Zooey Deschanel Has a New Podcast
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Hey girl, watcha doin’?
If you sang that line in your head, you know what I’m about to talk about. If you didn’t, I apologize, that must have read as very creepy.
Because that right there is the opening line to the theme song of New Girl, the hit comedy that aired from 2011 to 2018, starring Zooey Deschanel. I should preface this by saying: I LOVE New Girl. I watched it right from the beginning, and have rewatched the series multiple times. If you haven’t watched it, it’s about Jess (Deschanel) moving in with a couple of goofy guys in their hip L.A. apartment after she goes through a devastating breakup. Rounded out by a very fun cast (Max Greenfield, Jake Johnson, Lamorne Morris, Damon Wayans Jr., and Toronto’s own Hannah Simone), the show follows the friends through the ups and downs of their careers and love lives. It remains a delightful watch.
To quote a columnist-turned podcaster (I’m so sorry), I couldn’t help but wonder… are they about to ruin New Girl?
This week, Entertainment Weekly posted the trailer for Welcome To Our Show, the new recap podcast from iHeartRadio hosted by Deschanel, Simone, and Morris. I’ve talked about my ire for celebrity podcasts in the past, because they tend to have fairly poor production value, but especially when backed by a company like iHeartRadio, one can assume that hosts are getting paid handsomely to chat with their friends for a few hours each week. But, as I said, I do love New Girl, and was willing to give them some grace before I get mad at yet another group of famous people making a podcast.*
So I listened to the trailer. And readers… I am so, so bored.
For starters, it is two and a half minutes long. They spend a lot of time explaining what New Girl is, which seems very silly to me, because I would think their target audience is the people who are already obsessed with New Girl! New Girl is one of those shows that’s had a boost from streaming, and has been found by new audiences during the pandemic. With that understanding, I can see the business case for making the podcast.
But why! Are you explaining the show! In a trailer! That will primarily be listened to by people who already love the show!
It does not help that they also make New Girl sound boring. As someone who has both spent a few years working in film/TV development AND has made podcast trailers, it sounds like a boring TV pitch, not a podcast trailer. Two and a half minutes is way too long for a trailer — I almost didn’t make it to the end — and the fact that even the trailer is unnecessarily bloated doesn’t instill confidence that the actual show will have the editorial wherewithal to cut out the boring parts.
Eventually, they do actually tease what they’re going to talk about, including a conversation with the writer who invented the show’s drinking game, True American. I would actually LOVE to hear a conversation like that, and I will probably listen when that episode airs.
Anyway, I’m not here to yuck people’s yum — I know show recap podcasts can be a warm comfort in these cold, dark days. But again, I implore the celebrities who don’t read this newsletter and the executives who pay them:
Do better.
*I would say Deschanel is the only true celebrity of the trio; while Simone and Morris are both successful actors, and I’m sure made a pile of money from New Girl, they are, arguably, Whos to most people who have not seen New Girl.
If writing SEO-optimized headlines is your jam and your love language is newsletters (not impossible as you are reading one at this very moment), the Globe and Mail is hiring two audience growth editors on one-year contracts.
The Globe is also hiring a reporter to work out of their Calgary bureau.
Also in Calgary, the CBC is hiring a permanent, full-time associate producer, assigned to digital. Apply by EOD on January 18.
Do you love waking up in the weighty darkness of the hours before dawn? Great! Apply to be the new host of CBC’s Ontario Morning by EOD on January 18. It’s a full-time, permanent job.
If Emily in Paris taught us anything, it’s that being trashy is cool, actually, and that working in social media is extremely glamorous. If your New Year's resolution is to be more like Emily Cooper, apply to be CBC Music’s new producer, social media. This is a full-time, contract position, and applications are due by EOD January 21.
I think I posted this last week, but The Toronto Star is still hiring a podcast producer for a 3-month contract.
Eligible to work in the U.S? The hit New York Public Radio podcast Death, Sex, & Money is looking for a new producer, and On The Media is hiring an associate producer.
New York Times Audio is hiring a temporary producer for a new weekly opinion podcast — “imagine the personal guest essay, but in audio.”
Producer Jay Cockburn’s brand new book, The Podcaster’s Audio Guide, is being released at the end of this month!
We’re so proud of him. Jay is an amazing resource when it comes to audio, and while only a few of us are lucky enough to bother him directly when we need help, this book brings Jay’s expertise to podcasters of all stripes.
You can preorder it here.
The Y2K-renaissance seems to be in full swing, and it’s breaking my brain a bit. This is largely because, in my mind, the year is still 2011, despite all evidence to the contrary. Perhaps the perfect podcast for this moment is the Teen People Podcast, hosted and produced by Anna Soper, a librarian in Kingston, Ontario. In each episode, Soper interviews someone who was either featured in Teen People or worked on the magazine. I didn’t know this before listening, but Teen People, which ran from 1998 to 2006, didn’t use models — they scouted normal teens for fashion shoots. This makes Anna’s interviews particularly endearing — a lot of the people she talks to have nothing to do with the fashion or media industry now, and are baffled that she could find them at all.
It is fascinating to have those “where are they now” conversations with people who were profiled for one reason or another as teens — the episode I listened to this week featured an interview with Alex B. Hill, who was profiled for raising $70,000 USD for medical supplies in Uganda. In interviews at the time, Hill had talked about wanting to go into international development. The beauty of an interview that looks back like this is that Hill seems to have done a lot of reflecting about the problems inherent in a young, white teen embarking on a quest to help the people of Uganda. The conversation he has with Soper takes a thoughtful look at why this instinct may have been misguided, and how the white saviour narrative is harmful on a larger scale. If we’re going to talk about Y2K nostalgia, the image of the white saviour looms pretty large (whether you’re talking about the Kielburgers or the 2009 Sandra Bullock flick The Blind Side) and this interview was refreshingly candid. Watch out this Sunday for a Scream related episode — maybe it’ll ease your sorrows about not being able to watch the new Scream (2022), since movie theatres are closed in parts of Canada.
We want to hear from you! What are you looking for in your podcast news? Let us know on Twitter, Instagram, or by email at info@vocalfrystudios.com. Thanks to Emily Latimer for editing this newsletter, and to Katie Jensen for designing it.
We’ll see you again on January 21. Until then, here’s an update from my friend Emily’s gorgeous gorgeous girl, Ara. Photo courtesy of Charlotte Bell.
Yours in friends and fries,
Michal
