Extra Hot Great

I enjoy listening to podcasts, but with a couple of notable exceptions, they tend to be relatively short lived affairs. I get the impression that they are a ton of work, with little payoff. As such, I’ve had the experience of discovering a podcast that I think is exceptional, only to have it close doors within a month or two of my discovery. Often, there is a big back catalog, which is nice, but it’s still depressing that no new episodes are being made. Again, I can’t really fault anyone for quitting their podcast – it seems like a lot of work and the general weekly schedule that is seemingly required in order to maintain an audience doesn’t make it any easier.

Extra Hot Great was one of those podcasts that I discovered about a month before they decided to call it quits. They had about a year and a half of back episodes, and I really came to love that podcast. Well, the reason they stopped the podcast was that two of the principle players were starting a new business venture in LA, a website called Previously.tv (I have linked to several of my favorite articles from them over the past few months). If you like television, the site is well worth your time.

And now we can all rejoice, because they’ve brought back the Extra Hot Great podcast! It is, more or less, the same format as the old classic episodes. A topic or two (usually a show or news item), with some irregular but recurring features inbetween (my favorite being “I am not a crackpot”, a Grampa Simpson inspired segment where someone lays out their crackpot idea), followed by Game Time, where they come up with absurdly comprehensive and sometimes complicated movie/television/pop culture quizzes and compete against one another (the thing that makes this segment work so well is that Tara and Joe know their shit way better than you, but are probably about equivalent with each other). The old EHG podcast shuffled between movies and TV, but I’m not sure if the Previously.tv incarnation will focus more on TV or not. Nevertheless, I’m excited to see a beloved defunct podcast brought back from the dead, and you should be too!

And while you’re at it, take note of your favorite podcasts and enjoy them while you can – maybe write them a good iTunes review, or drop something in the tipjar or something. Chances are, they won’t be around forever! For reference, here’s my regular stable of podcasts, you should listen to these too!