…which as our readers know by now is the podcast I’m doing with Brian Haldane these days.

The podcast is picking up some steam; our listens started in the dozens and now they’re in the hundreds, and we’re beginning to get some feedback from the listeners that we’ve acted on to move the show forward.

But the stuff we knew from the start that we’d need to do in order to really turn it into a big deal – as in, get it to tens of thousands of listens per show and be able to sell some sponsorships and make a little money with it – is going to require some capital outlay.

The show doesn’t have its own site. We’re using Podbean to host the audio files right now, because it’s free, and the shows are getting posted here at the Hayride and they’re also feeding on Stitcher and iTunes, but it’s going to need its own site so that if somebody hears about the show and wants to look for it online they’ll be able to find it and listen. Not to mention it needs branding and a logo, and stuff like that – so that we can spin off things like promotional items and merchandising.

Plus there’s some equipment we need. Right now in order to generate decent-quality audio, we need the guests to come into the studio we’ve got set up at Haldane’s office. That limits who we can get, and it also limits our ability to do multiple segments with multiple guests on a particular podcast – or better than that, multiple podcasts of a more manageable duration. Ideally we’d like these to be no more than 30-40 minutes and have two or three, or maybe four, podcasts a week instead of just one which goes an hour or longer. But when you’re doing one show a week and you’ve got one guest, you really want to milk them for all the time you can. Particularly if they’re a really good guest like Ryan Heck, or John Couvillon, or Charlie Hanagriff, or Alan Seabaugh and Conrad Appel, or Mike Johnson and Blake Miguez.

But to get that to work we’ll need some decent-quality equipment.

And on top of that, we need to do a little marketing of the show. It’s hard to lift a podcast off the ground by word of mouth alone – there are just so many good ones out there these days. To get it off the ground you’ve got to give it a push. So we’re going to embark on a little digital advertising and a social media campaign, and to do that effectively takes a few bucks.

All told, we think that a $5,000 investment ought to get this thing rolling and turn the podcast into something big enough to really do some service to the community. Those of our readers in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, especially, know that while everybody thinks talk radio is dominated by conservatives it really isn’t in those markets. The local shows, and there aren’t many of them anymore in this age of corporate-owned radio, tend to be very middle-of-the-road if not left-of-center – and frankly, drive time seems more like a showplace for Democrat Party messaging these days. We think one way to address that is with a great podcast, which is where the future of talk radio seems to be headed anyway, and that’s why Brian and I are working on this project.

Thus, the GoFundMe project.

I know our readers are loyal to the stuff we do on the Hayride, and I thank you guys for that. One reason, in addition to the above, that we launched the podcast was to give you guys more quality content that was both informative and entertaining, and I’d venture to say we’re getting there with Red Bayou. If you haven’t heard the show, please feel free to check it out. And if you’d like to help, please click here and give us a little boost!