Bencredible

Happy almost new year everyone! I know we have an amazing and engaged community out there eagerly awaiting the live shows. I want to take a moment and explain the delay as well as let you know what my plans are for 2012.

First let me start by saying that the live shows will resume in very early 2012, hopefully the 2nd week of January. Unlike before the shows will no longer be on Thursdays at 0200 UTC. The new time, which is not set in stone, will likely be Sundays at 22:00 UTC which is Sundays at 2:00pm PST / 3:00pm MST / 4:00pm CST / 5:00pm EST. I can't stress enough that this is just a test time and I'm not sure it will stick. I can say that Thursdays at 0200 will not work anymore.

There have been a few issues in resuming the live shows. Some of them are pretty nasty bad while others are mostly in my head. The nasty comes from technology. We have been unable to find studio space that doesn't break the bank. While Spacevidcast epic subscribers as well as ad revenue does help offset the cost of Spacevidcast, we do still operate at a loss. So really awesome and expensive studio space is out. We have started planning on how to do the live shows from our apartment in Anaheim, CA. Unfortunatly the Time Warner Cable broadband connection we have doesn't have very good upload speeds. That means HD it out and stable SD is barely workable. But it does work. In March of 2012 we are slated to get DOCSIS 3 and hopefully that will allow us to bring back HD.

Another technology issue has to do with the camera and video equipment. A lot of support stands and infrastructure is still in MN. I'll be working on getting that out here, but no matter what we do we'll want a new camera for the live shows. For now I have been investing in our on-demand gear with GoPro cameras, new lenses/filters for our 7D and whatnot to get the SpacePods and LA Space Salon online. But now I need to invest in live get a bit. I'm combing eBay to see if I can't find a really nice prosumer camera like a Panasonic HPX-170 for a reasonable price. However, just to get us started we may move back to Webcams for a bit.

There is also this whole thing that is just 'in my head' which has also been pushing off the live shows. I don't like to stay put. I like to always be changing and improving. If you go back and watch Spacevidcast archives, you can clearly see that. We are always, always, always pushing what we're capable of. I have been working behind the scenes on a lot of awesome new stuff for Spacevidcast 500. Not just the live shows, but all of Spacevidcast in 2012. A lot of this new stuff needs to be done in a certain order, and when one thing gets delayed the whole mess gets pushed back. As you can probably imagine, that has happened and it has all been delayed. So much so that it simply won't be ready by January or likely even February.

So here is my plan for Spacevidcast in 2012 (subject to change of course):

• Resume live shows as early as possible. These will still be branded as 400 series shows and will maintain the same look/feel of the shows we did in 2011. 
• When the 5 year anniversary of Spacevidcast comes up on March 6th, 2012 switch to the new format and change to the 500 series numbering system on the next live show, March 11th.
• Work on no fewer than 3 SpacePods per week as well as 1 live show per week
• Play with live show timing to see what works best for everyone

My hope is that when Spacevidcast 500 rolls around we'll have a really great new show that everyone is excited about. My fear is that since the live shows have been offline for so long that it will take nearly a year to get the community back together. By switching the show time, that will likely make it harder to do as well. 

I welcome any feedback on the proposed changes and anything you think Spacevidcast should be doing in 2012 to help make space commonplace!