{"id":1260,"date":"2013-01-12T16:49:13","date_gmt":"2013-01-13T00:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1260"},"modified":"2013-01-12T16:49:13","modified_gmt":"2013-01-13T00:49:13","slug":"podthoughts-unfictional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1260","title":{"rendered":"Podthoughts: UnFictional"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/center><\/p>\n

Vital stats:<\/strong>
\nFormat: independently produced documentaries, mostly from Los Angeles and the U.K.
\nEpisode duration: ~30m
\nFrequency: weekly<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not easy to title a show, granted, but avoiding fiction strikes me as a mark of no particular distinction in public radio. Indeed, in more judgmental moments I pin the blame for the creative malaise afflicting the industry on its upper ranks dominated by people who began in (or have spent a little too much time in) newsrooms. This produces a number of deforming forces, from flamboyantly pious J-school convictions about the truth all the way down to simple stodginess. What a pleasant surprise, then, to hear in UnFictional<\/em><\/a> [RSS<\/a>] [iTunes<\/a>] very little stodge at all. Why, airing stories about colossally powerful car stereos<\/a>, self-immolation<\/a>, blind baseball<\/a>, and the U.K. roller derby<\/a>, it almost makes us describe it as stodge\u2019s opposite \u2014 but let\u2019s not go crazy. We\u2019re talking about public radio standards here. In fact, I suspect I\u2019ve already implied more radicalism than the show can realistically offer.<\/p>\n

Despite no doubt having rattled a few cages here and there over the past three years, UnFictional<\/em> comprises, for the most part, radio documentaries of the same basic type we\u2019ve been hearing for three decades. (This tradition tends these days to favor things like \u201csound-rich\u201d portraits of barrio life, which explains why I find so little support for my own projects, most of which are multi-hour conversations about Graham Greene.) The whole production comes as one of the newish offerings from KCRW, long the \u201ccool\u201d public radio station in Los Angeles. Don\u2019t read those air quotes as sarcasm; KCRW really does have the coolest programming, in part due to shows like this one, though it also trades on \u201ccool\u201d as a vibe \u2014 again, public radio standards, mind. Yet as a listener, I\u2019ve in recent years begun to glimpse a frown of deep discomfort behind the station\u2019s Wayfarers. With its schedule split between music, news, and cultural talk \u2014 not to mention Tuesday night\u2019s unmissable Santa Monica City Council meetings \u2014 KCRW probably fears the simultaneous eating of its lunch by predominantly newsy KPCC and music-oriented KCSN. An understandable fear, but one born, I would argue, of a framing mistake.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing at Maximum Fun<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vital stats: Format: independently produced documentaries, mostly from Los Angeles and the U.K. Episode duration: ~30m Frequency: weekly It\u2019s not easy to title a show, granted, but avoiding fiction strikes me as a mark of no particular distinction in public radio. Indeed, in more judgmental moments I pin the blame for the creative malaise afflicting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podthoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1260"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1262,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1260\/revisions\/1262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}