Scott Aukerman

Stan, I love you too, and appreciate you coming out to the shows. Being improvised, they're all going to be different lengths and content. The only thing that changes, if we do two shows, is the opener does less time. Occasionally during shows, if the mood strikes, we go longer. I hope this clears things up.

We did a 90 minute (in my opinion, very good) comedy show for a low ticket price. Then met every fan who stayed for 45 minutes afterward. Then put it up for practically free (or free, if you're doing the free trial) the next day. If any of that feels like a cash grab, there's not much more i can do for yooooooou

Hullo, it's your ole pal Scotty Aux, back on the boards. Long time, long time, yes, yes, I know. On today's episode, we talked about our new premium service, HOWL. Since I'm sometimes not the best at elucidating things when trying to do a comedy podcast, I thought I would set up shop, here, and take questions. I have a busy day, but I'll try to come back and answer when I can. There are a couple of reasons, when we started talking about this months and months back, why I thought this was an amazing idea. Let me try to go through a few: 1) A new way to pay for shows that we know aren't going to get advertisers We have a lot of people and shows who want to be on Earwolf. But recently I started to find it very frustrating to hear someone pitch a great idea for a show, but realize that we could never justify paying for it. Either it was just a one-off idea, or mini-series, that would cost a lot of money to produce; or it would be a show hosted by newer comedians, who could possibly take years to build an audience (if they ever could). The threshold of what it takes to get advertisers interested, we found, is sort of high - you need to put out the show regularly, every week, and you also need to have a certain number of downloads. A number that smaller shows, like Hollywood Handbook, and even BIGGER shows - some of our staples - aren't able to hit all of the time. So, as a creative producer, how do you not turn away these brilliant performers and ideas? Howl is a great solution. 2) A place where you can find all of your favorite things to listen to (to which to listen??) But we knew it couldn't just be new shows on HOWL - no one would come just for new talent and unproven ideas. The more we started talking about things like Netflix, we liked the model of being a place where you can find EVERYTHING you want to listen to. Joining forces with the WTF archives was a big step toward that. AST Records, I believe, is putting up their archive of awesome comedy albums. And we're adding a whole bunch more stuff - new and archives - over the next months and years. I hope HOWL will be the place where people want to put their shows because they want the same kind of exposure Netflix will give them. 3) Cleaning up the archives When Jeff and I started Earwolf several decades ago, we wanted to keep all episodes free. Every single one. "We're just starting out - why would we want to leave listeners on the table?" It was tough - we couldn't get any kind of advertising (or really income) for the first three years or so. I remember some of the early pitches to companies who laughed Jeff out of the building, or didn't even know what a podcast was. But it paid off - we showed advertisers that podcasts were a medium to take seriously. By putting out consistent shows and growing an audience. BUT - over the last couple of years, I look at the episode lists for the longer-running shows, and they just look impeneterable to new listeners. HUNDREDS of episodes for each show - where do you even begin? It would be like going into a comic book store, and being shown every single issue of the X-Men, and saying, "pick one, and that's where you'll start reading." Okay.... #1? That one looks old and they probably haven't figured out what to do yet. And the character your friends told you about (Gambit) isn't on the team for hundreds of issues. The most recent issue? Well, maybe you won't know what you need to know to be able to understand it. "Ah, no thanks - I'll just stick with Saga. There's only twenty issues of that - I can catch up." BUT, once you get your entry point into something - comics, TV shows, podcasts - going back, and sort of "collecting," can be one of the great joys. When I tried to get into Dr. Who, I tried starting with the older episodes, but they weren't really interesting me, so I just went to the Matt Smith episodes and started there. NOW I understand the show, and want to go back and watch the old ones. We knew we needed to clean up the archives. Hopefully this will grow the show. But it was a scary decision, and one I wrestled with. But I'm confident it was the right one. 4) Monetizing old eps The old episodes were just sitting there - thousands of hours of entertainment, with no way of being worth anything. Shows that could really use some more income for the hosts needed a boost. The great thing about HOWL is it's incredibly democratic. For the specials and mini-series, we pay those artists in advance to do the shows. But for the archive, we split up the subscription money based on the amount of listens they get. Very simple! This will be a great boon to some shows. So if you like Who Charted, and want to support them - listen in HOWL! New eps AND old. Same with Hollywood Handbook - listen to every new episode in HOWL, and they can finally start getting some ducats in those pockets. Okay, those are my initial thoughts. I don't really know anything about how the app or website works, or the process of when stuff is going to be introduced. Shannon will know more about that. But if you have any questions, I will try to answer them! SA

Sorry- I'm kind of super busy today, but just wanted to address this - it's not business spin, it's what made me feel better about taking episodes down. It's a real problem that we've heard about for a while, and have been discussing internally for as long. The more episodes we accumulate, the more clutter there is. It may sound counter-intuitive to you guys (cause you're such good fans, you have accounts here!), and it's weird to say, but having less choice makes something more popular. Like In 'n' Out Burger!

I am told that you can definitely download eps in the app. Adam sachs just did it yesterday for a long plane ride.

ok thank you! I truly appreciate your input.

this is a good question!

not sure this is necessarily Emmy-worthy material, but thanks for your suggestion!

you literally never asked a question, so it's hard to just address the general feeling that you don't like it. But please ask me something, and I will try!

sorry, what'd you want me to address? Not being smug, i just remember the post being just anger. was there a question? Again, really wondering. I'm at work and have one ear and eye on pitching jokes.

i understand, and hope in a week (or day), after you've calmed down, we can discuss some more! seriously - i've been through change so much in my career (name of show, bandleader, etc...) that i understand the cycle of people being upset at first. (and maybe remaining upset!) god bless you, my child. much love

yes i agree with this. i love you all!

aw don't worry about it! You're okay by me.

thank you, lovey

Haha, because everyone hated them! I promise I will work on ways of how to grow the show with new listeners - thank you for trying to get people into it over the years, and I hope you continue to. I'm more interested in how you, the current listeners feel about it!

i think everyone has interesting points about the downloading - we will look into it. maybe like a package of "Best Of" complete episodes that are downloadable from the EW store and iTunes? Sort of like what SNL used to do?

i think shannon has a fix for this... it's something they're working out.

haha, if you meant that, i would say thank you!

this was brought up earlier in the thread - i think this is interesting, and not something we had considered. so thanks for putting it in our ear! There's something to do here, I'm sure.

haha, sorry to come off snarky - just trying to take the analogy to its logical conclusion. so here's what i'm trying to say about a comic store - if you walked in, you would have ONE issue of X-Men (the current one), to browse through in the store. Then they would have back issues for sale in boxes somewhere, wrapped in plastic. You would have to pay for any of them (which is where the analogy breaks down - we're letting you walk out of the store with the "issues" from the last six months for free). But it would be insane to walk into the store, and on a table in front of you, there were hundreds of issues for you to sift through. And you would have to decide which to read first.

i think a clerk would ask you to pay for ANY of the issues, but I don't own a comic shop

it's an interesting question - what do governments owe their people? I believe health care and water could be considered universal rights. But people in this country seem to prioritize taxes being really low.

that's interesting - it's a little like the carpool lanes here going to a toll lane... it's kind of a bummer, but i guess Ireland needed to make more money? We pay for water here (unless you drink it out of your neighbor's hose).