Astronomy Cast Can't Go On Like This

0:00Hey Pamela, we get to do a we need to talk video now. Have you ever done one of these? No, no. And like that is a sentence I think I've gone through my life avoiding. Yeah well it's a YouTuber thing right? Like people will be on YouTube and they'll be like we need to talk and they'll have this like really serious thumbnail in a different place because everything is changed and and so you know if you're watching this right now if you're listening to this everybody we need to talk. Yeah yeah we've been doing a strongman cast for 20 years for 799 episodes and things have evolved over time but we're about to take I think the biggest leap we have ever made. But good news you're gonna experience a much better podcast and videos and here's the problem. Ads just don't work and we have been putting ads in astronomy cast for over a decade and they are annoying but and they used to bring in money and now they just don't

1:01bring in money and so we have made the decision to cut off all of the ads from everything that we do. If you go and you listen to back episodes on our SS feed there are no ads none they are gone and they're going to stay gone and we need your help to make up the difference in revenue so that we can continue to pay our people a fair salary. So we've been living in this sort of state of tension with our funding sources and that is because astronomy cast is largely funded by advertising and this is a thing that we did early on when sponsors reached out and they're like hey do you want to receive this box of dog toys and you can then fund your podcast and that seemed a perfectly natural fit to you but there is this ratchet that just keeps cranking so that the invasiveness of the ads goes up the value that you get from the sponsors goes down and you end up inevitably

2:07on this knife edge where you're just like if you would annoy your audience anymore they would all leave you some of them have left us some of them have left us yes yeah totally and yet you would not be able to afford to do your business run your podcast if you didn't put those ads in and this is the place where we find ourselves today or we found ourselves in the last month and yeah this is something that I went through with universe today I got to this exact same point about 18 months ago where the advertisers were just getting worse the amount that they were giving in terms of revenue was going down I lost like 80% of my ad revenue on universe today because of this ratchet and then you've got the rise of all this AI slop you've got the search engine optimization like everything's going for their pound of flesh and it is just completely unsustainable and we were very stressed out about this situation and we reached the point with astronomy cast that we're

3:11just done with it yeah we have heard you we have read your comments we have read your emails and we're just going to do what you asked for we've now removed all of the ads and we're not going to pay wall what we're doing everything is free but this isn't sustainable either unless you help us so we're currently around 900 we're under 900 patrons yeah we need to get to 1500 contributing patrons in order to make this part work right we've already done it we've removed the ads we are ad free yeah we we took the leap of faith yeah so we we know that this is a thing that will probably work and for it to work we need your help and you've been with us for 20 years and some of you yeah it's true bad pan that I'm looking at you um and and so I'm hoping that

4:14that you'll continue to contribute over at patreon.estronmecast.com and if you're in a place to financially help us and you aren't because you're like you have so many ads well we don't anymore mm hmm so yeah yeah we don't have any ads yeah this is the only way of funding um and like we've got to be really clear about this like this is not a paywall like we are not going to put all of our content behind a paywall make everybody pay for it no everything is going to be as freely available as possible and with this added benefit that it no longer have any ads and so if you're an educator or if you're a parent wanting to be in the car and uh inflict space knowledge on your children you don't have to worry that you're going to have to hear this 30 second long advertise been for something dumb or even embarrassing for all of us which is kind of humiliating yeah so they're gone yes and we are going to be doing early access wherever possible for paying patrons

5:18everything will then go publicly accessible everything is still creative comments so we aren't just free we are free free and we're asking for you to catch us as we take this leap yeah and I mean people probably don't even realize this but neither panel ought to take a salary from astronomy cast this is this is a volunteer effort that we have done for 20 years but you know we're happy to volunteer our time editing the episodes editing the video paying for the server costs paying for the tools that the team uses like these are real expenses and that the quality of the show it really comes down to their efforts and energy and I you know you live in the United States you guys cut provide additional benefits like there's a lot of expenses that are go along with astronomy cast and and by hitting that 1500 person mark that gets us to this place where we are able to cover the expenses of of everybody involved in a way that is sort of bulletproof that that then all we think

6:23about is what episode do we want to talk about what stuff are we curious about and we know that we've got the expenses covered for the team and we are so close like 900 to 1500 it's totally closeable gap with your help so go to patreon.stronomycast.com and that will take you to our patreon page if you're an existing patron feel free to deepen your membership if you are feeling free to feeling courage yes if you are a free member consider switching over and becoming a paid patron and of course if you're just on the sidelines and you're like I really like Fraser and Pamela and I really like this show but they're making money with ads and I want to punish them which is a real thing for having ads you know they made their choice no we have now removed the ads you are now free to join us on the other side go ahead so please go to patreon.stronomycast.com

7:30and support us and please don't support us through other means like YouTube superchats and things like that because patreon only takes a small amount of the money a fair and equitable fee everyone else takes a huge amount of money and it just goes to the corporation don't do that all right so we have done our part we have removed all of the ads everywhere that we could we have made this all available to you we are still paying the salaries of the team and we need your help to close that gap to go from 900 to 1500 patrons if you can support us we would really appreciate it and and if you can't I get it the economy is terrible tell your friends yeah tell your social media share us out so so if you can please go to patreon.stronomycast.com support us and if you can't make other people support us perfect yes awesome all right well it's been great 20 years working with

8:33you Pamela here is to 20 more yes this this is a goal we are going to be little people communicating the wonders of the universe to everyone out there listening all right thank you Pamela thanks everyone and we'll see you on the other side bye bye