Podcasting Use Case for Comics

Here’s an example of what podcasting can do that normal media just couldn’t. Derek Coward turned me on to Indie Spinner Rack. In a recent show, they had some correspondents at the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo who did a freakish level of coverage of the Howard E. “Gene” Day Prize. They recorded the presentation ceremony conducted by Dave Sim, and then did a short interview with every single nominee and winner. They caught as many people as they could at the show for the interview and those not at the show they interviewed on the phone. In the final show, they cut in the interviews immediately following the acceptance speech and it worked very well.

It was really fascinating stuff and has me scrambling to find out how to buy some of this stuff, especially the Mike Dawson comic about his love of Queen and Freddie Mercury. I had never heard of any of these people before listening to this show, and now I’m probably going to become a customer and fan of several of them. That’s what the production and distribution cost structure of new media does for you. With a little bit of energy and time and very little money, you can do any kind of hyper-local or hyper-niche programming. This is awesome stuff and I’m glad it exists.

Update: I should also mention for those in the “keep podcasts short” crowd, this is probably the damn longest podcast original show I regularly listen to. Episodes range between one and two hours. Wowza! The thing is, it works at that length and I enjoy it. I never find myself checking to see “how much more of this crap is there?”