BlueMoonPodcast
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 30 Oct 2009
- Messages
- 1,039
It's not a post that we'd like to have to make, but the time has come again to appeal to people who listen to this website's Podcast to help with the show's running costs. We have a Patreon page set up where people can back the show for a set amount of time and receive the bonus rewards - http://www.patreon.com/BlueMoonPodcast - and we have a PayPal that people can donate to if they feel inclined - http://www.paypal.me/BlueMoonPodcast.
We currently have 99 Patreon backers out of thousands upon thousands of listeners. If a few more listeners would be able to donate a tiny amount, then the funding issues would be solved.
I (David) took on a lot of the responsibilities for running the show last season and, running it alongside my home life and my regular jobs, was actually far more stressful than I'd been expecting.
To give you some idea: I was doing up to a 40hr working week across my regular work, plus then I was putting in 10-15hrs of podcast production, preparation and editing, the vast majority of which was unpaid. Obviously, we're not in the podcasting game to make money... in fact, over the nine seasons that we've done the show now, it's actually cost me a lot of money to make.
Each feature is about 5-6hrs work, from sourcing the interview clips, cutting them and saving them, writing the links, voicing (or finding and paying a voice-over) them and then mixing them to music to create the historical or topical packages that we run. Interviews are similar - they take an age to set up, travel to, and then edit afterwards, too. Each show had two features/interviews and there are 40-odd shows in a season.
Throw in the costs of getting to and from the studio - renting the studio in some cases, ever since the one we used to use became unavailable 50% of the time - and being able to help panellists get to and from recordings, the show is running on a very tight budget indeed, normally coming straight out of my pocket when the resources aren't there.
There's also the music license to buy so that we're allowed to use the music that we do, as well - all to make the show sound as good as it can and make it one of the best hours of Manchester City radio there is whether online or on air.
I don't see any other way to do this than to appeal to kind-hearted Blues and listeners that we might be able to get some financial, crowdsourced help... I don't want to put adverts into the show as I feel they would seriously detract from the quality of the episodes and wouldn't be worth the frustration it would cause. Equally, I don't want to put the show behind a paywall because I think it's important that it's accessible to all.
So please, if you can, give the show your backing on Patreon. If you back for three months, you'll get the reward for that tier ($5/m is a bottle opener, $10/m is a mug, the higher tiers and my and Howard Hockin's books) - so we'd recommend backing at the level of the prize you'd like for three months and then dropping down to $2/m, which will get you the bonus show recorded each week.
Numbers-wise on the bonus show, it's $2/m (which is about £1.50/m) - and there are four or five shows each month depending on the number of weeks in the month and each show is at least 10 minutes. So it's a small gesture and you'd be helping the show immensely... $20 for the season (ish), for an extra 400 minutes of exclusive stuff.
The Blue Moon Podcast is unique among City Podcasts as it's the only one out there that isn't a group of people sitting around discussing the club for an hour or so. There are interviews with ex-players, managers, staff etc, and there are topical and historical packages that look at the wider context of the club. We cover news and opinions and we have a stellar team behind it.
When I appealed on Twitter at one point in the season, someone replied with "do it for free, problem solved". What they don't realise is that the vast majority of the show IS done for free. The amount of stress there is to meet the deadlines, while digging into my own pocket to make sure that bills are paid and costs are met means that we could really do with a helping hand.
I wouldn't ask unless we were really struggling.
Thank you.
http://paypal.me/BlueMoonPodcast
http://www.patreon.com/BlueMoonPodcast
We currently have 99 Patreon backers out of thousands upon thousands of listeners. If a few more listeners would be able to donate a tiny amount, then the funding issues would be solved.
I (David) took on a lot of the responsibilities for running the show last season and, running it alongside my home life and my regular jobs, was actually far more stressful than I'd been expecting.
To give you some idea: I was doing up to a 40hr working week across my regular work, plus then I was putting in 10-15hrs of podcast production, preparation and editing, the vast majority of which was unpaid. Obviously, we're not in the podcasting game to make money... in fact, over the nine seasons that we've done the show now, it's actually cost me a lot of money to make.
Each feature is about 5-6hrs work, from sourcing the interview clips, cutting them and saving them, writing the links, voicing (or finding and paying a voice-over) them and then mixing them to music to create the historical or topical packages that we run. Interviews are similar - they take an age to set up, travel to, and then edit afterwards, too. Each show had two features/interviews and there are 40-odd shows in a season.
Throw in the costs of getting to and from the studio - renting the studio in some cases, ever since the one we used to use became unavailable 50% of the time - and being able to help panellists get to and from recordings, the show is running on a very tight budget indeed, normally coming straight out of my pocket when the resources aren't there.
There's also the music license to buy so that we're allowed to use the music that we do, as well - all to make the show sound as good as it can and make it one of the best hours of Manchester City radio there is whether online or on air.
I don't see any other way to do this than to appeal to kind-hearted Blues and listeners that we might be able to get some financial, crowdsourced help... I don't want to put adverts into the show as I feel they would seriously detract from the quality of the episodes and wouldn't be worth the frustration it would cause. Equally, I don't want to put the show behind a paywall because I think it's important that it's accessible to all.
So please, if you can, give the show your backing on Patreon. If you back for three months, you'll get the reward for that tier ($5/m is a bottle opener, $10/m is a mug, the higher tiers and my and Howard Hockin's books) - so we'd recommend backing at the level of the prize you'd like for three months and then dropping down to $2/m, which will get you the bonus show recorded each week.
Numbers-wise on the bonus show, it's $2/m (which is about £1.50/m) - and there are four or five shows each month depending on the number of weeks in the month and each show is at least 10 minutes. So it's a small gesture and you'd be helping the show immensely... $20 for the season (ish), for an extra 400 minutes of exclusive stuff.
The Blue Moon Podcast is unique among City Podcasts as it's the only one out there that isn't a group of people sitting around discussing the club for an hour or so. There are interviews with ex-players, managers, staff etc, and there are topical and historical packages that look at the wider context of the club. We cover news and opinions and we have a stellar team behind it.
When I appealed on Twitter at one point in the season, someone replied with "do it for free, problem solved". What they don't realise is that the vast majority of the show IS done for free. The amount of stress there is to meet the deadlines, while digging into my own pocket to make sure that bills are paid and costs are met means that we could really do with a helping hand.
I wouldn't ask unless we were really struggling.
Thank you.
http://paypal.me/BlueMoonPodcast
http://www.patreon.com/BlueMoonPodcast