We read in a trade quoting Fisher PD Travis Box" that "even prior to KVI/Seattle’s flip from Talk to Oldies late last year, there’d been a lot of conversation around the company’s Emerald City
(image credit: Sibling Rivalry)
headquarters about 'how we could take what we knew about spoken-word audio content to create a product/format for a new generation of listeners.'"
No shit. That's all it's been: a lot of conversation- for years... until now with their new product/format NoizBeam.com, a digital talk platform targeting 18-49 year olds. (Their old platforms, KOMO and KVI have been only marginally successful with the 59-91 demo).
Noizbeam is a collection of established (that's a relative word on the internets) podcasts by some 20 to 30-somethings -- mostly male -- and featured across several mediums, the internet, mobile applications, traditional broadcast and "other non-traditional distribution methods."
Or so reads the press release.
(We loved the throbbing and creaming first graph of a tech site announcing the start-up that read: "Fisher Communications, Inc., a major player in local media innovation..."We who know and love the deeply-troubled local company know they're dragging years, if not decades behind their competitors and the fucking universe in new media. If anything, they've been going backwards in the innovation dep't).
Until now, with NoizBeam.
There's one name we recognize: Jeremy Grater, former KVI and KIRO producer who produced Bryan Suits and Mike Webb (and many other hats at Fisher Plaza). His podcast, The Sibling Rivalry, calls itself a discussion of “real lives, pop culture, news of the day and sometimes farts — because they’re funny.”
We get that NoizBeam isn't meant for us (we're old, and have transcended farts) and been listening to Sibling Rivalry occasionally since Webb was alive. It's our favorite on this site (they've done 174 episodes). The Sibs are conversations between Jeremy and his brother Aaron who lives back East and a woman, Stacy (or Jeremy's wife Sheryl) the feminine foils to the masculine barbarity of the brothers.
The list of podcasts include The Grapes of Rad, two guys who challenge you to “listen like your sense of humor depends on it.” 
Stack of Dimes, two more guys, JD and Thunder talkin' shit. Everything that's not awesome, sucks, naturally.
Madge and Dave are a bi-gendered couple who figure stuff out, outloud on matters of sex, gender, and rock 'n roll. And also hangovers, dead raccoons and people who only chew half sticks of gum.
The Air Raid Podcast is yet another couple of guys: they're the ones That Drop Bombs of Awesome In To Your Earholes!
Famous radio sidekick/producer Sean Detore (of TBTL and The John Curley Show) makes some appearances on Rad. He has a particularly interesting sense of humor when the FCC's not his overlord.
And it's not, of course, NoizBeam free-styles the seven dirties like there's no tomorrow - it's a big FUCC-you to the FCC.
It's like listening-in on conversations at the urinals while sitting in a stall in the men's room at a wrestling match. It's fat jokes or dick jokes or combinations of both. (Hey, he's got a dick-do! What's a dick-do? That's when your gut sticks out farther than your dick do). It's discussions of hair gel, Anthony Weiner (of course) cock-push-ups, innovative onanism, and other explorations of regions of the nether kind.
Lots of booze-talk, weed-smoking, of avid discussions about passing gas and/or urine tests. Glib, muchly sophomoric conversations about poop, pop music and culture, body functions and trials in the lives of couples with small children or babies. (There's a poignant tale of an infant who throws-up into her mother's mouth- if that doesn't make you want to dial up NoizBeam immediately, you must be 49 and a half or a woman).
There's much self-absorbed, professional/personal navel-gazing normal with males at that age-stage. And jokes you won't get if you didn't memorize certain action movies.
You get the idea. It's TBTL without the maturity.
We're not being condescending here, we like this site. It's uncensored and off-beat funny, styles we admire. Our only criticism is the obvious one- The gender balance is tilted to the Men's Club side. We wish there were a couple of women-only casts ... and how about some gays?
Most of all, we're amazed and love that it lives under the stodgy imprimatur of Fisher Communications.
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