To beg or not to beg… that is the question.
Actually it’s not begging at all—but it sure is hard to shake the feeling that it isn’t. David and I are both hardworking individuals, we’ve never needed charity and have been gainfully employed our entire lives.
But we’re both artists—him more acting/directing; me more writing/acting. We come from an era where it was not as easy to break into the business … especially in regards to physical geography (East Tennessee) and the internet (not having been invented). So, much of our artistic devotion has been for love, not money—through passion projects and a LOT of community theatre.
David is still in the business producing/directing contracted shows for conventions in different cities (many of his podcast contributions are recorded on the road from his hotel room). My love of books landed me in retail management (for the dearly departed Borders) and has now become a title/profession that I have a hard time escaping if I want to eat.
When we came together with this idea for the podcast—born of our mutual love for genre-related film and TV—my idea was to spin it into possible books, co-written together for future investment… supplemental retirement income maybe. We could be writing these in conjunction with the podcast and, perhaps, use each to cross-promote the other—not a bad business model, if I do say so myself, considering that neither of us has done anything like this and we’re flying by the seat of our pants.
But then I started listening to our show and remembered our passion for entertaining other people. Why could we not make money from the podcast as well, at least enough money to re-invest (in addition to our own funds) and grow the show… improve audio, add video, broadcast more frequently, etc.
And we also started hearing from folks like you… people who enjoy our banter, laugh at our jokes, catch our obscure references, sift through the tiniest of minutiae for absurd relevance.
[Sally Field’s voice] You like us. You really like us!
Patreon was suggested by a friend… so I started exploring what was out there in this crowd-funding internet world.
There’s a lot of crap… and people are paying for it. Granted, we may not be everyone’s cup of tea… but we’re experienced in the biz, knowledgeable of our subjects, and reasonably funny and talented (no comments from the peanut gallery please). And if people are willing to throw money at racist idiots, Bigfoot porn, and Elvis sightings… then asking for a cup of coffee a month to help grow the JOHNNY HAS THE KEYS concept is not asking all that much… especially knowing that there are like-minded folks out there enjoying the same thing we do.
And we have big things planned, starting as early as next month with season 2. The new logo is amazing and being finalized as I write this. Supplemental material is being recorded for bonus shows. Future meet-ups are being planned. And–the biggest news of all–David and I are working on a subsidiary podcast that will feature every episode of a beloved show of so many–that it’s pretty much a demographic of our audience.
So, any support you can give us–even $1 a month–is going to help us grow this passion into the Godzilla it was meant to be. And with the new logo will come swag and merch that we will offer as recompense… and there are also those new shows in the pike. We don’t have tiers set up yet for subscriptions but you can still help us… and we will remember you with both shout-outs and future swag. We promise.
Artists have had patrons for centuries. It’s not a new concept.
So, we’re not begging… just asking for support to help grow the show—this labor of love—into something we can all be proud of. We hope that you’re enjoying it as much as we do.
If we didn’t love it, we wouldn’t be here.
–Tim
Do you like our show? Want more cool stuff? Help us continue…
Reach out to us…