The true crime storytelling that has done so well for so long on television seems to have met a moment in an entirely new medium. The podcast begins with the sound of a car slowing down, and then a straight-talking narrator takes over. “It was dark when the killer shut off the engine,” he says.
Over the next three minutes, eerie music kicks in and the host, Josh Mankiewicz, sets the scene: a freezing Colorado night, a woman shot in front of colleagues, a masked killer. Who was guilty of murder?” Mr. Mankiewicz asks. “Who was not? And who got away with it?”
A week after its debut, on Sept. 20, the show, “Internal Affairs,” landed at No. 1 on Apple’s U.S. podcast chart. That was not much of a surprise. Podcasts from Mr. Mankiewicz and his colleagues always seem to make the top of the charts. What is more surprising is where they work: “Dateline,” the long-in-the-tooth and occasionally overlooked television newsmagazine from NBC.