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Podcast fans from all around - come and nerd out about podcasts and discover new shows along the way!
On Podcast Book Club - a different group of podcast industry pros sit down each week to pour over an episode of a show they admire.
We're a group of podcasting professionals who spend every day scripting, producing, engineering, and promoting podcasts. And in our free time? We’re podcast fans just like you. We love to listen to even more podcasts and figure out what makes the best podcasts so good.
So tune in and join the club - listen to podcast reviews of some of our favorite gems. We’ll give feedback on podcast content but also sound design, production, scripting, storytelling, and more.
Want even more? Catch Podcast Book Club on Twitter: twitter.com/podbookclub
Podcast Book Club is produced by Alex Bennett, Head of Post Production at Lower Street. Alex is a domesticated audio nerd, who has spent the past five years learning about human social conventions via the medium of podcasting. From Edinburgh, Scotland he is an audio engineer that helps produce audio dramas in his spare time. Alex specialises in soundscapes and creative mixing. He has a deep and abiding love for sandwiches, and is the 2nd worst bowler at Lower Street.
Lower Street provides next-level podcast production services for ambitious companies: everything from podcast strategy and creation to growth. We’ve worked with companies like BCG to develop multiple podcasts like Climate Vision 2050, BCG Compliance, BCG Fintech Files, and BCG In Her Element. We’ve also helped produce: Cadence Bank’s In Good Companies; HPE’s Technology Now, Zuhlke’s Data Today, Northern Trust’s The Road to Why, Zoobean’s The Reading Culture; ICR’s Welcome to the Arena and ZeroNorth’s Navigating Zero.
Find out more at https://lowerstreet.co/ and sign up for our newsletter to keep in touch https://lowerstreet.co/newsletter-sign-up
00:00 Chase
Welcome to the podcast book club from Lower Street Media, where we take a look at what makes great podcasts so great. Our day job is making podcasts, but we're also fans of the medium and think that can be really useful to dig into what makes the shows we love so good. Today we'll dive into 30 for 30, the podcast offspring of the popular ESPN documentary series. Though the concept originated with those films, the podcast episodes are all original and tailored specifically to an audio only format. 30 for 30 podcasts have been continually produced over the past six years and each episode tends to run for about 45 minutes. So our conversation today will focus on the 2017 episode Madden's Game. It covers the origins of the now ubiquitous Madden video game franchise, an American football simulation game. But first some introductions. I'm Chase, an intern here at Lower Street. I have a gang here with me. So why don't you all go ahead and introduce yourselves.Elizabeth, if you'd like to get us started.
01:12 Elizabeth
Hi there, I'm Elizabeth and I am the production manager at Lower Street. Hi everybody.
01:20 Zoe
My name is Zoe and I'm one of the producers at Lower Street.
01:25 Alex B
I'm Alex. I'm the senior audio engineer at Lower Street and current cupboard dweller.
01:31 Alex R
And I'm Alex Rose, I'm another audio engineer at Lower Street.
01:34 Chase
Awesome. Let's go ahead and maybe get started with some broad thoughts on the episode written large. Zoe, if you wouldn't mind, like, do you want to go ahead and kick us off with just what you thought generally of the episode?
01:43 Zoe
So just generally thumbs up from me. I am not a, I'll say American football football fan. And I was kind of like, ooh, going into it like 45 minutes just hearing about American football. Not sure. But I love video games. So that also captured my attention in that way. But I think regardless of whether you enjoy either of those things or neither of those things, it just felt so polished, really high quality. And it really made me feel like I was watching like a really, really high budget Netflix documentary. It gave you that impression because of just how full and rich all of the content was. So I really, really enjoyed it. I thought it was a great pick.
02:28 Chase
Elizabeth, did you have some thoughts? I assume that you do.
02:32 Elizabeth
Yeah, one or two. I thought this was like an A plus history lesson in something that has been like adjacent to my life for a long time, but I really knew very little about. So from a content perspective, it was super interesting. But from a storytelling perspective, it was also a great ride. I really loved how the episode incorporated sound bites from live football and from the game. And I really thought that overall contributed to a super rich environment. We heard a lot of different perspectives from a lot of people related to the events and all in all, painted a really rich world around this story that, as Zoe said, made it feel ully produced, really high level and super well executed.
03:18 Chase
Do either of the Alex's want to take a crack at it?
03:21 Alex B
Sure. So I wrote something down as a note, which felt a little bit odd, but makes more sense now that you said this was a series based on a series of television documentaries. Also, I think Zoe mentioned Netflix as a reference. My final note was that it felt kind of like a televisual experience listening to it, which doesn't literally make sense because it's a podcast, but it really felt as though I was watching the audio accompaniment of something that would have had images playing over it. The kind of structure and pacing felt quite similar to that. I'm not going to say whether that's a good or bad thing. I think that's just kind of how it felt. It was really interesting. And yeah, what everyone else said, really well put together. And from an audio, like post-production perspective, the vocal processing was nice and chunky and crisp. So I was out and about doing stuff and I could still hear what was going on, which can't be said for quite a lot of podcasts.
04:22 Chase
Alex Rose, do you want to hop in on general overview?
04:28 Alex R
As someone who grew up in America, I grew up in a place without a football team and I was never a big sports fan to begin with, but it made me realize just how famous John Madden and the video game itself was. It just is part of the fabric at this point. And listening to the clips and the interviews and the games, it was kind of like a pastiche of childhood nostalgia in a way. Yeah, it did feel a lot like watching TV and I assume a lot of the clips are from TV interviews. So yeah, I thought it was really well done. Just from the audio engineer perspective, I imagine that session just looks insane with all the different clips and sources and the music was really well done too, just not super intrusive, but really contributed a vibe to it. But it was extremely well done, really loved it.
05:12 Chase
Yeah, I thought that point about the music was especially true in something that I noticed as well, that it's not super prevalent throughout the episode, but they do pick their key moments where they want to establish an emotion or kind of indicate we're going in a new direction and they use that really nicely.
05:30 CLIP
John was pretty upset because he felt like, wait a minute, this is supposed to be the market already and I'm just trying to get the thing done no matter what it takes.
05:39 Chase
I did quickly, and maybe we can have a longer discussion about this, but go back to a point that Zoe had made, which is that even as a non-fan was still able to get something out of this episode. I was wondering how you guys felt this show did at incorporating listeners outside of maybe that core niche audience.
06:07 Alex B
I think when people have a genuine interest and they've brought some serious production firepower to bear on something, it becomes almost intrinsically interesting, like regardless of what it's about. There were definitely references and parts, and certainly when they were talking about the individual players on the covers and players talking about their skill ratings, whatever it was in the game, completely lost on me. But the fact that somebody obviously, well, almost everybody interviewed really, really cared about this makes it interesting in spite of the fact that I've never watched a game of American football in my life
06:42 CLIP
Gigi, where'd you get all that speed? I don't know, to be honest, the reason I kept looking back, because if I'm maddened, my speed is like 82, 83. So I was like, nah, I think you're going to catch me, and the next thing you know I pull it away. What should your speed be in Madden? I mean, after today, hopefully it'll get boosted up
06:59 Elizabeth
To choose this episode of this series for us was a good selection because I think the video game focus has a nice access point for those of us who maybe aren't huge football fans or didn't grow up in North America and really don't have much exposure to American football at all. But I think probably to some extent, we all understand video games, and I really appreciated this as an entry point where maybe a more solely sports news focused episode would have been less of an accessible entry point for me personally.
07:45 Alex B
I'd also add that in some of the smaller moments, like making something feel real and grounded and detailed makes it way, way, way more interesting. So that scene where they are on the Amtrak talking to John Madden, and it's the added details of he was in the dinner car, which only he was allowed in outside of Mealtimes, and he had this cigar, but it wasn't lit, and it was a foot long, the guy said, and he was using it to gesticulate around the place. And building a scene like that draws you in more almost regardless of what's being discussed specifically.
08:20 Elizabeth
So I think that really helped. Yeah. And you reminded me to Alex of another point I had, which is that they did a really good job of setting the stakes for the story too. They did a good job of getting their audience to buy in to why this is an important story, why we care about this video game or about football, because they established really well in the context of recent history, why this video game was important to the history and evolution of video games, kind of taking us all the way back from really early days of video games to the kind of cultural phenomenon it is now. It was playing alongside the story of people who work in the video game industry being seen as kind of not a real job or not an impressive job to the kind of status that video games have in society now. So they did a good job of establishing why we care about video games. They did a great job of establishing why this video game in particular is important. And towards the end when they're talking about the interplay between the video game and the real game, how players are starting to use strategies that are common in the video game in the actual game itself now, I think that had me totally buy in to why this is an important story to understand outside of whether or not you're a fan of football, outside of whether or not you're a fan of video games. It showed the cultural significance of these events. And I think that was really great for having the audience buy in to why they should spend 40 minutes listening to this story.
10:00 Alex B
Yeah, and to add on to that, the way that they were continually adding stakes to the story was like, he bet the farm this video game is something that couldn't be done with technology at the time.
10:11 CLIP
But the reality is we then proceeded to bite off a really challenging technology development problem. It took them longer than expected.
10:22 Alex B
This development problem that was supposed to take a year took four years. The accountants were on them to shut it down, just like little things like that just kept the story moving, gave it some juice.
10:32 CLIP
There's no chance that those royalties will ever be recouped. We're telling the company to write the whole thing off like you're never going to recover a penny of it.
10:39 Chase
I think going along with that, especially at the beginning, they do a really nice job of kind of the classic like film and TV strategy of showing, not telling. They incorporate those interviews with the players who are so passionately talking about their own ratings within the game to indicate, yeah, this is important, but we don't need to tell you, take the player's word for it.
11:04 Zoe
So with that vibrancy in the kind of showing, not telling piece, I really liked how they mentioned so the host was brought in and they introduced him as a football fan and actor. And just that idea that someone who's a real fan of the sport was taking you through the story. I really, really liked that little detail and it helped just make it a little bit friendlier and a bit more dynamic without having to do very much
11:30 Chase
Zoe, you bring up the narrator, which might be a good segue because it was something I wanted to ask you guys about. They have this narration with Will Wheaton throughout the whole podcast episode and the rest of the audio is, or at least the people we hear speaking are interviewees in the middle of an interview, but we never hear the interview questions being asked. I wondered what, if any, significance you guys took from that.
11:57 Alex B
I thought it was great. One for your name or voice to juggle in your head and it also made it feel as though the participants in the stories were the people driving it rather than the questions from an interviewer, which I liked.
12:09 Alex R
It allows them to cram way more in as well. Instead of a question set up, you're picking sort of elements of these answers that propel the story forward, which made it feel really fast paced. And just a note on the earlier part of making it interesting to non-fans was that it's kind of universal because anyone sort of starting a billion or multi-billion dollar institution from nothing, it's kind of like listening to some of those stories about Apple or Microsoft startups. It's like a rugby story, which I don't know, there's something about the underdog element that just makes it super interesting to me anyway.
12:42 Alex B
Can I ask you, Chase, what is the significance of them choosing Will Wheaton? Is he like a football guy?
12:45 Chase
As far as my knowledge of Will Wheaton goes, he is a pretty prominent fan of the NFL, but that's as far as I am aware his only connection to football.
12:59 Alex R
Is he like a blogger or active online or something as a prominent fan? He's been very online for a long time, I think. I feel like he was one of the early Twitter users, if I'm not mistaken. He's always sort of been very visible, but he was also in Stand By Me and he's been sort of a known actor for quite a while that's sort of become known in these other A personality associated with football.
13:27 CLIP
Yeah, okay. You play football? Do you play football? No. What do you do? I don't know. Yeah, well your brother, Denny, is sure to play football.
13:47 Alex B
He was a very annoying child in Star Trek.
13:49 Chase
Yes, Star Trek. Yeah. Missed their opportunity to have him narrate in Klingon.
13:52 CLIP
Actually, most of my free time is taken up with my studies. I'm trying to get into Starfleet Academy and I earn credits for the time spent on the enterprise, but it's just not the same.
14:03 Chase
Well, yeah, for me, with the lack of interviewer, it makes it feel like more of a natural process of discovery. It kind of draws you along and forces you to, A, stay more engaged because you don't hear a question and then say, oh yeah, I know what they're going to respond to this with. But instead, you kind of make it a mystery where the story is going. It forces the listener to actively process what's happening at a level that I don't think you necessarily always do in just your standard interviewer, interviewee format.
14:33 Zoe
So if we're going with it being a sort of Netflix style, really high production value documentary, often when interviews are presented in those kind of shows, you never actually hear the questions being asked either. The only time that someone asking a question is actually added in is when they kind of want to show behind the scenes a little bit. They kind of want to show the mechanism of how the thing's working or how it's being created. It's something that I've seen quite a lot, especially in Netflix documentaries, and it just wouldn't work for this kind of thing because there's no sort of element of trying to break the fourth wall or anything like that. It's way more slick and produced, so that wouldn't really work, I guess, as a technique.
15:24 Elizabeth
Yeah, Zoe, and that makes me think of something else. Maybe this goes back to an earlier observation that we were talking about, but it is super slick. And Chase, when you were talking about the scene on the train, there's so many moments like that where I wasn't sure if we were listening to audio that had been created to tell the story of this historical event or if we were listening to authentic archival footage from then. That line was really blurry for me. Going through the story, it all became one and the same to me, and I wasn't distinguishing very much between we're here on the train or we're in a studio making it sound like they're on a train.
16:12 Chase
Yeah, I guess that's a good point that I hadn't even really necessarily thought of. With that scene on the train, my initial instinct was that it was produced, that it was ambiance that they were making in production rather than archival footage that was just pulled straight. But it could be that. The only reason I thought that was just because I don't know why they would be recording those first meetings.
16:35 Elizabeth
Totally agree. I thought the same thing. I didn't know that was produced in a studio after the fact, but it didn't experience-wise take me out of the story to wonder what was authentic and what wasn't.
16:49 Chase
No, yeah, it doesn't feel produced. And who knows? They pull up footage from the most obscure of places sometimes to make these productions.
16:53 Elizabeth
Right. Because then when they're at the viewing party at John Madden's house, that felt like it probably was authentic audio from him introducing what they were all going to be watching that day. But again, that was also seamless, that flipping between live on-scene footage and in-studio footage wasn't jarring at all.
17:22 Alex R
The crowd noise was exciting too. I felt like there was just a lot of like, you're watching football, you're in a football stadium. I thought that was nice. I'm not a huge fan of that sound, but for some reason on good headphones, you're just like, yeah, yeah, I'm here. This is great.
17:39 Chase
Yeah, I think that it's interesting. It's also kind of weirdly meta about the podcast because in the episode, they talk about the video game incorporating different game sounds and then the actual television broadcasts then mimicking those. And so you're kind of listening now to the third iteration of the podcast mimicking the TV product, which is mimicking the video game, which was reproducing the on-field product. So you're just more and more steps removed.
18:10 Alex R
But yeah, definitely, I think it adds a nice touch. Art imitating life imitating art. Right. Back and forth.
18:17 CLIP
One of my goals was to make the video game look like television. And then David Hill said, we want to make the game on television look like the video game. And I thought, man, we did it. We came full circle.
18:31 Chase
I think that's where they really take advantage of the audio exclusive format of podcasting the most is that moment where they cut to just the audio of the TV broadcast before the video game was popularized. And they say, just listen to this for a minute. Now listen to a CBS broadcast from that same year, 1993. It's like, see what you're not hearing is any of the sound from the actual field level. Like you'll hear a little bit of crowd noise. But other than that, it's dead silence and the broadcasters just to really emphasize that Madden did have because then they go on to show, hey, here's what they do now.
19:20 CLIP
Just a year later, the Fox broadcast under the guidance of David Hill sounds a lot more like Madden.
19:29 Chase
I thought that was a interesting moment and a good use of without that visual input, it opened the door for them to emphasize something that would have been much more difficult otherwise.
19:51 Zoe
Yeah. And I think a lot of the times with visual media, audio takes, it doesn't take a backseat, obviously in production value and what it adds to the story. But I don't think like generally a lot of people think about the audio maybe when they're watching a football match.
20:04 CLIP
Close-up audio is far more effective and impactful than close-up video. So I surrounded the field with guys with Sennheiser gun mics to get the sound of the line and the lead stuff.
20:16 Chase
Well, all right. We might have just enough time here, maybe for one last topic here of conversation. I want to ask you guys a little bit about the pacing of this episode. In my mind is an episode that moves pretty quickly. It's 45 minutes long, but it gets through quite a bit of what could be distinct conversations all on their own. You have a whole episode about John Madden's history as a coach, whole episodes about the more technical sides of production of Madden. And there are other things that later, maybe not a full podcast episode, but they get kind of glossed over like Electronic Arts sole acquisition of rights with the NFL, which is more of a footnote. It felt like to me than anything in this episode. They just mentioned it and they say, maybe that wasn't good. Okay, moving on. Did you guys feel like it was well paced? Do you guys think it was a little bit too fast or too slow at times?
21:10 Alex B
For me personally, I liked the pacing because like I said, I'm not massively into American football. So when they started off, it's like this first part will cover his career up into the blah, blah, blah. And I thought, Oh God.
21:27 CLIPS
This is my game. To tell the story of this huge video game franchise, we need to tell the story of its namesake, John Madden.
21:37 Alex B
I don't even know this man. I don't listen to a 45 minute long retrospect of his coaching career. And they blasted through it in like five minutes. And I was like, Oh, like I need to pay attention and kind of buckle up because this story is moving quickly. And from my point of view, I really liked that. I think if I were producing this show for a wide audience, I would hopefully make similar decisions to the ones they made in terms of pacing, just get through it. The nerds can drill down into specific parts if they want to at a later date. If I was making a very niche, like football sports nerd podcast, then I agree with you. That was four or five episodes crammed into one. And I'd be thinking, Oh God, I glossed over everything in that episode.
22:18 Zoe
Yeah, I totally agree.Alex, when they were like, we're going to tell you the entire history of Madden's career. I also was like, Oh dear. But they absolutely wrapped it up in a quick enough time that it kept you interested, but also gave you all the facts. I think to your point about glossing over the Electronic Arts rights acquisition stuff, I think because of, you know, it's not going to be aimed necessarily. And this is linked to Alex's point. It's not going to be aimed at a audience that is there for the video game content. I would imagine it's more, you know, an audience that is interested in the sport element. So I can see why potentially they didn't linger on that very chunky topic and why they made the production decisions they did make. And for me, I like because of the where I was coming into it, I would have loved to have heard more about that. But I also acknowledge that that's not what that podcast was for. And it's not for the kind of listener who'd want to necessarily know that boring, nerdy detail about this video games company. So yeah, I think the pacing throughout was really, really good.
23:31 CLIP
You want big time football? The hits, the boom, the thwink, the whap. It's all here.
23:35 Chase
Are there any things that people were just dying to hit on that we have not yet touched upon? OK, Alex, I could sense the just the relief that I asked that question.
23:42 Alex B
This is an aside, but I don't know if you guys, whether it was dynamically inserted or not, whether you guys got served a Draft Kings ad halfway through the episode. Yes. And I think it was a perfect lesson in why you should invest as many resources into the production of your ads as into the episode itself, because there was a stop. Suddenly, this person came along, poor quality audio, uninvolved, disinterested delivery. And worst of all, on top of all that, they're trying to sell you something. It was just like a carbuncle in the middle of the episode. And I was thinking, why? Why put all of this effort into this sourcing of this amazing archive audio, putting all of these mixes together, taking the time to process the audio and then right at the eleventh hour you slap on a cheaply produced ad that only serves to make me not want to come back as a first time listener. Although I'll get over it. I've forgotten about it by the end of the day. But it's just so annoying. They were so close to greatness.
24:52 Zoe
Yeah, I had exactly the same thing, Alex. And I thought actually that it was, yeah, maybe, I don't know, was just inserted dynamically. I wasn't sure if it had been actually put into the audio or if it was just like, we happened to get that ad in the middle of this podcast. But yeah, it sounded awful compared to the rest of it. But it doesn't seem like Elizabeth or Alex got it. I don't know.
25:17 Elizabeth
I got an ad in the middle. I'm trying to remember if it was DraftKings or not. But I don't think mine was DraftKings. But I also noticed the ad in the middle. And I had a bit of a different thought trajectory, which was, well, at least tonally, this isn't interrupting a really serious moment or something heavy here. The ad felt well placed to me if they were going to have ads. And I also, at the same time, had a bit of a narrative in my head of like, oh, it's ESPN, so of course they have ads, was the thought going through my head. So I don't know. It was forgivable to me because of the placement and because of what I knew about the producer of the show. Maybe it was also because it felt a bit like television to me. It felt a bit like a format where I expect ads. I noticed the ad for sure, but I did not notice it being super underproduced.
26:25 Chase
So I'm not sure I got the same ad. Yeah. I don't think that I got the same ad as you two either. Similar to Elizabeth, I remember there being an ad, but not that it was so jarringly dissimilar in production quality. Is there anything else that people didn't like? Because I feel like most of the comments that we've given are pretty much positive overall. You know, the pacing was good. They do a nice job knowing their audience with style. But were there things that you would have done differently or that you wish they would have done differently?
26:56 Alex B
Yes. The final piece of music, as the episode wraps up, felt kind of like a Hallmark movie score to me. I think if history looks back 100 years from now at the evolution of football, I think many people will confuse John Madden as the inventor of the sport. John Madden is an immortal. It's kind of odd and a bit saccharine and I felt like I'd heard it in like, direct-to-TV movies before. And the episode had done such a good job up until that point of mixing all different kinds of music. So it was just kind of an odd note to have right at the end, when I mean, they could have gotten away with not even like a full-blown track, just a nice sounding texture or tone or something to convey the emotion that they were going for. But they, yeah, I don't know who chose that track. It's just a bit odd.
27:53 Elizabeth
In terms of story, the only time I felt like we skipped from A to B a little quickly was around the conversation about how they were able to get 11 players onto the screen. There's a lot of buildup to that. We heard about why this was an issue for a long time, right? There was all this conversation about it's taking so long. We can't get 11 players onto the screen. If we can't get 11 players onto the screen, we can't release the game because John won't let us. And then I feel like I missed the moment where they explained how they actually did manage to do that. Did I zone out and miss it or did they just say after years of development, we got 11 players onto the screen and they were eight pixels tall?
28:41 Chase
At least to my memory, you didn't really miss anything. It was pretty much just, oh no, we can only fit five players on a team. And then there's one intervening sentence and then the next sentence is, and then there it was, 11 players on the screen, eight pixels tall.
28:56 Elizabeth
Right. I wanted a little bit more of the aha moment of they cracked the code. And maybe it is that they realized they just had to do them in eight pixel. I don't know, but I needed a sentence that was more of catharsis for that journey, but I didn't feel like I got it. And then I was wondering about it for the rest of the episode. I felt like it was the most buildup out of anything in the whole episode and very little reward in that one plot point.
29:22 Zoe
Yeah, I totally agree. The only thing is, I guess, they try and establish, don't they, that they have Tripp, who's the Electronic Arts founder, who's like, well, the technology will exponentially get better, so we'll be able to do anything. And I guess that's the key to be like, well, they can just do stuff if they wait long enough. You know?
29:43 Elizabeth
Yes, but I wanted to know what they waited for. What came onto the scene four years later that made it possible all of a sudden.Anyways, that was the only thing that I remember taking a bit of issue with.
29:52 Alex B
I bet the tapes there somewhere, and at some point when they were chopping it down to 45 minutes, somebody said, I don't want to hear technical, cut it.
30:00 Elizabeth
Still, if you're going to make a big deal about how limited the technology is and then there is some sort of breakthrough, I think you need to tell us what the breakthrough was.
30:10 Alex R
Strangely, I would have never picked this episode to listen to, but now that I have, I wish there was a deep dive. I would probably listen to it.
30:23 Chase
Well, that might just about do it for us here. If you've listened to this episode and also the Madden's game episode of 30 for 30, what do you think? Even if sports aren't your cup of tea, I hope you were still able to enjoy the show and hopefully learn a little bit from it. Make sure to hit follow on Apple podcasts or Spotify. We'll see you in the next episode with a new podcast to explore and a new host. Thank you so much for joining us and peace out.