The following is a free time political podcast ...

The Northern View's podcast
project featured Christy Clark as
a guest for this weeks show.

The 7th edition of the Northern View's  new Podcast project veered into provincial politics this week.

With the sales reps/podcast hosts from MacCarthy GM, taking some time out of reading their favourite highlights from the local weekly paper to speak with Premier Christy Clark.

The interlude with the Premier, which comes up at the seven minute mark of the podcast, provided for just short of five minutes of something that most resembled a scripted, free time political comment opportunity.

The concept of the podcast approach to communication probably made for a welcome proposal for the Premier, who dominated the conversation in what for the most part was a pretty one sided presentation.

Turning the gathering of news over to the podcast team of Kimberly Godfrey and Tyler Portelance seemed to offer up a pretty gentle version of the "press scrum" for the Premier. Allowing her the opportunity to make sure that her favourite Northwest talking points were delivered, with little in the way of follow up when it came to any other issues of concern for the community.

Depending on how you view politics, or journalism for that matter, some will probably rightfully suggest that the Podcast should have come with the obligatory "the following is a free time political broadcast" announcement.

And while Premier Clark waits for her complimentary coffee mug to be shipped to Victoria from the Northern View warehouse, the producers of the Podcast may want to start stocking up on more mugs and compiling their list of other potential political guests.

Considering that the province is now entering what is clearly the early stages of the 2017 election campaign, one wonders if NDP Opposition leader John Horgan, or any of the local candidates planning to run in the upcoming local North Coast race will be offered a similar opportunity.

They too would surely welcome the chance to share some thoughts in between ads for cars and tires, and we imagine they too are standing ready to grab some free advertising (and a coffee mug) sometime before the May election.

More notes on the media on the North Coast can be found here.