What does the talk show say about the podcast? Television matrices and modes of digital conversation

Abstract

Considering the hegemonic approaches that relate podcasts to the radio tradition, this study seeks to contribute to the debate on the modes of conversation native to digital culture from another equally important reference: television. In light of this argument, the article revisits the historical and cultural formation of the talk show in Brazil as a methodological gesture for understanding the television repertoires summoned by two highly prestigious national podcasts, Podpah and É Nóia Minha?, both available on Spotify and YouTube. Conventions of the talk show genre identified in these programmes – emphasis on visuals, popular themes, informal conversation, audience participation and live rhetoric – are not only evidence of television as an important matrix for podcasts, but also highlight how multiple temporalities act in the constitution of new forms of listening and spectatorship. In this study, podcasts are taken as a mestizo form of communication, with transitions between sound and television media, blog and platform culture, and the notion of television genre is reiterated as an analytical concept that is still useful for studying the processes of media mutations in the digital context.