Vital stats:
Format: mixture of tech speculation, audience participation and discussion of toys from 1990
Duration: 30m
Frequency: five days a week
Archive available on iTunes: all
Had I not found out last night about an anime-styled adaptation of The Oregon Trail for the iPhone, I would have deemed The 404 [RSS] [iTunes] the most Gen-Y product I’ve ever encountered. Sure, as the name suggests, it’s a show ostensibly about internet and technology culture and when both go wrong. But if you’re talking Gen Y, modulo the future Unabombers among us, you’re pretty much automatically talking about the net and the devices that engage us with it. You’re also talking about reminiscences of floppy disks, Super Soaker 100s and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Turtle Van.
The podcast is put out under the aegis of CNET, or CNet, or cnet, or c|net, whichever you prefer. Any way you type it out, I admit to never getting 100 percent clear on their mandate, function or purpose, despite having been well aware of the brand for at least 16 years. At this point, I suppose it’s just one of those “online media entities” that puts out such tidal waves of — excuse the hideous repurposed net-neologism, but — “content” that you’re going to periodically find yourself watching, reading or listening to output of theirs no matter what. Depending on how you count, they put out between eight and 32 podcasts. This is one of them.
It’s easy to imagine a non-CNET-sponsored version of The 404. Hell, odds are a few of them exist. Hosts Jeff Bakalar, Wilson Tang and Justin Yu all act like pretty normal guys, except, instead of holding the usual forms of podcaster employment — barista, grad student, “other” — they do professional-y stuff at CNET. The trio is thus anointed with a number advantages not possessed by your average basement broadcaster. First, they’re of necessity tapped way in to the tech/media flow. Second, they truly bring the energy every time, no doubt thanks to being encircled by a menacing ring of glowering bosses. Third, they can all get together in what sounds like the same New York studio with relatively atomic regularity, record, and upload about an hour later. Fourth, they have or are inentivized to gain the discipline to do it for 30 minutes a day, five days a week.
The downside of this slickness is, if you like, a certain over-“clean” feeling. I’m not positive, but I’m fairly certain that the hosts can’t swear and have to resort to sometimes-awkward workarounds. If that’s a rule, there are probably other restraints in place too, though I doubt CNET’s holding all that short a leash. The crew mixes it up with a great deal of audience involvement, though, from phone messages to contests to other recorded niceties. I’m unfailingly cracked up by one jingle, often played, that sounds as if it might have come from the voice and guitar of an enthusiastic fan: “♫ This is the 404, m-er f-ers / The show where we all sing songs ♫” Except that he really does say “m-er f-ers.” Feel the glower.
But damn, it says good things indeed that The 404‘s fans are so into the show; it seems as if they’re always sending in their jibes, their jokes, their jingles, their ‘shops. The image above this review was actually one fan contribution — one of many. The very best moment I heard, though, has to have been when a black lady called in to talk about her husband’s Turbografx-16, which she referred to as a “Turbo Tracks”. But then one of the hosts erroneously claimed that the “Turbografx” and the “Turbografx-16” were two different consoles, and they all agreed. Can I forgive that? I’m… not sure.
[Want to hire Podthinker Colin Marshall to Podthink at your debutante’s ball? colinjmarshall at gmail.]