The first year of “The Program”, my fiction podcast launched on HN | Hacker News Reader

The first year of “The Program”, my fiction podcast launched on HN

programaudioseries.com

87 pointsI-M-S21 comments

I am so glad that projects like this exist, and I'm impressed with the effort and commitment - including your apparently amazing marketing abilities in being able to network to good result and find pro bono talent. I also know that it's hard enough to generate revenue from podcasting, and audio drama podcast is harder still. I like though that these episodes are apparently build to age well (unlike most pop-culture podcast episodes), so hopefully it will build on itself over time. It's a hard thankless job to put significant creative effort into something that isn't profitable. I've been toying with an idea of a choose-your-own-adventure audio drama podcast - we have plenty of material written and it would mostly be a production challenge - but it feels overwhelming to figure out how to find pro bono voice talent, music/sound talent, not to mention the actual recording/editing.

If you ever have time, it would be interesting to read an in depth description of your production process - what you coordinate, what software you use, the editing steps, and what tricks you use to automate and save time (and save your sanity).

I think the trick is to find collaborators who are not approached too often and then pitch the project as something they are going to be proud of and ensure them you're going to be maximally respectful of their time. Simply being concise and organized is already a sign you are going to deliver on your promises to them.

I was thinking of delving deeper into the production process behind The Program, but so far my goal has been to keep these articles interesting to a casual reader. However, since I do get this type of question from time to time, I'll probably commit something to paper eventually!

The Program audio series premiered on HN in June 2018 [1], followed by an official launch in November 2019 [2]. Since then the show received 135,000 downloads and was featured by Apple Podcasts in 6 countries.

The community here was nothing but supportive (bberenberg just sponsored an episode by paying for audio equipment, and many other HN users are show patrons) so I am now trying to give back by posting transparent updates regarding the project every 6 months or so. I write these reports the way I'd like to read them, which is to say I divulge concrete numbers and share not only the wins, but fails as well. I believe a lot of lessons (and mistakes) contained within can be applied to creative projects beyond podcasts, so hopefully it comes in useful.

For those who haven’t heard (of) The Program audio series before, imagine Black Mirror as a podcast. Every episode is a standalone story set in a future in which Money, State, and God have been fused into a single entity called the Program. The world of the Program is neither a utopia nor a dystopia, as the new system produced both winners and losers - ordinary men and women who are sometimes heroes and sometimes the villains of their own lives. And to them, it is not this future they find terrifying - but our present.

Comments/questions welcome!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17425278

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21704417

Happy to be a sponsor of this great show. I hope to keep seeing it grow.

> The world of the Program is neither a utopia nor a dystopia, as the new system produced both winners and losers

It is usually the intent of a systems designers and shapers to produce very specific winners and losers. I therefore don't quite see the causal connection this sentence implies.

Will give the podcast a listen though, sounds interesting!

Chalk it up to difficulty of producing the desired outcome + second-order effects ^_^

While that plays a role too, I find naivite on the part of the observer plays a significant role. Maybe you've not actually identified the most significant shaper or their actual goals correctly ;)

Subscribed, and looking forward to starting. Amazing idea.

I will admit that I didn't get the idea on the first fast skim of the article. I completely missed the part about Black Mirror. It sounded like just another podcast from the rest of the article. I was looking for a link in the article but found none, missing the giant banner at the top of the page.

So, a link to the main page at the first two words ("The Program") might help skimmers like me.

On the main page, "The Program audio series is a historical podcast set in a future..." really grabbed my attention.

The article itself is a great account of the challenges of building a community around anything. The take on on Patreon resonated especially well, but I still don't get what's happening there. Patreon just makes no sense to me.

> Which goes to show that Patreon is king. Which stupefies me, because for the life of me I don’t see what’s so special about it - as far as I can tell, people don’t use Patreon to find new content, meaning the service itself is not bringing me subscribers. ...

Glad you managed to find the part that intrigued you! Another link that might have helped is that the word "homepage" at the very also leads to the main page :)

Thanks for sharing an in-depth breakdown of your first year. I've been curious on how indie shows can support themselves and it seems like it's really not feasible long term which is very disappointing. After paying for music, talent, hosting, and the payment platform's cut it seems like you'd need a huge listener base to get a small percentage of users that donate.

Patreon donations being higher than the others has to be due to user familiarity. It seems that most indie creators that ask for donations use Patreon so listeners might be more comfortable using that versus something like Liberapay or Interac.

I'm not disappointed because I still think the show will be feasible long term - just longer term than it's been so far! :D

I tried Patreon simply off name recognition as you say. With that said, I did try to switch over to Liberapay after reading this, but they don't support automatic payments via Paypal (only Stripe, which the receiver has to support), so unfortunately a bit of a non starter for a set-and-forget supporter mechanism.

I found one of your posts sometime during the hard lockdown and I absolutely loved falling into the world built in the podcast! I've done a second listen recently and loved spotting new links between episodes! I'm really excited to see what's in store for the show next year.

Thank you for the kind words! Make sure you check out the show's subreddit for illustrations, discussions and more ;)

Which one is it?

https://imgur.com/a/KfGwZY1

The one titled "The Program audio series", with the artwork matching the artwork at programaudioseries.com.

Glad to see it at least at the bottom of that screenshot :)

Long time lover of the show, thanks for sharing! On a related note, this post reminded me to order some merch, but encountered an zip code error on checkout. Is this a known problem?

There have been some known issues between Launchcart and Printful that have been fixed - hopefully this one is among them!

Thank you for becoming a patron of the show - just sent you the welcome email :)

Great show, entertaining and thought provoking.

I almost thought you'd called it The Pogrom. Maybe an April 1 edition? :)

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