Two "Production Values" Sides to Callin

Now that the first, "soft launch" episode of the KN@PPSTER: Thanks For Asking! podcast has been in the can for a couple of days, I've had time to think about the "production values" aspect of it and what I like/dislike about that aspect.

What I Dislike About It:

So far as I can tell, there's no way for me to do things like edit pre-recorded material (theme songs and between-segment ads, for example) into the episodes either live or in post-production. Actually, I THINK I might be able to do it live if I got very creative, but it it would be significant work, and I'm not hearing that happen with the "big names" who are using Callin, so I could be wrong about the ability.

What I Like About It:

Since I can't edit pre-recorded material into the episodes, I don't have to worry about editing pre-recorded material into the episodes.

While that means I don't get a cool theme song opening, etc. (I got a lot of positive feedback on the old podcast's theme song, which I spent a few dollars having done on Fiverr), it also puts me on a level playing field (in that particular area) with the "big names" who could massively out-do me on that front by e.g. having REM re-form to record a theme song for them, and having John Wayne's voice digitized and run through an AI to record between-segment ads. Since I can't do that stuff, I don't have to spend time doing that stuff, which saves me time and tension.

And there are other "production value" pluses. Callin automatically generates a transcript from the audio recording (handy for people who prefer reading to listening!), and makes it easy to use that transcript to edit out things like dead air for the permanent record. The audio, on the whole, sounds very high-quality to me except when someone's cell coverage or wifi shits the bed.

I don't know that the show's content will ever necessarily go toe-to-toe with Justin Amash's, Glenn Greenwald's, or Matt Taibbi's, but on the technical quality end of things it's a level playing field.

In a way, that reminds me of the early days of blogging. You might not be able to tell these days, but back then I was actually kind of in the running as a mid-level influencer. KN@PPSTER got lots of traffic and lots of links from "big names" until those "big names" were able to leverage their recognition into more traffic, bigger money for content creation, consolidation into multi-author platforms, etc. and outpace us small fry.