Every year, we do two listener support campaigns for three weeks each.  I’ve been toying with the idea of introducing Patreon as a replacement.

Patreon allows listeners to give regular to support a podcast or Internet show in exchange for certain rewards. A couple examples of how Patreon works for other artists and podcasters can be found here and here.

Both sites combined individual rewards as well as overall promised improvements and changes to the site.

Potential individual rewards might be:

• Early access to the raw or early access to the commentary.
• The ability to record a bumper and have that used in rotation. (Hello, this is Dave Winslow and you’re listening to the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio.)
• Recording an after-show ad for your business or service.
• Getting a vote on specials or future show ideas.
• Getting to request a single episode of any series (detective or not) be played as a special.
• Ebooks or Audiobooks.
• Signed Paperback Books.

Potential goal based rewards might include:

• A larger server for the show. (we occasionally run into slowness as our audience grows and a better server could solve lag problems)
• Improved Equipment/Software.
• Moving ads to “After the Show.”
• Replacement of Listener Support Campaign with Listener Support Specials.
• Creating an additional old time radio podcast (subject to be voted on by select listeners.)
• Licensing Copyrighted Series for a Limited Time Podcast (for example: Licensing a series of Harry Nile but with each episode available only for a limited time.)

These are just a few quick ideas. I think there’s a lot to commend the idea of doing a Patreon campaign. I’d love to hear if listeners would like the option of monthly giving to support the show and what type of “rewards” they’d feel would be appropriate.

Unexpectedly, Blip.TV, who had been hosting all of our videos that we used for our monthly video episodes, deleted our accounts because we were just posting videos without adding any commentary.

At any rate, this month’s current episode is posted and further, all prior episodes will be restored starting with the earliest videos that were posted prior to us using Blip as these videos are already on our servers. The rest will follow over the next few days. Please patient as it will require uploading and downloading videos which does take time.

The Lux Radio Theatre version of, “To the Ends of the Earth” will be our 500th Episode Special. I listened to the program today and it’s fantastic. I look forward to bring it to you on September 24th. Below is a video clip from the movie the radio show is based upon:

Welcome to our biannual listener support campaign. It will run from August 19-September 9th.

We face many expenses here on the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio to keep the show going with $60 a month in hosting and $300 a year in malware protection.

You can contribute in one of two ways. Either: 1) You can send us a donation by Paypal or 2) If you would rather mail in a donation, email me and I’ll be happy to provide an address.

All year round, listeners get access to our premium site with donations of $7.00 or more. In addition, we’ve added a small selection of year-round thank are available if you email me requesting it. (Limit: One gift in addition to the premium site per donation)

$20 level:

A copy of any Adam Graham Kindle book including:

All I Needed to Know I Learned from Columbo (available for all devies)
What Made the Golden Age Shine
An Ounce of Prevention (my first detective story)
Tales of the Dim Knight
Fly Another Day
Powerhouse Hard Pressed

At the $50 level:

• Two original Michael Shayne Dell pocket paperbacks books originally written between 1951-62. These editions were published between 1957-65. (U.S. and Canada Only.) (Note: only 2 two packs left.)

At the $100 level:

• Your Choice of Volume  1, Volume 2, or Volume 3 of John C Abbott’s Johnny Dollar series. At the $250 level, we’ll send all 3 books.

All Year Financial Support for the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio

• When planning your travel, go to our Priceline affiliate http://johnnydollarair.com. If you find a great deal and book through there part of your purchase goes to support the program at no additional cost to you.
• Purchase the App at either the Itunes Store or in the Amazon Android Store.
• Check out our Amazon widget on the lefthand side of the page with many books and movies I’ve reviewed that I think you’ll find enjoyable.
• I’ve written a couple ebooks relevant to the site including, All I Needed to Know I Learned from Columbo  and What Made the Golden Age Shine. Please read them and if you enjoy them, review them.  Both are available for the Kindle. All I Needed to Know I Learned from Columbo is available for the Nook, Ipad, and Kobo, as well as an Audible Audiobook.
• Every week we post one or two articles. They can be book reviews, old time radio program reviews, or something about vintage radio, television or movies. Subscribe to the article feed for the Kindle.
• I also have a host of other books (mostly fiction) available on Amazon or as Audiobooks.
• I’ve owned a Roku for years and it’s a great little device that can allow to stream from Netflix, Amazon, MLB.TV, Pandorra, and countless other places right to your TV. You can even listen to Great Detective through the blubrry app. If you buy it through this link, a portion goes to support the show.

Totally Free Ways to Support the Show:

• If you like the show, rate it on Itunes. While reviews are appreciated, you can rate a show without reviewing it.
• Become one of our friends on Facebook at http://facebook.com/radiodetectives
• Follow us on Twitter @radiodetectives
• Let your friends know about the show. You can send them a direct link to the home page or share on Itunes. Also if you’re following us on Twitter, you can retweet episodes or on Facebook, you can share the episodes from our page right on to your own wall.
• Link to us on your Blog Roll. (Let me know by email so I can link back to you.

Every week, I post an article here at GreatDetectives.net and now you can have these articles automatically streamed to your Kindle by subscribing to it.

These articles can discuss detective stories (classic or modern) or classic television or movies in general. Sometimes, these are book and DVD reviews like this recent reviews of, “Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu” or “Johnny Staccato.”  Other times, I’ll do a series on a popular mystery series like our recent “Columbo”  and “Rathbone-Bruce” series we’ve done. Of course, sometimes we venture out of the detective genre entirely such as with my look at Eddie “Rochester” Anderson.

With a Kindle subscription, the articles will automatically download themselves to your Kindle and be available for you to read right there on your Kindle. This is a nice convenience to everyone who has a Kindle and would love to be able to read about mysteries and classic entertainment while on the go. You can take the service out for a free test drive for 2 weeks with no obligation.

Of the course, the articles are still free to read off the website as that may work best for most people. Also,  if you don’t have a Kindle, and you’ve enjoyed the articles, you can hit the “like” button on our Amazon page which makes it easier for people to find our blog, and even write a review to give prospective subscribers an idea of what to expect.

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In the course of planning the schedule. I have reasons for the show’s I pick, but this time, I’m letting the listeners decide between two great detectives to be our regular Tuesday Night show after Jeff Regan and Father Brown are finished with their runs in November.

The two shows you’ll get to choose between are Candy Matson and Nero Wolfe.  Below is a brief run down of the shows and the characters, as well as a link to a Sample episode, you can listen to of each show off of Archive.org:

(Candy Matson photo courtesy of OTRR, Nero Wolfe courtesy of Digital Deli.)

How you vote:

NO VOTING BEFORE SEPTEMBER 1st will be counted.

Vote for the show on Podcast Alley in the month of September and in the comments section, include your vote  You can do this by simply including the first name of your choice, “Nero” or “Candy” or even the initials. “CM” or “NW.” Even if you don’t normally leave a comment, just leave these initials along with your vote and it will be counted for your favorite.

Feel free to “campaign” for your show in Podcast Alley comments, or by leaving a Voice Mail at 208-991-4783. Please keep your comments brief and to the point, and they’ll be shared on the show.

The winner will be announced on a special results podcasts on October 2nd

UPDATE

Fan vote is 40-19.

From Blubrry.com, a chart of where our listenership is coming from:

So of our first 500 unique downloads, 86.1%  from the U.S. and a total of 92.4% come from North America when Canada is added and 96.4% from English speaking countries when we add the downloads from Britain and Australia. A tip of the cap to our German friends for generating the most downloads from a non-English speaking country.

One thing is inaccurate about the pie graph. The 1% for Thailand actually includes downloads for 3 countries: Two unique downloads each for Thailand and Morocco and one unique download from Italy.

Other interesting facts: even though the majority of the audience (52.3%) is using Windows, a substantial portion of you (43.7%) are using a Mac. Which isn’t a surprise given how popular Itunes is as a source of downloads with 80.6% of all downloads coming from Itunes and with another 5% going to I-phones, I’ll have to say a hearty thank you to the Apple Corporation. It should be noted that 7.4% of downloads are going to a Zune player.

However you’re listening and from whatever part of the world, thank you. And if you’ve not yet signed up to subscribed to this series featuring some of radio’s greatest detectives, I invite you to do so.

Below is the information to subscribe to this podcast:

Click here to add this podcast to your Itunes, click here to subscribe to this podcast on Zune, click here to subscribe to this feed using any other feed reader. Vote for this show on Podcast Alley.

The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio Podcast will begin one month from today on Monday, October 26th and will include new episodes every day Monday-Friday. A special preview edition of the show will be posted on October 12th.