17 November 2014

A Review of Can’t Bowl Can’t Throw’s First Year

Written by Dennis Freedman

Well, we did it….somehow.

The Can’t Bowl Can’t Throw podcast has made it through its first year.

People still listen for some reason. In fact, over the last two months or so, our numbers have skyrocketed. Probably because Australia has been playing.

The history of how we came to be, etc is all found on our FAQ page so I won’t go back over that detail.

However, I’ve had a few questions about how we get guests, numbers of listeners, what equipment we use to record the show, etc.

I thought I’d share some of that with you.

The Stats

First Show:

Nov 15 2013.

Dan Liebke and I discussed the upcoming Australian Ashes Series.

Total Shows made in the year: 55.

This includes a few outtakes and some other cricketing chat that I have been involved in on Ballz Radio, Guerilla Cricket or Voice of Barbados Radio

Total Listens:

Just over 25k at time of writing. However, with cricket season here, we are now getting about 1k plays per week across the whole catalogue.

When we did our first few episodes, we were high fiving when we cracked 100 listens a show.

25 of our 55 episodes now have had at least 450 listens with the Martin Crowe episode having 1,113 listens at the time of writing.

Not earth shattering numbers, but an audience has been built and Cat and I are proud of that.

How long does it take to record an episode?

Usually, Cat and I map out what we call a running sheet the day before.

Here’s an example from our latest podcast with Brad Hogg:

1) Get Hogg to record “This is Brad Hogg and you are listening to the worlds best cricket podcast, CBCT”

2) Intro Joke

In a week where …..[DF to work something out]

3) BREAK – Insert Hogg soundbite

4) Introduce Cat.
5) [CJ Lead] Introduce Brad Hogg (find some cool stats or something) and start crowd the questioning.

a. Phil Withall (@phil_whitall)- how does Brad feel having his highest test score overshadowed by “other events” in 2nd test of ’08
b. Rish (@Rish70803974) – Can anyone actually pick your wrong’un
c. Thetipsman (@thetipsguru) – what was the best tournament he was involved in?
d. Whittamg (@whittamg) – What went through your mind when Warne was out of the World Cup and you replaced him?
e. Anim Ishfaq (@Animishfaq) – Why are Chinamen bowlers so rare?
f. Megan Maurice (@meganMaurice) How drunk were you when you agreed to do the ‘Hoggy’s Back’ video for the Scorchers?
g. Ayush Singh (via Facebook) – Why do you stick your tongue out while bowling?
h. Nikhil Mane (via email) – How long will we see you play for? You look like you can play until 50!
i. Mick Hussey (via email in NZ) – What is the worst behaved crowd you have played in front of?

6) BREAK – Insert pre recorded piece on sponsor Grip Grip

7) [DF lead] Current cricket issues
a. Nominate the 4 winners for best questions….Which ones???
b. Clark v Smith
c. Chucking?
d. Who wins the World Cup?
e. What impact has T20 had on his career and cricket as a whole

8) Break – Soundtrack of Hoggy rapping

9) Muller
a. ICC for allowing the World Cup to have joint winner if there is a tie or a no result
b. Australian Selectors for ensuring none of the last XI Test players picked have played more than 5 games
c. Sachin Tendulkar for releasing his fiction novel
d. ICC for allowed banned match fixers to return to domestic cricket prior to their sentence being carried out

The running sheet is our map of how we want the show to go.

I will usually have the sound bites pre-recorded for the breaks the night before. I will also set up the webpage that will be created to host the show notes.

We usually record at 8pm on a weeknight. That can take an hour.

We then edit out the stuff ups, insert the sound bites, etc and upload the finished product to Soundcloud and publish the webpage. Depending on how well the recording went, it can take between 1 – 2 hours to edit and upload the final product. I usually get to bed around 11pm

So all up, there’s maybe a total of 5 hrs work to produce an episode. Then we market the hell out of it!

Most Popular Episodes by listens:

1) Martin Crowe

2) Emergency Podcast – IPL Corruption

3) Emergency Podcast – Saeed Ajmal

4) Michael Holding Ringtone

5) Craig McDermott

Where is our audience based?

1) Australia 36%

2) UK 16%

3) USA 14%

4) India 5%

5) South Africa 4%

The remaining 25% is spread over 180 countries. We are truly global

The one episode that you must listen to :

The Truth about Jonathan Trott

The episodes that have included proper cricketers:

Paul Harris

Colin ‘Funky’ Miller

Martin Crowe

Umar Gul

Craig McDermott

Stuart MacGill

Brad Hogg

Tools we use and their costs:

We use Skype to make the calls. This is free unless we need to call someone’s landline or mobile which we try and avoid as the sound quality is usually poor. If we do have to call a real phone, the cost via Skype is usually something like $0.05 / minute.

We use iFree Skype Recorder to record to chats (free)

We use Audiocity to edit the sound (free)

We use ListenToYouTube.com to grab the audio tracks from YouTube videos for our break fillers (free)

We host the podcast on Soundcloud (USD$130 per year)

We use WordPress to make the show note pages on the Dennis Does Cricket website. (Free)

The domain names of DennisDoesCricket.com and CantBowlCantThrow.com cost me $12 per year each to own.

It costs me an additional $78.88 / year to host the website on NameCheap. I also pay for the domain names here too

I record into a Logitech USB headset into my PC. That probably cost me $50. Cat usually uses her iPad.

How do we get the guests on the show?

Cat and I sat in a cafe in Melbourne maybe in March this year. We decided that we should challenge ourselves to get the best quality guests we can on the show. Neither of us at the time were what you would call ‘well networked’ in cricketing circles. But, we had a crack at reaching out to some people and had some silly enough to agree to come on.

We haven’t had to pay anyone yet to appear and we ensure that the guest knows they can ask us to edit out anything they regret saying.

Only one guest has ever asked us to remove something from a recording.

I will never tell you who or what…well I might if you buy me a coffee.

What’s Next?

We have a few short term goals.

1) We want to keep the content as relevant and interesting as possible. That means ensuring we cover cricket issues in our own unique way, maintain the humour and keep working at getting great guests. KP, that means you. Also, if anyone knows how we can get hold of Scott Muller……

2) We want to increase the sound quality.

3) Get more iTunes reviews from listeners. This helps our search engine rankings and therefore, more people will discover us.

4) Have higher interaction with you, the listeners. We think the Brad Hogg interview was awesome, largely due to you guys sending in questions for him. Please keep it up! In return, we will try and keep the sponsors prizes coming.

3) I have a personal goal of cracking 50k listens by the end of the World Cup.

What’s the end look like? What are we ultimately aiming for?

No idea.

We are just two mates having a laugh and a chat over a common interest.

So, there you have it.

We started Can’t Bowl Can’t Throw a year ago because we enjoyed talking shit about cricket.

The driver is still the same. We just spend a bit more time working on it to make it easier to listen to.

We are not getting earth shattering numbers by any means, but the trend is clearly upwards.

Cat and I thank you all for listening, sending in questions and sharing the links with your mates.

If you are thinking of starting a podcast, just do it! If you want any tips or guidance, drop us an email. We are always willing to help.

Follow @cantbowlthrow

Follow @cricketbatcat