Perhaps most Max Funsters are already bona fide dinner party animals. Your Podthinker counts himself as one — or aspires to, in an case. What better way, then, to climb the ladder toward over-the-top gourmand status than with the first podcast geared specifically toward the dinner partier: KPCC‘s The Dinner Party Download [iTunes link], “the show that helps you win your next dinner party.” (Yes, they can be won.)
Each episode of The Dinner Party Download adheres strictly to a format. First comes the “ice breaker,” a corny joke. (Personal favorite: “How do you turn a duck into a popular soul singer? Microwave it until its bill withers.”) Then, in “small talk,” hosts Brendan Newnam and Rico Gagliano talk to reporters — usually the ones across the hall at Marketplace — about which events of the day make for the best hors d’œuvre conversation. After that, it’s “time for cocktails,” where they talk about an event from the week in history and then ring up a bartender to find out how to make a drink kinda-sorta related to it. They then converse with the “guest of honor,” some famous interviewee like M.C Frontalot [MP3], Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh [MP3] or filmmaker David Fincher [MP3], who seems to have fallen on creative hard times. In the “main course” that follows, they talk to foodmakers about food: fancy peanut-butter sandwiches [MP3], rare-bird delicacies [MP3], that sort of thing. Finally, there’s “one for the road, a song to play on your way to or departing from your dinner party.”
A pretty solid set of features, to be sure, but what’s most fascinating is, in this jungly world of podcasts, how… public radio-y the show sounds. It’s got everything public radio stations seem convinced will attract new blood to the listenership — young, just-laid-back-dudes hosts; semi-ironic pop cultural references; chats with artists that those twentysomethings seem to love — but it also retains the trappings that, unconsciously included, identify it to other, non-public-radio podcasts as Not One of Us. First and foremost, every segment noted in the above paragraph is crammed into about fifteen minutes, causing that rushed-along feeling one knows (and probably doesn’t love) from all stripes of traditional radio. This takes a serious toll on the interviews, which feel as if they run about twelve seconds and are conducted using the same two questions every time (“What are you sick of being asked?” and “Tell us something we don’t know about yourself”). As a hardcore fan and creator of the interview form (and one who considers the sub-30-minute interview to be essentially worthless), your Podthinker is pained by this.
Second, after having listened to hundreds of honest, mumbly podcaster voices, the interaction between Rico and Brendan — indeed, between most professional public radio hosts — sounds suspiciously polished, like it’s the fifth or sixth rehearsed take. And third: please, public radio producers, take this to heart: there’s no need to wedge a music bed under everything. There are many answers to your problems; music beds are not among them.
Vital stats:
Format: cultural variety
Running since: July 2008
Duration: ~15m
Frequency: biweekly, roughly
Archive available on iTunes: four months
[High-priced Podsultant Colin Marshall accepts all offers at colinjmarshall at gmail. Discuss Podthoughts on the forum here or submit your own podcast for the next by-Max-Funsters column here.]