Monday, April 6, 2009

BBC history magazine

Jim Mowatt of the history podcast Historyzine aproached me with a request to review the podcast of the BBC History Magazine. He was surprised to find I had not reviewed it before. The fact is however, I have, although it is a long time ago (2007). I couldn't keep up with the podcast, although that does not necessarily mean it is a bad podcast.

BBC History Magazine is a monthly that can be purchased in the UK and can be ordered all over the world. The podcast is a promotional effort to go along with each edition. Twice a month the podcast comes out and highlights several articles from the current magazine. Usually the author of the article is interviewed about the subject. Two subjects are covered in the episode of around half an hour. Enough to get a really nice expose of the subject at hand.

I can imagine why Jim keeps up with the podcast and I am sure you will find the occasional treasure along with the regularly interesting stuff. So, why then did I drop out of this podcast? One reason is that I do not particularly like jumping around history from subject to subject era to era perspective to perspective. With podcasts that do this, I like to pick and choose my items and leave the rest. Contrary to most other podcasts, BBC History Magazine delivers no information about the content with the podcast, not in the info and not in the description label. That is the second and effective reason. When I quickly have to decide which podcast to download, a nondescript title like BBC History Magazine April 2009 part 1 with no added description will make pass this one by.

I feel however I can recommend what I assume Jim does, pick up each issue and be treated with an endless stream of history varieties presented by a professional team interviewing the true specialists.

More BBC History Magazine:
December 2007,
November 2007.

More Historyzine:
The lines of Brabant,
Historyzine at its best,
The battle of Blenheim,
Reliving the War of Spanish Succession,
The year 1703.

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2 comments:

Ronnie Horesh said...

Hi Anne and thanks for your blog. The BBC does now give some information about each History Magazine podcast. See here.

Anne the Man said...

that is pretty concise. Concise enough to easily fit into the labels of your MP3's. Thus I can read from the feed what content you offer. A good teaser is the best seller - right?