Stockholm: Swedish audio streaming platform Spotify has announced ‘The Big Hit Show’, a new podcast docuseries from Higher Ground Productions, former US President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s media company.
As per Variety, the new podcast series is coming out on January 12 this year. ‘The Big Hit Show’, which is being released through the Obamas’ multi-year deal with Spotify, will focus on transformational moments of pop culture. The audio documentary will be hosted by journalist Alex Pappademas. Each chapter of ‘The Big Hit Show’, one to be released each quarter, will each have five episodes.
The first two chapters will explore the impact of Stephenie Meyer’s teen vampire romance book series
‘Twilight’ and Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy-winning ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’ rap album.
‘The Big Hit Show’ also will span TV, internet culture, and video games through in-depth interviews.
“‘The Big Hit Show’ is a thought-provoking exploration of fandom that analyzes some of cultures’ biggest movements that have never been dissected before,” Julie McNamara, Spotify’s head of US studios and video, said in a statement.
For ‘The Big Hit Show’, Pappademas, who was formerly executive editor of MTV News and a staff writer at Grantland, said the subjects he’ll focus on in the series are not only “massive pieces of popular culture” but they also have had “a profound butterfly effect on our culture.”
Higher Ground’s first podcast for Spotify was ‘The Michelle Obama Podcast’, which released in mid-2020 and ranks as the most listened to Spotify original to date.
It also produced ‘Renegades: Born in the USA’, a series of conversations between Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen, and recently released ‘Tell Them, I Am’, a podcast collection of universal stories from Muslim voices.
Higher Ground also has a pact to produce film and TV exclusively for Netflix. The company’s first film, ‘American Factory’, won the 2019 Oscar for best documentary feature.
