James: In this episode of Podcast
Tactics, you will learn how to organically grow a sci-fi podcast
from one show to seven popular shows. Today's guest is a seasoned
podcaster or who gives his insights into creating successful shows. Plus, he gives the definitive
answer to the age old question, "Did Han Solo shoot first?" Hello. I'm James. Welcome to another episode
of Podcast Tactics. This is the show where you will learn
how to podcast from other podcasters. In today's show, I interview a very
experienced podcaster who gives his practical advice for starting
and growing a successful podcast. As a matter of fact, that podcast
became so popular that they spun off six more shows from it. You'll also hear his surprising
advice for new podcasters and his suggestions for handling the ever
evolving podcasting landscape. Enjoy the show and remember to join
the mailing list at PodcastTactics.com to get new episode notifications. Now let's get into it. Joining me right now is veteran
podcaster
and YouTuber Jason Hunt from Kansas City, Missouri. Jason, thank you so much
for coming on the show. Jason: Well, thanks for
having me good to be here. James: So let's dive right in, I mean,
you know, elephant in the room, you know, you're a veteran podcaster. You're very well versed at this craft. Where did it all start for you? Jason: Well, um, my start
actually begins back in 1988. I I've been in media for 32 years. Both of them started in radio
and I've done television. I've done newspaper.
I've done motion pictures. So I've, I've been in and around
this space, uh, pretty much my entire professional career. So it's not anything new. The idea of podcasting came a little bit
late, mainly because, uh, as old as I am, there are times where I have a tough
time adopting new technology and new processes, but once I got it in my head,
This is radio that people just download. Then it was almost like this light
went off and I, I had my aha moment. I was like, okay, well, this I could do. It'
s just radio, but it's,
you know, somebody has a play button instead of just. Turning it on. So, so once I got past that, I it was,
it was fairly easy to drop into it. I've been, of course, you know,
now we're added the video side of things, so it's just the same kind
of thing that I've been doing. Pretty much all my life. Just in a, on a different channel. James: You know, it's funny, I'm
cracking up a little bit inside just because you said you were new to
this, uh, but you you've been going a
t this podcasting thing for, I think
since 2009, if I'm not mistaken. Jason: Well, the magazine, uh,
sidebar for me as a magazine has been around since 2009, we started. We started the YouTube channel
in 2017 with a movie reviews and then got into podcasting. I want to say maybe three or
four years ago with a couple of different shows and it's evolved
and we've bounced back and forth. And it's, it's a constant
learning experience. So even, even having. Three or four shows, seven shows,
12 shows,
whatever we've done. And the number of years that
we've been doing it, it's still a constant learning process. Well, this didn't work. Let's try this. I mean, we're still doing that, even
though that we've, you know, we've been doing it for awhile and we took a
break in 2018 for a little bit and came back pretty much, pretty much solid. January, 2019 gangbusters
and have been going pretty so pretty, pretty strong since then. James: What brought that on in, in 2019? Jason: Well, the 2019 was com
ing
up on our 10th anniversary. So we were dark for a while. And, you know, the, the discussion
basically became, you know, what, what are we going to do? Do we come back before the 10 years? And that prompted a discussion
, and a brainstorming session. And I ended up with about 30 pages of
notes of what we could do if we came back. And so we have, it grew from there .
James: So it sounds like there
are quite a few people that you're collaborating with on your shows. Can you talk a little bit
about that? Yeah, we have about, I want to say about
eight volunteers at this point, a number of them participate in the various shows. I'm either a host or a
co-host on four of them. And I produce all seven. We have a couple of people
that are on multiple shows. It just depends on their area of
interest and what kind of time they have. But we have , We have a general news
program on Saturday morning, we have a horror theme show on Saturday afternoon. We have two star Wars shows. We have a docto
r who program, and
we've got a general interest, interview talk show in the middle of the day. So it, it varies, uh, by topic,
but we have a number of people that are in on all of them. Man! I am overwhelmed by all of that,
just the considering that you alone are producing all seven of those. I mean, I'm producing just this little
startup show that hasn't even launched yet and I'm overwhelmed already. So , I want to pick your brain , like
what kind of advice would you give to somebody who is jus
t starting out? Jason: Don't sweat the equipment. That would be the biggest thing, uh,
to start with because everybody seems to think , what kind of gear do I need? Do I need to spend a whole lot of money? You don't need a $600
microphone starting out. You don't need a $30,000 camera. I'm in a, a little bit of a unique
situation because a number of pieces of equipment that I have. I already have, because I've been
in media production, I make TV commercials, I make web videos. So I've got all the
cameras and the
microphones already, but you don't have to go through a big expense to get started. You can get a decent microphone
for anywhere from, you know, 50, 50 or 60, $70 and a web, a webcam,
you know, we've got web camera. I've still got non- HD cameras
that we use in the studio here. So, you know, they upscale
to 720 and that's fine. And, and you know, the
picture it looks okay. And we're do okay. So you don't have to have to
go through this huge expense. To set things up, you need a
decent
microphone, you need a pretty good camera that gives you at least a
picture that you could be happy with. And then some, some kind of a software
where you can put everything together. We use OBS as our primary broadcast
software, and we use that also to record interviews and that sort of thing, because
we can mix a number of different sources. Graphics, music files, sound
files, and that kind of thing. In addition, to being able to bring
in people by Zoom or Google Meet or whatever video
conferencing
tool there is in the day. So that gives us a little bit of
flexibility there, but as long as you've got those, those items, if
you have, a good camera, a good microphone and decent software to
record, then you should be all set. Don't sweat, don't sweat the gear. James: Tell me about the growth of,
starting off, I'm assuming with one show and then how did you end up blooming in
the way that you did with multiple shows? Jason: We started with a program
called "The H2O Podcast", Tim H
arvey, and I, met through the independent
filmmakers coalition in Kansas City. It's an independent film
production networking group. And, usually after the meetings,
Tim and I would be off somewhere talking various different topics. You know, it was genre related mostly. And at one point we looked at
each other too, and, you know, "We really should be recording these". And so we sat down and our very
first one was a Christmas special. Just kind of, you know, test the waters
as kind of a proof o
f concept thing. And the "H2O Podcast" comes from
the first initials of our two names, you know, hunt and Harvey
and the O of course being opinions. So we thought we were being clever. And our first episode was talking
about how Santa Claus is a Time Lord. And from there, it's just sort of grew. And we started, we did that one as a
video, we dropped it on our YouTube channel and then that one started off. Uh, when we started doing it
regularly, we were just recording the audio and it was a podca
st. And then, I don't know, maybe about. A 100, 120 episodes in, we started
doing video and we started to lean into the YouTube channel as a TV channel. And from there we had. "SciFi for Chicks" for awhile,
which was the, the all women genre discussion podcast. We had the "Echo Chamber", which was
a general round table discussion. We had "Level Eleventy-Seven",
which was our Marvel Podcast we launched at the same time that
"Agents of Shield" premiered on ABC. We decided to do that as a
discussio
n of each episode. And then we had the "Rogues Gallery",
which was our DC Show talking about all of the different CW shows the DC movies. So it just sort of evolved from, you
know, we were doing that one and as people started to join up and start
volunteering, they had interest in various different things and we said,
well, you know, everybody's talking about these Marvel shows, why don't
we put together a podcast about it? And it was very organic in what kind of
shows we decided we were going t
o do. We had one that was focused on
"Grimm", uh, which ran for a while and, and our podcast did quite well. And then we have one that spun out of
our shows it was called "Zombocalypse Now", which does a lot of looking
at "The Walking Dead" series. And horror stuff and that sort of thing. So we still host that one, even though
it continued after we went dark. But you know, you look around
the landscape and you see what people are talking about. You see what opportunities there
are in terms of
ideas or topics, and then you figure out, okay,
well, we can talk about this. How is our take on it going to be
something that's different enough that it attracts an audience? And that's what you've got to figure out. And that's a constantly, that's
a moving target all the time. James: So it sounds like, it
was a very organic process. It sounds like you had your ear
to the ground really, listening for that kind of opportunity. And then, I mean, at some point, you
know, there's a risk, where you
come up with a concept and you're going to say,
let's do the show, let's structure it and put it out there and see how it goes. Can you talk to us about . I don't
know if you even approach promotions and how you get new listeners, you
know, when you were starting out really is what I'm curious about. Like, how did that happen for you? Did it just, well, I'll shut up. No, you're Jason: no, you're fine. We did, we did a lot with, uh,
we do a lot with social media. Um, we post to Facebook and
Twit
ter, like everybody else does. We have an Instagram channel? We have some of the alternative
social media is now we've reached out because mainly I'm looking at
it as, you know, if one goes down. Yeah. Then we have all of these others and
the audience is fracturing now because you've got people that are on me, we and
mines and parlor and, and gab, and, and for whatever reason, they're over there. There's a lot of dissatisfaction
with Facebook and Twitter. And so we're approaching this from
the,
don't put all your eggs in one basket approach in terms of marketing. And we put the links out there. I don't do a whole lot of engaging,
especially with the trolls, but it's a way to put, you know, the links to
our articles, the links to our reviews. We post that sometimes we'll engage and
do some, some back and forth talking with other people and, we'll set up
collaborations and, whenever I'm on somebody else's show as a guest, do
some interviews and we'll plug those. But we haven't really don
e a whole
lot in terms of paid promotion. We've bought some ads on Facebook. We've done that experiment a few times. We've even bought a couple of digital
billboards, uh, out in, we, we did one, we bought one in Atlanta during
"Dragon Con", but we don't see a whole lot of return on the paid promotions. So alot of it's just organic,
a lot of it's word of mouth. We encourage people to sign up for
our newsletter, we tell people, you know, find us on all of the social and
share the links and that so
rt of thing. So our growth has been slow. It's been organic. We haven't paid for any followers. I don't think that's a, a
very ethical way to do it. Do I wish our numbers were higher? Sure. But I'd rather get there
honestly, than, than not. James: Absolutely. It should be a reflection on the
interest and the quality of the show that you're putting out. Yeah. Jason: And we get a lot
of good feedback too. We get, we get people who are, uh,
who appreciate our approach because we're not the typical
YouTube channel. My approach has always been to look at
this as a TV channel that happens to be on YouTube . So when we're looking at news
content, it's presented as objectively as we can and as accurate as we can
get it, because we don't have a whole lot of inside sources, or people that
are giving us the scoop on anything. But, uh, we present the news
and say, here's the news. The opinion shows stay delineated
and separate from that. And I think it's that approach that a
lot of people who appr
eciate the fact that we're not pushing some kind of an
agenda, we're not ideologues in terms of any particular political party or,
cultural stuff or anything like that. We're straight down the
middle, we're above the fray. We're not going to dive into the drama. You don't have to agree
with us for everything. We're not going to call you names
if you disagree, that sort of thing. We're we like to say we're the
grownups in the room, and a lot of people seem to appreciate that. James: That's good.
That is really good. I like that. Was having, people volunteer. I mean, it seems like that would
be part of the growth of the shows that you put out there. How did that come about? Jason: Well, it was, mostly, a product
of my not having the time to get everything done that I wanted to get done. When we started out, it
was pretty much just me. And as we were having discussions
with people about all of the different things that we could do, there were
people that expressed interest. Well, you know
, I'd like to write
and how would, how would we do that? And how could we, how can
I help and what can I do? So we had people that from the
early days, were interested in writing articles and doing reviews. And some of that is, you get to see
things early, you know, it's that early access to some of the screeners
and you get books before they get published and that sort of thing. So there's an appeal there, but then you
also have people that really do enjoy doing this kind of thing where the, yo
u
know, they, they want to write, they feel like, you know, this is their thing. And so it gives them an
opportunity to do that. I wish I could pay everybody. And one of these days who knows,
maybe we get a revenue stream such that I can actually do that. Uh, but you know, it's the understand
standing is you're going to volunteer. You give me your time and talent. I'll promote it as, as much as I can to
anybody that'll listen, and you stay as long as you think that it's a good fit. James: That s
eems to make sense. I like that approach because
you're giving them a platform. Really, you know, you have an audience. That has the ears and they're interested. Jason: And, you know, the joke
is, we'll pay you in exposure. And I, and I really don't like having
the circumstances be that way, but it's been, you know, the fact that our
audience is small enough, we haven't attracted, a whole lot in terms of
advertisers or sponsorships yet. I'm hoping that changes. And as events and conventions open
back up, I'm hoping that we get some opportunities there because I really
want to lean back into the live broadcast from various different conventions. James: When you think about the people
that listen to your shows, what is it that you want them to get out of it? Jason: Well, that's a good question
because I don't, as much as we do, uh, in a mix of programs, I don't think
there's any one particular thing. But I think ultimately the
takeaway for the audience is that we know what we're talking
about. And we respect the people
that are giving us their time. Those are the two biggest things, I guess
for me is the fact that, you know, we, we don't want to come across as just making
it up and coming across as we really don't know what we're talking about. We do know what we're talking about
and anything that we're not sure about. We do our homework, we do our research. And the audience I want
them to understand. And I hope that they get this is
that we appreciate them for being here for
being part of our audience. We respect their intelligence. We respect their point of view. They don't have to, like I said
before, we, they don't have to agree with us all the time. And if they don't agree with us
and they share those thoughts with us, we take that into account. We read every comment that we get. We read all of the emails that we get,
and there's a certain back and forth. That we have with our audience that
I think a lot of other channels and a lot of other websites don't
have a
, we're not condescending. We're not patronizing. We're not going to sit there and
pat you on the head and say, "Oh, that's nice that you think that way,
but you know, go run along now." And so that I think is probably the most
important takeaway is that our audience understands that we respect them. James: When you look. Let's say for you, a
month, sorry, a month. When you look a year or a couple, two,
three years down the road, what do you, what do you see happening with SciFi4Me? Jason: My go
al, and this does change
every now and again from month to month. My goal. Eventually, and I don't want to put a
timetable on it, but what I would like to see us do is at least one live broadcast
from a Comicon every month to three months, whether it's the, one of the
bigger conventions like "Dragon Con" or "New York Comicon" or San Diego, or if
it's a smaller one, like "Smallville", "Topcon" in Topeka, those kinds of events. I want to be in that space, because
especially now, after the lockdow
n on the pandemic, there are going
to be people that are not going to want to go back to conventions yet. And the virtual event has become a thing. And now convention organizers, I think,
need to have in mind that virtual track. And I think we can bring a little
bit of that because we take, you know, we can take all of our
computers and cameras and lights and microphones and go into the space. And we broadcast pretty much like you
would find with a sporting event or a political convention or any
thing like
that, where you have your anchors in the booth and you have your reporters
out on the floor and we're all there and we're spread out and we're live
from the event the entire weekend. James: It's like a news crew! Jason: Pretty much. And we did that at "Worldcon 74"
when it was here in Kansas city, back in 2015, and it's a five day event. And we're broadcasting live
throughout the entire five days. And I think we ended up doing 53
interviews with authors and, and comic book creators an
d editors. But it took a couple of days for everybody
to, to figure out what we were doing. They'd come over and they'd see
the lights and the, to the cameras. Like, what are you guys doing? It's like, we're broadcasting,
but you're doing what? We're streaming. We're live streaming
on our YouTube channel. You guys are live right now? Yes, we're on the air right now. James: What year was this again? Jason: This was in 2015. The Worldcon people generally
tend to be skews older. So they're not as,
I don't
want to say this as a monolith. They're not as tech savvy and they're
still in that literary convention mindset, but when the light went off,
and you could see this little "ping!" right above their head when they
figured out what we were doing, I think we're about two days in. They was like, can we do an interview? That's why we're here, come on down. And we ended up having to
schedule, schedule people and make lists and all of that. And it was a really good experience. And then we did i
t again at "Planet
Comicon" the next year, 2016. And I would love to be doing that
all the time, where we have , six to 10 of our people and go out and
do that, report on what happened at panels and do some cosplay features. And we interview authors and artists and
comic book writers and that sort of thing. So that's where I'm hoping to go. That's where I'm hoping for us to have
that as our normal set up, but we also have the policy of abort or pivot. This is something that we started
adopting w
hen we came back. It's a constant process of evaluation of
what we're doing, both from the standpoint of the articles that we're posting on the,
on the.com and all of the different shows that we're producing, where we'll take a
look at the performance of of said, item. Oh, wait. So, okay. Is this doing as well as we want it to do? If it's not, then you have the decision. Do we abort? Do we just completely stop
doing this or do we pivot? Do we make an adjustment? Do we change something? Do we try
something new
and then see what happens? So it's a constant process of adjustment
based on the various different statistics and analytics and stuff that we get back. One of the reasons why "Live from
the Bunker", for example, is at one o'clock Eastern is because the
YouTube data shows us that a lot of our audience is on YouTube and looking
at our channel about that time. I was like, well, okay, let's
give them something to watch. James: Nice. Jason: So it's stuff like that,
where we're constant
ly looking at the performance numbers we're looking at,
what kind of responses we're getting from the audience in terms of comments
and interactions in the chat, and based on all of that, we'll make adjustments
and, tweak every now and again, here and there and, try to make things better. It's a constant process. We're never done James: So with "H2O Podcast" and "Live
from the Bunker", those were both essentially live streams it seemed like. And I was curious about... Jason: Yes, most of those a
re live now. Okay. Okay. No, I was just gonna say, yeah. Cause most of them, most of them
are live mainly because we want that interaction with the audience in the chat. James: I was impressed by that as well
that you're doing that on the fly and it comes across as smooth as it does. Jason: It does flow out of my training,
my experience in media production. The other part of it is, depending
on who's involved in the shows. It can go a little bit smoother than
other times, depending on if you hav
e somebody that has any kind of theater
or performance experience, that generally goes a little bit better. If you've got somebody who's used
to doing presentations for work, for example, anytime that you're doing
something for an audience, that kind of experience helps with that kind of
thing with participating in the shows, but it's not a necessary component. And, you know, I do. Every now and again, I do a little
bit of handholding and mentoring and say, okay, this is what you need
to remembe
r and think about this. And, because we've had a couple of
times where people have participated on our shows and they ended up
sitting and listening to our guests and they forget that they're one of
the hosts, like you have to talk too. "Yes, I know, but I was
just listening to them." "Yes. You have to speak, you have
to, you're here in the show. it's your show. Let's do this." So every now and again, that
comes up, that that comes out and we have those conversations, but
it's, it's it's infreq
uent enough. I don't. I generally worry about it. A lot of this comes from the
comfort level, because again, we know what we're talking about. These are things that we find interesting. And so we have a general, at
least a general knowledge. Some of us have knowledge that's a
little bit more specific in some areas like Marvel or DC or horror or anything. Anything like that. So between all of us and the various
different things that we've just zeroed in on, it's easy to have those discussions,
an
d it just so happens that we've got a microphone and a camera in front of us. James: So, Jason, before we wrap things up
here, I do have one last question for you. I fear it's going to be controversial,
but, because I have your ear, I'm going to ask it anyway. Did Han shoot first? Jason: Absolutely. James: There you go. All right! Jason, you've got a ton
of projects in play. Where is the best place for somebody
to go to learn more about you and learn more about what you've got going on? Jason: T
he magazine site is SciFi4Me.com. The video channel, you can
type in SciFi4Me.tv that takes you directly to the YouTube. And we're on like all
of the social platforms. We're not on Tik-Tok. We're not on Snapchat, but most of
the expected social media channels: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
MeWe, Pinterest is all cosplay. That's a rather specialized
channel, but we're there. Minds, Gab, Parler, all of those just
to spread out and reach the broadest possible audience that we can reach. So any of t
hose is where you can find us. I think the ".tv" is probably the
most active because we have, you know, like seven shows in production. So that's where most of our
efforts are concentrated, but you can also find us at SciFi4Me.com. James: You've got seven great shows so
far covering the sci-fi genre on SciFi4Me. Jason, thanks again. Best of luck to you! Jason: All right. Thanks a lot. James: Thanks again to Jason Hunt. Please do check the show notes for links
to all of the SciFi4Me websites and
to connect with SciFi4Me on social media. What did you get out of this episode? Let me know, by leaving a
review on Podchaser.com. Check the show notes for this and feel
free to make suggestions for what I can do to make this show even better for you. And remember to subscribe and follow
Podcast Tactics, to learn even more about podcasting in future episodes. Thank you!
Comments