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General discussion

Yesterday's angst-ridden BOL

Jun 6, 2011 11:55PM PDT

Yesterday's BOL was very difficult for me to listen to as I walked to work today. It was a culmination of the issues I've been seeing pop up on BOL lately and I'm not exactly sure where we go from here in regards to the show.

I've been listening way back when Veronica(their first sound engineer)
was on the show hardly(vocal wise). I think one of the key issues I've
been getting irked by nowadays is the extreme unbalanced/emotional-based
conclusions that sometimes comes out from the balance of BT &
Molly. Most days they're fine, but I really do miss the days when Tom M.
was around and acted as a foil and counter-balance to some of the
extreme movements other co-hosts sometimes swung to.

In many ways, Tom was the straight shooter, who despite rare moments of
outrage(like against Amazon's VOD player), has always been a stabilizer and devil's advocate towards Molly when she swung from
one emotional viewpoint occasionally.

I love BT and I do appreciate the energy he brought to the show, but he
tends to swing as well and over the last few months, he and Molly have
basically fed off each other's energy to bring us great moments
sometimes, but I've found myself getting tired in others.

From yesterday's show, it sounds like Molly & the rest of the CNet crew have just been overworked lately. They had to cover Apple's event and E3's! The way Molly & Brian C. talked about how much work they'll need to put in to explain iCloud was indicative to me about how over-worked they probably are.

I don't know where BOL will be in a year, but I do miss hearing someone who can come in with some calm and balance to offset the emotional moments as times. Yesterday's show was unfortunately typical of the show as of late. Even now the once "Molly rant" has become so common we don't even hear the jiggle for it anymore, it's just expected, and I think that is not excellent podcasting. It's great radio, but I know BOL can do better than what yesterday's show was like.

Discussion is locked

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A simple question?
Jun 7, 2011 1:28AM PDT

It is really strange that this debate ONLY comes up when the talk on the show is about Apple. I dont see 29 posts to defend AT&T when they are attacked. Or angry mobs leaving the show when Microsoft are being ridiculed for missing the ball. Or when Nokia is put on deathwatch.

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This is not about Apple
Jun 7, 2011 1:36AM PDT

This is also not about anger, at least I tried not to portray anger in the post, so I do apologize if I failed in that. The point is the trend that I've been seeing and yesterday's was a good example of what I've felt has been happening to the quality of the stories being covered.

This has been similar to me when topics like FB, Sony, Anon, Playstation, perception or ranting about lack of science teaching in classrooms. Those are all worthy topics to discuss, but the tone and manner they're being presented sometimes has been lacking.

In addition, I have been a regular listener, but not a regular forum follower. So I can understand your frustration if this type of topic does appear whenever they speak about Apple, but for me, yesterday's show in general was what prompted me coming back onto the forum and stating my 2 cents. If the show was about Microsoft's lackluster announcements or calls for Ballmer to resign, it might have tipped me over as well. It's been a building up feeling, not just b/c it's an Apple thing.

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Balance
Jun 8, 2011 12:13PM PDT

Being that most of the world uses Microsoft Windows PC's but only Mac customers have been called " Sheep" on the show. I agree the WWDC/E3 show was out of control. You don't have to be a long time listener to get that neither Ms. Wood nor Mr. Cooley care for Apple. I would just enjoy a more balanced podcast. It seems that only Apple and Perhaps Sony are the worst tech companies on the planet according to the current version of BOL.

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missed B. Tong Yesterday
Jun 7, 2011 2:30AM PDT

Cooley is so over the top, wished we could have had at least a "balanced podcast". Molly and Cooley are such anti-apple it's unfortunate. With BT there would have been some balance.

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Me too
Jun 10, 2011 11:06AM PDT

<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> I agree with the OP in that Monday's podcast was especially painful to listen to. I listen to a bunch of podcasts, and none were nearly that biased against Apple's announcements. You'd think Apple just rounded up and shot random WWDCers or something judging my Molly and Cooley's reactions.