I am posting this and two other articles to give you folks some added info about the last of the posts. I was informed a few minutes ago that my World of Warcraft talk show, Know Your Role, will no longer be airing on MMO Radio. You all may recall that back in September of last year, I was let go from the station I had help build from the ground up, WoW Radio. Difference of opinion on what is legal and right for a company meant that it would not be feasible for me to remain employed there. The other stuff I had heard was that the owner gathered all his friend, and ganged up on other staff to convince them that my presence could risk the station, and their reputation with Blizzard.
I went to MMO Radio, and asked if they wanted me and my show to come to their station. After a few days, a lengthy application, and a try out on a test stream in front of god knows who, I was accepted, and my final farewell on WoW Radio was played a couple of hours before my show aired in it's new home on MMO. While I knew immediately that MMO, and it's parent company TMSB, were far different than WoW Radio's fan site flavor, I felt that it was somewhere I could find a home.
I did my shows, both my normal Tuesday 'downtime' show, playing music while the weekly maintenance was ongoing, and my Wednesday night show Know Your Role. I met some great people, some of whom I now count as my closest and dearest friends, and, I hope, brought a few people closer to the idea of Role Play as a decent way to experience an MMORPG. Over time, there were... suggestions made about how I could improve my show, and outright orders for me to not express some opinions or play some music, and not just stuff that wasn't PG13.
I sat back, in all this time, over 8 months of it, saw the politics and the way people are. I observed, much as I always do, the people involved. The management, the listeners, the staff and more. I watched how they interacted, how they talked when a subject of conversation was not around, and so on. It was an interesting exercise in people watching without a doubt. Over time, though, I felt like I was not as welcome as I would have wanted. I was a grunt, I felt, not someone who was part of a closely gathered group of friends.
Then came the competition. The management of the company decided to recruit another show to talk about World of Warcraft. The War Room, hosted by Hak 5's Darren Kitchen and Jenn Cutter of OpenAlpha.tv, both popular podcasts, was a show on Sunday nights, recorded live, where the two talked about WoW. I will concede that in my anger over this news, I refused to listen to the show. It seems, though, that both shows got the axe at the same time.
According to this post on the Hak 5 website, the management at TMSB killed the site, forums, and feed for the show immediately after the show was off the air. I had known for awhile that TMSB wasn't happy with how Blizz treated the TMSB staff. I was the first, to my knowledge, but I can only assume by the later information at staff meetings that the management's attempts to bring about a positive resolution were not to be. I was warned by a GM from promoting my show in the game, even though the same brought a lot of cool users to my show.
I feel that this encounter led to the death of my show this week. I could no longer promote my show, nor grow my audience, as I had on WoW Radio. The staff didn't promote it, and if all I could do was throw 'dance parties' where I was the only person there, and could answer no questions as to why I was dancing, I was pretty useless for it. I often tried to get people from the station in game, but when the flow is one sided, it's pretty much a dead end.
Now, where to go from here is the question I ask myself. Podcast? Another station? Can I do something with this whole talk show about a video game idea? I would like to take it to a podcast, but I also want someone as a co-host. I have a few ideas who I could ask, but I suspect all of them would say no, either because getting them on air int he past, in podcast or live shows, was almost impossible, or because of stresses between myself and the person. I also wonder if the other two WoW podcasts, Taverncast and The Instance, aren't enough. Do they need me in the podcast realm? I'll let you know what I decide.
