Over the past week I've had several emails and messages from users who are less than satisfied with the unreliable updates of our podcasts, including certain items from the Coffee Break Spanish, My Daily Phrase Italian and My Daily Phrase German series.
Here's the thing: as I'm sure everyone knows by now from things which have been said on the podcast itself or on the wesbite, we are a very small team trying to keep things going producing three regular podcasts. We're currently producing up to 25 podcasts per week, including the enhanced versions, the bonus podcasts and this doesn't include the extra pdf guides and bonus items like iQuizzes for CBS. In addition to having a very small team (I do all the admin, recording, editing, post-production, website management and I host MDPI and CBS; and Catriona and Kara host MDPG and CBS respectively) we all have other commitments during the day, so for the time being all aspects of our podcasts are managed, produced and administrated between 6-8am and after 8pm at night on weekdays and most of the weekend.
This week has been extremely busy because I've been working with Apple in Germany and have therefore had very restricted access to the web, and very little possibility to spend time on the early morning and evening work. This is what slows things down and creates a backlog.
I'm aware that some of the materials are outstanding. I thought it would be useful to explain our priorities in terms of production. For MDPG and MDPI the first priority is getting the daily show out as close as possible to the 'proper' launch date. Because of the way in which MDP is produced, we create the basic version from the enhanced version. This means that for premium subscibers there will always be an immediate release of one item which contains the words in a written form. Around 99% of premium subscribers use iTunes, so the bottom line is that premium subscribers will be able to see the text in some way, regardless of when the pdf follows. The pdf and the bonus podcast are both bonus items and are completed as soon as I can possibly do them.
Our CBS episodes take much longer to produce - on average I spend around 8 hours each week in planning, recording, post and administration of each episode, not to mention the writing of the pdf guide and the recording of the bonus podcast. Again, the priority is on getting the main podcast out in both a basic mp3 version and an enhanced version, meaning that the vast majority of listeners can, at the very least, access the written version of the words included through iTunes, QuickTime or iPod.
I don't want to sound as if I'm making excuses for delays. I'm simply trying to put things in a context. I'm fully aware that we have a commitment to our premium subscribers and we will do our absolute best to keep this commitment. We knew what we were taking on in terms of production with our podcasts. If anything what we didn't really expect was the sheer amount of admin of emails and communication which we've been getting.
In the past week our German, Italian and Spanish podcasts were downloaded around 464,000 times. And that's just the basic versions. Added to this are the premium downloads and we could be getting on for nearly half a million downloads in a week. If just 0.1% of the total listeners have a problem with the feed or some kind of question about the podcast, that's immediately around 500 emails to reply to. In reality it's probably nearer 0.2%...
For information, the coming 10 days are the busiest 10 days of the year for me in my "day job". This will mean that it's likely that there will be further delays on some items, but I've done my best to ensure that as much as possible will be published on time.
I really, really hope that this doesn't sound like a moan. We are absolutely delighted that things are going so well. We would simply ask you, if at all possible, to be a bit patient. We will do our very best to ensure that things happen when they're supposed to, and I hope that previous experience shows that when there are slight delays we try to make up for the inconvenience in other ways, eg. by adding extra items to the premium feed.
The workload issues will resolve themselves in the next couple of months, and MDPI is due to finish this Friday, as is unit 3 of CBS. This should mean that it will be possible to get things a bit more organised.
Above all, I hope that the delays aren't ruining your experience and that you'll continue to enjoy learning with CBS / MDPI / MDPG. Thank you all for your ongoing support and your enhusiasm for language learning. Please do feel free to feedback in comments here or by email.
Mark Pentleton
Director, Radio Lingua Ltd
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