March 1, 2018 - 5:30 am EST (UTC -5)
A ctually, it's really just the annual "State of the Site" blog I usually post in January that describes, with a minimum of boring detail, how the site is doing.
Like everything else, this post is especially late. Two months late. Why? I had the flu for the first time in decades in January and in what's now last month, a needlessly frigid January gave way to a big thaw that unfroze my car and gave me the opportunity to get things done that I'd been putting off until the temperature went from impossible to improbable. It did, so I got necessary things done. Consequently, there were no new shows. The editing still got done, though.
But first things first... Usually, I start this post with our membership numbers, which if you check yourself, remain in a sorry state, indeed. We maxed out at Xmas with 147 (another new record low, just like the previous year), and now are below 110 again as we were before the holidays began. As I predicted years ago, there would be a day when all we had left would be our dedicated hardcore members - thank you for sticking with us, BTW. That time arrived a couple of years ago and membership has been slowly deteriorating ever since.
The site itself has more features, music and general appeal than ever before, but you know...YouTube. Google is being evil & demonetizing YouTube videos to make their stockholders happy, so we may get some of our lost members who've become disgusted with it back someday. Or not.
Meanwhile, we'll remain the repository of all comedy music and all our shows will remain free. I'll continue to look after things and generally keep all the info accurate - though I received a bitch of a lot of resistance last year. Far more than I'm accustomed to. A younger editor might have reacted to it more, but I'm old and don't really give such things much thought beyond mentioning them here.
The site could use some updating & repairs that I can't do myself - the obvious fix being that the damn Xmas banner is still up on the homepage and it's freaking March already. I mention it to Wayne every now and again...and never get a response. He's either extremely busy, or...well, best not to think about it.
I wrote a better welcome article for the top of the homepage and Dave made a good banner to draw attention to it. Hopefully, that will help at least a small amount. The mp3 store was costing more than it was bringing in, so it had to go just as the old chatroom did.
In a month or so, the horrid winter will end and, with any luck, I can get in more shows than I did last year. Maybe it's time to get a bit more experimental with the formats. Perhaps a few more silly characters and shorter but more frequent shows. But no promises.