A Modest Proposal
Loading ...TL;DR summary: Jim and I want to start doing one movie review a week, and are wondering if the listeners would be willing to pay $1/to listen to the resulting cast. Read on for details…
So, Jim and I started talking last night about things we could do to take Bald Move to the next level. How we can do more casts, more shows, and maybe have time to get back into the kind of critical writing we were doing on Breaking Bad and to a lesser extent The Walking Dead. The problems we always come up against are lack of time. With working full time jobs, relationships, kids in the mix, it’s hard to expand on what we’re doing.
As an experiment, over the winter there were times I did four casts in a week, more often three casts, and of course I’ve done two casts for the whole run of Game of Thrones and Mad Men, and it’s pretty grueling. I don’t think I can do that again without making changes. Allow me to explain. Each cast requires the following effort:
- Watch the show. (1 hour)
- Watch it again and take notes (1.5 hours)
- Watch it again (1 hour, and optional, but I find the optimal number of watches that = a good cast is 3).
- Read critical reviews, and relevant reddit/forum/facebook threads (3-4 hours)
- Read and compile feedback (varies greatly, from 30 minutes to up to 2+ hours on a fat finale cast)
- Record (1.5 hours)
- Edit/Post-production (1 hour)
As you can see, that adds an approximately 8-10 hour work load per television show we cast about on any given week, and that represents us working at maximum capacity with our present schedules. Some of the work gets divided, and we’re a 3 man operation at this point, but the actual viewing and note taking and casting doesn’t work like that. The point of this isn’t some “woe is us” guilt trip, because we enjoy doing it. The point is to explain why it is so hard for us to just start up “Homeland”, or “Boardwalk Empire”, or why I can’t just get around to banging out “The Wire” and why it’s difficult to fill in all the seasons of “Breaking Bad”. There’s only so much time, and we’re not interested in doing more and sacrificing quality. Right now it’s our hobby.
But what if we could scale back some of our paying activities and make some more room? At that point it starts blurring the line between a avocation and vocation. And we’re wondering if that’s something you’d be interested in helping to make happen…
We want to start doing weekly movie reviews. Our idea is we post a poll, either here or on Facebook, and we put all the movies that are opening that week on it. You guys and gals all vote for which movie you want us to see. You can pick a good one you’d like an honest, thoughtful, critical evaluation of, or you can punish us with a shitty one that we’ll get liquored up and skewer. You can be the Dr. Forrester to our Joel.
Here’s the plan: We get up Friday morning, catch the first matinee, cast around lunch time, and have it out by early afternoon. You can get our take on it before you get off work, and go into the weekend confident that your entertainment choice will be sound. I feel like we’ve earned a rep for a no bullshit, honest review, and you know us well enough that you can take our individual tastes to the bank and feel confident that we’re going to shoot straight when it comes to our opinion, and not pander or bitch/nitpick where it’s not warranted.
The catch is, these bonus movie casts will be $1/episode. And depending on how hard it is to support other outlets, they might only be an iTunes/Zune market kind of deal. We don’t know the details on that just yet.
Our question to you; is this something that your’e interested in? If enough people express intereset, then we”ll try it out. If we make enough to be worth it and everybody is happy, we’ll find a way to make it work long term. And this will hopefully lead to bigger and better things.
Why movies, you might ask? Why don’t we tackle some other awesome TV series? Certainly that’s the goal to work towards, but Jim and I are both budding cinephiles. And pace our last Mad Men podcast, we are both committment phobes. We honestly don’t know if we can make this work with our schedules for a 13 week season. But we’re confident we can give it a trial run over the summer. The eventual goal is to make more podcasts, cover more topics, and to continue to do a better and better job at building this little community of like minded individuals that all enjoy smart television. We’re covering our expenses so far with what we’re doing, and in recent times we’re actually making a bit, but at the rate we’re going it’s going to be a long time before we can really expand.
I want to make it clear, that we always want to provide the bulk of our material for free. Whether you donate, support us on Amazon, etc is always up to you. I promise this will NOT be the gradual slippery slope towards a pay site, so please don’t think if you throw us a dollar today you’re putting the cruel yoke of capitalism on your shoulders forever more. And again, this is just an idea, we have a few others we’re working on. But the first step is opening up the conversation to those that got us to this point. Let us know what you think!
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I’m a budding cenobite…
Mad Brew
June 6, 2012
I hear ya. At Natter Cast, we do one show a week, don’t have kids and don’t go to nearly the depth you guys do (we’re more of a “morning zoo” type show) and that already feels like a lot of work. I have no idea how you guys run year round sometimes doing two shows at a time.
I’d totally throw you guys a buck a cast. I spend more than that everyday on coffee. I’m actually looking forward to Breaking Good almost as much as Breaking Bad
-Jason from Natter Cast
nattercast.blogspot.com
NatterCast
June 6, 2012
Totally worth $1. But can you do that via iTunes? Another cast I listen to, Doug Loves Movies, occasionally has paid episodes like this, but he has to classify them as Comedy Albums (because you can’t sell podcasts) and from what I understand the minimum price is $1.99.
njn113
June 6, 2012
I would rather pay MORE money to listen to more podcast about other TV shows: (Eg: The Wire)
Having said that, if the movie you guys reviewis a movie I am interested in, (Eg: The upcoming “The Dark Knight Rises”) I would still pay $1.00
Forristicat
June 6, 2012
I would be interested to see how the experiment plays out. I would agree with Forristicat, though, in that I enjoy the TV podcasts a bit more, but obviously that is a larger commitment on your part.
What are your objections to taking on advertising to pay the bills? I think if you did it tastefully it wouldn’t be any worse than pimping your affiliate link. I’d love to see you guys build up the Bald Move empire and become the “5by5 of Good TV”.
Thanks and keep up the good work.
Josh Rickard
June 6, 2012
I really like movie podcasts – one more to listen to each week would make my day.
I also liked your random Blue Yonder ones – any more of those in the pipeline?
dee255
June 7, 2012
We’re actually not opposed to doing advertising, but we’re in this really weird place where we’re getting just big enough to get advertising offers, but they’re at the point where they’re not really worth it. If we’re making twice as much off Amazon, for example, than a guy offering us to talk about Fleshlights for 30 seconds a month, is it really worth it. If I’m going to be hawking plastic pussy, it better be paying my bills!
Josh, and Forristicat, yeah, that’s the end goal. If this is successful, then you can bet it will be extra motivation to get The Wire done, and I’d probably have a per-podcast price, or a season pass, for example. If it makes $15, well, back to the drawing board.
Dee, Blue Yonders are really fun to do, and that’s how we got our reps in podcasting so we were ready to step up to the plate with Breaking Good. It’s interesting to listen to the evolution in our style and quality from the early Blue Yonders that were all skype and laptop mics to now where we’re using semi-pro gear… BY is not nearly as much work since we just get on a spit, but we’re low on extra time / energy at the moment. If we could ever figure out a way to hit the magic number where we could make this on part time work, it would explode, because there are plenty of things we want to cover, we just have very limited time.
I’m actually surprised / embarrassed when I hear people go that far back into our catalog!
A.Ron.Hubbard
June 7, 2012
I’ll fucking hawk some plastic pussies, put me in contact with the fleshlight people. I’ll work them into all my recaps in The Night’s Watch.
Mad Brew
June 7, 2012
For a $1? Sure! Especially since Slashfilm’s podcasts have slowed waaaay down and they’re my favorite movie podcast. I’d love to pick up another one.
Kudos to your awesome work -I look forward to seeing how you guys evolve.
Also, is it July 15 yet?
spoonflipper
June 7, 2012
Without a doubt I would pay money for a season pass to listen to your podcast of ‘The Wire’.
Paying money for your insights and humor style which I enjoy a lot- no problems
Forristicat
June 7, 2012
We spend money on stupid things all the time – you are asking for less than the cost of a bottle of water. We would pay much more. We love your podcast. I’m about to start watching a whole new TV series – Breaking Bad – because I’ll miss you guys too much after Mad Men is over. Thank you for your great work!
lmr
June 9, 2012
One more thing – would consider doing 1/2 hour or less intensive TV shows? Girls is a fun series and I would love to hear your thoughts.
lmr
June 9, 2012
I dont watch movies anymore so of course I wouldn’t pay for that podcast. But I have no problem paying a dollar per episode for the other TV show podcast you do.
Shawn
June 9, 2012
We would happily pay for a subscription for your tv shows. We’re not as interested in movies but it’s so much fun listening to you, we’d pay anyway. Crazy thought – but if you were really committed to doing podcasts – it could be a real job for you – people would pay. We’ve listened to lots of other podcasts and what you do is unique and special – combining insightful commentary, literature, referencing other tv and culture, with humor. Love the ribbing, self reflection, cursing, drinking — all of it. My wife and I are huge fans. You are welcome to come watch tv with us in Brooklyn any day. For now, we would pay for a subscription. Whatever you decide, please make it easy for us to get more podcasts from you and make the payment process easy – iTunes is ideal because we use it anyway. Good luck!
fjt
June 9, 2012
Alright; now a long post; I am the guy who proposed Flattr to you. First of all – you need to make you comment system a little bit more accessible – either no account-necessity or login with wordpress.com or something like that.
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Personally, I am not really interested in a movie podcast; probably because I don’t watch not as much movies and because there are so many frickin’ ways to check out movie reviews or discuss about them… – so even a small fee per episode would hold me back from listening.
In general – not only for that movie podcast – I very much suggest you that you dive in more to the pay-what-you-want/donation model. This means Paypal button(s), normal Transaction information and Flattr-buttons for every item. Let me explain you the latter: Flattr is not just donating stuff; I just donate a fixed amount per month to “everyone”. That means if you have more things I can flattr more things which then means that you get more pieces of the cakes. But Flattr is – especially for you americans – just a playground at the moment and they (sadly) take a big cut of what people cash into the service (I just get money with aFlattr). In Germany the biggest podcaster Tim Pritlove (metaebene.me) is generating >2500€ / month; but he also does it full-time
The direct donations could probably generate more than you think and if you make both models simultaneous you could even compare which topic/pay-model generates more
Being transparent about the donations would be also nice, of course.
I VERY MUCH LIKE that you’re ad-free, that’s why I am so motivated to motivate you to have some faith in the pay-what-you-want model.
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You definitely should also check&try out http://bitlove.org/ – easy bittorrent for podcasts. That could save you some traffic and might take some pressure of your servers.
klyonrad
June 12, 2012