Reflections on Show Making
Whatever happened to weekly reports?
I started writing one of these last week, got distracted, and when I got back to it, it was gone … like a mustard burp in the wind.
JC and I had guests on this week’s The LEFT Show, which was great. Sarah and Doug Willoughby graciously accepted a last minute invitation and it was a lot of fun - especially the Patreon* part of the show.
There’s a bittersweet taste doing podcasts the last couple of years. 10 years ago, when we started, it was not as populated a field as it is now. Our most downloaded show was in 2012 during Obama’s reelection. Some shitwit named Todd Akin had popped up from conservative obscurity to state that, in the case of “legitimate rape” the female body had ways to “shut that down.” Our 3 hour show (yeah, they used to be 3-4 hours long) was downloaded over 140k times. Pretty big numbers for us. As a reference, our 500th show was only had about 13k downloads.
2016 was a rough year for the show, I had a job that was eating 16-18 hours of every day, Forrest was too sick to record anything, Jake was gone, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep doing the show after 300 episodes. JC, on the other hand, was a victim of circumstance, ready every week to record, and I kept cancelling on him, which hurt both shows quite a bit.
2016, started out strong, and, for a lot of different reasons, mostly my fault, it ended as a total shit show losing over 70% of our audience. It’s been a total slog ever since trying to build them back up, especially as the podcast landscape went from figurative farmsteads to seriously dense vertical high-rise density.
Those little shits that make Pod Save America kicked the shit out of smaller shows with regular folks hosting. As well they should, it’s a great show. Top shelf stuff. Yeah, shows like that are kicking the shit out of the grandparent shows that came first. Not their fault, but it is a kick in the teeth to hear them talk about how important it is to have a robust progressive media infrastructure when their sucking all the oxygen out of the room - LOLz.
The funny thing, and this is also all my fault, is that the shows have never made money. They cost a small fortune to produce, host, and distribute. A small fortune to me, at any rate. This might be a good time to mention our Patreon!
The other thing that stings a bit are the shows that have gone into hibernation. I mentioned them in a previous post, but I miss MANSplaining and Tell Me A Story quite a bit. Even the parts where I couldn’t find a guest and read my own little stories, which was actually quite difficult to make myself do. We are always our own loudest critic, after all.
So, we’re coming up on our 550th show for The LEFT Show, and the 450th episode of The World’s Greatest Comic Book Podcast, and, to sum up, I am actually quite grateful and humbled by the support we’ve maintained.
JC took a massive personal step and wrote his first comic book - The Shaolin Nun. He’s now crowdfunding the third issue - SUPPORT THAT HERE - of what is, I loudly proclaim, a very, very good story. I’m proud of him, and impressed by the work he’s doing with his team, and I know that folks that listen to the podcast are too. Where I get frustrated is knowing that with a little more financing and time, we’d be able to increase audience interaction and participation, and really kick his fundraising into a higher gear. I know he can’t work any harder, and I know that I should be. That is the purpose for this paragraph, at any rate.
So, I’m left without an inspiring close again this week. Sorry about that. I’m sure this was whiney again, even though I don’t mean it to be. Regardless, I am in love with what we’re doing, what we’ve done so far, and I’m happy to keep making original content every week.
If a few little things fall into place over the next couple of weeks, I might even get to wake up a couple of those sleeping shows and get everything back on track. Who knows? Life is a fickle bitch, but sometimes you can coax a smile.
Thanks for reading. Maybe take a moment to share? Certainly support The Shaolin Nun on Kickstarter, and I will see you in a few days.
— JMB