Putting the Show Together



Today I am interviewing my first guest.  We will sit by the fireplace in rocking chairs and talk about her UFO sighting.  The fire will not be going, of course.  The high today will be 71°F (21C), unusual for October.  But in future interviews I plan to have a nice fire going in the background.

The friend that I have been talking about, with the special lens for his phone, is coming by to help out with the production.  He is going to do some of the recording with his phone.  It is good practice for him, for his own Podcast he is planning.  Good motivation too.  Whenever I see someone else succeed it makes me want to succeed.  I hope I can do the same for him.

I need to make a point of lining up my other guests later today.  Once things get going I will need to keep up the momentum.  I have two scheduled, so far, and sent out an email this morning to set up the third.  The fourth, I will probably get to today.  The fifth is the other witness who saw my sighting.  That is going to be tricky because he told me he is OK with talking to the documentary production company but he does not want to be on camera and wants his voice disguised.  I do not suppose then, that he would want to be on the Podcast without the same protections.  I can keep him off camera but I have not figured out how to disguise his voice.  I am open to suggestions from my readers.  Post comments below or on my Facebook page.

The plan is to release an episode once a week.  I have thought for a while that Friday mornings would be the best day to release it.  There are a number of reasons.  It is a weekday so people can download it and listen to it on the way to work.  But it is also close to the weekend so people can listen to it when they have more spare time, over the weekend.  It is also a day when other media options may be fewer.  Howard Stern, for example, runs reruns on Fridays.  He has millions of listeners.  I used to be a big Stern fan when I had a commute.  If even a small percentage of these folks do not feel like listening to reruns of his show on Fridays maybe they try something new, for half an hour.


Riley Martin


As an aside, any longtime Stern fans reading this might find it funny to know that when I posted my sighting story on a friend's Facebook page, I got the predictable trite ridicule from a few predictable trite people.  One of the comments was "O-Qua Tangin Wann."  You have to be able to laugh at yourself when you put yourself out there like I am doing now.  I can take a some heckling from my friends.  I have the feeling that this was just the tip of the iceberg.  Once the documentary comes out next year, I am sure I will be the butt of a lot of jokes.  What are you going to do.  This story is bigger than my ego.

I am big on research and I do not mind poring through data to find out what is right or true.  Plus if I am trying something new I do not want to reinvent the wheel.  When it comes to content I do not want too many other influences because I want to create something fresh and unique which has not been cross-pollinated by someone else's content or style of delivery.  But as far as the production of the show goes, if someone else has figured out how to do things then I am going to do what they did.  So I did a search on what's the best day of the week to release my Podcast.  The article had some great data on this subject.  I plan to peruse the site some more to see what else I can learn.


Podcast Theme Song


One enduring challenge I have been working on involves the theme song for the show.  There is one certain song that has been going through my mind for weeks since I first started thinking about doing a Podcast.  I like to do the right thing, whenever possible, so I have done many searches on this subject to see if I need to get some kind of licensing rights to the song.  It is harder than I imagined to get definitive information on this.  You would think in these post Napster days that the recording industry would want to make it as easy as possible to inform people about legal requirements for music licensing and then have a shopping cart feature to get the license.  But it has taken me weeks to finally track down someone who may be able to help me.

Just when I was starting to think, forget-it, I will just start using the song and deal with whatever happens later, I got a response from Universal Music Publishing yesterday, telling me I would have to license the song.  There was no other information like how the licensing works, i.e. per download or a flat rate, and how much it might cost.  Again, why do they make it so difficult?  There are individuals with this personality disorder, where they will not simply volunteer information, they want you to draw it out of them.  It is exhausting to speak with people like that.  Could an entire industry have this obtuse personality disorder?  The site I linked above should be the first hit on Google when you search "music licensing" but it does not even come up in the first four pages.  I gave up my search after that.  Hopefully I will get somewhere with person who emailed me yesterday so I can use the theme song I have in mind.


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If you have seen an alien spaceship or any type of unidentified flying object (UFO) contact me using the Contact form on this page.  You may remain anonymous if you want.  I will not ridicule you or try to tell you why you are wrong.  I get it, I saw one too.

Thank you for reading and keep an eye on the sky.

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