No Junk, All Joy*

We are comedy writers who write and love old school radio comedy of the kind that Radio 4 still makes, but not as much as it once did. Every couple of months, we do a try out night called Tall Tales. Plenty of that material has been broadcast but there is also plenty which we think is every bit as good that has not, either because it doesn’t fit a standard format or because it didn’t quite fit the eye of the commissioner that year. We would love people to hear it.

Listen & Often is our plan to do so. It’s an attempt to build a community who wishes there was more great radio comedy in the world. By joining that community, they help put more radio comedy into the world. Is that a virtuous circle?** If it isn’t, then I don’t want to know what is.

Why are you going for subscribers instead of distributing it for free and paying for it using adverts? The answer is that a podcast based on written contributions by many different people simply doesn’t work with an ad-based model. Or, to be more accurate, it only works on a massive scale.

However, the Substack/Patreon model is different and subscription is incredibly powerful. It lets us build a community which likes something and knows that it can only exist with their help. We hope you want to be part of that community.

*We looked up successful online advertising slogans and this was the top one. It was for baby food.

**Audio comedy has been a great British training ground for writing and acting talent. Writers, especially, are increasingly having to learn their trade without being paid. That excludes many people from the industry’s ground-floor. All writers in our collective are paid the same. We don’t take a big slice of profit. All income goes into paying people and making L&O shows.