Few From The Quad has been a solo show for a long time now. Over 130 shows, I think. Of course, there were the odd guest host appearance, from Charly and Kiraun, but for the most part I have been going in It alone. So what made me decide to bring Liz onto VFTQ as a permanent cohost? Why give myself the extra work of having to edit longer shows, organize more sociable recording times and teach her not to hit the bloody microphone stand?
The reason is that VFTQ needed a cohost. Subscription rates have been falling for months now, and I am down to maybe a fifth of the listener base I once had. View From The Quad needed a quick stir up, format and talent wise. And hell, Liz has done a damn fine job!

So. What are the pros?

1. Longer, more entertaining, episodes. If you have a cohost, you shortly realize that it’s not just you ranting on to yourself every week. You can ha e a conversation, deepen your knowledge of the topic under discussion and provide entertaining debate to your listeners. This is likely the biggest pro to having your cohost.
2. Split the work. With a cohost, there is more then a single person working on the show staff. Gone are the days when you have to totally prep, record, edit and produce a show, all by yourself. Now you have somebody to help you. Split the jobs between you, an you will find that the show gets easier to do every week.
3. A new voice. Two voices discussing something are infinatly more fun to listen too then a single voice discussing the same thing. Give your listeners a break from your drone, let them hear a new voice.
4. Somebody to chat too. Seriously. This makes everything go so much faster.

So what about the cons?

1. You *might* have to spend a fair bit of time teaching the cohost exactly what a podcast is, and how one gets made. Not much of an issue, and you can take the chance to relearn your skills yourself.
2. You have to show them the way your show works. For instance, if I was to take on a cohost with Starting WoW, I would need to be sure that they kept to the format that I have worked for so long to create. While change might be a good thing to bring to a show, if SWoW totally changes it’s aim from humor and self deprecation to actually becoming a 100% serious show, most of my audience would just up and quit.

So there are my ideas for the pros and cons of bring a new staff member onto a show.

Have you gone through such a change? Leave a comment and let me know what you thought!

Tags: cohost, podcast

Podcasting: It’s fair to say that it has been around the block once or twice. I think it has existed for about 5 years, or there abouts, in it’s current form. VFTQ has been around maybe three years or so, and web before that, my first podcast was maybe four years ago.

So it is maybe time for me to ask the questions which many others before me have asked.
Where am I going with all this work every week? Where do I want to be in the world of podcasting? Why do I want to be in the world of podcasting?

The answer is fairly long. Because of this, I am breaking it into a few separate blog posts. This is the third.

Last time I posted one of my first ever episodes. Time to close up this series of posts!

So, once I was moved to Libsyn, View From The Quad became pretty much a weekly regular show. I started interviewing the likes of Scott Sigler, Tee Morris and Mur Lafferty, and really settled into my stride.

I think that it is safe to say that my finding of Blubrry was the biggest jump in podcasting technology i ever made, save actually starting the show. Blubrry, headed by a great and friendly staff, became my podcasting “agents”, finding advertising partners for the show. Ever since I first found them, I have been working closely with them to monetize View From The Quad, quite successfully. When I went to the last New Media Expo in Ontario, California, they even brought me into their crazy party suite and gave me lots of little notebooks and cool stickers, which now grace my microphone cases. Friendly people.
However, helping me monetize VFTQ is not where these people stopped. About a year after we became affiliated, they introduced what is simply the best podcasting stats system ever. Now I could finally see what was going on behind the scenes of my podcast, and found that VFTQ was a huge hit in Canada.

Once VFTQ reached episode 80 or so, I decided that it was time for a new show to begin. Starting WoW, my foray into World of Warcraft podcasting hit off to a great start, attracting advertisers from the third episode or so. Huge numbers flocked to download it every week, and it’s first season of 12 episodes flew by. Then the second season. At the time of writing, I am putting off beginning the third season due to some switcharounds i’m making with View From The Quad.

So that’s how I got where I am now. How did you? Write a blog post and leave a link in the comments!

Tags: about me, podcast

Podcasting: It’s fair to say that it has been around the block once or twice. I think it has existed for 5 years, or there abouts, in it’s current form. VFTQ has been around maybe three years or so, and web before that, my first podcast was maybe four years ago.

So it is maybe time for me to ask the questions which many others before me have asked.
Where am I going with all this work every week? Where do I want to be in the world of podcasting? Why do I want to be in the world of podcasting?

The answer is fairly long. Because of this, I am breaking it into a few separate blog posts. This is the second.

Last time I spoke about my early days as a pirate broadcaster at the ripe old age of 7 or there abouts. Fast forward about 5 years. I have been listening to podcasts for about a year now, notably the now totally different Dragon Page Wingin’ it and Scott Sigler’s Earthcore. I really respected these people, and wanted to be like them. So I decided to try.

What is now known as View From The Quad started off as the Stuff Slasher Saw podcast. SSS was my drupal powered site, which is now quite very dead. The podcast consisted of me rambling on for a while about whatever I wanted, in my squeaky pre-adolescent voice. I managed to dredge up one of the first ever episodes, thanks to a friend. Be warned – My squeeky voice MAY harm your eardrums.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

I can still see the live podcast creation software I used to create the show. Can’t remember what it was called though. Podcast producer maybe.

SSS started off sporadic, and after a while I kind of forgot about it. After a few months of it not doing anything, I remembered it and decided to do something utterly mad for a 13 year old to do. I invited a few palls over and we watched the entire Matrix trilogy, with recording breaks between movies. We reviewed them, and got very tired. Again, this pushes SSS into weekly production for a while, but it soon died off again.

Now, at this time I was hosting with the free version of Switchopod. It is with them I struck my first advertising deal. In return for a month of my advertising for them, they would stick my promo in about 100 podcast feeds. I don’t know if they actually did this, because I didn’t really see any returns. But what the heck. It gave me the push I needed to keep podcasting.

Stuff Slasher Saw died out, an the podcast moved to it’s current address, www.viewfromthequad.com. A while after this I got sick of the limitations of even a paid Switchpod account, and moved my media files over to Libsyn.

Tags: about me, podcast

Podcasting: It’s fair to say that it has been around the block once or twice. I think it has existed for about 5 years, or there abouts, in it’s current form. VFTQ has been around maybe three years or so, and web before that, my first podcast was maybe four years ago.

So it is maybe time for me to ask the questions which many others before me have asked.
Where am I going with all this work every week? Where do I want to be in the world of podcasting? Why do I want to be in the world of podcasting?

The answer is fairly long. Because of this, I am breaking it into a few separate blog posts. This is the first.

At a very young age I was I was interested in broadcasting and the radio. Every single morning I would get up early to listen to a breakfast radio show called The Strawberry Alarmclock. While the other kids were watching tv, I was giggling at political skits I hardly understood. This show was possibly the single best comedy show on radio in Ireland for the past 30 years, but it is now finished it’s run of the awards. The two hosts moved their entire show, minus the name, no another radio station. It is now called Colm and Jimjim’s Breakfast Show, and can be found on 2FM at about half past 6 in the morning. While it is still a great listen, it doesn’t live up to it’s former glory on a non nationalized radio station, where they could get away
With a lot more. Sadly, the previous station has kept the AlarmClock going with different hosts, and it has become the same childish drivel as all the other breakfast shows.

One of the best presents I ever got was a little electrical set by uncle gave me.I think I was seven. It was one of those boards with lots of little springs, all which were connected to components out of view. The idea was that you connected the components, using wires to con connect the springs, and then made something. Like a Morse Code transmitter, basic adding machine, or in my case, an FM transmitter with a dinky little microphone attached. I could connect this likely illegal device to my houses plumbing and have this huge antenna which basically consisted of my entire steel frame house.

You couldn’t receive the signal from any farther then about 30 meters away, but I was transfixed. My voice was somehow travelling through the void, and maybe landing in somebodies ears. It’s doubtful, but it could have happened.

I remember telling my uncle and cousin to stand in the next room and to listen to me talking for brief moments, then playing music. I was adamant that they would then dance. This lasted about 10 minutes before my cousin needed to use the bathroom.

After playing with this gizmo for a while, I got bored with it and put it away. My love for broadcasting would not resurface for the next few years.

Tags: about me, podcast