OurDailyPodcast: Midseason Thoughts and a Call for Assistance

Greetings, ODBers. This week off is providing us a bit of an opportunity to take stock of the first half of the season here at Our Daily Bears, and I figured I would be remiss if I didn’t do the same thing with OurDailyPodcast. But to start, I’ll give you a little bit of information about the next few shows.

First Things First: Tonight’s Recording

We’re recording another episode of the podcast tonight, staying on our regular schedule. Yes, the latest episode came out yesterday, so I probably will take my time with editing and put the show out on Friday morning most likely. The fun part: Tonight’s show is going to be a special Open Date recording, with ODB contributors David Fankhauser, Ted Harrison, and Matt Wilson joining Mark and Peter (Prashanth has clinical rotations that will keep him away from the "studio") for a round-table discussion recapping the first half of the season. We’ll be attempting to answer the age-old question, "How many people can you cram into a podcast at once?" It’s like a high-school youth group game, and it should be a lot of fun.

Here’s where you come in: We have several potential topics that we should be able to spend a good amount of time on, but it’d be fun to have questions/topic suggestions from ODBers. So, if you’d like to hear the five of us talk about something specific during the round table, let me know in the comments below. You can also send me those topics/questions via email if you like. If you have any specific questions for a specific panelist, by all means post them!

It’d also be fun to have No Huddle questions for our panel, so please send me special questions for Fank, Tedvid, and Mattisbear. As always, you can email those to OurDailyPodcast(at)gmail(dot)com. Thanks folks!

Next On The Docket

The next week or so should be fairly interesting. Sunday night’s episode we’ll welcome Amy Pagitt, prolific Twitter maven who recently began actively commenting on ODB, only to be snatched away to Bears Truth in an official capacity (congrats Amy!). She’ll join Mark, Prashanth and me to talk about the notable weekend matchups, the Big 12, plus Baylor football leading into the OU game, so be on the lookout for that on Monday. We’re excited to have Pagitt on the show.

The OU game makes things interesting from a recording perspective, since Thursdays are typically the day that editing and posting happens. We’re still planning on recording on Wednesday night, but we’ll probably do a "rough cut" show (kind of like we did with Kirobaito) and I’ll plan on getting that online Wednesday night after some quick editing. That way anybody who’s traveling to the game can download the podcast before they leave on Thursday!

Taking Stock: The first 2 ½ Months

The response to the podcast has been overwhelming. I never expected that it would garner the kind of following that it has, and I’m thrilled, and I know that Mark and Prashanth are also. When we started the podcast, we never thought that there’d be the groundswell of support from the ODB and Baylor communities. The truth is that ODBers are what have made the podcasts great. Your questions, comments, No Huddles, calls into That Good Ol’ Baylor Phone Line, and support are what make the podcast great.

To give you a bit of perspective, we’ve released fourteen episodes, and at the time of writing, the podcast has been downloaded over 16,500 times, for an average of nearly 1,200 downloads per episode. The show has been downloaded in 45 states (I’M LOOKING AT YOU, ALASKA, WYOMING, NORTH DAKOTA, VERMONT, AND RHODE ISLAND) and 32 countries on all six inhabited continents (where you at, Antarctica?). They love us in South Korea, the U.K., Japan, India, and Honduras! The U.A.E. also likes us quite a bit, surprisingly.

Predictably, the top five U.S. Markets are D/FW, Waco/Temple/Bryan, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. Tyler/Longview/Lufkin/Nacogdoches, Nashville, Oklahoma City, Los Angeles, and Chattanooga round out the rest of the Top Ten Markets. Texas accounts for at least 69.94% of all downloads. Tennessee (2.64%), California (2.55%), Oklahoma (1.68%), and Florida (1.26%) round out the Top Five Regions.

Finally, the best single day was October 18 with 931 downloads, the release date of Grooming Tips and Panera Music with Spencer Hall. Our growth month over month has been impressive. We had 2,960 downloads in August, the month we started the show. In September, you downloaded the podcast 4,756 times. And with a little over 36 hours left in October, you snagged the show nearly 9,000 times. That is mind-boggling.

Final Thoughts: Many, Many Thanks

All of this is the long way of saying this: You guys are fantastic. Without you, it’s Mark, Prashanth and me staring at each other on a Google Hangout. You have commented, left 5-Star reviews (my self esteem is soaring), called in, emailed, and donated. You’ve been exceedingly generous, and for that we are thankful.

I’d also like to again thank all of those that have been on the podcast as guests so far: Brian Ethridge of Bears Truth, Matt Wilson, Kate Morrison, Dan Rubenstein, Bill Connelly, Spencer Hall, and Kirobaito. Thanks in advance to Fankhauser, Hypemaster Ted Harrison and Amy Pagitt for helping us make it through this final Open Week!

Podcast at you soon!