Backspace

The story behind backspace

Backspace came about after a year of survival. The show I was hired to work on, Pop Americana, was cancelled after only its second season due to budget constraints, layoffs and the COVID-19 pandemic restricting in-person filming and travel. With only me and my host, Sana Saeed, left, we had to do something while we figured out how to move ahead.

While we worked to put the pieces together, we created an interim series of short videos commenting on the news at the time. These topics ranged from impeachment to civil rights to media narratives and more.

After deliberating, brainstorming, pitching and re-pitching ideas for our new main series, we landed on Backspace in March 2021.

The insight and context we offered about media narratives seemed to resonate with our audience and we wanted to push the envelope as far as we could go with that premise. And our pilot episode reinforced that.

So starting from scratch, we began to build…

…until finally, we had a set.

And after months of research, interviews, filming and post-production, we finally launched Backspace to pleasantly positive reactions and strong metrics.

Season One was a success. Not only were we offering a new perspective on the news for our general audience, we were sharing insightful case studies that journalists and scholars alike have gone on to reference in their own work.

But if there’s anything we learned from backspace, it’s that we can always do better…

And so for Season Two, we revamped the studio again.

We wanted to visualize a maturation of the show’s critique and level of production

And now in the midst of Season Two, we continue to find media narratives also in need of a revamp.

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