This 1938 trade press article argues that choosing the announcer to voice the commercial is similar to choosing the correct typeface for a print ad.

As podcasters draw larger audiences, they are experimenting with business models, especially with advertising.

Like many media historians, I’ve been struck by the parallels between 1920s-30s radio and 2010s podcasting. Despite obvious differences between podcasting and early radio—such as asynchronous reception, niche rather than mass audiences, global rather than local distribution—podcasters hoping to support themselves by advertising share many of the opportunities and difficulties faced by the producers of Jack Benny and Kraft Music Hall.

When radio emerged in the 1920s, its boosters promised it would be an effective advertising medium because, instead of inert printed text, it used the human voice, which “tug[s] at heartstrings,” according to Radio Showmanship, and “affects the heart, mind, and soul,” according to a 1929 CBS pamphlet. Podcaster Alix Spiegel (Invisibilia) has recently made a similar claim about the emotional information carried in voices.

Early radio advertising proponents noted that audiences experienced radio as individuals rather than as masses, in the intimacy and privacy of the home, making it feel like a more confidential and personalized medium than, say, films in theaters. Likewise, some podcasters today note the high “engagement” they enjoy with their audiences, many of whom, listening on headphones or earbuds, are far more attentive than audiences for whom radio or television is sonic wallpaper. Advertisers who fear television audiences have strayed to other screens may find podcast audiences more appealing. As one podcaster explains, “People really pay attention to the ads,” so advertisers may pay very high prices (CPMs) to reach them.

The cartoonist H. T. Webster poked fun at announcers perfecting their commercial delivery.

Early radio proponents, such as a NBC time salesman, noted radio’s “pseudo-friendship” effect, when audiences’ parasocial relationships with radio personalities spilled over into their perceptions of whichever products those personalities endorsed. Likewise, some podcasters today, such as Mark Maron and the hosts of Men in Blazers, are asked by advertisers to promote products by integrating endorsements or uses of products into their podcasts, allowing brands to leverage the audience’s good will toward the host. Such “testimonials,” an established strategy in print advertising before the radio era, also had a long history in radio and television, as hosts such as Mary Margaret McBride and Arthur Godfrey integrated product endorsements into their talk shows.

However, advertisers do run some risks when closely tying the commercial message to the host or announcer’s personality. In early radio, some suggested that announcers delivering advertising messages must sound “sincere” or risk losing audience trust. The commercial’s words, according to Norman Brokenshire, a well-known announcer, must be “felt as well as spoken.” Likewise, StartUp podcaster Alex Blumberg, who uses first-person narratives and interviews in both his program and advertising, has insisted that he selects his advertisers carefully so that any implied endorsement by him is sincere and authentic.

In the 1930s the ad agency J. Walter Thompson would sometimes, instead of professional announcers, have an amateur or “man on the street” speak the commercial message; this, the ad agents believed, could make the advertising sound “more sincere, frank, and open.” Likewise, podcaster Roman Mars (99% Invisible) often uses soundbites of his own child speaking about his advertisers, and the producers of Serial, most famously, use “man on the street” interviews for their commercial for MailChimp. The interviewee who notoriously mispronounced the name as “Mail Kimp” reinforced the authenticity of the ad.

In 1920s radio, producers worried at first that audiences would turn off the radio if the program were interrupted by ads. Today audiences can easily avoid interruptive ads, and so podcasters feel a special need to keep them listening. Blumberg’s ads in StartUp, for example, resemble the rest of the show; as he interviews his documentary sources about his topic, so he interviews his sponsors about their business, with no change in style or tone. The similarity is so close, in fact, that he employs a special music cue so that listeners won’t confuse the ad with the program.

This integration of format or style between program and commercial was routine in 1930s-40s radio. Comedian Fred Allen made jokes with announcers about sponsors, and Jack Benny famously integrated humorous references to Jell-O into his comedy. The intention was not to confuse audiences but to smooth out any disjunctures and keep audiences listening.

Alex Blumberg of Gimlet Media & the StartUp podcast (Image: The Wolf Den/Midroll Media)

Blumberg has already confronted one of the pitfalls of such integrations. For his company’s other program, Reply All, the producer used an interview with a young boy about his use of the web site provider Squarespace as an advertisement for that site. The boy, and his mother, thought the interview was for the program, not an ad, and the mother’s sense of offense was rapidly transmitted via social media. In a perfectly reflexive and reflective episode about this event, Blumberg interviewed the mother, who noted that her son, unlike a hired performer, was offered no compensation for his testimonial. So Blumberg’s production of authentic ads via documentary-style soundbites has to gain the trust not just of the audience but also of the documentary subjects.

In some ways, then, podcasting is where radio was in the late 1920s, promising to be a new medium but like old media simultaneously. Advertisers’ need to reach attentive audiences has increased as audiences have been unshackled from linear media’s schedules and forced exposure to advertising. As podcasters try to monetize programming, maintaining their audiences’ trust and attention will be crucial to their success, and that, in turn, will depend in part on how they handle their advertising.

Compared to the decidedly impressionistic recreation of past Doctors’ outfits by James Acheson and Colin Lavers in “The Three Doctors” (1972) and “The Five Doctors” (1983) respectively, Howard Burden’s costumes for the “Name” cameos show considerable attention to detail. This is particularly striking in the case of the First Doctor, who appears in the pre-credits sequence on Gallifrey and again at the climax. The body double here is seen only in long shots, which alternate with close-ups and medium close-ups digitally incorporating footage of William Hartnell. Each shot of Hartnell is tight and short enough that in fact only the most general costume correspondence was needed to make the body double a credible match. Yet Burden was evidently taking no chances; his homage to Maureen Heneghan’s original costume design was remarkably precise, at a stroke establishing “authentic” costume as a key value for the anniversary season. This use of costume as a marker of authenticity was to play out in unexpected ways, with various ramifications for Who tradition and canon, in both “The Day of the Doctor” and “The Night of the Doctor.”

John Hurt as The War Doctor in “Day of the Doctor.”

The culminating moments of “Name” introduced a past Doctor who was, from the audience’s point of view, not a past Doctor at all – the “forgotten” incarnation of the Time Lord played by John Hurt. While this brief, tenebrous sequence allowed little opportunity to see the details of Hurt’s richly textured costume, unofficial photographs from location filming had already revealed that in the fiftieth anniversary special Hurt would be wearing a leather “U-Boat” jacket similar to that chosen for Christopher Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor. The likeness was enough to provoke speculation well before “The Name of the Doctor” aired, and even before Hurt himself had disclosed that he was playing “part of the Doctor.” Fan interest was further piqued by the fact that Hurt’s double-breasted waistcoat bore more than a passing resemblance to the one worn by Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor in the 1996 TV movie. All this led to the quite reasonable supposition that Hurt might be “another version of the Eighth or Ninth Doctors.”

As it turned out, the melding of sartorial images is a function of Hurt’s playing a missing incarnation between McGann and Eccleston. The logic of Howard Burden’s costume choice in terms of branding and affect is easy to discern. The leather jacket, which is the dominant element of the outfit, reinforces the New Who aesthetic and allows the war-ravaged Hurt incarnation to stand in for the absent Eccleston. For the observant fan, the secondary detail of the waistcoat helps subtly to bridge New Who with the TV movie and thus Classic Who. (Hurt’s “sawn-off” version of the Classic-era sonic screwdriver represents another such visual bridge.) What’s particularly noteworthy about the War Doctor’s costume is that rebranding is achieved through a strategic break with Who precedent. Hurt’s outfit situates his Doctor “authentically” within the canon precisely by subverting the tradition that each Doctor’s costume should be unlike his immediate predecessor’s. Nor, as it turned out, was this to be the only such breach of this tradition in anniversary productions.

Paul McGann as The Eighth Doctor in “The Night of the Doctor.”

Among the biggest surprises of the jubilee season was the Eighth Doctor’s scintillating return and regeneration into Hurt’s incarnation in “The Night of the Doctor.” For this “minisode” Howard Burden designed an entirely new outfit for McGann. At one level this was no doubt a response to the actor’s well-known dissatisfaction with his original costume and wig. However, as with Hurt’s costume, the main function of the new ensemble was surely to form a bridge, this time between the War Doctor and the Eighth Doctor’s own prior image in the TV movie. For “Night,” McGann once again wears a frock coat and patterned silk waistcoat, but this time more muted, the coat being earthier in tone than the TV Movie original and made of a soft, matt, woolen fabric rather than flashy panne velvet and satin. In other respects the costume tends “prophetically” toward the militarism of Hurt’s outfit. Thus the canvas soldier’s leggings worn by the War Doctor are prefigured by the Eighth Doctor’s leather gaiters, the War Doctor’s khaki field trousers by his predecessor’s tobacco brown twill work-pants, and even Hurt’s tattered scarf by McGann’s casually knotted silk neckerchief.

Paul McGann as The Eighth Doctor in the audio drama series “Eighth Doctor Adventures.”

The Eighth Doctor’s costume for “Night” was also interesting for what it was not. In 2012 Paul McGann secured approval to introduce a new outfit, satchel, and sonic screwdriver into publicity and packaging for the Eighth Doctor audio dramas he records for Big Finish Productions. The new costume was very close to Eccleston’s: leather pea coat, tee shirt, and jeans. Clearly it was too close for the purposes of the anniversary specials, with their sleight-of-hand sartorial “retcon” of the War Doctor incarnation. There is slight irony in the rejection of the 2012 costume, given that one of the most discussed aspects of “The Night of the Doctor” has been the name checking of the Eighth Doctor’s Big Finish companions, which effectively established his audio adventures as canon. Yet brand logic evidently required that this new inclusiveness apply only to the aural component of Big Finish’s work, not to all its “televisual” trappings.[1]

What strikes me most about the series is that it deals with visual space but that audio space is mostly absent.  Throughout the series, the glee club has struggled to obtain auditorium rehearsal time.  The members have struggled with the structural limitations of the choir room as a practice venue and Sue Sylvester’s efforts to remove any claim the club has on the use of school space.  In one of the most interesting moments of “Home,” Mercedes does a rendition of Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful,” replacing Aguilera’s use of the second-person pronoun with I/we.  The performance number mixes Cheerios and glee club members in the same space – the center of the gym – that has only been occupied up to this point by the Cheerios and school athletes.

Outside of basic sound design rules dealing with the intelligibility of dialogue, editing, and mixing, techniques for achieving and communicating reverberation, distance, and space have little importance in the series.  Occasionally, as in the roller rink scene last night where Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” plays over the sound system, the actual recordings of songs are used for atmospheric effect.  However, these diegetic songs are often supplanted by the diegetically motivated (but clearly lip-synched) songs that are the hallmark of the series.  These numbers are clearly overproduced, largely erasing the “grain of the voice” from the picture.  Regardless of the performance space (interior, exterior, living room, auditorium, choir room, school hallway, gymnasium), environmental acoustics never play an integral role.   Of course, the desire to sell soundtrack CDs and the difficulties of actually doing real live vocal performance while shooting sequences militate against truly authentic performances.  But these economic and industrial exigencies don’t preclude post-production negotiations that could lead to moments of audiovisual play similar to those in Murphy’s Nip/Tuck.

It has been interesting to hear voices with more vocal power (Chenoweth, Menzel, and Lynch) and not just the young adult voices of the glee club members.  Personally, knowing that musical theater stars such as Chenoweth, Morrison, and Menzel can belt it out for real reduces the gap between the recording and the televisual performance.  As reactions to the show illustrate, however, the creators need to wrestle with how to balance screen time and song time between the adult and teen characters.

These concerns were allayed in part by the program’s second episode.  “Meet De Boys on De Battlefront” sees Treme find its feet by making authenticity its primary focus. Although some have accused the episode of being heavy-handed, I think that this approach is justified as it takes the series’ sense of place and explores the characters’ connection to it. With an emphasis on work and tourism, Simon and company work their way out of the authenticity cul-de-sac by interrogating the nature of geo-cultural belonging in a place that boasts myriad interconnected classes, cultures, and communities. The storylines concerning the Wisconsin tourists,  Zahn’s struggling musician/DJ Davis McAlary, and Pierce’s trombone player Antoine Batiste examine what it means to be ‘of’ New Orleans – to know it, to inhabit it, and to be provided for by it.

We see McAlary lose his DJ job as a result of a traditional New Orleans voodoo ceremony performed to authenticate his relocated radio station. After attempting to borrow money from his wealthy parents, he takes a job as a concierge at a Bourbon Street hotel, where his discomfort with his own relationship with his environment manifests itself in a conspicuous distaste for ostensibly phony tourists and an excessive eagerness to demonstrate his local knowledge to those he deems worthy. We see that McAlary is the ultimate tourist in his own town; sharing his local knowledge is the only way for him to establish a claim that he belongs, just as the hotel job is necessary for this would-be musician to survive. Yet this strenuous performance of belonging ultimately costs McAlary his post when he instructs a New Orleans church group to visit a bar in the Treme for a taste of the authentic New Orleans.  Even this does not deter him; encountering them in the street, McAlary cannot resist proffering one last bit of knowledge. He deprives himself of his own breakfast experience in his haste to direct the Wisconsin group to a great local spot.

McAlary contrasts with the character of Antoine Batiste here. Just about broke on the outskirts of town, the trombone player’s partner exhorts him to get a real job, but he refuses. He is a musician, and is resolute that his city will provide that money if he only plays for it. He also ends up on Bourbon Street – accompanying the dancers at a strip club – but he will not admit to it. He is delivered when he pops up at Bullet’s in the Treme, scarfing down a plate of pork with the Wisconsonites before jumping on stage to play with Kermit Ruffins. Batiste is barely making it, but he is making it through music; the implication is that he can do nothing else because he is who he is where he is. He is going to ‘play for that money’ and let the cards fall where they may.

Treme paints in broad strokes here and in the ancillary storylines concerning its characters. This could have been highly problematic if not for the explicit focus on authenticity and belonging. I recoiled when I saw Elvis Costello and Allan Toussaint materialize in a local recording studio, but the scene is redeemed when the African-American players invite Costello to check out Galactic after the session. Costello, who had been so enthusiastic about Ruffins in the pilot, expresses skepticism about the jazz-funk ensemble on the basis of their whiteness to which the trombone player replies that Galactic are legitimate and authentic players. Later, we see the players from the session jump on stage in a performance of racial integration that provides a dollop of nuance to the McAlary-Batiste comparison. Lest we want to think that this is all about race, the program invites us to consider the myriad other factors that make up our identities and position us within our places and communities.

This second episode still exhibits significant problems –the wholly unconvincing buskers who recalled Lost’s Nikki and Paulo, the curious beatdown by Chief Lambreaux, the lethargic primary plotline concerning LaDonna’s missing brother – but its meditation on authenticity and belonging provides viewers with something tangible and substantive to consider. Now, we need only hope that Treme’s plotlines become more engaging so that we might come to care about those who inhabit Simon’s post-Katrina New Orleans storyworld.