Podcast 461

All About Iowa. Do you want the Iowa Caucuses to determine which presidential candidates are ‘viable’? In a state of slightly more than three million people, party leaders expect one hundred fifty thousand to show up to caucus, slightly more than in the 2012 cycle. Over the last year Iowans have been sliced and diced by pollsters, pundits, political psychologists, and sociologists. Anyone who attends political events – and there have been hundreds of them since last year – will see famous candidates, film stars, and national TV stars. It’s a spectacle, a circus, and a show being put on for one state. As the hours are counting down to the caucus Monday, February 1st, the Bob Davis Podcasts attends a Marco Rubio rally. One side of the room is reserved for the stage, the other for media. In between, are the Iowans, ready to comment when reporters approach them. Of course reporters will approach, like fish feeding at the water’s surface. ‘Who will you caucus for?’, ‘What do you think of Donald Trump?’. The answers to these and many other scintillating questions will be filed, dissected, and added to the national story line. All About Iowa. Fasten your seat belts. A rural backwater, albiet a very nice one with very nice people, is about to decide which candidates are the most viable. At least that’s how they see this process. After Monday’s caucus, the story lines will change, predictions will be adjusted, and some campaigns will never recover. Is this how we want to elect a president? While there is much to celebrate in the American political system, as I attend events and cover the caucus and the events leading up to it, what comes through louder and clearer is the dark and potentially dangerous relationship between big government, big media, politicians, pollsters and the population of a single state that has insinuated itself into the political process in an unprecedented way. All about Iowa? Indeed. Sponsored by X Government Cars and Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul.

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Podcast 426

How Media Has Changed. I’m about to go to my high school reunion, but for me, it’s a different kind of high school reunion. At over a thousand in my graduating class, it was way to big and impersonal for a full reunion. So, we’re having a reunion of graduates of the school’s ‘radio lab’ program, which included the high school radio station, where the ‘radio bug’ first bit. In a mid fall relaxed conversation on the deck with a fire, on a warm midnight, it’s time to talk about how television and radio have changed over the years giving way to social media, time shifting, video games, You Tube, cable only series and now serial dramas, really produced exclusively for viewing on line, or on specific sites. We used to have a collective experience — watching the same shows when they came on or watching events as they unfolded in real time. Those shared societal experiences don’t happen very often these days, aside from sporting events or monolithic breaking news stories. We do have collective experiences, but they happen at different times. What are you watching these days? Dramas? News? Comedy? Documentaries? Most people aren’t watching commercials anymore, taking the feed direct from the line, but they’re time shifting, watching more TV, consuming more information, but in a different way. How have opportunities to message the public changes. Besides, its fun sometimes to talk about what we’re watching. What is media? Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and Eric and Erum Lucero of Pride of Homes and Luke Team Real Estate.  

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The Bob Davis Podcast

Podcast 348

Freelance Nation. Live from Los Angeles, California on Road Trip 2015! First, an update on the trip to LA from Phoenix. All the way from the desert to the sea. With a massive Orwellian wind farm in between. If wind power accounts for around one percent of all energy production in the US (effectively zero worldwide), does it make sense to subsidize an industry and ruin a perfectly good valley? We leave the news updates for another time, in this podcast, Los Angeles is home to the entertainment industry and there are 13 and a half million people living here, sometimes it seems like no one works. Almost everyone is always home! In reality, many work on projects at home, or freelance different jobs. You see a lot of people in the coffee shops, seemingly wasting time, but usually they’re working. One of those freelancers talked to the Bob Davis Podcasts about getting started on the production side of the TV, Commercial and Film business. You hear from a lot of actors on this subject, but not very often from production people; the people who work behind the scenes on some of your favorite shows and movies. Most of them start freelancing, at the bottom. What’s freelancing all about? Moreover, can this model of freelancing — something Angelenos working in the entertainment business have been doing for decades — be the model for how work gets assigned and done, in the future? This is an especially pertinent question given the advent of new technology. Of course, we’re live from Mobile Podcast Command Unit 8, using the brand new power unit, thanks to X Government Cars! 

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