I'll Pass You Over To Our Publicity Department

I'll Pass You Over To Our Publicity Department

When I first listened to Issue Four of 'Sonic Waves' tapezine, all those years ago,  I automatically assumed that editor Alan Hayes and his team hired a professional sound studio to record the main articles and linking material.

This may provoke a fit of disbelieving giggles from all those involved, but you can only judge by what you hear and the sound quality was, for the most part, pretty damn impressive to my eager young ears.

But it's interesting what people think when presented with limited information and I was amused when Warren recently played some of the 'Juliet Bravo' material from Episode 24 to some new listeners. They wondered which local studio we'd recorded it in and took some convincing that it was just in our living-room on our old(ish) red sofa.

But that's digital technology for you. So long as nobody is doing their strimming outside, or knocking some nails in, the cheap and cheerful Tascam DR-05 recorder does a damn fine job all things considered.

We have also learnt not to talk over each other, so even when there are three of us bunched together we hope the points we're making come across clearly and that the flow of each article makes some sort of sense.

But I've always been keen that we aim for high standards if we can. Decent sound quality is a very good base from which to build and I think Episode 25 demonstrates that we've been lucky to assemble a team of contributors who not only know their stuff but are good at communicating that knowledge in a vaguely professional way.

When I was a member of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society I was impressed that it boasted a number of Departments (e.g. the Reference Department) althought eh term Writers' Pool did conjure up a mental image of a load of soggy scribes with manual typewriters in a pond.

The DWAS Publicity Department is a snazzy enough title, but the 'Round The Archives' Publicity Department has even fewer personnel, we suspect.

Although Episode 25 was uploaded with little bother yesterday morning, you then have to let people know it's actually out there. We do have a few followers on Soundcloud, but inevitably not everyone wants to press the Follow button - and I'm just as guilty of forgetting as the next person if I come across a new podcast that tickles my fancy.

Our first port of call is, of course, Twitter and Facebook and it's always polite to include the contributors' names. But hopefully that also leads to some retweets and shares which instantly spreads the word.

Depending on when you do the initial post, it's always worth following this up within 24 hours as it's easy to miss something on Twitter if you follow as many people as we do. We are always grateful for publicity if people enjoy our work, so never be afraid to do so.

I also do a blog post and try to remember to update the Episode Guide which is also on the blog. It also doesn't hurt to do a YouTube video announcing the new Episode as the little information I've got seems to indicate that not everyone follows our work on every platform, which is fair enough.

I will upload the Episode to YouTube in a few days, but when we launch a new one that's less of a priority and takes some additional churning on the computer. But with Martin providing all manner of pretty 'RTA' images, it's nice to be able to show those off. As I type this, Episode 23 is currently playing on our telly, with his glorious adaptation of the 'Radio Times' cover for 'Terror Of The Autons' which recasts Lisa as Jon Pertwee, me as Roger Delgado and Warren as Katy Manning. And none of us could argue with that!

There's a thread on Gallifrey Base for podcasts and I've made one for 'Round The Archives' so I also update that as soon as possible. I'm not sure whether anyone has discovered us from looking at that, so if anyone wants to pop a comment into that thread, again we'd be very pleased.

Player FM also updates itself magically, somehow. As far as we can remember that just sort of happened - I have no memory of setting anything up. It's a useful alternative way of listening and the more platforms you can offer to people, the better.

Then comes the initial anaylsis of the numbers. It's nice to see that it doesn't take long for people to click on the appropriate links, as Episode 25 is already up to 57 listens, which is far more than the readership for the average issue of my old fanzine 'Spectrum'.

So that's another one out there in the big wide world.

And a folder named 'Round The Archives - Episode 26' is already lurking with intent on the laptop, so the story goes on...

Episode 25 of 'Round The Archives' is available on Soundcloud here.

On Player FM here.

And on iTunes here.

(If you enjoy it, please give us a like, share, retweet, rating or review. Thank you!)

(Written by Andrew Trowbridge)