If you’ve been enjoying television comedy over the past several years, you likely owe a debt of gratitude to a wholly different production form: the podcast. 

Podcasts have existed in their current form for well over a decade now, and have been much discussed as a technological form and an industrial challenge. Last year the format got perhaps its largest mass exposure ever, with the success of the docu-series Serial, an absolute sensation that was influenced by some of the finer elements of true crime TV and long form radio production techniques. There have been a number of popular podcasts in many other genres, like sports (The B.S. Report), technology (TED Radio Hour), and business (Planet Money), each of which can be found tucked into its little niche on the iTunes charts.

But I would argue, the unbridled cachet of something like Serial excepted, that the biggest cultural impact of the podcasting revolution, such as it is, has come from comedy. A cursory glance at the iTunes charts in the comedy category reveals a host of comic talent that would be familiar to nearly every TV fan in 2015: Marc Maron, Aisha Tyler, Bill Burr, John Oliver, Chelsea Peretti, Dan Harmon. These comics are joined by other comedy podcasters who have made their bones in screenwriting, local radio, improv theater, and even YouTube. While the technological ease of podcasting has allowed inroads for all kinds of talent to reach increasingly segmented audiences, comedians have reaped the greatest televisual benefits in a media landscape that we have come to accept as both post-television and, almost unquestionably, post-radio.

Take Maron as an example. The 51-year-old standup has widely credited podcasting (in his act, his book, and his podcast itself, WTF With Marc Maron) with saving his stagnant career. Cable network IFC developed a starring sitcom vehicle for Maron (cleverly titled Maron), which features the comic as a fictionalized version of himself, a comedian and podcaster, and which draws heavily on personal stories Maron had shared with his WTF audience. The show has been successful enough to advance to a third season, which premieres in May. Maron was certainly a known commodity as a comic before he began his podcast in 2009, but Maron is undoubtedly a career zenith, and owes its existence to the podcast’s success. In other cases, like in the case of Joe Rogan’s The Joe Rogan Experience (routinely near the top of the iTunes’s rankings), the podcast’s success owes far more to its host’s TV credits. And Rogan has plenty of those, from Newsradio, to Fear Factor, to his current role as UFC commentator.

What I think is most fascinating about this reciprocal influence between the arenas of podcasting and television are the narrative challenges (and opportunities) that come from translating one to the other. And on this count there are several podcast-to-TV properties that have had both critical and commercial success. In the case of Maron, the writing staff has whittled down years of Maron’s musings about his personal life, personal history, and personal neuroses (delivered in an extemporaneous monologue in the first ten minutes of each WTF episode) to a series of fairly average, wholly recognizable 22-minute sitcom episodes. WTF listeners know more about Maron’s outlook on the world than they probably ever cared to hear. In the resulting television product, Maron’s perspective is acted out and contextualized with re-enacted versions of those rants serving as de facto narration. It’s a far different approach to the same material. Some of the 200,000 regular WTF listeners may feel that the sitcom format neuters Maron’s delivery or diminishes the parasocial effect of engaging with the host’s current life crises twice a week for years on end; others may feel the sitcom effectively cuts Maron’s ranting off at a more appropriate juncture (it’s not uncommon for fans or other comedians to profess to loving WTF “except for the first ten minutes”).

Another of the most popular comedy podcasts, Comedy Bang! Bang!, has also made the transition to television (also on IFC, now in its fourth season). Unlike WTF, which is primarily an interview show outside of Maron’s monologue, the podcast version of CBB is essentially an improvisational showcase for comedians of various backgrounds. Framed as an interview program, CBB typically begins with host Scott Aukerman talking with a celebrity guest. Soon enough, the show is interrupted by at least one other guest, a skilled improviser performing in character in an attempt to derail the proceedings. Very little about the character’s personality is known to the other participants ahead of time. The results are often very funny, sometimes fall flat, and are never in any way constricted; the format of the show is incredibly loose with episodes stretching from 45 minutes to upwards of two hours, depending on when Aukerman decides to rein things in. In 2012, the IFC version of the show was developed, and included major celebrity guests (some of whom had appeared on the podcast), along with recurring characters from the audio version. The CBB television show faces significant narrative challenges in its adaptation, especially considering the fact that a typical episode must be delivered in under 25% of the podcast’s running time. In the adaptation, Aukerman has tried to remain true to the improvisational roots of the podcast. Clearly the appearances of the celebrities and guest characters are edited down from longer, looser improv sessions, but the show has taken advantage of the televisual format to include produced sketches, narrative framing devices, and musical elements (featuring comedian and bandleader Reggie Watts).

In addition to these more direct adaptations (of which I could also mention TBS’s failed, though critically well-received Pete Holmes Show), podcasting’s influence on television comedy is felt in more subtle ways. Lost in the recent shuffle of late night Comedy Central hosts is the continued success of Chris Hardwick’s @midnight, a panel show meant to skewer web culture that features three comedian guests each night, many of whom (like Hardwick himself) have had a great deal of success in podcasting, and who use the show’s promotional opportunity to drive traffic to their online offerings. Some of the most frequent guests on @midnight include Doug Benson, Nikki Glaser, Paul Scheer, and Kumail Nanjiani, who have all promoted their popular podcasts on the show (Doug Loves Movies, You Had to Be There, How Did This Get Made?, and The Indoor Kids, respectively). The ABC-Univision collaborative cable venture Fusion has had modest success with one of its first original series No, You Shut Up, featuring comedy podcast all-star Paul F. Tompkins (CBB, The Pod F. Tompcast, Spontaneanation, among others) improvising with fellow comedians and puppets from Henson Alternative (an offshoot of the Jim Henson Company). Comedy Central’s popular Review stars comedian Andy Daly, who is well known among podcast fans for his improvised appearances on dozens of shows. USA’s Playing House features comedians Lennon Parham and Jessica St. Clair who honed their skills through character work on scores of podcast episodes. The list could go on.

The influence and overlap between the worlds of podcasting and television (and live comedy) is expanding as visual and audio media continue to fragment. Issues of narrative construction and narrative influence are ripe for questioning, as are issues of economic viability and the longevity of both of these forms as the landscape continues to change. Additionally, the cross-pollination of talent between these forms could lead to interesting transmedia inquiries. To my mind, it’s heartening that, in just the past half-decade or so, many more prospects have developed for varied comedic voices, and that a burgeoning format like the podcast has incubated many of those opportunities.

30 Rock and Feminism

Sure, 30 Rock has feminist implications, especially for the essentialist who looks at Tina Fey’s role as creator, writer, producer and star, as progress for (white/straight) women in the male-dominated field of comedy TV. However, I think we must probe deeper to consider how 30 Rock represented gender and race, and moreover, how it participated in the legacy of TV shows centered on strong female characters. Furthermore, 30 Rock is NOT a depiction of today’s modern women. Liz Lemon’s life is hardly typical of the female experience, as she is very white, very hetero, middle class, and works in an industry known for being a boys club: television sketch comedy. Yet, 30 Rock certainly engages with feminist discourse. Fey’s position as a feminist is also pretty well known, and the show plays with this, from the moment Baldwin’s character Jack Donaghy meets Fey’s character Liz Lemon in the pilot, and calls her a third-wave feminist. My own feminist reading of 30 Rock is one of my primary sources of pleasure in the show, however, if we allow for polysemy, this reading is not guaranteed. Indeed, it may not even be the dominant one. I was visiting family members once, observed their love of Jack Donaghy’s character, and realized how comforting and familiar the extremity of Donaghy’s hegemonic yet also ironic sexism, racism, and classism might be for viewers to embrace. I am, thus, critical of 30 Rock‘s feminist implications, and argue that 30 Rock‘s legacy has been to discipline the female-centered work place comedy in two ways. First, by downplaying the fact that it is a female-centered program, and also by consistently disciplining feminist characters in the show.

30 Rock obscures the prominence of its female-lead by the very choice of its title, 30 Rock, which is of course shorthand for NBC’s home in New York City. In the past, TV shows built around a single, independent working woman highlighted the female character in the title: The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Murphy Brown, Ally McBeal.  It also downplays its position as a female-centered workplace comedy by not really being a female-centered show. 30 Rock is often discussed as Tina Fey’s TV show, or characterized through descriptions of Liz Lemon as its lead character. Do not be deceived. In many ways, this is really Alec Baldwin’s TV show.

Sure, Mary Richards centrality was perhaps tempered by her close relationship with Lou Grant, but that does not compare to the way Baldwin consistently steals the show, both discursively with critics and literally in the narrative arcs of most episodes. Baldwin’s character most often works to disciplines feminist characters, as we consistently see him mock Lemon, and others, for their character’s feminist inclinations. The show also mocks Lemon and feminism most overtly in its use of the postfeminist consequence trope, where we see Liz Lemon constructed throughout the series as unhappy and unfulfilled, while her drive to succeed has delimited her ability to be satisfied in personal relationships or have children.

Perhaps this is why Tina Fey’s celebrity text can function as cultural shorthand for unhappy singletons, as we see in this video. The fact that Lemon is married with two kids by the end of the series also shifts the work-centered premise of the show in many ways, and points perhaps to the ultimate disciplining of the single, independent woman. 30 Rock is satire, and her marriage/children are nontraditional in many ways (Princess Leia wedding dress!), yet I think this part of 30 Rock‘s conclusion works, overall, to reinforce hegemonic hetero gender roles.

This is not to say that 30 Rock does not also engage with feminist topics in other ways. For instance, a recent episode had a scene at a Lifetime Women’s Award Show where an all-female setting opened up a discussion on whether (straight) women should define themselves through their relationships with men. However, given 30 Rock‘s position, as a satire that is so playful, this scene is opened to ridicule by the tenor of 30 Rock‘s style. This scene at a (fake) Lifetime Award show also points to how 30 Rock‘s show-within-a-show format encourages a great deal of self reflexivity and satire of the television industry.

30 Rock and self-reflexivity

One of the rare TGS skits we get to see, bears attacking a robot!

TV comedy can be a difficult thing to make sense of, because satire is open to interpretation beyond producerly intent. One of 30 Rock‘s contributions to TV is its modification of the show-within-a-show format that we have seen before in The Jack Benny Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and Seinfeld, among others. In 30 Rock, as in other shows, the show-within-a-show format encourages parody of the entertainment industry, whilst being complicit in the entertainment industry it satirizes, which we see in 30 Rock’s self-effacing portrayal of  its successive parent companies. The self-reflexivity in 30 Rock specifically reflects on sketch comedy programs.  It features a quick-editing, over-the-top acting, absurd plotlines, frequent flashbacks, and narrative tangents that seemingly mimic the truncated structure and hyperbolic style of sketch-comedy shows.  Yet, 30 Rock’s sketch comedy show is merely the MacGuffin that drives the program’s plot.  We rarely see TGS sketch comedy skits, and when they appear we usually see only parts of the sketches, often in the background of other scenes. It is irrelevant whether we actually see the skits, though, as they are never funny.  The vapid and superficial humor on TGS represents popular criticisms of television: its stupidity, mindlessness, and narcissism. Here, 30 Rock positions itself next to TGS as an example of bad television to assert 30 Rock’s quality as good television. 30 Rock’s show-within-a-show format also allows a level of identity performativity, which at times plays with racial, gender, class and other representations. Thus, we can see, at least partially, how 30 Rock‘s legacy to comedy television is also a reconfiguration of the show-within-a-show model.

Certainly, there is more to 30 Rock, more that it contributes to feminist discourse, satire TV, experimental TV (remember its two live shows?) and beyond. This post could be part of a series on the cultural legacy of 30 Rock, which may satisfy those 30 Rock fans still craving more Liz Lemon. In lieu of such a column, we can but wait for a 30 Rock reunion show.