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‘I Know What a Podcast Is’: Post-Serial Fiction and Podcast Media Identity

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Abstract

This article explores a developing sub-genre of highly popular fiction podcasts emergent from the success of WBEZ’s Serial (2014). While numerous press commentators have branded such podcasts derivative, or as “trying too hard to be like Serial” (McFarland, Fiction podcasts are trying too hard to be like Serial, www.wired.com. 2015) this overlooks the crucial fact that Serial is not just an extension of effective radio journalism aesthetic and form, but rather offers an inherently and importantly successful, sympathetic utilisation and expression of its unique podcast media identity. Furthermore, discourses of derivation ignore the extent to which such shows expand upon Serial’s blueprint. From exploring a broad sampling of what we term post-Serial fiction, this chapter argues that audio-drama takes a new and critically important shape as the first explicitly podcast-oriented audio-fiction form.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Hancock and McMurtry (2017) for a more detailed discussion of fiction podcasting’s genealogy.

  2. 2.

    Indeed, it is worth noting that the show’s Peabody was awarded on the grounds of its ‘innovations of form and its compelling, drilling, account of how guilt, truth and reality are decided’ (Peabody Awards 2014).

  3. 3.

    This companionability of the podcast is, for Ulvestam, a key component to its future development: ‘We see a future where you can start listening to a podcast on your walk to work, get into your car and have it immediately start playing from where you left off and get home and have your Amazon Echo continue. It’ll learn with you and continuously play content that it knows will interest you, in different formats. That’s how we’ll make podcasts as easy to listen to as radio, and that’s why we’ll continue to grow.’

  4. 4.

    According to Snyder , the difference in storytelling (and indeed, a different way of relating to Koenig as a character, is due to the fact that ‘The structure of the story didn’t necessitate it [in series 2], so Sarah is not as much of a character’ (cited in Biewen et al. 2017: 82).

  5. 5.

    Similarly, in Archive 81, Dan’s new boss compares the audio-archive to both NPR , and perhaps This American Life more specifically, stating, ‘You like NPR, right? They’re like these little radio-documentaries, the uplifting ones’ (‘A Body in a New Place’).

  6. 6.

    This technique is not new per se; take, for example, The Columbia Workshop’s War of the Worlds (1938) whose creation of verisimilitude was second-to-none. The journalist Carl Phillips, played by Frank Readick, represented the CBS network’s respected news staff, even if never formally identified as a CBS correspondent. Indeed, CBS’s reputation as a respected chronicler of news was only reinforced during World War II and in particular, with the techniques of Edward R. Murrow. It seems only CBS could believably offer a programme where its news team went back in time to cover important events in history, play-by-play, minute-by-minute, sometimes not even surviving as in the Pompeii episode of You Are There (1947–50). Now, the new kind of radio journalist voice, transposed to podcasting, is signified by Koenig and her imitators.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

    Danielle Hancock

  2. University of Salford, Salford, UK

    Leslie McMurtry

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  1. Danielle Hancock
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  2. Leslie McMurtry
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Correspondence to Danielle Hancock .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Media, University of Brighton, Brighton, United Kingdom

    Dario Llinares

  2. School of Film & Television, Falmouth University, Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall, United Kingdom

    Neil Fox

  3. Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries, University of Sunderland, Sunderland, United Kingdom

    Richard Berry

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Hancock, D., McMurtry, L. (2018). ‘I Know What a Podcast Is’: Post-Serial Fiction and Podcast Media Identity. In: Llinares, D., Fox, N., Berry, R. (eds) Podcasting. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90056-8_5

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