Some good news. After negotiations with Al MacDermid, and some lobbying efforts from Peter Jaworski over at the Western Standard, the Al & Mike Show is going to be resurrected from the grave.
I am in the process of getting the studio back up and functional, as well as getting the remote studio up over at Al's place, as it will no longer be convenient for him to do the show in-studio all the time.
Ezra Levant has agreed to be the guest on our re-kick-off show, so that should be interesting.
We've also go the live caller lines back up and running, and we'll consider doing some live calls, with streaming via ustream, if the wonderful Sarah (my fiance) will agree to once again to the call screening job.
I'll also be lobbying for more guests this time around, particularly left-leaning guests in an attempt to make it more "balanced" and interesting.
Ti-Guy should be your first guest, or Robert McClelland.
I'd love to have Ti-Guy or McClelland on.
Congrats, Mike.
Will new episodes be available through the iTunes subscription?
Left-leaning guests? I've heard the podcast Mike and there's no room in them for left-leaning (or indeed anything other than Conservative) guests without changing the thing completely.
Existing podcast format: Episode starts with something that a non-Conservative has done or said or insinuated, Al complains about the event and/or the individual, you complain about the event and/or the individual, you [usually] bring the discussion around to some other, and sometimes (at least generally) related event/person, Al complains about the event and/or the individual, you.....
-- and so the podcast goes with small dialog islands of patting the Conservatives on the back for something they have done, or resisted doing, while they were in Opposition, or since coming into minority power.
You have described yourself as a hard right libertarian (I'm pretty sure that's the description I heard in one of your episodes anyway - correct me if I'm wrong) and while some of your writing bears that out your show dialog doesn't.
Al is just plain 'ole, straight up, Conservative.
Without some significant changes in dialog and attitude on the part of the hosts the only reason for a left-leaning (or indeed any "not Conservative") individual to participate would be as a live object of insult and/or ridicule; and I think that after a couple of podcasts you'd probably have more and more difficulty finding anyone to play the game.
You may be able to make the adjustment, I seriously doubt Al could.
Don't take any of that the wrong way, the podcast has obviously been modeled on the very successful Conservative talk radio format, and as a Conservative podcast it works - but there's a reason why Conservative doesn't have any success getting left-leaning (or indeed any "not Conservative") guests in any form other than Conservative satire actors and voice-overs.
I'm glad the podcast is coming back, I did listen to it when it was on previously (I tend to find Conservative talk radio entertaining as well so that shouldn't be a surprise), and will no doubt listen to it again - good luck with that left-leaning thing.
-- and if you do decide to do a call-in thing are you goign to consider Skype as an option?
-- and if you do decide to do a call-in thing are you goign to consider Skype as an option?
I definitely want to try that, this time around. The problem is going to be, as it was before, that the show is a production nightmare. Since you've heard the show, you know that we do it in a live format, which means everything you hear on shoe is happening in real time, we don't do post-production mixing, or anything like that.
This time around it's going to be even more complicated, because we're going to have Al MacDermid on a remote mix-minus loop, mix-minus for the callers, and mix-minus for the main guest line. I don't really have the equipment for a fourth loop. So maybe I can share a loop between the caller lines and skype, somehow.
I take your point about the format of the show To a point, I agree. The show had a very partisan flavor to it. But at many levels, that was just both mine, and Al's somewhat sarcastic personalities coming through a lot of the times. We DID after all, slam on the Conservatives for the lightbulb ban. In fact, I don't think we made a bigger deal out of anything else on the entire run, outside the lightbulb thing. So I guess you got to take it for what it is.
Mike:
Glad to hear that you and Al are bringing the show back! I've missed it. I kept checking the old show website, but nothing since your last show.
ps: still waiting to get the buttons I won on your show ;-)