Two pains in particular, advertising and getting local listeners on board, have proven particularly frustrating. In both cases the issue is the medium itself: podcasting may be well-established for early adopters, but for much of the general public the medium has a long way to go. “Whenever anyone is trying to sell my show to a potential advertiser, whether it is me or another sales person, and the first question is ‘what’s a podcast?’ the meeting is effectively over,” Frantz explains. “There’s just too much to explain about podcasting: it includes the issues of technology, different listening habits and even the idea that the ad is, unlike an ad on radio, permanent.” Even more frustrating is the experience that Frantz runs into time and time again when he meets former listeners who tell him how “they loved The Mike and Bob Show” and “wish it was still on the air”. When he tells them about his new podcast and that it is essentially everything that same as the old Mike and Bob Show, they all too often know nothing about how to get a podcast despite the fact that many of them own iPods, iPhones, and use iTunes on an everyday basis. “People enjoy commercial radio because of the convenience of it. You get in your car and you know how to get it,” Frantz explains. “Trying to explain how to download a podcast to someone who has been invested in radio all their lives is often like trying to explain to a caveman what an airplane is.”

Still Boneyard Industries continues to promote their network and have discovered that the best way to do so, just like anything else, is by generating word of mouth. Of course this has meant using mainstream social media such as Facebook and Twitter, but it has also meant doing appearances at local clubs to host trivia nights and promote an occasional bar night. Pocketing the appearance fees, Frantz and his associates use this money to attend specific conventions, buy promo materials, rent tables, and shake hands with fellow zombie lovers and sci-fi fans. In the case of Dork Trek, considerable growth has occurred as as a result of numerous efforts. These include the creation of free, custom Valentines for their listeners to give away and attending Star Trek conventions to make connections with fans and other Star Trek podcasters. What started out as a relatively weak podcast in terms of numbers of downloads per month, had grown to a healthy 7,000 per month by April 2012. After attending another Star Trek convention in May, Dork Trek broke the 10,000 download per month mark. The continual production and promotion of Bob’s Boneyard garnered the cast some unexpected national press when The Onion‘s A.V. Club gave the cast a positive review in a “Best Podcasts of the Week” column in April 2012. Noting that “The real appeal of the show is how Frantz straddles the line between “Adam Carolla-type regular guy” and “Chris Hardwick-type regular nerd,” the A.V. Club called Bob’s Boneyard “the comfort food of podcasts.” Still this experiment offers little clarity for the prospects of local podcasting. In an atmosphere where the economics of radio mean that more local radio performers are losing their positions, Frantz predicts,”that those former radio guys will go into podcasting and the people who lived in their local market and listened to their radio shows will listen. However, it will be a tenth of what their audience was.”

Although Frantz still toys with the idea of getting back into radio, he often tells others not to do so. “The way radio is now there is no place to cultivate your talents–there are no overnight shifts to learn your craft. Everything now is being voice tracked. When I was at Sinclair Communications we automated just about everything. There are no minor leagues of radio where you stay up all night and you figure out how to be on the air. Voice-tracking doesn’t really help any talents grow. You can’t learn radio by recording your breaks and throwing out those that suck. You need to listen to your tapes and work on how you can improve. It’s the only way you can grow what is essentially an amalgamation of skill sets needed to be entertaining over the air.” But for now Frantz and his colleagues remain dedicated to producing podcasts and recording them live from Virginia Beach. And although they have yet to figure out how to make money from their casts, right now they do it because they love it. Given that all of this new, unexplored territory, how long it takes for what they love to line their pockets is anyone’s guess.

If you want to listen to any of the Boneyard Industry Podcasts, including Bob’s Boneyard, Dork Trek, Torres vs. Zombies, and Get Mommy a Drink, just click on the above links of search for them in iTunes.

The other shows include Torres vs. Zombies, a zombie-survival podcast, Dork Trek, a “Star Trek: The Next Generation themed” podcast, and a mother-oriented podcast titled Get Mommy a Drink. The latter podcast consists of Frantz’s wife Stephanie and her friend, Sarah LeClaire Heisler, both of whom developed a program devoted to mothers who hate the idea that they should talk about their kids 24-hours a day. Launching in the summer of 2011, the podcast quickly became the network’s most popular offering. Foul- mouthed, obsessed with Duran Duran, and simply unlike any other “mommy cast” offered at the time, Get Mommy a Drink appeared as a recommended comedy podcast on iTunes. It found itself as one of the top comedy podcasts for a number of months, placing them in the company of comedy podcast celebrities such as Adam Carolla, Marc Maron, and Kevin Smith. After an initial stint of podcast fame, Get Mommy a Drink found its core audience of around 10,000 downloads a month and connected with an audience of spirited and dispirited mothers, women who never wanted to have kids, and self-identified gay men.

Get Mommy a Drink‘s success taught Frantz and his colleague’s two lessons. First, the power of finding and filling an niche at the national level. As far as podcasts goes, there was nothing like this in the “mommycast” universe. Secondly, it affirmed what Frantz began to suspect: the idea of turning a “local comedy program” into a “hit” may have to be abandoned. Even though the original Bob’s Boneyard flagship podcast is still the most popular in terms of downloads per month (close to 15,000 a month), Bob’s Boneyard posts three podcasts a week as opposed to Get Mommy a Drink‘s one and came with pre-existing audience from The Mike and Bob Show. In other words, Frantz discovered that his other niche-oriented podcasts, had “more room for growth”. Frantz predicts that “in two years Bob’s Boneyard may have the smallest number of listeners because the other shows are so niche.” As an extension of a local comedy radio show, the podcast lacks a focused topic and is competing nationally not only with all those other local comedy teams from across the nation that are no longer on radio and are now on podcasts, but with fellow podcasters. Frantz understands that he is at a severe disadvantage competing with many of them: “Dana Gould and Marc Maron live in LA and have been in the business for years. They are national performers that use their casts to promote their acts. They can leverage their celebrity and call someone famous to come on their cast. Guys like Adam Carolla has these connections. Even then someone like Kevin Smith is a huge podcaster and has just started making money at this.”

That question – “How to make money at podcasting?” – is a problem that plagues Boneyard Industries and will be explored soon in the third and final post on this topic.

If you are interested in listening to these podcasts, search for them on iTunes or click on the links above.

Indeed, in 2011, Hampton Roads, the portion of Southeastern Virginia where I live, suffered a significant media loss when a 10-year radio drive time show and career came to an abrupt end. Bob Frantz, aka Bob Fresh of Hampton Road’s The Mike and Bob Show on 96XFM, found his show cancelled. Ten years of any media project is exceptional, but in the fickle arena of local broadcasting, shows like The Mike and Bob Show were the rarest of birds in a post-1996 Telecommunications Act context. As a staple among the region’s testosterone-fueled audience of military workers, beach bums, and working-class commuters, The Mike and Bob Show was in and about the local. Local guys doing dumb local guy stuff that other local guys talked about. Like most drive-time shows, this included stunts at the beach, appearances at local bars and restaurants, interviews when comedians came to town, and, of course, giveaways to concerts and sporting events. Describing the program to me in an interview this April, Bob characterized it as “just guys ‘dicking around’ with no real format, working with no real clock. It was just friends hanging out and being stupid breaking balls, mainly just a lot of fun with Mike and I patrolling and delegating the chaos around us as complained about our bosses, friends, wives, girlfriends.” Immature, silly, and full of dick jokes – lots of dick jokes – it was the kind of program that most of my media studies colleagues wouldn’t bother with, let alone know much about. And if they did know about it most of my colleagues would either find it repulsive or kept silently embarrassed about their enjoyment.

Yet all it took to produce some eye-opening results that would seal the show’s fate was a less publicized but important analogue-to-digital media move, Arbitron’s shift from diaries to portable people meters in the Hampton Roads market in mid 2010. After the first book was released, The Mike and Bob Show, a program that had routinely claimed the number-two position with persons 18-34, was now pegged at dead last in the same demographic. Repositioning the show and jettisoning staff members couldn’t save the program from this method-driven nosedive. By the release of the first book of 2011, the show was effectively dead in the water and Bob Frantz’s professional radio career was done. With a buyout package in hand and a radio career in afternoon drive that had begun quickly after he graduated with a degree in history from Virginian Commonwealth University in Richmond, Frantz decided to begin a podcast. And, thus, Bob’s Boneyard, the flagship podcast of what would be an emergent network of shows, came to be.

Of course, these transitions are never that simple nor are they out of the blue. Bob had taken some time off from his show for paternity leave upon the birth of his first child and promptly watched every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a show he both loved and seemed logical to mock on the air. However, even though the program could occasionally “talk Trek,” the program couldn’t find enough room for his own personal TV ramblings. Bob began to think about a Star Trek  podcast. He had become acquainted with podcasting as his 96XFM radio show posted a podcast and online videos of the show as a YouTube channel. When the program was effectively trimmed back from talking 35-minutes an hour to only 3- to 11-minutes an hour of talking in between MP3s, Bob suggested that the show should produce a podcast. The other members of the staff didn’t find the suggestion interesting.

 Whatever their reasons for not producing a podcast, Frantz shortly found himself without a job, time to kill before the paychecks and benefits ran out, and time to find a new batch of reasons. Let go in Spring 2011, Bob Frantz quickly decided within days to  follow the path of other displaced on-air personalities, such as Marc Maron and Adam Carolla, and begin a podcast. And like Maron and Carolla, Frantz drew from radio talent he once worked with on terrestrial radio to bring the podcast to life. Working with Alfredo Torres and Manny Fresh, the three decided to produce the podcast, Bob’s Boneyard, a program that would essentially produce much of the same banter – odd, offensive, and localized – that used to take place over the airwaves. Working with Stephane Frantz, Bob’s wife and soon-to-be podcasting colleague, the the four formed an LLC and moved forward with what would become a successful Kickstarter campaign that netted enough starting capital for computers, a board, and recording equipment and promotional materials.

What digital taketh, digital giveth, albeit one without any cash-flow and health care benefits. Trying to grow a profitable local podcast with advertisers and cultivate a significant audience would prove something different altogether and is the subject for the second part of this three-part post, which is forthcoming. In the meantime, those interested in listening to the Bob’s Boneyard podcast can visit their website or find them in iTunes.