Is Ira Glass the new King of all Media?

He's a hit on radio and the Internet. His contributors' books are bestsellers. Now Ira Glass takes 'This American Life' to TV.

  It makes total sense that Showtime would be the TV network that would spend five years cajoling the creator of “This American Life” to make a video version of radio's quirkiest and most original program.

  After all, “This American Life,” with its leisurely story-telling and decidedly anti-establishment point of view, could never have found its way to commercial radio. And Showtime doesn't air commercials.

  But could you imagine “This American Life” on public television? Not Ira Glass, its host and creator.

  “Public television is terrible,” said Glass, breaking up a roomful of TV critics in January. “I work for a public radio station, and many of the stations which carry our show are affiliated with public TV stations. So this isn't the greatest thing for me to say, but it's the truth. In terms of innovation and what they do, you know, it's just not that interesting most of the time.”

 

Sad to say, Glass is right. Besides, PBS didn't come to him, Showtime did, and courted him for years before the famously nerdy host of the Chicago-based radio program said OK.

  When Glass demanded that the look-and-feel of “This American Life” on TV be worked out before agreeing to do the deal, Showtime said fine. When Glass wanted to work with a filmmaker, Showtime hooked him up with Killer Films, best known for “Boys Don't Cry.”

  Showtime's perseverance was amply rewarded. “This American Life” on TV is a one-of-a-kind show for a one-of-a-kind storyteller, with a look and feel ideally suited to the radio program's off-the-front-pages subject matter and its off-the-beaten-path host and his many correspondents.

  Don't expect to see too much of the literary stars minted by the radio show, like Sarah Vowell and David Sedaris. But do expect to see more subjects like the rancher who loved his prize steer so much, he had him cloned. Or the 14-year-old named Joe who takes a solemn vow that he will never fall in love with anyone -- ever.

  “This American Life” fans on radio may have a sense of déjà vu watching the pilot episode which airs Thursday on Showtime. That's because the stories originally aired on radio, like the one called “Pee Girl,” featuring a woman who reveals how her life changed one day in school when she was on the bus and just had to go …

  The pilot is the only episode where you'll see video recreations of stories that aired on the radio. “When we did the stories for pilot we had no idea if Showtime was going to pick us up,” said Glass. “In fact, we figured they will never pick us up.”

You can't blame Glass for being pessimistic about TV. With his Buddy Holly glasses and business suit, not to mention that voice, he just doesn't seem the kind of guy any network would want in front of a camera. But his audience adores him: 1.7 million Americans every week who tune in “This American Life” on their local public radio station, and thousands more download it every week, making it one of iTunes' most popular podcasts. The vast majority of listeners are young and affluent, not unlike Howard Stern's audience, and could add substantial numbers to Showtime's subscription rolls, which still lag behind HBO and Cinemas.

  Speaking of the King of all Media, Glass loves the Stern show on radio, but takes a cautionary lesson from the difficulties Stern has had translating his act to television.

  That is why it took five years to develop “This American Life” with Showtime. Glass didn't know what he wanted, but he knew what he didn't want. In an early version of the program, cameramen tried shooting stories with hand-held camcorders. The video looked awful, so they threw it out.

  “Truthfully, to turn the radio show into a television show, we could have just put people into a studio and filmed them telling their stories,” said Glass. “But it felt like that wasn't ambitious enough. It felt like that wouldn't be exploiting everything you can do with pictures to the degree we wanted. We wanted the pictures to be part of telling the story.”

  So they put the camera on a tripod and went for a more intentional, documentary-style look. It worked. “This American Life” on TV achieves the same contemplative mood as the radio show. And it has a striking spareness of imagery, much as “Life” on radio has a spareness of sound. That will become more obvious next week, since from the second episode onward, Glass and company chose stories exclusively for its TV audience, like the one about the Chicago hot dog stand where drunken white patrons and hostile black servers yell obscenities at one another … for sport. It's Showtime, so no bleep button is required.

  “Finding stuff for TV turned out to be one of the biggest challenges,” said Glass. “If anything, we've totally been appreciating just how easy it is to make radio. It never seemed easy to us before.”

“This American Life” airs for six weeks beginning at 9:30 p.m. CT Thursday on Showtime. The radio version of “This American Life” airs 10 a.m. Sundays, repeating 8 p.m. Tuesdays, on KCUR-FM (or check the website for your local station), and is also available as an iTunes podcast.

Comments

[Scott H]

Aaron, actually the Chicago hot dog stand story that you mention in your final paragraph is not a video exclusive. It's a new visit to the same hot dog stand that was featured in an original radio story that "This American Life" did on the radio over a decade ago. I only know this because Ira Glass talked about it with Terry Gross on her public radio show, "Fresh Air", a few weeks ago. Your review actually makes me wish I had Showtime...

[Aaron]

OK, but there's going to be one big MF-ing difference between that story and this one.

[Adam Abrams]

I'm a huge TAL fan, but being north of the border, I have to hope that a Canadian network picks the show up eventually.

Alas, though Showtime should be commended for their handling of TAL's move to TV, I continue to despise their bafflingly xenophobic approach to the Web: they bar access to their site from anyone outside the US! (As far as I know they're the only network to do this.) What they're afraid of the rest of the world seeing I don't know - or maybe they're just too stingy to pay for the bandwidth - but it sure hurts my opinion of them.

[Vivian]

I was hoping for a longer running series. I changed from Showtime to HBO just for TAL! Now that I don't see any new shows coming up, I'm going to switch back to Showtime to catch Californication.