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Over the weekend, RadioPublic had tagged us in a tweet:
When we clicked on the link provided, we were surprised to discover that we were among a handful of Podcasts chosen as Indie shows to watch for March 6, 2019.Indies we've got our 👂 on this week, featuring @BushwickPodcast @Rachel_DiNunzio @heyqweentv @Squawking_Dead @hstrong_ @FunnyRosie @HotBreathPod @FreeballPodcast @teamwoodnote @michdailymedia @describingarock https://t.co/uw3RDdoBBj— RadioPublic (@RadioPublic) March 10, 2019
After getting a ton of excitement out of our system, I have a few thoughts on what this means to us.
We don't have a very large listener base but, among our handful of listeners, ours is fiercely loyal. The manner in which we've been growing this project and with the fluid nature of entertainment in the internet age, our listeners are priceless. An Instagram account can have 10K+ followers but, at the end of the day, a vast majority of those followers couldn't care less about what that account is producing, on a day-to-day basis. Our listeners engage with us, every single day, via DMs (mostly), chatting with us on our Instagram/Facebook/YouTube lives, and even through extensive episode comments, continuing the conversation and breaking down episodes and ideas even further. The receipt of wonderful emojis/comments is humbling and leaves us incredibly grateful, to be absolutely clear, but the engagement and camaraderie is on a level we never could've anticipated and I can't find the right words to express how excited/grateful/honored it makes me feel.
And speaking of humbling, my second thought really goes towards the nature of how we've scaled out the show over the year-and-a-half since we started this endeavor. We've been constantly trying to improve the show, making it more accessible across all different outlets, both audio (placing them on as many podcast outlets as humanly possible) and visual (eventually, going live on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube). Even then, "good," in my mind, was never "good enough." I'm always looking for ways to get people to not only find us and engage with us, but to even be a part of the experience. In recent weeks, we've collaborated with former Talking Dead Ultimate Fan Ashley Weidman, fellow podcasters BMNY DeadCast, and even pulled up Rachael Burt who was just an astute listener/engager/personality who we thought would make an excellent addition to help host episode break-downs. We have day jobs that already eat into our personal lives. Making all of these things possible is a constant struggle for improvement and development. We just plug away, not really concerning ourselves too much about where we really are (yes, we look at analytics, but those analytics don't really tell us what we could be doing differently: you do!). The point I'm trying to make here is that when we receive acknowledgements like this, from RadioPublic, it really allows us to take a minute, look back at what we've done, and appreciate it.
With all of that in mind, this is something I figured out a few months ago, while tackling some bumps in the road in scheduling and feeling out the general direction of SQUAWKING DEAD. I came to the realization that this show, this podcast, was about more than just me, David Cameo, and more about including the hive mind of fellow fans, going down rabbit-holes together and getting different takes from different points of view: none of which are required to be in line with one another, because that would, frankly, be boring. Even different opinions of characters, the often-times hilarious ways in which we express those opinions, are precious currency in the landscape of fandom, and should be encouraged, rather than shouted down. We don't always have to agree, but we can certainly recognize our points of view and, at the end of the day, it's all about the multitude of ways in which we love The Walking Dead franchise.
It's why I say W E _ A R E _ S Q U A W K I N G _ D E A D
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