Show #213 – Mismanaged Carnival of Stupidity
May 15th, 2014 | By Fredcaster | Category: Podcasts
THE FREDCAST CYCLING PODCAST
Episode 213
Mismanaged Carnival of Stupidity
Week of May 12, 2014
Listen now by clicking here: [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/thefredcast/The_FredCast_213.mp3]
This week’s show is sponsored by JensonUSA, Fezzari Bicycles, Lynda.com, and listeners like you!
In this week’s episode of The FredCast, product reviews of the BKOOL Cycling Trainer and Allett Wallets. As always, there’s lots of news including the death of Rep. James Oberstar, the U.S. Census Bureau reporting that bike commuting is up 60% in the United States, more AAA chapters adding roadside assistance for bikes, Alaska Airlines sponsors Seattle’s bike share system, Felt Bicycle recalls triathlon bikes, a bomb found near the Giro d’Italia course, the Tour of Utah introduces a women’s race, Johan Bruyneel receives a 10-year ban, Alec Baldwin arrested in New York for riding his bike the wrong way, and the world’s dumbest bicycle thief. We’ve also go Podsafe Cycling Music, and, of course, MUCH MORE!ÂÂ
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I think you asked for feed-back on this podcast, so I’m moved to tell you that you may have gone too far.
I usually fast forward through the first 3.5 minuted of sponsor endorsements.. but this time it wasn’t far enough. Everywhere I stopped it was either an ad or product endorsement. This stuff is really not interesting. At all. really. To be fair I caught news that a cycling advocate had died. Sad, but at least that was news. But as far as I could tell there was nothing else. Suddenly… podcast music. Over.
It’s getting to be a lot of work to listen to this for little return. What about you re-run some of your classic Floyd/Hamilton interviews? In hindsight they would be pretty funny.
I’m sorry to be critical, I’m a fan. But it”s just not what it used to be. Safe riding.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for your feedback, which I always request and appreciate. I am sorry that you feel that there are too many ads and not enough content on The FredCast. As you can imagine, the show takes an enormous amount of time, effort and, yes, money to produce and so over the years I have had to turn to paid advertisers to help support the show and my efforts. I’ve always asked for donations but since I hate being the guy who always has hat in hand, I prefer to go the paid advertising route and I only accept ads from companies whom I can honestly endorse.
That being said, your comment made me wonder whether the show has become too heavy with advertisements, so I ran an analysis this morning. I broke the show down into content (news, racing news, product reviews, etc.), ads, intros and outros (setting up the show, giving contact info, etc.), and music. Here are the results:
Ads: 0:08:38 or 9.97%
Content: 1:10:57 or 81.91%
Intros/Outros: 0:02:44 or 3.16%
Music: 0:04:18 or 4.96%
Considering the time spent on ads on radio and TV these days, I feel pretty good about providing a 1 hour and 26 minute program with just 8 minutes and 38 seconds of advertising content. I don’t think you’ll find the same on any non-subscription-based commercial broadcaster out there.
With the above in mind, I would suggest that if you are inclined to fast forward through content (although my advertisers and I would prefer that you didn’t) that you consider subscribing to what I call the eFredCast. This is an enhanced AAC edition of the show that allows you to skip forward and backward to specific markers, thereby only listening to that content which interests you most. As someone who DVRs TV shows and skips commercials, I can understand if this is how you wish to listen to The FredCast. I just hope you will take a moment to consider visiting the sites of our sponsors to at least let them know that you appreciate their support of a show of which you are a fan.
Thanks again for your comments and for listening to The FredCast. Enjoy the ride!
David
P.S. If you’d like to see the more detailed version of the data I provided above in MS Excel, just let me know and I will email it to you.
Does your blog have a contact page? I’m having problems locating it but, I’d
like to shoot you an email. I’ve got some ideas for your
blog you might be interested in hearing.
Either way, great site and I look forward to seeing it improve over time.