This week Jason and Joel were joined by their old TV Squad buddy Bob Sassone for a super-long podcast full of technical glitches and sounds of trucks passing in the night. We talked about what everyone else is talking about, how NBC is “screwing up” the Olympics, along with a few other topics:
- Joel tries to figure out how NBC is being criticized for tape delaying Olympic events taking place 5 hours ahead of time, but is still bitter over when the Peacock network delayed the Atlanta Olympics, even though it was in the Eastern time zone,
- We try to figure out if the primetime events stream live someplace (they do), because we know NBC won’t give the events live on cable if they’re going to play them at night,
- We then talk about the TCA awards, why it’s such a fun atmosphere there, and why it seemed like half the recipients this year didn’t show up,
- Then the conversation turns to the cancellation of The Killing, and why the ratings tanked so bad after it got so much buzz in its first season,
- We then talk briefly about Jason’s challenge show this week, as he asked Joel to watch Virgin Diaries. Yes, there were some weirdos on that show,
- Since Bob is a big fan of Aaron Sorkin, we asked him what he thought of The Newsroom (which had its best episode so far this past week), and we got a surprising response,
- Finally, we talk to Bob about an essay he wrote on his blog about why he thinks TV critics need to rethink how they do their jobs. Bob’s been writing about TV for a long time, and the way he sees things going isn’t making him want to write about TV much anymore.
You can listen to the podcast above (if you don’t hear anything, fiddle with the volume slider), download it via this link, subscribe to our RSS feed, or subscribe via iTunes. You can also find us on the Stitcher radio app for smartphones and iPads.
By the way, the bumper music is “Trevor Trailer Trash” from the late, great band Cropduster.
Joel Keller
Joel Keller is one of the co-founders of Antenna Free TV and co-hosts the weekly AFT Podcast. A long time ago, he left a career rebooting servers to write about TV and other fun stuff (though his ulterior motive was to write off his cable on his income taxes). At the time, he was writing for the late, great site TV Squad, where he eventually became editor-in-chief. Since those heady days, he's written about TV and other topics for The New York Times, The A.V. Club, TheAtlantic.com, Fast Company's Co.Create, Vulture, Zap2It and elsewhere.
