[Post-campaign update: This campaign has ended.. But if you’d still like to support my work you can always head over to the9pmedict.com/tip. Cheers.]

Hello, I’m Stilgherrian. Guess what? It’s time yet again to organise more special-guest episodes of my inappropriate and often disturbing podcast for grown-ups The 9pm Edict and other projects.

I’m determined that the podcast should never have those terrible, badly-placed adverts. But that means I need income while I produce them. Thanks to you generous supporters, I’ve been able to do that for several years now. Let’s continue, shall we?

Target One $2700 ACHIEVED: Four special-guest episodes in Dec–Feb

The core of this campaign is a minimum batch of four podcasts. They’ll feature special guests to discuss what’s on their mind, current events, and whatever topics you choose for them — just like these recent episodes from The 9pm Spring Series 2024. Warning: There’s often explicit content.

I’ve already started contacting potential guests. I’ve already started to pencil them in here. More will be added. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

• Friend of the pod, Scottish author and social researcher David F Porteous will have an update on everything British and beyond in the final few days before Christmas.
• My good friend Snarky Platypus will be joining us again to wrap up the year and review our 2024 Bingo Cards, some time between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. This one doesn’t count towards the episode totals.
• In January we’ll look at space with space archaeologist Dr Alice Gorman aka Dr Space Junk and astrophysicist Rami Mandow.
• Writer and columnist John Birmingham will probably join us in February.
• And there will definitely be an episode about conspiracy theories like the Flat Earth, unless that turns out to be true.

Previous guests have included satirists Mark Humphries and Dan Ilic, AI sceptic David Gerard, climate communicator Ketan Joshi, cartoonists Cathy Wilcox and Jon Kudelka, AI researcher Professor Toby Walsh, journalist Erin Cook on South-East Asia, digital rights enthusiast Justin Warren, and science communicator Upulie Divisekera.

Just check out The 9pm Edict in your usual podcast app to see more.

Target Two $4000 ACHIEVED: Two more podcast episodes, so six in all

Get us to Target Two and there will be two more of these excellent conversations. That’s six episodes between now and the end of February! As usual, I will slot in a pro rata fifth episode if we split the difference.

Target Three $5400 CLOSE ENOUGH: Untitled Music Podcast, two pilots

If you follow Snarky Platypus on Bluesky you’ll know he knows a lot about pop music. And if you know my history, you’ll know I once presented a dance music / techno / hip hop program on the radio in the early 1990s (Club Escape), was features editor of a street mag aftr that (The Core), and for one year I was station manager of Adelaide’s Three D Radio.

We”ve been talking about producing a music podcast for some time, so let’s make a couple pilots. This also means paying for an appropriate music license and a new domain name and hosting account. However the production time will be shorter so I’ve pulled back the per-episode allowance.

NOTE THAT WE’VE ADDED A COUPLE MORE REWARDS TO SUIT THIS PODCAST. So quickly, in fact, we’ve added typos in them as well.

It occurs to me that we need to handle the situation of not reaching enough for the music podcast but people having bought the reward. If that happens, the Platypus and I will do them as a segment in the regular pod.

And if we only get half-way to Target Three we’ll do a single pilot episode. Can’t be more fair than that.

Target Four $6700: Two episodes of The 8pm Quiz livestream

For the last two years I’ve produced some end-of-year episodes of The 8pm Quiz video livestreams. Shall we do them again this year? They take about the same amount of time as the podcast to produce, so I’ve added in this target.

A Note on the Rewards

These are the standard rewards I offer for podcast projects. Further rewards may be added as the campaign progresses. Suggestions are welcome.

Everyone who pledges to support the project will also get access to a secret stash of photographs and other treats. The set-up of this trove is long overdue, but we’ll get there. Sure.

Your contributions will provide me with a net income of $2200 while producing those first four podcasts. Pozible’s fees, bank fees, and other administration costs take about 9% of any total funds raised. On top of that there’s 10% GST, which brings the total for Target One to $2700, rounded up.

The figures for Target Two are calculated the same way, with my net income being $3300 from the gross total of $4000. 

The Fine Print

All up, each regular episode of The 9pm Edict takes a little over a day to research, prepare, record, edit, and post. Based on the MEAA award rate for casual freelance journalists that's about $1100 per episode. As a casual rate, that includes allowances for superannuation, leave, and the like, as well as equipment costs.

I discount this figure by 30% to $770 per episode because some of the work involves copying and uploading files and other mechanical tasks, so I can do other things at the same time. And because I love you all, I discount it another 20% down to $550 per episode. Maybe I should stop doing that.

The Untitled Music Podcast per-episode cost is estimated at two-thirds of a talk episode, at least for the pilots. The relevant music license, an APRA AMCOSS Online Mini License, is only $275 per year.

If you want to see my working, check the numbers (PDF). I’ve updated this to reflect the next two targets.