As a regular listener, I too worry about the future of the EscapePod experience and how ads effect it. One of the attractive elements of EP for me is Steve's commentary before and after. These are a most welcome warm-up and cool-down for me. Hearing a canned ad glommed on to one end or the other would not enhance my experience.
Another characteristic of EP that helped cement my regular listener status is that EP is a paying market. That's doing it the right way (and the hard way) in my opinion. This is what made me decide I wanted to be a supporter.
Of course, I could have used the Donate button to show my support so why did I choose to become an advertiser instead?
First, I thought there was nice irony to advertising hand bound books on a digital story feed.
Second, my business keeps me pinching pennies and I can support EP at a much higher level when my support both serves as a tax write off and can generate further income for me. It may not be pretty, but running something as fringy as a hand book bindery has taught me that I either have to shoot the angles or throw in the towel.
These were my reasons, but I knew regular advertising might change the EP experience. I had heard the Invasion ad and the responses to it. I hadn't had any strong negative response to it myself. I also tried to imagine I was "any listener" hearing the EscapePod Dreaming Mind pairing, would this sound right? I knew if the ad sounded wrong in the format, there would not be much hope of it being an effective use of my money and would not, in the end, help EscapePod. It felt ok to me. I decided to toss the dice.
I really don't expect (or want) people to support Dreaming Mind because they support EscapePod (as Ryuujin describes). EP deserves your direct support. And hopefully, some people will also want my products!
Long live EscapePod!
Regards,
Don Drake
Dreaming Mind Bindery
