Out of control | 3 January 2019

You may have noticed the flood of podcasts that’s been pouring out of the BBC since the launch of its BBC Sounds app. This is supposed to give us easier access to the programme archive but actually has been an excuse to show off the podcasts now made by the corporation, from the specially made How to be a Muslim Woman to Turbulence, a clever series of linked short stories by David Szalay, which was commissioned by Radio 4 and released as a podcast at the same time as being broadcast on the network.

Podcasts are not bound by time and the demands of a schedule. They can last for ten, 20, 50, 100 minutes, taking as long as the story, the conversation, the facts require. Our ability to pick up the programme whenever it suits us means that the exchange is different; we are not being given stuff to listen to but are empowered to listen whenever it fits into our schedule. Lack of a ‘controller’, of an editorial vision, shaping programmes into a network style and character, means that every podcast sounds different. But that urge to be as unconventional as possible has its downside. Listening to the uninhibited chat and oversharing of so many ‘conversational’ podcasts (unless they are tied to a specific subject, like a football match, or are ‘guided’ by those who understand how we listen) is like being stuck at a party where everyone else has had just a little bit too much to drink but you’re stone-cold sober. How Unexpected Fluids, for instance, ever got past editorial control at the corporation is a mystery.

The number of podcasts now being made by the BBC also raises the question: where’s the money coming from? Are podcasts being given priority funding over network programmes? Or, perhaps more significantly, are the BBC’s podcasts constrained by such tight budgeting that they will never be able to compete with the sophisticated production values of online series such as Serial, created in Chicago by the team behind This American Life and funded by advertising and subscription.