The Bastard Machine
 Journalist, critic, blogger, podcaster, and Mr. CrankyPants. For a guy whose sole job is watching the boob tube, Tim Goodman sure has a lot of alter egos. The San Francisco Chronicle critic started his print career hating TV, and now he can't write or say enough about what he calls The Bastard Machine. The hardest-working man on the Web takes a break from his three TiVos, two kids, and a deadline to muse about the small screen… and the small screen.
So what do your parents think about you calling your blog "The Bastard Machine"? (Laughs) Well, luckily or unluckily, they're both dead right now. They would've rolled with it, no problem. What's the origin myth behind title, and how'd you get it by your paper? A long time ago, I wanted to write a play and one of my characters was using that [term] to describe the television. And that was before I even started writing about television. How I got it by the Chronicle before the blog, I was already calling the television set the bastard machine, I was surprised when it got in the first time. And when it got in, I thought great, there was no going back. You podcast, you blog, you still do a print column. You're a one-man convergence. Is this journalism five years from now? I think in five years, all of us will be doing whatever's possible to stay employed, and whether that involves a paycheck or not… I totally resisted blogging for the longest time because I wanted to be paid for it, and I rightly assumed at the time it would be a second full-time job, and it is a second full-time job… Then I tried a reverse tactic: Maybe I'll blog and I make it a positive blog, and I could go back and ask for a raise. Which was a failure financially. Now you've taken on even more with the podcast. Why? I don't interview stars. The only people I interview are network execs and people I find particularly interesting... I was thinking, if I had more time, I could probably do a lot more of this. If I podcast this, wouldn't it be cool to interview the people I want to interview, not someone shilling a TV show, not because it's someone who stars in a fall drama, but people who I like? And, at the end of two, three, four years, to have an archive of interviews that are going to live on forever. The first thing I did, I made a list of people I wanted to interview [e.g. Keith Olbermann] and I sent out an email and I said, "I'm going to do a podcast thing, would you be on board with it?" Nobody thought twice about it. The tone of your podcast is really informal. I searched all over to see if anyone was doing television podcasts. The ones I heard, they were really trying very, very hard. I don't want to try very hard. It has to be absolutely spontaneous. The feel that I'm going for is public access television. I don't want to try to sound like Edward R. Murrow and end up sounding like public access. I want to start sounding like public access. Is that why you got [fellow Chronicle writer and neighbor] Joe Garofoli, AKA Question Boy? (Laughs) I got Joe because I was going to take email and phone questions. I thought, how stupid is it going to be when I read the emails and then answer then. That's got to be so low-fi, low-rent. That's just so in your own basement and in your own pajamas... So I came up with Question Boy. Speaking of low-rent, let's go back not so long ago, and revisit an intro to one of your podcasts. "TV Talk Machine. Worst. Podcast. Ever. "Well, so far. I had a really bad headache and lacked sleep. Question Boy sucked at reading questions. Well, not really, but I like to blame him for everything. We were angry. I had the Cranky Pants on instead of the shorty robe. We made a stab at man-love and retreated." Even for us, it sucked. I think that was the podcast when we were re-reading questions from a previous podcast because we were too lazy to do research. Joe and I met in the bathroom 10 minutes before the podcast and asked what we were supposed to be doing... I kind of like it that everything's unplanned. There has to be a base level of preparedness, which we went under the water on that one. I think there's a certain spirit that comes out when we're in there … The thing that I found when I was listening to other people doing it, they were sounding like the local news anchors… I wanted to make people feel like they were eavesdropping on me, talking to one of my best friends. Your columns are long. Your blogs are like columns. Your podcasts go on for days. You're breaking all the rules. [The people who] run the podcasting department, they thought 15 minutes maximum [for a podcast], no one would ever go 15 minutes. I thought, absolutely impossible, there's no way to do an interview in less than 15 minutes, especially when Joe and I talk about TV. I thought, 36 to 40 minutes. It's one thing when Ken Burns is talking about the war, but it's me and Joe in our shorty robes talking about cougars [on "Age of Love"]. [You'd think], who in the world would listen to this, but people would do. We are getting people to listen, which surprises us to no end. Even though Joe and I don't really prep, although I definitely prep when I bring people to interview. You know, Tim, you could write less. One of my new year's resolutions is that I'd blog less. Ironically, I blogged that I'd blog less. Once I get going, I just write it, I'm sure that breaks some kind of blog rules. How big is your blog audience? It really varies. When I did "The Sopranos," 20,000 people hit it, and the next day was 48,000, but on average, it's 8,000 to 15,000. The number of people who comment on the blog apparently is out of proportion to other blogs, you know, about television or almost about anything we have a pretty interactive audience. How is the Bastard Machine voice different from print? What do you get out of it? I have a pretty conversational style anyway, but in the newspaper, 1 out of 50 or out of 100 was [written in the] first person. I really don't like writing in first person, but it fits the blog style. I also like just getting instantaneous comments. I write three columns a week, and I probably get anywhere either from 100 to 300 emails per column, but it's something different when you get comments from the blogs, They're right there, you get that instant feedback and I really like that. ...The podcast I'm definitely doing that for nobody but me. If Joe and I laugh, that's the best hour of my day. Later on, what'll I get out of it [will be an] archive of Ken Burns and Keith Olbermann, people on my list, people who are making television that maybe [readers] don't know about--that's the only reason why I'm doing it, to have that archive. That sounds so historian. I actually got the idea, to be honest with you, after I reviewed a DVD of Tom Snyder's show, The Tomorrow Show. Tom Snyder lives in the [San Francisco] Bay Area. I looked at the DVD and looked back at him interviewing all these punks in '77 and '78— The Clash, that was really cool, Joan Jett when she's 16. Having people that I like in the archive setting would be great. Hopefully I'll add a Tom Snyder episode. I want to go back and ask you about the "I." In the blog universe, the "I" might be perceived as more honest, that you're taking responsibility for your writing. I stand by the fact that it's lazy writing. I think it works perfectly in the blog… I look at the two with two totally different mindsets. In print, it reads better not to have "I' in there even though as a critic I'm entitled to do so. Who gives a (expletive) what you think? If you can be critical without hitting people over the head with "I," "I," "me," "me" it's just more useful. If a critic can pull the wool over my eyes by enlightening me with some analytical piece while not drawing attention to themselves in the process, I'm more interested. If it's all about them, I don't care. I think I'll keep it strictly to the blog. It's more intimate. I don't know if there's more accountability but it gives the illusion of more intimacy with the readers. If you share more of our personal stuff, there's a bond. That said, not everything that people say in their blogs is actually happening—my guess is there's some exaggeration for comedic effect if nothing else. What's your most shameful pleasure? I don't know if it's shameful, but my TV pleasure is always "Sports Center." That's like my getaway, you know what I mean? It's hard not to critique other shows, even if I'm watching for pleasure. What other blogs do you read? I read TV Tattle, which is a blog that, you know, brings in what other TV critics in the country write, so it saves me from visiting their newspaper sites. I do fantasy baseball, so Rotoworld. I sort of live on that because of my fantasy baseball. I check out Metacritic for TV, Romanesko to watch the failure of my industry go down the toilet. It's a reminder everyday that I'm dinosaur. I'm adapting, I'm trying to stay alive. Do you think you'll migrate entirely online one day? That's a possibility, if that's the way the newspaper business goes. I prefer a newspaper. I like to hold it in my hands.
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