A belter of a True Crime Podcast

I’ve eaten a whole bag of Dolly Mixtures while writing this newsletter, and it’s ended up being a good one. I might try that every week. Enjoy.

Worse Than Murder

At Fresh Air we don’t often do true crime podcasts. But when we do one, it’s an absolute belter.

?And so it is that ‘Worse Than Murder’ – our first ever true crime narrative documentary for the BBC – was released on Monday and has dominated the top of the True Crime charts ever since.

Muriel McKay was kidnapped in December 1969 and held for a ransom of ￡1 million. Why? Because the criminals wanted to abduct Rupert Murdoch’s wife, Anna Murdoch, but took the wrong woman. Muriel was tragically killed and buried on a Hertfordshire farm. Her body has never been found but her killers were convicted of murder – the first to be found guilty of a killing in the UK without a body.

By almost-complete coincidence, this week the Metropolitan Police began digging to look for Muriel’s body, prompted by new information from Nizamodeen Hosein – one of the murderers – on the possible location. Her family are working with the man who killed their mother so that they can find closure after 54 years. The ‘Worse Than Murder’ story spans the birth of Tabloid journalism (Muriel’s husband was the Deputy Chairman of the News of The World), a family’s heartbreak, and mystery that has never yet been solved. We genuinely don’t know how it will end.

The show is a co-production with our friends at Telltale, and special mention goes to Paul Russell who found Simon Farquhar’s book ‘A Desperate Business’ and felt it had all the ingredients to be a great show. Basil Oxtoby – Fresh Air’s Head of Pressing Record – has done a stunning job on the sound design throughout, on a project that’s taken over his life. We’re super-proud of this show, and can’t wait to see whether there’s a new twist in the story.

You can listen now on BBC Sounds, Spotify, Apple or anywhere else. If you would rather wait for it to come out of your transistor radio, it will be on BBC Radio 4 at 9.30am on Wednesday.

Beckie’s Getting Married Tomorrow

A word about Beckie Bird . If you’ve worked with Fresh Air you may well have come across our Head of Organising Everything Everywhere All At Once. Well, tomorrow, the thing she’s organised is her own wedding. Beckie and Adam are getting hitched, and we couldn’t be happier for them. Is Adam good enough for her? Well, on her first day at Fresh Air, he ordered doughnuts to be delivered to the office for the whole team. So we say yes and we wish them all the very best for a happy life together.

Beckie and Adam are the first happy couple ever to be blessed with a good luck message in the Fresh Air Recommends newsletter, so if that doesn’t give them the basis for a wonderful marriage, I don’t know what would.

One thing you might not know is that Beckie is the Queen of the OOO email, making it her mission to work as many puns into her holiday messages as possible. If you try and email Beckie now, you’ll get a reply that includes the line ‘Aisle be out of the office this week and will get back to you without veil on Monday 29th’. I think you’ll agree this is professional level punnage, following on from a previous holiday to Vietnam where her OOO promised she’d be back in a ‘Ho Chi Minute’.

The GB News Sports Reader Isn’t Real?

I was once the worst sports bulletin reader in British radio. In 1998, my first job out of university was a three-month long run reading the drive time sports news on Jazz FM. The bulletins were 90 seconds long and I made a hash of them every time. I never did a single one without stumbling, I got scores wrong, I mispronounced things, I got the wrong train and was late, I had an actual asthma attack on air, and I missed my final day by getting chicken pox.

A year or so later, I did similar drivetime shifts on BBC Radio London. I was a bit better and managed to include a joke about goalkeeper Dean Kylie signing for Charlton Athletic and obviously thinking “I Should be so Lucky’. I was very proud of this.

In 2001, I began writing sports bulletins for BBC Radio 5 Live and accidentally broke the embargo on the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List.??

So I was rubbish, but at least I was real, which puts me one up on the sports bulletin reader on GB News Radio. In case you didn’t know, GB News Radio is essentially the audio feed of GB News TV, and broadcast on DAB. It has a weekly reach of … and I’m so sorry to tell you this … 454,000 people. You might not think it, but you may even know someone who listens to ‘Lee Anderson’s Real World’ when they’re in the car.

This week, they revealed that the sport news is completely created in AI. The script and the clip choices are all done by robot, and then the words are read by a synthesised version of GB News presenter Titania Sanchez. You can hear a bulletin here – demonstrating that the AI host may efficiently tell you about Gareth Southgate’s resignation, and that digital Titania has all the personality of a ball of Blu-tak.

On one hand, you might say this is a terrifying glimpse into a dystopian future where robots are writing and presenting the news, taking jobs away from skilled journalists and broadcasting stories to the public without being checked by humans for accuracy. On the other hand, she won’t have an asthma attack after running up the stairs to get the cricket scores, will she?

Brand Safety Podcast flags

In a second story under the ‘technology makes things a bit worse’ banner, it seems that overly zealous brand safety tools are leading to some podcasts losing ad revenue. Desperate to avoid having their ads placed in or alongside anything controversial, many brands are using blunt brand safety robots to spot anything potentially problematic. These can seek out podcasts that mention anything rude or violent and essentially blacklist them.

So what do we do? Play it safe every time? Bleep out naughty things? Have bland conversations about flowers, clouds and lettuce? This article that I pinched the story from is clearly a puff for an alternative tech solution, which you can use if you like, but may I be so bold as to suggest using your ears? Spending the time to choose your own ad placements? Programmatic clearly has its place, but using the audio world cleverly means seeking out partners who give you the right audiences with a well matched tone of voice.?

Sometimes it’s about pure reach and scale, in which case the robots may be your friend but you might end up with loads of wastage or mediocrity. On the other hand, speaking to experts and listening to the show you want to partner with, even if that occasionally means the hosts say poo or weewee, will almost certainly get you smarter and better results. Did I mention we’ve just started ‘Fresh Air Media’ to help you do just that?

Our recommends this week include..?

Martin Poyntz-Roberts is already on the beach..

Malcolm Gladwell must be a very busy man. He presents one of my favourite podcasts in Revisionist History, and any opportunity to hear him telling a story, I jump at. The attraction of podcasts to me are not the slapstick banter of friends chatting, not two experts breaking a news story (although I love that kind of show too) but the art of telling stories. Medal of Honor tells the selected stories of some of the 3000 recipients of the American Medal of Honor, awarded for bravery in combat that goes far above and beyond the call of duty.

I’m not a big fan of military stories, but I’m a big fan of well told stories and these are, like all the best stories, true. And as expected all these true stories are way better than any story that could be made up. So, plunge yourself into the first episode, ‘Courage is Contagious: Mike & Tommy’, which tells the story of the bravery of friends in Vietnam, struggling to stay alive in a deadly fire fight. Before long you’ll close your eyes and you’ll be swept off to the surf on the Vietnamese coast and into the mind of Thor, our first hero of the series.

It's Malcom Gladwell. This is perfect summer listening on the beach with a cold drink of your choice.

Listen here

Izzie Clarke recommends..

This week I've been hooked by Afghan Star. It's the story of how Afghanistan navigated its identity after Taliban rule and how one talent show both unites and, somewhat, divides the nation. Narrated by THE John Legend, it carefully dances between the tension of being in singing competition, the drama of such a huge show being put together on very little notice, the amazing response from hearing people sing after such strict rule, but the careful and certainly risky boundaries, especially for women, of such a show existing. If you want great story telling, strong narratives, considered sound design then this is the series for you. The added bonus is that it's produced by Fresh Air freelancer and all round superstar Meera Kumar , which just makes it even better!

Listen here.

What have we been listening to this week?

Rich and Michaela

As you may already know, we’ve recently launched the newest brand in the Fresh Air family – Fresh Air Media. After many years of using the podcast world to promote the work we make for our clients, we’re making our agency planning and buying services available to all brands and agencies.

What does that mean exactly? Well, the best way to understand something with depth and nuance is, of course, a podcast. So Richard – Director of Pressing Send on the Email – and Michaela – Director of Content and Fierce Woman – have recorded a special episode of Fresh Ears to explain and explore the idea.

Hear their insights and perspectives on how brands can make use of the podcast space to build a long term presence through creative approaches and partnerships, not just the usual spot ads. Plus, Rich has a very soothing voice.

What have we been doing this week?

On Wednesday night, I went to watch Fawlty Towers The Play on Shaftesbury Avenue. I could not be more target audience for this if I tried, but even I was a bit sceptical about watching it rehashed on stage to fund John Cleese’s bitter old age. Give me any line from any of the 12 episodes and I could probably tell you the next line, and the same clearly goes for everyone else in the audience. Evidence for this is the amount of laughing that happens before something is even said - a whole theatre of middle aged / older middle aged people giggling in anticipation of ‘I know nothing’ or ‘Yes you did, you invaded Poland’.?

Something interesting happens though, when the words you know so well are detached from the performances you know so well, and played by unknown actors. The writing and the script suddenly come to the fore. Cleese and Booth were incredible writers at the peak of their powers, and watching in the theatre is a bit like you’ve shut your eyes to the TV show and hearing them for the first time all over again. And I fell in love with it all over again.

Anyway, please take three minutes of your Friday to watch and admire my favourite Fawlty Towers scene. The Fire Drill.?