their lived experiences. We are interested in the pro-Black, pro-Brown, pro-Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI), pro-indigenous, pro-queer, pro-working-class voices, which critique, interrogate, deconstruct, and engage in a revolutionary struggle of ideas against the slant and spin of corporate news media that manipulate fear, resentment, and division in order to manufacture consent. We are interested in the broad explosion of intersectional voices in dialogue about everything, from political organizing to plant-based diets. We are interested in the myriad coalitions that are formed behind the microphone. We are interested in alternative and anti-capitalist funding models that emphasize cooperation and collaboration over competition. We are interested in podcasting as a medium of decolonization.

Podcasting has exploded as a form of communication in recent years. In 2021 there were over 1 million active podcasts that contained more than 30 million podcast episodes.⁴ In 2018 these numbers stood respectively at 550,000 and 18.5 million.⁵ A 2019 study found that over half of Americans had listened to a podcast and over one third listen to a podcast monthly.⁶ These nascent media makers draw in sizable audiences, which range in the hundreds of thousands to millions.⁷ The phenomenon of podcasters increasing audience size is part of a broader trend, in which audiences abandon legacy media in favor of digital content. Indeed, television, radio, and newspapers have seen a precipitous drop in audience size over the last two decades.⁸ Meanwhile, from 2016 to 2017, the numbers of Americans who receive their news from online sources increased from 38% to 43%, while the number of viewers who receive their news from television decreased from 57% to 50%.⁹ Over that same year, the proportion of Americans who rely on social media for their news surpassed the proportion of those who rely on newspapers.¹⁰ By 2020, YouTube was steadily increasing as a news source for 26% of Americans.¹¹ In fact recent data reveal that even old generations, which have constituted the majority of legacy media audiences for decades, are increasingly depending upon digital spaces for their news.¹²

Podcasts are digital files with audio or video content that, once accessed, allow users to “timeshift and place-shift their listening and viewing habits through the downloading of content onto a personal computer or a portable media player for immediate or future viewing.”¹³ Podcasts should be understood as a continuation of auditory media such as radio. Podcasts and radio are similar but differ in audio quality, program advertisements, and time limits on broadcasts. Furthermore, podcast production is relatively affordable by comparison with recording in radio studios, and podcasts can be disseminated through the Internet rather than through traditional radio broadcast networks. As a result, they are easier to create than radio programs and more accessible to audiences.

      Radio and podcasting also differ in terms of their target audience. Where radio producers have traditionally focused on developing content that would attract the largest audience possible, podcasters tend to develop content for smaller or niche audiences. For example, rather than marketing themselves as concerned with any and all issues, podcasts are dedicated to specific themes. Thus, Speak Out with Tim СКАЧАТЬ