Friends, as we begin the new year, we thought we’d share a few thoughts on what we’ve learned in 2022.
We hatched the idea for the Station 151 podcast last February as a cool, fun side project. Of course, we’d never done anything like this before. Our day jobs are an art director for a gaming company (Bear), a software developer (Andy), and a content marketing strategist (Steve). All of us are writers with a several published stories to our credit, but none were screenwriters, voice actors, directors, or podcast producers.
We found that with hard work (OMG, so many hours), we could get good results, even for an indie production. We found that the podcast community of creators, writers, actors, sound designers, and producers were some of the finest, most generous people we’ve ever had the pleasure to meet online or through social media. And we found that the Kickstarter community REALLY wanted Station 151 to succeed and produce a second season (which we’ll be doing!).
Work began on the Station 151 podcast last February. We had to work remotely because part of the team is in Kansas City, and part of the team is in Scottsdale, Arizona. This meant lots of late-night Zoom meetings. Early on, we had a goal to launch the podcast on June 25 (the 40th anniversary of the release of John Carpenter’s The Thing, a film that has inspired us over the years). It didn’t take long, though, before we realized we were nowhere near ready to launch the podcast by the end of June. It’s a big time commitment from both the production and writing side of things, in addition to all of the supporting efforts (website, brand identity, building a social media following, etc.). This gave us a greater level of respect for our friends in the podcast community who endeavor so tirelessly to produce great work—and it is great work!
Station 151 finally launched on December 6 after much writing, recording, producing, and marketing (so much marketing). We’ve delivered a new episode of Station 151 every Tuesday since. The numbers look good. The early reviews look good. The ratings look good. As of this writing, we are halfway through season one of our science fiction podcast series. It should wrap up by mid-February, and then perhaps we’ll get a little break before we start to seriously outline and write season two.
We have plans in the near future to launch a Patreon for Station 151 fans who would like to toss us a little pizza money and help fuel the effort. Many advance thanks to those who do. What we do at Station 151 and what podcast creators everywhere do is no small effort. But we love it. And we truly appreciate the response and support from fans of the series everywhere. Back in February when we were just getting started, if someone had told us that by mid-season the Station 151 podcast would have been downloaded nearly 6,000 times in 57 countries or territories across the globe, we probably wouldn’t have believed it. This has been an amazing journey so far, and we’re just getting started.
A few specific people to thank:
Our Kickstarter backers—friends, family, and total strangers all stepped up to give us a great boost, both financially and morale-wise.
Everyone at Monte Cook Games (also included in the friends above) who have been very supportive of this effort and helped spread our social media posts far and wide.
Derrick from October’s Children or @OctChildrenPod. So much help! Thank you!
The Guys from Cypher Unlimited for our first interview and for just being great people.
Yurie Hoyoyon, Susannah Snowden-Ifft, Jeremiah Tolbert, and Orrin Grey for lending their voices to the podcast.
Artlist for the highly useful and extensive collection of sound effects and music, which covers roughly 90% of our needs.
Buzzsprout for making the launching of a podcast very easy and giving us great tools for watching its success and growth. (Seriously, we watch way more than is probably healthy!)
And all those who listened to Station 151. Even if our little Antarctic science-fiction story wasn’t your cup of tea, we appreciate you for giving us a listen. And if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard and you’ve stayed tuned to our story week after week, we are so happy to have you along for the ride. It’s only gonna get weirder from here! Lastly, if you’ve given our podcast a rating and/or a review or shared it with your connections on social media, we can’t thank you enough. As an indie production, that kind of help is invaluable.
Cheers!
– Steve, Bear, and Andy at the Station 151 podcast.
