#which would make lydia a fun new development for an 'us' that's been stable as us for quite a while
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fave headcanon for each character??
YE!!! I have a good few for each different version of Beetlejuice, haha, but I’ll just go crazy about the musical for now. I’m about to go crazy I’m so sorry
So I actually really love this idea that Charles used to be a theatre kid. He just has big theatre kid energy, you know? So dramatic, such a baratone voice. But he took up the more lucrative real estate job when he and Emily got married because he wanted to be have stable income for his new family. He loved to play pretend with Lydia when she was little, really let his inner actor out in their games. There are a few home videos Emily took of them that he’d rather no one else saw, huehue
I like to think Barbara grew up on a farm, doing hard work and getting real strong and all of her hobbies involve getting hands on with stuff still, like pottery and gardening. (You can’t take the farm out of the farm girl) she’s super buff and can carry just about anyone, which surprises a lot of people. She also knows a lot about taking care of plants and animals from it.
I think Adam didn’t grow up with a dad. He didn’t even know who his dad was. It was just him and his mom his whole life and he grew up insecure about it. He doesn’t like to talk about it, all the kids he knew growing up would make fun of him for it. It’s also part of why he’s so scared of being a dad himself. But helping raise Lydia quenches that fear real fast.
Delia used to be grunge and knows how to play bass. Somewhere she has a hidden album of photos from the time she joined a grunge band as backup vocals as well as bass, and she doesn’t want anyone to see because she’s been made to feel embarrassed of it by her old ex-friends. One day Lydia found the photos and begged Delia to teach her how to play. This was also the time Delia realized she was pansexual when she developed a crush on the female drummer.
Lydia now has a fear of the people she loves getting sick. (Same with Charles actually haha) Watching her mom get so sick left Lydia reeling and she never wants to see someone she loves get that way ever again. If Charles, or Delia, or heck even Beej ever get ill, she gets uncharacteristically worried, and watches them like a hawk and makes sure they don’t push themselves. She is also little lesbian, but wonders occasionally if she might be aromantic.
Beej is never in danger of getting eaten by sandworms. One of the few perks of his status as a born dead is that he smells different to sandworms, so they don’t see him as prey like they do ghosts. Because of that he actually is able to hang out with them a lot and is pretty fond of the beasties. Sandy is the first Sandworm he’s ever ridden though, and he likes her a lot, she’s the nicest Sandworm he’s ever met.
Big Sandy acts like a protective mama Sandworm but she is not actually a mom. She does have a bunch of nieces and nephews that she adores, one especially feisty niece called Lil Sally who is smol for a Sandworm but super ready to kick ass and eat ghosts ;3 But Sandy doesn’t have any biological kids. She has however adopted Beej and the Maitlands and the Deetz
Skye the Girl Scout has the biggest puppy crush on Lydia. Lydia takes Skye as her apprentice, like Beej took Lydia as his, and she and Skye can raise absolute hell should they ever decide to. Lydia knows Skye has a crush on her, and it’s cute, but Lydia sees the Girl Scout as a little sister. She’ll definitely chaperone any date Skye has though, the queers gotta stick together, you know?
Miss Argentina and Toaster Lady are wives, and you can’t change my mind. Ever.
Otho disappeared during the events of the musical, and no one knows what happened to him. Did he actually die?? Did he just get sent somewhere else and he hasn’t contacted them again? Beetlejuice never says what the truth is, and at this point, people are too scared to ask.
Maxie Dean fired Charles after the disaster dinner. He died of unknown circumstances a few months later. Maxine Dean mysteriously disappeared before police could question her about it.
I’ll stop here but y’all can keep asking me shit haha. Hell send in your own headcanons! I’d love to hear it 🖤
#beetlejuice#beetlejuice the broadway musical#beetlejuice the musical#beetlejuice broadway#asks#anon#anonymous#thank you for the chance to blab anon 🖤#if anyone wanted to know about my ocs developed for ibbp fic I’m all up for talking about them too👀👀#adam maitland#barbara maitland#charles deetz#delia deetz#lawrence beetlejuice shoggoth#lydia deetz#guru otho#skye the girl scout#miss argentina#netherworld ensemble#maxie dean#maxine dean#big sandy#lil sally#headcanons
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I really liked how you wrote the a/b/o dynamic in your last fic. It wasn't some thing that overruled and defined everything about the characters, which is so awesome because I doubt many people - Stiles especially - would deal well with that. Anyway, i thought I'd washed my hands with a/b/o fics but it's sucked me back down again. Do you have any fic recs?
thank you so much! that fic was super fun to write, and I loved cramming in all my favorite tropes :) I’m a big fan of a/b/o, idek why, but I love it. I’m sure all the ones I’d rec are well known, but here’s a list of some of my favs in no particular order.
we can take our time by KouriArashi
Tact and social mores are completely relegated to the back of Derek’s brain, and without thinking, he blurts out, “Did you spend your heat alone?”
Stiles’ head jerks around in surprise, and then he flushes pink and looks away. His voice comes out brusque and unfriendly. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I spend every heat alone.”
Knot if You Don’t Knock by jsea, marguerite_26
Stiles never expects to present as an omega – that’s something that happens to people like Greenberg, not him. He is so wrong.
His life only gets stranger when Derek Hale mistakenly bursts through the door of his exam room during a doctor’s appointment. What happens next is a complicated series of events, including freshly baked cookies, book-carrying and surprise heats.
Build an Ivory Tower by teot
Stiles didn’t know how Derek sleeping on his floor developed into sleeping in his bed, or how cuddling ended up turning into Derek humping his ass. He didn’t agree to being knotted in the school locker room, either. But what can you do when Derek Hale wants something? He’s the Alpha, after all.
You Smell Like Mine by bleep0bleep, marguerite_26
People talk about the alpha instinct, an alpha’s head being swayed by a nice-smelling omega, or the desire to drop everything and show off. Derek’s never felt any of that. He’s just not that kind of alpha.
Then he meets Stiles.
Say It With Me (Don’t Assume) by orphan_account (I’m pretty sure this is by KuriKuri, does anyone know if this was abandoned on purpose or not, since they’re’ still on AO3 with other fic?)
Derek knows way too much about how omega heat suppressants work now, after having been partnered with Stiles for as long as he has. They’re probably his favorite thing to bitch about whenever they’re stuck on a stakeout. Of course, omegas on the force aren’t required to take them. Derek’s never really understood why Stiles does, if he hates them so much, especially –
– especially because he’s bonded.
#omegaproblems by subnivean
Stiles didn’t need an alpha. He might want one, though.
The Sanctuary by chase_acow
Stiles runs away during his first heat, right into the waiting and ambiguously scary arms of the Alpha’s nephew, Derek Hale. He doesn’t have any choice except to submit, but along the way, he digs up a mystery that threatens his family and even the town’s safety.
Old Traditions, Werewolf Edition by Footloose
Stiles does not work his Omega ass off to attract frat boy Alphas. Absolutely not. He’s at college to get his degree. If he’s crushing on an Alpha who never crosses the lines of propriety, well, no one needs to know, right?
Mix and Match by Jerakeen
Stiles walks into the Beacon Hills alpha-omega mixer with a smile on his face and three condoms in his wallet.
monday i can fall apart but by friday i’m in love by tryslora
It’s just past five in the morning and Stiles is barely awake, wearing only sleep pants that hang low below his pregnant belly, and he can’t get the damned brand new jar of decaf coffee open. But he has a neighbor, and he’s too tired to think that waking someone else up at this hour might not be the best (or politest) of ideas.
Someday Came Today by Fatebegins
“March 2, 1810…Today, I met the man I’m going to marry.”
At the age of eight, Genim “Stiles” Stilinski showed no signs of Great Beauty. And even at eight, Stiles learned to accept the expectations society held for him–until the evening when Derek Hale, the handsome and dashing Alpha of the Hale pack, solemnly kissed his hand and promised him that one day he would grow into himself, that one day he would be as beautiful as he already was smart. And even at eight, Stiles knew he would love him forever.
But the years that followed were as cruel to Derek as they were kind to Stiles. Stiles is as intriguing as the Duke boldly predicted on that memorable day–while Derek is a lonely, bitter man, crushed by a devastating loss. But Stiles has never forgotten the truth he set down on paper all those years earlier–and he will not allow the love that is his destiny to slip through his fingers . .
Rare Books and Special Collections by KuriKuri
Derek Hale hates libraries.
Unfortunately, not all books can be ordered on Amazon.
(Or: in which Derek is a grumpy omega writer, and Stiles is an annoyingly attractive alpha special collections librarian.)
The One With The Mail-Order Brides and A/B/O Dynamics by Stoney
Wolves aren’t meant to be alone. Laura tells Derek this repeatedly. Which… is why Derek knows he’s losing his mind, as Laura has been dead for more than six years. Wolves aren’t meant to be alone.
And so he sends away for a companion. JUST for a companion, not for a mate. The universe, however, has a different plan in store for him.
here comes trouble by grimm
All Derek wants is one day where he can sleep without worry of being woken by gunfire, without the threat of death hanging over his head. He wants a full stomach and no pain clinging to his bones, no ache in his feet from months of running. He wants a shower, a safe place to put his head. He wants his family, the healing comfort of pack. He’ll never have any of that again.
You’re a Mess, But You’re a Catch to Me by jsea
The laws are clear: omegas are required to have an alpha guardian. So when the sheriff gets shot, Derek is roped in to stepping up as Stiles’ temporary alpha while he recovers.
Derek knew it was going to be a bad idea, but he never could have predicted all of the ways that Stiles would end up turning his life upside down.
Worth the Wait by Dexterous_Sinistrous
Stiles always had a thing for Derek, but then again, so did everyone else. Stiles just wanted to be seen as different, which was why he waited.
But maybe he waited a little too long.
Can’t Be Saved (Not So Frail) by weathervaanes
“Kira doesn’t care a wick if you can afford her dresses and bonnets, I’m well aware. It doesn’t change the fact that I have to look after her best interests. I’d like her to be with an Alpha that puts her above all else even if he cannot afford her every luxury.”
Scott looks surprised. “I know you do not know me, sir, but I can promise you that that is my only wish. I—I love Kira quite dearly, and all I want is to provide for her, make her happy.”
“So you will marry off your brother,” Derek says, taking a sip from his drink.
-0-
In which Kira is Derek’s ward, Stiles is Scott’s brother, and omega heat cycles are good for everyone.
Fight Fires In Your Best Clothes by standinginanicedress
The key isn’t actually being confident, he repeats in his head in Lydia’s breathy voice. It’s faking the hell out of it and looking as sexy as possible while you do it. For omegas, it’s easy. There’s a natural charm to all of us that only takes seconds to engage, and barely takes practice.
Walk into the room, he chants in his head. Own it, and look people in the eyes. Find the best looking alpha, have them buy you a drink, and the rest is easy.
Fallen for You by Mynuet
Stiles is not swooning when his hot next door neighbor comes to his rescue. He’s not! Maybe a little.
Survival of the Species by Lissadiane
“I think I’m dying.” Nothing makes sense – and now Derek has left him.
“No, Mr. Stilinski,” Deaton says grimly, rooting around in his special cupboard of herbs and remedies. “I’m afraid not. You’re merely suffering from a biological imperative to bear your alpha’s children and strengthen the pack.”
Stiles considers that for a moment, as best he can with his mind a hazy mess, and then he says quietly, “I think that might be worse.”
“So, so much worse,” Scott agrees.
*In which Derek’s pack is apparently stable enough to begin planning for the future, and somehow, the universe has decided Stiles is the perfect candidate to bear his alpha’s children.
i need your sway by thatworldinverted
Stiles always figured it would be Scott who saw him through his first heat. They pinky-swore on it, in fact, when they were eleven and newly-presented. There haven’t exactly been an abundance of offers between then and now.
What there is now, though, is the pack, and pack takes care of each other.
How to Woo Your Local Omega by alocalband
Stiles knows a pity gift when he sees one. Mostly because that’s all he’s ever gotten from anyone since the moment he hit puberty.
I don’t know why, but I guess it has something to do with you by LunaCanisLupus_22
“You smell like me,” the guy says, scowling as he crowds in and Stiles staggers back between the coats and finally hits the wall. “Why do you smell like me?”
He barely lets out a garbled sound as the blood rushes to his cheeks. “No reason,” Stiles yelps, struggling to get his footing and grasping at a whirlwind of puffy fur.
Or the one where Stiles goes thrift shopping and steals an alpha’s shirt. And gets a lot more than he bargains for.
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Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 181, published October 16, 2018.
The state of Slate. Two seemingly conflicting ideas can be true at the same time. Here’s the first idea, which doubts a line of speculation I’ve been seeing a lot lately: Panoply’s divestment from the content business tells us relatively little about the future of the podcast business at Slate, its sister company under the Graham Holdings family. Here’s the second idea: there’s a lot changing at Slate at the moment, and I can’t tell you for certain what its podcast operations will look like this time next year.
Does this paint a worrying picture? Not necessarily. Let’s go over the notes.
Over the past week or so, the veteran digital media company has seen some turnover at the leadership level. On October 4, it was announced that Slate’s editor-in-chief, Julia Turner, is departing for the Los Angeles Times, where she will serve as the newly revitalized paper’s deputy managing editor for arts and entertainment. She will, however, remain as co-panelist on the Slate Culture Gabfest, which means that the podcast will mirror the Slate Political Gabfest in being a Slate podcast stalwart that features three main panelists who aren’t on staff. Deputy editor Lowen Liu takes over Turner’s spot for now.
Then, last Wednesday, Slate’s executive producer of podcasts, the NPR alum Steve Lickteig, announced that he, too, would be leaving the company, to become the executive producer of audio and podcasts at NBC News and MSNBC. (There, he will be joined by senior producer Barbara Raab.)
All this comes on top of the executive-level departure that was announced last month in tandem with the news that Panoply was laying off its editorial team: Jacob Weisberg, chairman of the Slate Group, was leaving to form a new audio company with Malcolm Gladwell, taking the audience-driving Revisionist History with them.
That these leadership exits are clustered is certainly eyebrow-raising, but any overtly glum narrative should be checked against the state of site’s actual podcast portfolio. And on that front, things seem to be quite good.
Consider that Slate has just wrapped up a very successful second season of its narrative documentary podcast, Slow Burn. Not only would I argue that it’s the best nonfiction narrative podcast of the year so far — yes, that includes Serial, In The Dark, and Caliphate, and yes, I’m aware it’s almost certainly recency bias — the sophomore season put up significant numbers. (Some of those numbers, apparently, came from White House aides.) I’m told that, as of Monday afternoon, the second season alone has seen 9.8 million downloads, with an expectation of beating 10 million by tomorrow. It was also an effective driver of subscriptions for Slate Plus, the site’s paid membership program, generating thousands of new members with its offerings of bonus content.
It’s worth noting that Gabriel Roth, previously a senior editor and editorial director of Slate Plus, will be taking up Steve Lickteig’s leadership role over the podcast team. Slow Burn was largely born out of the Slate Plus program, and I’m told that Roth was an instrumental part of the show’s development and strategy. He will hold a new title, editorial director of the Slate Podcast Network, and I, for one, am excited to see what else he brings into the mix.
Consider, also, that Slow Burn’s success comes on top of a well-oiled and sprawling show portfolio that most notably includes all of its Gabfest programming, The Gist with Mike Pesca, and Studio 360 (which it doesn’t own, but houses and co-produces in partnership with PRX-PRI).
That portfolio continues to grow: On Tuesday, Slate will launch its own daily news podcast (The Gist notwithstanding) called What Next with former WNYC personality Mary Harris at the mic, and the site also recently absorbed Karina Longworth’s popular history podcast You Must Remember This, previously housed at Panoply.
Again, two seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time. In this case, you have dramatic shifts at the leadership level, but you also have a product line that appears to be stable, robust, and reaching for new heights. Take from that whatever conclusions you will, but for me, I’m tempted to put a little more weight on the latter.
The only way is pods [by Caroline Crampton]. How real is reality, really, when it’s captured on a microphone, edited extensively, and then bundled with narration before being presented to the listener?
That’s the Big Question prompted by The Brights, a new British podcast launching this week that presents itself as part of a curious sounding genre: “structured reality.” Behind the production is a producer named Sarah Dillistone, who happens to be the brains behind big British reality TV hits The Only Way is Essex and Made in Chelsea, as well as host Lydia Bright, who found fame as a cast member on TOWIE. (That’s the fun acronym for The Only Way Is Essex, by the way, in case that wasn’t clear to you.) The Brights will follow Lydia and her family over the course of 12 weekly episodes, which will supposedly reveal their everyday highs and lows. It kicks off on October 18.
“[Podcasting] just felt like a really exciting space to be telling this sort of story in this genre,” said Dillistone when we spoke over the phone recently. I had reached out to learn about how she is translating her reality television work into the seemingly more modest audio medium.
“When you go into a family house to film a scene, you have set up your cameras, the lights go on, you have to place people in the exact position for the shot, and then they talk about whatever story is going on,” she explained. “With the podcast, we walked in, popped some mics on, and that was it…It just felt so natural. I can just walk out the room, and life continues being recorded, without the pressures of a camera.”
In many ways, the traditional methods for making a storytelling podcast — identifying characters and scenes, collecting a lot of tape, shaping it into the desired narrative, and then recording narration to go around it — are similar to the methods Dillistone said she uses to create her structured reality TV shows. The difference now that she’s working in audio, she emphasized, is how much less of an intervention the process of recording feels. With no cameras or yells of ��action” going on, “the environment just doesn’t change,” she said. “I think it’s completely different to the TV that I’ve made.”
The Brights also strikes me as a straightforward commercial proposition. Lydia Bright has nearly a million followers on Instagram — where she does plenty of sponcon — and appears fairly regularly in the tabloid pages. I’m sure that Acast, the podcast platform that hosts and sells ads for the project, won’t be struggling all that hard to find sponsors who want to follow Bright into podcasting as well.
In the accompanying press release, The Brights is strongly pitching itself as the world’s first ever reality podcast. But I don’t think it can stake claim on being the first “reality podcast” per se. After all, CBC’s Sleepover, Gimlet’s The Habitat, and maybe even something like Megan Tan’s Millennial arguably fall along design lines that are somewhat similar to what we generally talk about when we talk about reality television.
Where the podcast is distinct or unusual, perhaps, is in its focus on harvesting the profile of existing reality stars and the transference of the familiar reality TV aesthetic. Rather than Lydia Bright taking the route of other social media stars and building a generic interview podcast or similar to augment her #brand, she’s actually still doing the thing she’s best known for: goofing around and yelling at her family in public, but in your headphones.
The other chart. I spilled quite a bit of ink last week on the Apple Podcast charts, how they seemed more dysfunctional than usual, and how that complicates the way the industry is represented to the eyes of many newcomers. Apologies for quoting myself, but I posed two underlying questions: “What does it mean when the top of the Apple podcast charts, one of the first touchpoints for many newcomers, features more scams than authentic entries? What signal of values does the chart project to those experiencing their first glimpse of the wider podcast universe?”
Versions of these queries very much apply to the Podtrac Industry Publisher ranker, by the way, which is the other major node of industry representation that functions as a first touch for many newcomers — and which still gets cited as an authoritative picture of the “top end” of the podcast industry without much caveat.
As a reminder: Podtrac’s Publisher ranker continues to work with an incomplete sample. Which is to say, its list of Top Ten publishers only includes those who have chosen to participate in the ranking, and a good number of major players still have not. (The case is different for Podtrac’s podcast ranker, which purports to list shows regardless of whether they opt into Podtrac’s system.) I know nobody really clicks through when I link to my older columns — newsletter analytics, baby — but I wrote about those chart limitations two years ago.
Among the notable publishers that still do not participate in Podtrac’s Publisher Ranker: Gimlet Media, the Vox Media Podcast Network, Cadence13, and Stitcher. That’s not to say that they would all show up in the top 10 if they were included, mind you; I’m just making a point about what the ranker is actually telling you, and many of those noteworthy podcast shops remain excluded at this writing.
This should not be taken to mean that Podtrac’s industry ranker isn’t a helpful resource. I’ve come to find it really useful as a snapshot of the several major publishers that have opted into the list, and it’s generated some interesting questions for research: I, for one, am fascinated by why many companies in Podtrac’s top ten seems to cluster around the 5 million unique U.S monthly listeners mark. All I’m saying is that being “the third biggest publisher on the Podtrac” is far from being the “third biggest podcast publisher,” period — which is an interchanging I’ve seen used a fair bit.
In general, I’d counsel being wary of any industry analysis, ~thought leadership~, or self-congratulations using the Podtrac ranker that:
Doesn’t mention its incomplete sampling;
Doesn’t take into serious consideration the efficiency ratios of listed publishers — a publisher that needs 600+ shows to reach 5 million unique U.S. monthly listeners has a very different industry position than a publisher that reaches the same audience number with only 5 or 6 shows.
Put some nuance on it, y’know?
Locally sourced [by Caroline Crampton]. Repackaged radio content still makes up a considerable chunk of podcasts. Here in the UK, the BBC in particular does a lot of this — the majority of shows that you can see on its Apple page, for instance, went out as radio broadcasts first. Most of the time, they just get sandwiched with a new intro and outro bits. Occasionally, they slap on some extra material, but typically what you hear on the podcast is what you would have heard on the radio. Until the BBC’s recent shakeup to its podcast commissioning efforts (which I’ve written about in more detail here), this is how the corporation initially projected its influence through podcasting.
That was on my mind when I saw the announcement that BBC English Regions was planning to launch its own showcase podcast feed, called Multi Story. For the uninitiated, English Regions is the segment of the corporation that produces local and regional television, radio, and web content for England, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands. (Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have their own operations going on.) I assumed that the feed would be yet another basic radio repackage effort designed to broadly bump up the potential reach of the division’s 43 local radio stations. The project sounded like a budget-friendly way of getting local radio stories out through podcast feeds when individual stations, typically cash-strapped, might not have the time, bandwidth, or resources to produce original podcast content. And you know, I figured that was totally cool.
But when I listened to the opening of “Swallows,” the first episode dropped into the Multi Story feed last Wednesday, I realized that this was something far more than a simple repackage.
Veteran local radio journalist Becca Bryers, who serves as host and producer, had woven hand-picked excerpts of personal stories from various local radio documentaries into a contemplative, act by act structure. It’s vaguely reminiscent of the way a typical episode of This American Life is constructed. The show’s atmosphere feels purely suited to on-demand audio, from the scoring to Bryers interjecting dashes of her personal life experiences. Even more notably, the episode was largely stripped of any local radio promotional effort in favor of a clean, immersive, podcast-first listening experience.
“Local radio gets stories that perhaps some of the networks don’t, almost because they’re not able to, because at a local station you’re coming into contact with people on a really small level all the time,” Bryers told me. The idea of a digital audio project weaving these more lasting, timeless, personal stories together seemed the natural next step to her.
Development for Multi Story began around 18 months ago, when Bryers took that idea of weaving together timeless and personal locally sourced stories to the then English regions commissioner, David Holdsworth. After getting her to make a pilot, he commissioned a ten-episode first series of Multi Story, an out-of-the-box move for a BBC executive heading up a division that had no real track record with podcasting. It’s a stretch play that Bryers is grateful for. “I really appreciate that he took that chance on me,” she said.
Bryers sees Multi Story first and foremost as a chance to make a rgreat podcast rather than necessarily as a direct promotional tool for radio or the local stations that it draws on. “I don’t know if completely the aim is to increase the listenership for the radio stations,” she said. “Obviously you’d hope that it raises awareness of local radio in general…We think of it a bit like the Facebook pages that each of the local stations have. Originally the thinking with those was as a branding strategy for the station, whereas often now we see them as a separate entity, just another service that the local stations offer. Just because you use the Facebook page doesn’t mean you listen to the radio and vice versa.”
She used her contacts in local radio to find “producers who really get podcasting” at each station, who would then populate a farm system feeding her suitable stories. She also did a substantial amount of original reporting, gathering tape for “stories I’ve been working on for a while but haven’t found a place on the station.” With the pieces that had already been broadcast, she worked extensively to “reversion” them in a “podcasty way,” to avoid the sound being that of replayed radio. “That’s not to take away from the original broadcast,” she said. “I think that if you’ve got something that’s two people talking in a studio, there’s ways that you can lift that into a podcast style and put music under it, or give it more pauses, and breathing space.”
The result, I think, is something quite rare — a genuinely fresh piece of audio made partly from cuts of previous broadcasts. Bryers’ personal immersion in podcasting (she counts herself a massive fan of Ira Glass and Radiolab) and determination to do something different have allowed her to break out of the customary “BBC sound,” and hers is a template that others trying to squeeze more out of the BBC’s existing resources could do well to follow. “I’m genuinely passionate about doing this,” Bryers said. “I really hope that it comes across that it’s not just a ‘local radio thinks they should jump on the podcast bandwagon’ thing.”
Speaking of locally oriented media and podcasts…
The national local. Next Monday will see the release of Believed, an investigative series by NPR and Michigan Radio, the state’s network of local public radio stations. The podcast will examine the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal, one of the largest serial sexual abuse cases in American’s history. Michigan Radio reporters Kate Wells and Lindsey Smith will host the series. Here’s a great Elle write-up outlining the show.
Here’s something that this NPR-Michigan Radio collaboration is making me think about: this scandal was originally vaulted into the national consciousness by The Indianapolis Star, the Gannett-owned daily news organization in neighboring Indiana. Gannett, of course, also owns the USA Today Network, which recently launched its own nationally oriented podcast platform that intends to use Gannett’s ecosystem of local publishing entities as pipelines for potential investigative projects.
I bring Gannett’s national podcast initiative up to highlight what seems to be a noticeable increase in the trend of local-national podcast production partnerships. For some reason, my gut tells me that this isn’t a particularly new development, but I can’t seem to find very many similarly structured productions going back over the past four years. (In other words, hit me up with examples I totally missed.)
Anyway, here are two other contemporary productions that I see fitting into this mold:
(1) Gladiator, a limited series that debuted yesterday from the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team in collaboration with Wondery on the former NFL player Aaron Hernandez, who was convicted of murder and later took his own life in prison. This project continues Wondery’s strategy of partnering with local news organization to produce feverish, nationally eye-catching podcast programming that can be then packaged off as adaptation IP — see: the Los Angeles Times’ Dirty John, now an upcoming Bravo series starring the great Connie Britton. (Give! Connie! Britton! More! Roles!)
Speaking of which, the LA Times is apparently developing two follow-ups to the aforementioned Dirty John, or so the company announced at the recent NewFronts West event. Here’s some info for those projects, as described by AdWeek:
The first new podcast project, tentatively titled Big Willie, will follow a local street racing veteran and Vietnam veteran, examining his eccentric career and checkered legacy; the second, Room 20, centered on an unidentified car crash victim who has been in a coma for 17 years, will piece together clues about the man’s life.
Note that they are both true crime projects. True crime: if it works for them, it works for you.
(2) Last week also saw the release of Underdog, a new weekly podcast documentary from Texas Monthly and Pineapple Street Media tracking the closing days of the Democratic senatorial campaign of Beto O’Rourke — pronounced Beh-to, not Bey-to, as I learned from the first episode — as we crawl into the midterm elections.
Local-national production partnership aside, here’s why I’m in on this show. As I, armchair political analyst Nick Quah, told Fast Company:
[O’Rourke’s] fight with Ted Cruz is increasingly a stand-in for a bigger struggle about the heart of America… I know [O’Rourke] said otherwise, but he’s probably a viable 2020 [presidential] contender for the Democrats [if he wins]. I’d listen the crap out of a Beto-Cruz podcast.
But also: I remain fascinated by Pineapple Street’s continuing adventures with political media and podcasting. Underdog is a strictly journalistic product co-developed with a widely respected monthly, but Pineapple Street is also the shop that produced With Her, the official Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential election campaign podcast that’s essentially a longform political ad/branded podcast, and Stay Tuned with Preet Bharara, an interview show-slash-ideas platform for the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. There’s some line straddling here, but nonetheless, I’m very interested to see where else the boutique studio will take political podcasts, already a vibrant and saturated genre.
Midterms, everyone: it’s a mere three weeks away.
One last local podcast bite —
Last week also saw the final dispatch of WBEZ’s 16 Shots, which sought to document the Laquan McDonald police shooting trial in semi-real time. The production was the latest in a line of similarly structured efforts by MPR News with 74 Seconds, which followed the Philando Castile police shooting trial, and WHYY with Cosby Unraveled.
Betsy Berger, the station’s director of communications, tells me that they’re considering 16 Shots a success “from a journalistic perspective, as a partnership with the Chicago Tribune and critical acclaim.” She noted that it was promoted heavily on social media and through the station’s email newsletter, and that the project garnered more than 30 media placements. However, they declined to share download numbers.
This week in New York. Did you know that New York Magazine is developing not one but two new podcasts?
The Intelligencer, the new site that merged together NY Mag’s politics and business-focused Daily Intelligencer and tech-focused Select All sections, is working on something called 2038, which will “explore eight different visions of how we can expect to live in two decades.” It will be hosted by Max Read and David Wallace-Wells, and it drops tomorrow.
I wrote this up already, but now we have a thread: New York Magazine’s The Cut site is collaborating with Gimlet Media to produce a weekly “what’s happening in the newsroom” podcast, called The Cut on Tuesdays. It’s hosted by Molly Fischer, and the first episode dropped today.
These two projects add to Vulture’s ongoing interview podcast Good One: A Podcast About Jokes, hosted by Jesse David Fox, resulting a New York Magazine podcast portfolio shape that I suppose you can describe as “one-site, one-show.” For now, anyway. This marks the storied media organization’s second wave into on-demand audio; the first came in the form of Panoply partnerships, back when that company was still producing content and generally pursued a strategy of hand-holding non-audio publishers into the medium through Gabfest-style templates. That early wave resulted in the Vulture TV Podcast, New York Magazine’s Sex Lives, and the Grub Street Podcast, all of which are now defunct.
A disclaimer: I contribute to Vulture as a podcast critic, but I have no special insight into these matters. In fact, I didn’t even know these shows were in the oven! Freelancers and contractors, we are an afflicted kind, living in little wells with fleeting views of the sky.
Miscellaneous Bites
Eric Mennel, the co-creator of Criminal and a senior producer at Gimlet Media who hosted a recent season of Startup, is moving to NPR, where he will join the Embedded team. There, he will serve as a supervising producer tasked with making the podcast a “premiere franchise for serious journalism” whose work will be presented through various platforms.
The television adaptation of Crooked Media’s Pod Save America debuted on HBO this past week. Much like Texas Monthly’s Underdog podcast, it runs until the midterms, which means it’s a really limited series.
“Mississippi-based podcast aims to educate, impact local ears.” (AP)
via Nieman Lab
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