Geek News Radio

Last year I came up with a cunning plan. Well, it seemed like a cunning plan a the time. I’ve been podcasting for four and a half years and since I started the number of podcasts has doubled and then probably tripled again. On the one hand it’s great, as there is a lot of free and interesting content out there to prevent me from going mad whilst driving two hours every day to and from work. On the other hand it can be very difficult to find good shows and quite often you have to wade through lots of dull shows to find the good ones. So how do you find good shows? The answer is often with great difficulty. I wanted to create a place where people could listen to a range of good podcasts across a wide range of subjects connected to geek culture.

I should say I know there are people out there with longer commutes than me, and people who have to work in tedious jobs where mercifully they can listen to music during the day to stop them going insane, so I’m not hosting a pity party for myself about my two hours of driving every day.

So my plan was to bring together a group of podcasts and form the equivalent of a radio station, but one completely devoted to geek news and reviews. The only thing I wanted to do was make sure all of the shows brought something different to the table, so it didn’t end up being twelve podcasts about TV, or Marvel comics. There is always going to be some overlap, and that’s fine, but I wanted there to be a range of shows covering a broad spectrum of material from independent comics, to movies, to TV, to mainstream comics, to SFF publishing, to dark fiction, to geek discussions, to computer and videos games.

Last night we launched Geek News Radio with a series of live podcasts. It ran from 4pm (UK time) to 11pm and several of the 12 podcasts that initially form GNR took part in the live event. Overall it was a huge success, everyone who did a live podcast got a real buzz from broadcasting live and getting instant feedback from listeners. It had been incredibly difficult to organise and pin people down to a specific date and then a time slot, but in the end I think it was worth it.

In the future I am sure we will add more podcasts to GNR, but there again I want to add shows with their own edge, so that if someone were crazy enough to listen to all of the latest episodes from all podcasts on the network back to back, they would not have 12 hours of different people digesting and discussing the same material.

So, what next? Well, GNR is up and running, it’s being broadcast 24x7x365 on Stitcher. The website for the lastest episodes from everyone is all set up here and it lists all twelve of the podcasts that initially make up GNR. I think we’ll do some more live podcasts in the future, definitely individually and perhaps as a group at a later date, perhaps when we add some new podcasts to GNR.

On that last point, if anyone out there reading this has their own podcast and they would like to see it added to GNR, then get in touch. The only rules are that the podcast has to be something that is produced fairly regularly and consistently, and the show should not focus on a topic already covered by one or more of the current line up.