Billy Dec Has A Podcast. Should You Listen To It?
By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 15, 2017 8:44PM
Have we jumped the podcast shark?
Now, Rocket Ranch’s Billy Dec—whom every single press release will remind you is a “two-time Emmy Award-winning TV Personality, Actor, Entrepreneur, Restaurateur”—has his own podcast, The Meal Of Your Life.
Look, we really have nothing against Billy Dec. Yeah, we can’t stand that fedora of his, but we have to admit every personal interaction with him has been pleasant. He's a nice dude, we promise! But we couldn’t imagine wanting to carry him around in our earbuds for any extended period of time.
The basis of the podcast at first glance seems to be: Billy has many famous friends! So it’s no surprise that the new series kicks off with Billy’s most famous friend, David Schwimmer.
So what is the actual format of the show? According to its description:
Billy welcomes a uniquely distinguished and dynamically unforgettable guest, from celebrities to athletes, renowned chefs to intellectuals, politicians to everyday people, and invites listeners to join in on an intimate conversation surrounding the defining meal that forever impacted their life.
O.K., we’ll grant that could be a cool concept. If the conversations actually revolved around that concept. So we dove in and gave the first episode a listen. The result? It’s a little too inside baseball, and just consists of two longtime friends reminiscing. Which gets at the problem with many podcasts by folks who either don’t plan ahead or aren’t natural raconteurs: recording an interesting, compelling broadcast takes more than just recording a conversation with a friend.
A couple of the other episodes have been put up and show that Dec is still finding his way. Even a conversation with someone who is as natural a performer as Ed Asner tends to drag.
We’re not saying The Meal of Your Life won’t get better as Dec gets more practice behind the mic, but we would counsel him to wrangle in some folks with experience in the field to help him along, and add some form to what’s currently a rambling discussion.