Left Of Dial compiled an Essential Listening Poll listing the 100 best podcasts based on input from creators, writers, and scholars. The poll included disclosure that a participant contributed selections and that Normal Gossip ranked, while the participant could not nominate their own show. Such lists serve as imperfect metrics that privilege popularity, recency bias, and marketing reach over subjective measures of quality. The poll asked contributors to name five podcasts that inspired, influenced, and enthralled them. The top three programs were This American Life, Serial, and The Daily, long-standing standards shaping podcast form and production.
This week, Left Of Dial published its Essential Listening Poll, a compilation of the 100 best podcasts of all time, according to industry creators, writers, and scholars (Disclosure: I was invited to contribute my selections to the poll, and Normal Gossip ranked on the list, though I was not allowed to nominate my own show). Lists of this sort, and really of any sort, are inherently imperfect metrics for measuring the impact of any given piece of work.
I was a bit annoyed at first when I saw this. Not because these shows were in the wrong place, which they were not, but because for the better part of the last decade, these three have reigned over the podcast world as standard bearers of form and quality and inspired dozens-maybe even hundreds-of copycat shows, many of which I have worked on. Their names have dogged every audio producer of a certain age as the standard against which our work is measured.
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