It’s actually somewhat rare that I second-guess myself on anything to do with my various projects shared with you folks here.
That sounds arrogant, but I genuinely feel like about 80% of it is a function of working on a pretty breakneck schedule: With the exception of episodes that require extra research/prep or are held for specific times of the year, your average episode of IN BOB WE TRUST takes shape in my head around Saturday night/Sunday morning and gets worked on into the overnight Sunday for a Monday morning release. I actually prefer doing it this way, because it keeps things about as current as I can keep them and let’s me react to things in a pretty immediate way.
To use a recent example: I didn’t decide to do a show about the
LAST MAN STANDING cancellation controversy until I heard about the petitions gaining steam, which was really close to the weekend on my end – that’s turned out to be one of the more popular shows of late. On the flip side, the yet-untitled “How I’d Have Fixed Spider-Man’s MCU Debut” episode(s) are currently being pre-written because that’s going to be a project, but the final production will be as close to launch (currently hoping to drop PART I the week of HOMECOMING, so PART II can have the Monday after it opens – no promises though.)
However, there’s a direction I’ve been going back and forth on vis-a-vi whether or not it’s a good idea, and since you’re the audience I figured it was a good idea to solicit feedback. So, here goes: How do you feel about topics/subjects that were previously featured as episodes of my earlier series, THE BIG PICTURE, being revisited in similar (but not directly-reproduced) fashion as part of IN BOB WE TRUST?
For context, in case some of you came aboard within the last few years and thus may not be 100% up to speed: My catch-all pop-culture series IN BOB WE TRUST is, in tone and area(s)-of-focus, something like an unrelated (and
unofficial!) successor to the legacy of THE BIG PICTURE; which was a series I had previously produced while under contract to a website known as The Escapist. Owing to boring specifics of contracts and agreements, the rights to broadcast/re-post episodes of THE BIG PICTURE (all 225 of them, give or take) – which I wrote, recorded, compiled and edited entirely on my own with only a handful of recurring visual assets and some music cues provided by the content-host – are owned entirely by the corporation which now owns what remains of that site.
What this means is that, whereas I am able to collect a (relatively small) amount of advertising profit when you watch episodes of IN BOB WE TRUST on my YouTube Channel, I am unable to derive a similar traffic-benefit from current viewings of content produced for BIG PICTURE or other prior series because I am not permitted under old agreements to feature them on my own channel. To be clear: I acknowledge that this is
absolutely fair, legal and undisputed on my end… it just kind of sucks, you know? And on the less innately-selfish side of this, a lot of these episodes were “starmaking” turns for my brand that I’m both very proud of and are still among the most widely viewed and shared material I’ve produced, but because of the era in which they were originally posted to their current homes on YouTube they are mainly available in low-quality versions that not only don’t reflect the current quality of my work, they don’t even reflect their original quality. That bugs me.
While I can’t discuss the specifics for a variety of reasons, I’ve had several discussions with relevant parties about reclaiming full or partial rights to re-feature my older work; but thus far have not achieved satisfactory results. As such, I’ve begun to seriously consider doing
new episodes of IN BOB WE TRUST that would cover topics previously featured on older series like THE BIG PICTURE. To be clear: These would be new scripts, new edits, new graphics, etc; and the subjects in question would be mainly “this is a thing that exists” episodes, not necessarily issue/”essay” episodes. Example: Old cartoons (
Street Sharks, Samurai Pizza Cats, the “lost”
Super Mario Bros or
TMNT Anime features), bizarre comic book lore (The Spider-Man Clone Saga, the two different Captain Marvels, etc) that sort of thing.
I realize that this might sound like a whole lot of fretting over nothing to some:
“It’s your show, man – talk about the same thing twice or however many times you want!” But it really does matter to me that I’m NOT producing filler or content-for-content’s sake – I’ve worked hard and, in many cases, taken the more difficult road in order to build a name for myself as a writer, critic and content producer so that my fans, followers and viewers know that even when I put out a Top 10 show or a “listical” there’s real thought and depth put into it. And even though I’m confident that just the years having passed alone would result in a
Street Sharks show now being suitably different from one produced 4-5 years ago, the prospect of my audience feeling cheated to see a topic being “revisited” rather than something 100% new worries me. A lot.
That’s not to say that I’m putting whether or not I do these sorts of shows at some point in the future up for some kind of “vote” – I’ll do it if it feels right, and won’t if it doesn’t. But I’d genuinely appreciate it if anyone who felt particularly strongly one way or the other on the subject wanted to weigh in with their thoughts.
Thank you for your time,
-Bob