I've been listening to Pod Save America since it started; the Trump administration is playing out like a soapy drama in many ways, so I have become rather addicted to American news/discussions, so have several podcasts and news broadcasts of both sides to help feed that addiction. PSA in no way is news, and if the people involved didn't already alert you, then certainly even a casual listen will tell you that this is not a balanced discussion weighing up both sides, but rather a podcast coming very much out of the 'resistance'. I don't mind this in the slightest because I know this is what it is, but I still enjoy hearing the banter in and around the talking points - mostly because I agree with them on what they say.
I'm less of a fan of the live shows that I've heard, and the reasons for that also mean that I felt this TV show isn't really working for me. It is not that suddenly the format or content has changed, it is just more that the nature of the HBO show lays a lot bare and harder to ignore. Some of it is petty, but some less so. The petty element is that there are lots of superficial things that just bugged me. The near constant use of cards surprised me in terms of just how often the team were reading information off them, unable to look up for longer than a few seconds. Okay the banter was not off the cards, but too many moments were and it made me feel like they were less genuine and more 'prepared'. I understand how much of television "news" is being read off scripts but the cards just felt worse. Related to that, I didn't really know what anyone looked like before the show, and it did put me off how very 'oh of course' they looked. Like I said, very petty, but everyone is the liberal stereotype, or perfect smiling gym-body, and again it added to the feeling of superficiality.
The reason this feeling mattered to me is because the HBO show is clearly 'important' to its makers; it is their chance to get their message out more than before and influence more voters. This is a positive thing, but it does mean that there is more and more a feeling of a message being pushed, rather than a message being presented or discussed. Some interviews/segments are worse than others but mostly this is the case. Part of that is me though, since I often fast-forward the interviews which are about promoting candidates rather than discussing issues, the sense of this all being a party political broadcast did make me have less interest.
This short run is over now, and hopefully the work of Crooked Media did contribute to the flipping of congress seats, but these episodes were a bit brazen and basic in what it does. The podcast may be the same, but it feels more like a discussion and more natural - which none of the show ever got close to feeling.
