So as to not pollute the Feminist Women in Male-Dominated Spaces thread.
The only reason GeekNights is so consistent and has run for 12+ years is that we forced ourselves into a live-to-tape format coupled with a minimal pre-production pipeline and an entirely automated post-production pipeline.
There are two kinds of guest shows we can do: a guest host and a guest interview.
The latter is what we usually do if we bring someone on the show. It requires about 5 hours (total) of work to have a guest on the show, including pre- and post- production. Most of this is prepping questions to ask, editing, etc…
Guest hosts are a nightmare. They require full show edits unless the person is supremely skilled in talk radio in addition to their actual area of expertise. Most podcasts out in the wild are heavily edited, which is something I am no longer willing to do.
While that prep is part of the pre-prod pipeline, it’s not the biggest time sink. The editing is.
Most people can’t do live. They pause, they slow down, they say something and then ask us to edit it out after the fact. Sometimes they want to review the show before publication to ensure they didn’t say something that could bite them later.
Editing out stammers, pauses, microphone mistakes, etc… takes 4x-10x the runtime of the actual show to do.
There is a reason why many popular podcasts have dedicated editors, especially those who exclusively do interview format. Rym, you got a bunch of Patreon money. Farm that shit out. It’s not like you’re doing anything else with it.
When you have “real” guests it’s standard practice to let them know in advance what questions will be asked, and they have prepared answers and such. Very very few people of note are willing to go all the way live for real. Even fewer will go live with assholes like Rym and Scott.
I’ll chime in and say live only or “YouTube exclusive” for the interviews would be fine. You can’t controller the guest mic so by stating that from the jump is ok. Also 1 or 2 a month max is reasonable.
I’m pretty sure (if 10 year old memories serve me right) that that was the entire reason why the website is Front Row Crew as opposed to Geeknights. I would totally be beyond interested in more content of the caliber of Geeknights covering other perspectives.
That seems right, because it diversifies GeekNights.
Yet, it also seems wrong to have someone, anyone, else under our label, even if they want to be. Especially since I still stand firmly against us joining any kind of other content network, how could I honestly suggest someone join ours?
If the people joining are non-cis, non-male, or of color it would almost seem worse. Almost as if we are colonizing them for the purposes of diversifying our own image. I would feel better about just replacing ourselves than with putting our label on someone else’s content like they somehow belong to us.
That being said, I do try to consume a lot of content from diverse creators, and I endorse all the good stuff I consume. I can do it more, but the limiting factor is that I just don’t consume as much total content as most people. I already talk about pretty much every single thing I read/watch/play. It’s not a lot, which is why we often struggle for show ideas.
The other Crew members either
A. Are not as interested in Audio quality or are positioned geographically/Life issues in a way that make it hard to collaborate.
B. Are not interested in appearing on Podcasts.
C. Have interests that don’t align well with what is being talked about or don’t consume the same stuff in a timely manner.
D. Don’t have 10 years of pod-casting experience and tend to use a lot of crutch words :-p
E. Would just endlessly argue with Rubin on air :-p
F. Didn’t we read a second book for our Political book Club RYM DIDN’T WE :-p (though that only included White dudes as well) I even got a new Mic and a pop filter :-p
Maybe we can do it in such a way such that the messaging implies partnership or support pushing up from below rather than ownership underneath our brand.