Early Release is Being Replaced

You've read the headline, so I'll give you a moment to collect yourself before I explain exactly what's happening and let you know our rationale.

NOTE: Premium shows are unaffected by this. You do not need to change anything about your premium feed RSS subscriptions.

What's Happening?

Starting on May 1, 2022 we are getting rid of the early release feed and modifying the $3 and $5 tiers to replace it with something we hope will be of approximately equal value to you.

In addition to access to our community Slack, our $3 backers will get a welcome package of our bonus content. This will be a sampling of episodes of shows like Unfilmable, Adaptation Decay, Bonfireside Chat... etc. For long-running bonus shows, we'll have multiple episodes in there, likely about one from each year the show ran.

In addition to the perks outlined above, our $5 backers will get ongoing episodes of our WOFF! Dispatch Roundups, released quarterly. This is extra content for you, and it means questions won't languish unanswered if we can't fit them into the two hour runtime of a normal Dispatch episode.

Why is This Happening?

We explain ourselves on the most recent WOFF! Dispatch (ironically enough, just released on the early release feed) but I will summarize our thoughts in brief here.

We've offered early access as a perk since we started the Patreon in 2014, because it seemed like a good thing to offer. It was always a little cumbersome, but we never rethought it... until we started making other changes like the big overhaul that happened earlier this month.

That process revealed that having early release for as many shows as we have on this network is confusing and unwieldy. This is true even if you set aside technical problems. "What shows will be where?" was a too difficult of a question to answer in a way that was sticky. We should have reconsidered the reward sooner, but inertia is a hell of a force.

Early Release also complicates things like promoting episodes. And talking about episodes. When you split your audience and have things up twice, at different times, everything becomes hard to manage. We'd rather have a big announcement when an episode comes out, and everyone be on the same page.

The other major thing that dawned on us is that Early Release just isn't that impressive of a reward... It only counts for the first week you're on that feed. Then you're on the weekly schedule again like you were before, just shifted a little bit. The replacement content feels like a better fit.

Straggling Concerns

There are, of course, a couple of odds and ends to address at the end.

• You will need to subscribe to the public feed of any show you want to listen to, in addition to the premium feed that Patreon provides.
• Per-show premium feeds, for people who got those to work, will remain unchanged.
• People who like having one combined feed of the publicly available shows will have access to something like that. Watch for the announcement to come when we officially make the switch.
• People on the Early Release schedule can expect a week at the beginning of May when there won't be "new to you" content. We have Dispatch Roundups we'll put out so you have something to hear, in addition to any bonus content from the welcome pack that's new to you.

We're aware that this month has brought a lot of changes, and that this is another on a large pile of long posts you've had to read to understand what's happening. We appreciate your patience, and we hope that this new arrangement works out better for everyone.

Kole

GARY ADDENDUM: This likely means the chunk versions of DOFC and Guppy will go away. I know some folk like them, but as is, Jeremy and Will need to edit and post those shows 5 times, once for the combined version and once for each individual episode. The alternative is we just make one big episode a week, which we might do if enough people ask for it. What will definitely go away, however, is having both versions.