By the end of this week I will have gone from a three-a-week man to only once. I am of course talking about radio, with NottinghamLIVE finishing tomorrow leaving me with one show. The cool thing is that the show is in America, a concept that I still find bizarre when I think about it; I have a radio show in America. This will of course keep me in touch with the Nottingham music scene, especially if I can start doing the sessions again. I have emailed the PR companies and managers that I work with to give them the news that I have temporarily ended The Sunday Alternative but that they shouldn’t stop sending me new music as the show isn’t over. There are still irons in the fire and today I assessed the situation in the aftermath of the end of the show.

Twice a year, New Year’s Day and my birthday, I look at the state of my career and try to see the positives. I am proud of what I have accomplished so far, but when I look at the ideas I have had over the years and had to put on hold I can see that there is still a long way for me to go. Reading back through old blogs and diary entries I write about projects that I had forgotten about, sometimes I see a reference to writing with no idea what it was that I had written and what for. My excuse these last few years has been that I have devoted so much time to radio that I haven’t had the chance to get more involved regarding the other areas that I wish to pursue. The new podcast project is an experiment that I am optimistic about as I don’t think it has been done before; to make it available only by email. The last Friday of the month is a good day to do it, as there’s also the general feeling of happiness associated with that day. Not only is it the last working day of the week, but as it is the last Friday of the month it is payday. If I send the podcast out just after midnight it will leave plenty of time for people to download and add to their mp3 players ready for the morning commute. See below the line after this blog for details, along with other bits of information.

Inevitably, the new podcast will be free of charge, so hopefully people will enjoy it enough to spread the last day of the working week/payday happiness towards the PayPal button in order to help fund other more ambitious projects. Although I don’t want to run advertisements of course, I might look into the idea of sponsorship which might involve running an advertising jingle at the beginning and end. This will also be put into the pot to fund other free to enjoy stuff.

Financially speaking I’m not sure how the video version of The Sunday Alternative could make money, as I certainly don’t want to have the ‘end of part one’ style advert breaks so sponsorship might again be the answer. As the show will go up on YouTube there’s the option to have the advert beforehand, but considering nobody watches the advert and instead presses the ‘skip’ button, this might not work. There will be text appearing on the end of the video (and possibly during as a series of blipverts) urging people to use the PayPal button. Richard Herring has had some success with doing a free podcast but charging for a video version and extended versions, there’s that option to follow and investigate. Originally I wasn’t going to do the show in front of any kind of audience to maintain the feeling of The Old Grey Whistle Test, but I might consider allowing people to come and watch for free and ask them to make a ‘pay what you like’ donation on the way out. This method, popularised on Bandcamp, was used last year by Prefontaine for their Jongleurs gig and did make them a reasonable amount of money.

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