a reply to:
DictionaryOfExcuses
It started with one show and expanded covering several genres in different specific shows. Originally all shows were done live, streaming over the
internet, recordings were made available of some shows. There were even a few prerecorded shows streamed in regular time slots. One of the exceptions
was the After Midnight Show, which was live but no recording was made available.
My opinion, the big three were All Things Survival, After Midnight and ATS Live for your Thursday, Friday and Saturday listening pleasure airing at
9pm Eastern Time. They were the longest lasting and quite frankly the most fun to do.
Why did it end? Several factors including burnout. At one point, it personally consumed 20+ hours a week (shows Tuesday-Sunday) and that was when
After Midnight didn’t start until midnight. How big did it get? ATS Live (the main focus) was simulcast over two terrestrial 50,000 watt radio
stations that covered roughly 1/3 of the US and could be dialed into in parts of Mexico and Canada. For that to work, the live stream was picked up
and broadcast by a communications satellite parked over the Atlantic, just like your favorite syndicated talk radio shows are. Pretty cool, right?
I guess the neatest thing about the whole experience was that there was no actual studio. We did it by patching the audio from a Skype conference call
so the “studio” was worldwide. Hosts were located in New Zealand, Australia, Germany, England, Canada and all over the US. We took callers by
bringing them into the Skype call and even by phone. A regular caller listened by satellite (an old style 6 foot dish antenna) and would phone in
because he did not have a computer.
Worst experience was a pre-recorded bit that I worked up to do a “live on the air seance.” The whole thing was meant to be a gag, and I honestly
thought that it would have been funny but we over-hyped it and some people were quite ticked off because they thought it was going to be real and that
we would make ghostly contact. Like we had done it dozens of times successfully off the air and was going to do it to prove it works 100% or
something. I still think it was a good bit, but that is just me. Maybe it had something to do with spending 4 hours on the sound effect for the
“spirit radio device” which had some 20 layers of audio to the complete track that went on for six minutes even though only about 30 seconds was
the most ever used in any of the four segments and was buried so low in the mix that you can only hear it if it is absent...which to me makes for a
better sound effect if it just belongs there.
I did kick around the idea of doing a radio drama like the old radio shows of the past, but there wasn’t a lot of interest in the writing, acting,
post production work, etc. so that was shelved.
edit on 2-1-2019 by Ahabstar because: (no reason given)