ESN: Electric Shadow Network

I thought I'd share some more details about my soon-to-launch little podcast network. All three shows (and two companion feeds) start the first week of February 2014, with new episodes posting weekly.

This post will be updated with info until the site launches at ESN.fm

Electric Shadow

When Screen Time went through a format overhaul, it transformed into what I'd wanted it to be all along (panel plus limited-length interview). That show about movies, TV, games, and "moving images on a glowing screen" is now Electric Shadow, which doubles as the signature branding of the new network as seen in the title of this post.

Electric Shadow is the original title I had pitched. It comes from a literal translation of the Chinese word for cinema. I wanted something evocative that bucked the trends seen in the names of other shows and publications dedicated to any of the above kinds of storytelling. Screen Time becomes the feed for the unedited, "director's cut" versions of the interviews that make up the back segment of Electric Shadow.

Episode 1
panel: Horace Dediu and Guy English
topic: TBD, but expect something about Nintendo wedged in

Episode 2
broadcasts live: Monday, 10 February 2014 at 11am CST
panel: David Loehr, Merlin Mann, and Matt Zoller Seitz
topic: Wes Anderson and Fantastic Mr. Fox (which is receiving a Blu-ray special edition release from Criterion on 18 February 2014)

Giant Size

Much like its most recent iteration on 5by5, this show also follows the same panel plus limited-length interview format as Electric Shadow, and will have its own "uncut interview" feed, probably called something like "Artist Edition". I have a few other ideas, but welcome suggestions.

Episode 1
panel: co-host John Gholson and Merlin Mann
topic: how to get into reading the X-Men

Episode 2
panel: co-host John Gholson, David Sparks, and Casey Liss
topic: getting in or back into comics as an adult, reading recommendations

Thank You For Calling!

This will be more conversational, and looser in style. Some weeks will be one-on-one, some will be panels. Addressing sub-topics within the Customer Service industry is something I think has the legs of a long, long, long-running series. People who work in customer service, whether retail, call center, chat support, or whatever else are encouraged to email or leave a voicemail [(240) 285-9623] to tell their story on future episodes of the show.

Episode 1
panel: Brent Simmons
topic: Network Solutions charging $1850 like a threat (see his blog for more updates), and supporting customers as an indie

Episode 2
panel: John Roderick, Lex Friedman, and Brent Billings
topic: airlines, why we hate them, who holds the power, and what to do

More to come later this week on a variety of fronts. Thank you so much to everyone who has been so supportive so far.

All-New Giant Size and Screen Time, Not on 5by5

In the week since last I posted, I've been making big decisions about what and how I create the content I want to be making. These are decisions I've been mulling for a few months now for various reasons, but chief among them is that I want to chart my own course, sink or swim…you choose the metaphor.

Within the week, I am recording the final episodes of Screen Time and Giant Size that will be posted at 5by5. The shows are not ending, far from it.

"I Swear to God You're a Dead Man If This Means Critical Path Is Over"

There is no change to my co-hosting The Critical Path on 5by5 alongside Horace Dediu. We're recording a new episode this morning. He's about to do a pile of traveling (get your AirShow San Jose tickets for 30 January), so don't take any broadcast interruption to mean anything other than travel schedules complicating things vis-à-vis our show continuing for as long as Horace wants to do it.

Where Shows Are Going

Starting the first week of February, Screen Time and Giant Size will re-launch as a part of my new broadcast entity alongside the debut of Thank You For Calling, a show about customer service (pilot recorded and posted here). If you currently subscribe to the 5by5 feeds for Giant Size and Screen Time, you will have to subscribe to the new feeds on the new network.

"So, You and Dan Benjamin Are Mortal Enemies Now?"

Sorry to disappoint, but there is not some big drama behind the scenes that is worthy of being a subplot on Scandal. The infrastructure of 5by5 and what I wanted to do with my existing shows (and others that I have been developing) no longer match. This is a thing that happens. People's needs change and grow, respectively. At a certain point, Robin had to let Batman "do Batman" and go off to be Nightwing.

Apologies for the comic book reference.

I still consider Dan Benjamin not only a very dear friend, but the whole reason I'm doing podcasts in the first place, after "meaning to get serious about" doing a show for years. I owe Dan in ways I can't ever repay.

Listening to Dan's show Quit! is part of what made me want to jump into the insanely hard work that is not only producing content, but selling my own ads and sponsorships. Both parts of that equation have been elements of my career in the past, and it feels great to unify them on behalf of my own thing rather than those of others.

Due in large part to the people I've met, befriended, and been blessed to have as listeners and supporters while doing these shows on 5by5, I already have a few sponsorship deals closed or in the works. 

Dan and I are totally cool. I'm still doing a show for him with Horace. Dan will guest on my new shows as time and topic permit. I'll do the same for him. I think I'm going on a BBQ run with him later this week. We had coffee this morning. We're cool.

How the New Network Will Work

All three shows will be broadcast live as they record. There will be an IRC-based chat room where you can suggest and up-vote titles. John Gholson has agreed to remain my better-than-I-deserve co-host on Giant Size. I've begun curating a sort of revolving co-host chair for what was called Screen Time. Giant Size and the show most recently known as Screen Time will remain panel-format focused, with short talent interviews plugged on the end. Longer versions of those interviews will be available too.

Much more information will be available in the coming days, but I wanted to cover some points I knew people would wonder about.

I'm focusing on these three shows, and should they do well, a few others that I've been developing.

Screen Time: Reiterating and Repurposing

I'm still using "Screen Time" as a show title, but I'm peeling it off of the signature panel-format show. I originally pitched it with a completely different name, a name that is bolted into the branding of the network. I'm not sharing that just yet, because there are a couple of things I need to lock up that I haven't secured just yet.

Screen Time has had a weird, complicated life that has taught me a great deal. It began as, predominantly, an interview show. Most of the episodes I recorded of it are done in that format. The new Screen Time feed will include the "Extended Cut" versions of interviews that will otherwise be cut down for the main "anchor" show.

The "new name show" will be more like Screen Time episodes 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 46, 49, 52, and 53 (and very rarely #50) than any others in that back catalogue. It will have guests very much like those found in those episodes, as well as others from both the tech and entertainment industries.

The first panel on the relaunched show will be return guests Horace Dediu and Guy English.

How You Can Help

First and foremost, if you love the shows I've done on 5by5, subscribe to the new feeds when they're posted, and please rate/review the shows like crazy once they're in iTunes. Listen to the shows, continue to give me great feedback, and enjoy them. Tell a few thousand friends.

On the financial side of things, if your company is interested in sponsoring the shows, please get in touch. By "your company", I also don't necessarily mean a corporation with an enormous overall ad budget. That includes everything from one-person app developers to independent comics creators.

If you host a podcast and would like to have me on as a guest in the coming days and weeks, let me know.

If you work or have worked in any sort of customer service job, have a horror story, or a company you can't get to solve your issue, send an email and I might have you on Thank You For Calling.

Thanks for reading this, listening to any of the shows I've been on, and supporting what I do in any way ever. 

I'll have more next week. Wish me luck.

Screen Time #50: Turbo Time

This is the most personal episode I've done of this show yet, and it might be the most personal I ever do. Recording solo wasn't the hurdle, it was getting through the thing and staying focused for the most part. The episode uses my brother's love of Jingle All the Way starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a bridge to opening up about living with someone else's autism.

Autism can be a part of who someone is, just as much as anything that makes any of us unique. Unfortunately, prejudices against autism are deeper and more openly expressed than those against something as innocuous as left-handedness, or something like race or social class.

Movie and TV portrayals have trained many to treat autistic kids like classic Universal monsters rather than human beings. There's a documentary titled Autism is a World, which I think is one way to look at it. Throughout my life, I've come to think of it as a radically different calibration of sociocultural behavior and perception.

Social constructs like money, and other things that we invented as a species, seem patently ridiculous to an autistic mind. How could money ever run out when it's a thing that's printed like anything else on paper? The idea that there are times when we should and should not talk, run, or do as we please also makes no sense.

When "normal" people say things to that effect, they are hailed as firebrands, revolutionaries, and champions of liberty. Someone diagnosed as autistic is somehow diseased, and a mutant. They're an outsider on a genetic level, and to many "normals", they are no better than a burden on their loved ones, and something to be hidden from public view. I saw people clutch their children as if my brother's autism was contagious, or not do a good job concealing their supposition that my entire family must somehow be "infected".

That bundle of feelings is almost impossible to convey outside James Whale's Frankenstein.

My younger brother had a great deal to do with shaping the way I enjoy, process, and judge entertainment. I'm at once an exacting critic and most likely to forgive flaws in favor of charm and effort.

The interview paired with this episode is with animator/director Tom Cook. In the 70's and 80's, Tom worked on cartoons for Filmation and Hanna Barbera, among others. His work means a lot if you ever held a plastic sword aloft and bellowed "By the Power of Grayskull!!!", tried to reason with a friend how great The Herculoids or Thundarr the Barbarian were, or simply cackled at the bizarre mismatch that was the He-Man & She-Ra Christmas Special.

Screen Time #17 Named One of Stitcher's Top Podcast Episodes

In my first of two interviews with Andrea Romano, she discussed her entire career. Screen Time #17 is one of my favorite interviews that I've ever done. I'm thrilled to report that Stitcher has named/ranked/noted it as the #3 podcast episode about TV cartoons in their entire library of curated shows. I didn't know Dan had 5by5 shows on Stitcher in the first place.

As highlighted by the people at Stitcher in the splash image they used, she discussed the reunion of the original Jetsons cast in the 1980s. Almost exactly a year later, I'm getting ready to post an episode with animator/director Tom Cook, who was working on Hanna-Barbera cartoons during the same era.

Subscribe to the show to get the latest episodes (iTunes/RSS)

Screen Time #39: Beyond the Physical

Jim Dalrymple (The Loop, Amplified) and Tom Hall (DOOM, Commander Keen, much more) join me to reboot my signature show.

We discuss and speculate on the fast-approaching war to be the one box to rule them all. We start by taking a look at what we each have connected to our TVs and consumption habits. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Roku, and many more players have wildly divergent strategies.

The point regarding Apple that I'm spending a lot of brain cycles on is the question of gaming. TV and movies are already pretty fleshed out, they just need more "channels". Many of the games in iTunes' App Store either were designed for physical controllers, or come from genre that traditionally use controllers. That new Time Capsule/Airport enclosure makes me wonder yet more. The price tag on the new generation of dedicated console game systems goes from $350 to a staggering $500. There's a notable gap between the "hockey puck" price point (Roku and AppleTV) and the "aircraft carrier box" one. More on this very soon, and certainly in next week's Screen Time.

In this week's featured interview, I talk with Jen Linck, VP of Digital for Acorn Media, who distribute the largest library of UK TV shows and telefilms to the US. We talk about their instant channel strategy, including exclusive content from fan-favorite series like Doc Martin, Poirot (with original star David Suchet), Foyle's War, Marple, and more.

Each episode of the all-new Screen Time opens with a panel discussion, followed by the interviews that had previously been the backbone of the show. This is the version of the show I've wanted to do from the start.

Acorn TV: New App and Exclusive Debuts for DOC MARTIN, FOYLE'S WAR, and POIROT

In the latest episode of Screen Time, Jen Linck (Acorn Media's VP of Digital) revealed some news relevant to fans of UK TV here in the States. Not only did she reveal a planned July overhaul to their still relatively-new Roku app and streaming service, but some exclusive, faster-than-usual US debuts of popular shows. The overhauled service promises 800-900 all-you-can-eat hours of content from across all genre of UK TV.

The sixth (final?) season of public television hit Doc Martin  will debut exclusively on Acorn TV, as soon after each episode's UK airing as possible. They have put new series of both Foyle's War  and Poirot  into production, with original stars Michael Kitchen and David Suchet reprising respectively. The new Foyle's War  will debut on Masterpiece, and appear on Acorn TV the next day after airing. The entire final series of Poirot  telefilms will see the first two debut on Masterpiece, but the rest, including the very last one, will debut exclusively on Acorn TV. There's a new series of Marple  being filmed, with US distribution plans still under wraps.

This is a huge deal for the new entrant to the "streaming channel" game, which currently costs $25/year or $3/month. The content arms race is on, and Acorn holds the SVOD rights to a staggering library of UK TV content. They're moving earlier than most others with libraries even approaching the size and quality of theirs.

Daily Grab 142: No Matter Where You Go

...there you are. The latest Screen Time is a solid hour of Peter Weller-minted gold.

Daily Grab 133: Murphy

I met Peter Weller at yesterday's Ain't It Cool News double feature of Star Trek Into Darkness and Robocop. Professor/Doctor Weller is a brilliant man, consummate raconteur...

...and my next confirmed guest for Screen Time, following Jane Withers (whose episode posts very soon). He'll be on live late this week or very early the next, unless his schedule changes (as they do). He asked me to call Monday or Tuesday when he's back in Los Angeles. Keep an eye on the 5by5 schedule for updates.

He told me to tell you that the one posting tomorrow with Jane Withers ("James Dean's Pink Shirt") is your homework.

We'll naturally talk a bit about his time with the Hong Kong Cavaliers, his work protecting Detroit and Gotham, and his exterminator pastime he kept up alongside a drug habit...but I'm more interested in talking about the power of myth and the nature of art. Everyone knows Peter Weller has a PhD in Art History, right?

Daily Grab 111: Radical Rat

My guest for both Screen Time and Giant Size this week is Kevin Munroe, who directed TMNT (2007), was lead designer/animator on Shiny Entertainment's Wild 9, and has a diverse and deep geek creative résumé. We talk about game design, animation, chasing the creative work you want to be doing, and...working directly with George Lucas.

In another 5by5 first, the recording of one creator interview show lead directly into an episode of another. I should have planned it this way. Both episodes should be up in the feed soon (subscribe to Screen Time and Giant Size if you don't already.

Munroe's Splinter in TMNT was played by the great Mako, in one of his final released performances.

Daily Grab 64: Trials and Tribulations

I hosted a pair of Q&A's today at the Dallas SciFi Expo.

Avery Brooks and the pair of Cindy Morgan and Bruce Boxleitner could not have been more generous, unique, and fun. Those discussions will appear in consecutive episodes of Screen Time as soon as I have the audio.

Screen Time 22: Pure Game Language

iTunes link / RSS link (for other podcatchers)

5by5 site show notes

I added a blazing-fast news segment to the front end, and an equally-fast New Releases piece at the end of this episode. Let me know what you think as I continue to monkey with format.

Tom Hall has had a major impact on my creative development ever since I was in elementary school.

A nice fellow who helped set up our blazing-fast 386SX GeoWorks-brand computer put a game on it that he thought I would like. That game was Commander Keen, a platform adventure game like few others (then or since). It's available on Steam, albeit Windows-only. It's not hard to...find a way...to make all 6.5* games work on the Mac.

Tom has a big, cool new thing that he's got attached to a Kickstarter. We hoped to include that announcement in this episode, but Amazon Payments threw a wrench in our plans. That short segment of this interview will be included in next week's episode, and it'll also be posted as an After Dark attached to this episode for good measure.

*Keen Dreams really only counts as .5 of a whole game.

Screen Time 21: Cowboy Hats in a Mosh Pit

iTunes link

5by5 site

My utter disgust and HyperApathy toward 4KTV and CES continues with fellow 5by5 host Brett Terpstra. No one tell him, but I think he has suddenly become my favorite Internet Friend. Don't tell anyone else.

I will soon appear on his show Systematic to talk about fish tanks.

The Daily Grab 29: Creature of Creatures

I recently interviewed Guillermo del Toro on Screen Time, one of the highlights of my professional life. We talked a fair amount about the classic Universal Monsters movies. For me, the guy with stitches and neck bolts will always be the definitive monster...if he's even the one you consider the monster in his story.

Screen Time 19: This Magical Cat (with Sam Smith)

I talked with my pal Sam Smith recently (iTunes link) about movies, art, design, and classic, true-blue Mario Bros. games. He made this, among other really cool things:

Screen Time 17: The New Radio Theatre (with Andrea Romano)

This is my favorite show yet (subscribe in iTunes). It's long, but when talking to an artist of this stature, the length is merited and warranted. I talk with Andrea about things I haven't heard or read her discuss in any previous podcast or interview.

Andrea Romano either cast or voice directed (sometimes both) all of the following animated projects and more (not in chronological order):

Batman: The Animated Series
Animaniacs
Tiny Toons
TMNT (2012)
The Last Airbender (and The Legend of Korra)
Ducktales
Chip & Dale: Rescue Rangers
almost all of the DC Animated movies, starting with Batman: Mask of the Phantasm on through The Dark Knight Returns
Snorks
Smurfs
Pound Puppies
ReBoot
Static Shock
Superman: The Animated Series
Justice League

There are too many more to list. She's directed Batman more times than Burton, Schumacher, and Nolan combined, and has director's shelf in my DVD library alongside Scorsese, Spielberg, Lean, and Hitchcock. In the opening minutes, we discuss exactly what a Voice Director does, and why she's this big of a deal.

The stories she tells are absolutely unreal. Here's a name you won't forget after hearing this episode:

George O'Hanlon

Don't Google him, just listen.

George O'Hanlon and Joe McDoakes: The Original Hard-Luck Kid

George O'Hanlon is an actor you'd know by his voice more than his face.

Three words: Meet George Jetson.

In this week's Screen Time 17, my guest is Andrea Romano. Andrea has been working in voiceover direction (and previously casting) since the 1980's, and a significant portion of our discussion centers around the great Mr. O'Hanlon, with whom she worked on the 1980's revival of The Jetsons.

Warner Archive has collected all 63 of the Joe McDoakes shorts on DVD, clocking in at 650 minutes of content. Here's the one I found on YouTube, "So You Want to Be a Detective":

I grew up trying to imitate the voices of guys like O'Hanlon, and his comedic timing formed so much of my formative study of acting. Cartoons were the radio theatre of my generation and so many others before and since.

Screen Time 16: Value-Added Material:TNG (with Robert Meyer Burnett)

Based on the two currently released, the Star Trek: The Next Generation Blu-ray sets represent an outstanding achievement in both 35mm preservation and home video. On this episode of Screen Time, I talk to Robert Meyer Burnett, one of the co-producers of this series, which will see more seasons out next year.

Subscribe to Screen Time in iTunes here.

The next episode of Screen Time features an interview with legendary voice director Andrea Romano. It, along with #16 here, are among my favorite bits of work I've done with Screen Time.

We have some more great guests coming up, including Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro (subject to their very busy schedules). 2013 is going to be a big year for this show.

I should also mention here that I am now booking sponsors directly for both Screen Time and Giant Size. Drop me a line through the contact form if you or your company are interested in sponsoring these shows. We can accomodate varying levels of budget and placement.