SOP: Summer Off Program

MouseStation 411 – SOP: Summer Off Program

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Show run time 0:46:13

On today’s show, Steven Ng joins Mark and Mike to take a look back at the show so far as we prepare to go on hiatus for the rest of the summer.

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Feature: SOP: Summer Off Program

Steven Ng joins Mark and Mike to take a look back at the show so far as we prepare to go on hiatus for the rest of the summer.

Due to scheduling conflicts for us here at the MouseStation, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get the show out to you each week. We’re going to have to take a look at how we’re recording the show and how we’re doing post-production. We’ve been trying to work things out without halting production, but there’s just no time to do that. In order to figure out what we need to do, we’re going to need to take some time off to work on our schedules and to consider options. We’re going to take a hiatus after the next couple of shows to use the time we usually spend recording and producing to rethink and retool the show and the production stream. This is our last show before the hiatus, and we spent it looking at our first 410 shows and sharing our (and your) thoughts on the show. We plan to be back in the fall, but we don’t know what the show will look like yet, so if you want to tell us to keep or drop any part of the show, please let us know. You can keep sending us feedback while we’re on hiatus and we’ll consider what you say while we retool the show. We’ll miss doing the show over the summer, but we need to do this to ensure that we can keep doing the show for the longer term.

Mark reviewed the history of the show, starting with its roots in the Magical Moment Podcast, which ran for 21 episodes in 2006. We reached an agreement with MousePlanet that December to start doing a show over at MousePlanet. The agreement was reached halfway through that year’s MouseFest, so we were able to make the announcement a the Mega Mouse Meet.

Just weeks after we started, Mark was able to attend the Year of a Million Dreams kickoff event, where he was able to get a bunch of great interviews for the show. Steven joined us around that time, first just doing audio processing, and eventually taking over editing as well.

Mark reviewed how we went from one show to a really long show, to a medium regular show and a short news show, to a really long show and a short news show, to four short weekly shows, to two short weekly shows, to our current one moderate weekly show. We don’t really know what format we’ll return with in the fall.

Steven has really enjoyed having the chance to do many interviews for the show. Mike has enjoyed MouseFest, meeting people, becoming more active in the Disney community, talking with Tommy Tallarico, and hanging out with Mark while recording. Mark has enjoyed talking with all of the amazing people that he has had the opportunity to interview, getting to meet the listeners, and getting to chat about Disney with Mike every week.

Steven and Mike reminded Mark of his “um” problem. Mark talked about how parts of the show are now scripted and others are just outlined. We did a little math and figured out that the total time for all 411 episodes of the MouseStation are approximately 18,495 minutes of running time. That’s about 308.25 hours or about 12.84375 days of straight running time. That means that Mark and Mike have probably spent almost 25 days of their lives talking on Skype to record the show.

It’s been a lot of fun, but now we have to figure out how to do it while not spending quite so much time working on the show every week. We don’t have a set return date because we want to have the issues worked out before we return and we don’t want to be rushing ourselves to make an arbitrary deadline.

Twitter/Facebook poll question

Last week’s question was:

What is your favorite moment from the first 410 episodes of the @MouseStation podcast?

via Facebook:

• first time I had an email read…that and the top 3 lists
• Top three lists, for sure!
• Show 400, it really made me teary-eyed.

via Twitter:

• The wonderful heartfelt interviews at The Adventurers Club were the best!
• I am not submitting a fave moment because there are too many to choose.

Mike and Mark covered their favorite moments in Episode 400, so we didn’t go over them again. But what episode would be complete without a Simba vs. Nemo argument? Steven tried to insert Dumbo into the argument, but it was a tough squeeze.

What do you think?

Listener Feedback

Stuart Sternberg told us via Twitter that he wishes the show didn’t have to go on hiatus, but that he understands. He’s looking forward to MouseStation’s return in the fall.

SharlaManglass told us via Twitter that while the news is sad, she understands.

Karen Stoj wrote us an email about how she loves the show, but that she supports our decision to take some time off, as long as we come back. She enjoys all of the segments, especially the ones where we discuss our personal opinions. She’s hoping to be able to listen to us again come this fall.

Donna S. tweeted that she’ll miss us, but wants us back in the fall.

Hollywood Fast Food tweeted “oh man, why?”

Paul Schnebelen told us via Facebook that if we must we must, but he’s going to miss us.

Kevin-john Jobczynski told us via Facebook, that he’s going to miss us during the break, and urged us to return, not to discontinue.

Brian Martsolf noted on our Facebook page that he’s going to miss us during our hiatus, but that he hopes we make the most of it and have lots of quality time with our families. (Mike pointed out that we do owe a huge debt of gratitude to our families for letting us do the show. Mark pointed out that he’s making an effort to make some more family time of late, and that this change will make it yet easier.

Karen Ellis told us on Facebook that she understand the reason for our hiatus, but that she will really miss all the info we bring to you each week.

We closed out the show (after our usual closing) with a voicemail from Wesley from Vermont offering some interesting suggestions on how to make it easier to record the show. If you didn’t listen all the way to the end of the show, you need to go back and listen to it.

Wrapping up

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Thanks to our audio engineer and sound editor Steven Ng.

Thank you for listening!

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