Hey everyone -

Big changes to the world of TCGS and specifically to how you get to view it and be a part of it, all being announced right now!

We’ve re-done our entire website and you get to participate in it more. We’re going to give you daily content, some of which you can’t get on TCGS itself, and all for free. Our live streaming service is going to improve massively.

I consider this effort all to be a major step up in our game, and a big part of why I want to do it is as a thank you to all the people who are already supporting TCGS. We’ve built one hell of a community over the past year and change, and it’s time to make it even more fun for all of you guys.

Take the jump after the following badass photo by my friend Zac X. Wolf to get all the details. To give you fair warning, this is a very long post - the first half details all of our improvements and updates. The second half lets people know what they can do to help the show. Feel free to read some or all of it, but please don’t get turned off by the length. There’s a lot of info you might be looking for - feel free to go through and find the stuff that interests you or applies to you.

The redesigned www.thechrisgethardshow.com

First things first, www.thechrisgethardshow.com has undergone a massive overhaul. Our friends Darren Miller and Daniel Spenser have been building up our web hub for years now, extending back to when TCGS was a stage show at the UCB Theater in New York. But as the show slowly morphed and changed from a stage production to a new mentality in the televised version, the site sort of wound up splitting the difference, with a lot of elements from the old days mixing with the new stuff and over time it got pretty dense.

If you visit the site today, you’ll see that it’s relaunched and completely streamlined to focus in on our television show. The most recent episode is displayed prominently on the front page. The most recent YouTube clip (more on that later) is right there as well. There’s links to all the different sites and services we’re now embracing, as well as clear links to places where you can get more TCGS content on a regular basis, as well as archives of our past shows. Our store is there, our press is there, information on the show and who makes it run is all available there. One of the most important new features in my opinion is…

The show’s message board

I’m so excited that this message board exists and that people are already using it. As TCGS has grown, we’ve started getting calls and emails from all over the world. On any given Wednesday night we get calls not just from New York City, but any state in the USA, as well as Canada, Sweden, the UK, Australia, and who knows where else? I’ve gotten emails from people in Dubai, Panama, China, Croatia, Ireland and so many more places that I can’t even think of right now.

The message board is our most major effort to consolidate this strange community we’ve built in one place. One thing that I am really proud of regarding the show is that it has the same vibe and accessibility as the local TV I grew up with that’s not really around any more - that regional local programming (a lot of it was kids’ programming back in the day) that existed only in your state, or on your cable programming. But for the community of our show, the region is not a physical location anymore, it’s a state of mind - TCGS is kind of old school regional programming for people who inhabit the region of feeling like underdogs.

It’s really an amazing thing to see how many people from all over the world have become a part of this thing. I beg of you - join this message board. It’s where we can all hang out and meet each other, no matter where on the globe you might reside. We’re going to use the message board as the platform to let you participate in the bits of a lot of shows (even this week’s!) as well as to announce events, contests, and news about the show. And that’s outside of just shooting the shit with other people who watch. I can’t stress enough how much I’d love for you to be a part of this, so please register and use this thing today. Use it to let us know how we can help you make the show your own.

Daily Shortform Content

As I often mention, it’s a massive and overwhelming undertaking to produce this show under the circumstances we are working under. No office, no budget, no writer’s room blah blah blah, you guys are tired of hearing me complain about that stuff.

One of the first things that we realized we couldn’t keep up with was chopping up the show and putting highlight clips out on a regular basis. Between writing and producing an hour of content each week, then getting the show itself edited and out there and distributed on all of our various platforms, we did not have enough time or manpower to do this right.

Now we’ve got more people ready to edit, as well as dozens of hours of back-logged content. We’ve broken down a game plan on how we’re going to give you guys daily content that’s not an hour long show. Each day around 2pm est/11am pst we’ll be posting a clip that highlights something relating to the show. Here is our projected schedule you can look forward to:

MONDAY: A comedic clip we pull from our archives that shows off a favorite moment from a past episode.

TUESDAY: A highlight reel from the previous week’s episode.

WEDNESDAY: A musical performance from a past episode showing off one of our former badass musical guests that we’ve been keeping in our archives.

(Wednesday night our show streams live at 11 PM eastern)

THURSDAY: Web exclusive - this will be fresh content that isn’t aired on the show itself, but that will show the people who create, perform on, and exist within the world of TCGS doing more than we have the time or ability to show on the MNN airwaves.

FRIDAY: That week’s show will go up in its entirety for your viewing and download pleasure.

I really hope you’ll subscribe to our YouTube channel and partake in this daily onslaught. It’s super exciting for me to get this type of stuff out there. It’s a lot to ask people to sit down and watch an hour long video online. Also, when people do for the first time, they consistently express that the show has so many characters and running story lines that it’s hard to jump in cold. Hopefully these short form clips will serve as an intro to the universe we’re building here and can entice new viewers to get on board with us over all.

To that end - if you are already a fan of the show and a soldier in this army, please help us spread these clips around as they come down the pike. I have high hopes that this new system will hold up and become a major way that we can gather up new viewers as we enter this new phase of TCGS.

This is starting TODAY. Please, if you are a fan of the show and have been trying to get friends to watch it, use these clips, spread them around - Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, blogs, message boards of any kind, all of it really helps. I hope that these clips come to serve as the free hits of drugs we hand kids on the playground so that they’ll get addicted, come back for more, and we can ruin their lives through this nasty habit. Help us do that!

New ad-free live streaming!

I can’t explain to you guys how much I’ve had to keep my mouth shut with my frustrations regarding our live streaming up until now. Cory Palmer is in charge of it, and I can’t express what a saint this guy is - he kills himself to get it up and running as best as possible in the face of some unreliable infrastructure in the studio, as well as a streaming service that we have very little control of. And worst of all, even when we get it up and running as smoothly as possible, there’s big dumb ads that we have no control over that overtake the entire screen.

I know people who try to watch our show live often say that it’s frustrating, but I PROMISE you it’s one of the things we dedicate ourselves hardest to maintaining and making a pleasurable experience. My personal preference is that people watch live - it makes it fun for all of us, it makes it fun to know people are out there who can participate in our dumb bits, it just adds a layer of excitement and adrenaline to things. But I know that people get disappointed with the ads and unreliability of the system we’ve used up until now. It’s just been that without putting a bunch of money behind it, there’s not much more we can do.

Well, I’ve decided that one of the things I’m going to do now that I have my IFC job is to take a bunch of the money I’ll make through that and pour it into our live stream infrastructure. We are now paying for a service that should allow us to bring you a much higher quality live stream each week. NO ADS. I REPEAT, NO MORE ADS. I have such an aversion to our former system’s habit of letting ads overtake the stream - that is NOT GOING TO HAPPEN EVER AGAIN. You will no longer miss the high point of a comedy bit, or chunks of songs you’ve been enjoying, or calls that set things off in the studio because a service wants to make money off of us through ads and give us no say in how those ads are delivered. If ads ever come back on the live stream, I promise you - they will not overtake the stream or destroy the flow of the show for you. And they will be something that we personally will have a say in and will be profiting off of, which I think fans of the show would be way more in support of anyway - we will no longer have an entity disrupting the experience of our viewers for their own gain. Never again will I settle for a system that interrupts our show for 30-45 seconds at a time at the expense of our viewers.

Please pardon us in the early going as we figure out this new system - there will probably be some glitches and road blocks we encounter in the early going, but I have very high hopes that this will lead to a much more pleasurable live experience for our non-NYC viewers.

We plan on putting even more into this over the coming months. You guys would be surprised how much we already have been. Cory has not only killed it for us, but the people at MNN have come to realize that he has solid advice all around. For example - he is the one who convinced them to hardwire internet directly into their studio - before that, we were working our streaming off of wireless. That right there - game changer. Cory’s got many more great ideas and knowledge to spread and it’s just a matter of time. There’s going to be an effort to get some new hardware in there soon that will greatly improve the streaming even more. This will be coming either through MNN or through us sometime soon and I wish we could announce it already - but know that it’s a high priority of mine to get the live stream to be completely badass and that Cory is the man for the job. We work hard for you every week, and he and I touch base on this stuff constantly.

And live viewers - as this new system gets better, please help us spread the word on it. I feel like a lot of people in the early months of this show decided that the non-live archive was better for them because they didn’t have to deal with this stuff. The live viewers who committed to this did so in the face of all these things because they are behind this show, and that means more than you’ll ever know. Please - give us feedback on the message board about how it’s going and what we can do to get this thing perfect. And if we do get it improved to a degree you’re happy with, all I ask is that you tell other people and help spread word that our live experience has gotten much, much better.

HOW YOU CAN HELP THE CHRIS GETHARD SHOW

People constantly ask me how they can help the show. There are people in NYC who want to join our crew, and most of the time we don’t have need for more hands on the floor. There are people outside of NYC who want to know how they can help, especially monetarily, which is very nice. Below I’m going to break down the major ways we can ask you from our end to help out. These are the things we value the most, in order, and that we will ask anyone who wants to help the show to do:

Spread word of our existence. This is not a joke. More than money, more than physical labor, more than anything else, the thing you can do that will help our cause the most is to let people know about our existence. The bottom line is that our show has gotten a lot of press, a lot of buzz, and has a decent amount of credibility in the very niche world of alternative comedy and its fans. But it’s really hard to find, even for people who already like underground comedy! This can happen at any level - first and foremost, tell friends. Convince them that they should watch not just one episode, but three or four to really get a feel for it. Tell them that we’re building a strange little world here but that if they can penetrate it it’s pretty fun and addictive. Show them clips, watch episodes with them. Pitch them not just on the show itself, but the ethos of the show - the values that show up on screen and that lead to the creation of the show itself. Let them know that we’re underdogs, that we’re doing something we believe in outside of the traditional system . I really grew up on punk rock and the values it lives and dies by, and I feel like our show has the weird comedy/television mutation of those values, and that might help people want to take a chance on our dumb, sometimes technically unsound show if they knew more about it.

This is not a joke. More than money, more than physical labor, more than anything else, the thing you can do that will help our cause the most is to let people know about our existence. The bottom line is that our show has gotten a lot of press, a lot of buzz, and has a decent amount of credibility in the very niche world of alternative comedy and its fans. But it’s really hard to find, even for people who already like underground comedy! This can happen at any level - first and foremost, Convince them that they should watch not just one episode, but three or four to really get a feel for it. Tell them that we’re building a strange little world here but that if they can penetrate it it’s pretty fun and addictive. Show them clips, watch episodes with them. . I really grew up on punk rock and the values it lives and dies by, and I feel like our show has the weird comedy/television mutation of those values, and that might help people want to take a chance on our dumb, sometimes technically unsound show if they knew more about it. Post about the show on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, message boards and anyplace else that you participate. This stuff goes so far. So many of you guys already do this and it means the world - the more the word gets out there, the higher the chance that we actually gain some momentum with this thing and maybe force ourselves to a level where we surprise the world with some success. If you work at or know people who work at online outlets of some influence, put in word for us. Showing up on best of lists or being highlighted in places that don’t normally cover alternative comedy goes so far. Some of the episodes that have helped us the most are: the one with Colt Cabana for bringing in wrestling fans, the one with the Basketball Jones for bringing in basketball nerds, etc. Anything that lets people know about TCGS beyond the edges of alternative comedy always manages to get us a chunk of new viewers, because there are nerdy outcast people on the fringes of every subculture. We are a catch all for outcasts, but it’s hard to find them if we don’t spread to cultures that aren’t aware of us yet. Anyone and everyone you tell about this thing helps us. It’s the main thing we ask, before anything else. I think our show appeals to the socially awkward who might not have it in their nature to reach out and be missionaries for us and I appreciate that, but know that this is the main way you can help us.

This stuff goes so far. So many of you guys already do this and it means the world - the more the word gets out there, the higher the chance that we actually gain some momentum with this thing and maybe force ourselves to a level where we surprise the world with some success. If you work at or know people who work at online outlets of some influence, put in word for us. Showing up on best of lists or being highlighted in places that don’t normally cover alternative comedy goes so far. Some of the episodes that have helped us the most are: the one with Colt Cabana for bringing in wrestling fans, the one with the Basketball Jones for bringing in basketball nerds, etc. Anything that lets people know about TCGS beyond the edges of alternative comedy always manages to get us a chunk of new viewers, because there are nerdy outcast people on the fringes of every subculture. We are a catch all for outcasts, but it’s hard to find them if we don’t spread to cultures that aren’t aware of us yet. Anyone and everyone you tell about this thing helps us. It’s the main thing we ask, before anything else. I think our show appeals to the socially awkward who might not have it in their nature to reach out and be missionaries for us and I appreciate that, but know that this is the main way you can help us. Sign up EVERYWHERE for our stuff. You would be amazed at how much numbers matter to the people who make decisions that could very much affect the fate of our show. Signing up for anything where a number ticks upward legitimately helps the chances that this show busts through to the next level. The next few bullet points are specific things you can sign up for that will help us GREATLY if you do:

You would be amazed at how much numbers matter to the people who make decisions that could very much affect the fate of our show. Signing up for anything where a number ticks upward legitimately helps the chances that this show busts through to the next level. Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes. Even if you watch the show in your web browser and don’t need to put it on a device or whatever, for real - being a subscriber goes a very long way for us when people reach out from development companies and networks. And if you’re already a subscriber and you do like the show, take the time to leave a positive comment. This stuff also increases the chances that iTunes gets behind us and features us on one of their front pages. If that ever happened, it would be a game changer and could lead to direct exposure to our show to people who already download stuff that goes beyond anything we’ve had before. Just signing up and clicking subscribe goes SO FAR.

Subscribe to our channel at YouTube. Even if you just make an account, turn off all email notifications, and click subscribe with no plans on ever checking it out again, it will help more than you know. I feel like thus far our YouTube channel hasn’t been consistent enough to warrant people signing up and a lot of people who watch our YouTube stuff do so through Tumblr, Twitter, or Facebook anyway. We currently have less than 800 YouTube subscribers. That’s insane. We know for a fact we have between three and five thousand hardcore diehard fans of the show, and that depending on how well an episode goes we can have many more people who are come and go fans who check in and watch when it’s above average. We need as many of them as possible to subscribe to all this stuff. Please subscribe on YouTube - not only do the numbers matter to the dummies who matter, BUT - we have just been given partial partnership status by YouTube. There are tiers to partnership that offer more benefits, access to more services, and increase the likelihood that YouTube helps promote our clips an episodes. This would be huge for us if it happened. Gaining a larger subscriber base can help increase the likelihood that this goes down.

Join the message board. Again, I know I harped on it above, but this is a strong community and one that I value so much. Joining that message board and participating in it means that we’ll have a consolidated base all in one place. When it comes time to jump on some internet campaign, we can launch it from there. If we need all the supporters of our show to get behind something on short notice, it will be a mobilization point. We’re really trying to do something different here, and if and when things start to move in a bigger way it won’t be through traditional means. We’ll need all you guys in one place, all the people across the world who want to see this thing succeed, ready to go. The message board is our new home base and stomping grounds, and being signed up and active on it means you’re declaring yourself part of the movement and ready to go when that time comes.

Follow us on Tumblr, and also Join our Facebook Group, and follow me on Twitter. Again, numbers impress people who have shallow priorities. But they help. It’s a nominal thing to sign up for any of these, but I can’t stress enough - it helps. PLUS - the above three avenues are three of the most consistent ways that we disseminate information about the show itself and any events or needs surrounding it. I also want to give a shout out to the Reddit group that has formed around the show. It’s not an official TCGS outlet like these others, but it’s people who are passionate about the show sharing links, opinions, and ideas for the show. And Reddit is SUCH A cool site. It aggregates any links people share in one place and allows people with a shared interest to interact. Plus the values of Reddit are very positive in a way that matches up well with what we do. Please join Reddit and that sub-group. And ESPECIALLY if you’re already on Reddit, why not take the time to join our specific sub? It would be an amazing community to gain some traction in and I think a lot of people there would love our show. Making that subreddit more substantial increases the chance that we bust out there.

SIGNING UP FOR ANY/ALL OF THE ABOVE ARE THE THINGS YOU CAN DO FOR THE SHOW THAT WE WOULD BE MOST GRATEFUL FOR. EVEN IF YOU DON’T PLAN ON USING ANY OF THOSE SERVICES TO EXPERIENCE THE SHOW, SIGNING UP AS A GESTURE OF SOLIDARITY HELPS WAY MORE THAN YOU REALIZE. TAKING TEN MINUTES OF YOUR TIME TO SIGN UP FOR ALL OF THOSE ASKS ONLY A LITTLE BUT CAN YIELD US A LOT DOWN THE LINE.

THANK YOU!

BUT WHAT ABOUT MONETARILY? II WOULD LIKE TO CONTRIBUTE MONEY TO THE SHOW SINCE I KNOW YOU GUYS ARE GRINDING IT OUT.





We are grinding it out! And it means a lot that you’ve noticed! I stress about the money we put into this show and I know I’m vocal about it, but the first thing I want to say is I am proud to put money into this show, as it’s something I’m extremely proud of. So I do stress about it, but know that it also makes me feel good and you guys don’t need to worry as much as you do. I want to make this thing good and it’s worth it to me to spend money on it. It does mean a lot that you guys care.

Many people have asked me how they can straight up donate money to the show. Thus far I have balked at this idea. I believe in providing content for free and am proud to do it. I think it reflects the values of the generation we are trying to appeal to. I haven’t been comfortable asking you guys to give something for nothing tangible in return. I have a feeling it will be a real turn off and leave a sour taste in the mouths of our audience. Please, if you think I’m off base on this one, I’m open to arguments. Start a Thus far I have balked at this idea. I believe in providing content for free and am proud to do it. I think it reflects the values of the generation we are trying to appeal to. I haven’t been comfortable asking you guys to give something for nothing tangible in return. I have a feeling it will be a real turn off and leave a sour taste in the mouths of our audience. Please, if you think I’m off base on this one, I’m open to arguments. Start a message board topic if you are passionate about this idea, and I’d like to hear everyone’s opinions in favor of or against this. Philosophically, I think there’s something about it that rings untrue to what we do. But I’d love to be convinced otherwise (fair warning that I’m very stubborn, ask JD, Noah, and Dru.)

That being said - visit our store!

We make products and we sell them. All shipping fees are included in the listed price (except for international orders). We work with the Night Owls Print Shop in Houston, Texas, and they cut us occasional deals because they believe in what we’re doing. Isn’t that the nicest thing in the entire world? Great people who are helping us a lot.

I want to give you guys a sense of how the store works - I am about total transparency. With the stickers and pins we don’t really make much profit, but those are cool things to offer and serve as advertising for us and hopefully get people asking fans of the show what they’re about. That’s why we have a minimum five dollar order - if we ship people only a pin or only a couple stickers, we actually lose money between the cost of the product and the shipping.

So it’s mostly t-shirts. I’ve made a real effort to make sure all of our t-shirts present something that a viewer of our show might actually enjoy or get behind. The Hintmaster shirt was our fastest selling shirt ever and I think a big part of it is that people knew that if they bought it during the weeks that The Hintmaster saga was unfolding, they were contributing to the comedy of the show. That is to me the coolest thing in the world. A show serving as a platform to bring a product into creation, and a viewer base that buys the product to become an extension of the content being presented on that platform. Very cool stuff and I’m proud to be a part of that.

So everyone knows - we make about $5 profit on a shirt after paying for the shirts, paying to have them shipped to us, then shipping them to you. It’s a modest amount, but each one we sell helps. So that means, for the sake of total transparency, that if we sell about 40 shirts a month we’ll be covering just our new infrastructure costs relating to live streaming! Then any shows we have that need props or any time we need to build something in the studio to deliver our content, that’s a budget we build on a show by show basis. Plus each week we need to buy tapes, we’ve needed to buy cables to make things run, etc, etc. There are costs!

I want to be able to take things bigger - bigger in studio bits, and ESPECIALLY big out of studio bits. One of the first things that people on the message board was a bunch of people saying they like seeing people out in the real world. I LOVE THIS EXACT TYPE OF COMEDY, and to me, sending our characters and personalities out into the real world is the EXACT TYPE OF SHIT I WANT TO DO.

I want to send Murf down to North Carolina to take down Gimghoul! I’d love to send him to Virginia to be a part of that Civil War Reenactment. I’d love to send Shannon to Alyssa’s house for dinner so we can see her awkwardly interact with Alyssa’s parents regarding all the things she’s said to the young lady over the course of the show. I’d love to fly Bananaman around the country to entertain at kids’ birthday parties. I’d love to send Rob Malone around the world to dance for people. I’d love to send the Human Fish pretty much anywhere!

But keep in mind - that means transportation costs, rental cars, and all of that for whomever we send plus someone to film it all. And really a one person crew means a stressed out shoot and maybe not the best results. I don’t want to give you guys sub-standard results!

And that’s on top of - imagine if we had the money just to rent a storage space near our studio? We could put props in there. There have been a number of sad times where I have to throw props away, because there is literally no room left in my house for them. And I know I’ll need to buy those exact things again in four months, but what can I do?! We could store a drum set so touring bands could come through easier. Robot Fights - guys, all that cardboard was stored in the garage of the parents of Intern Emma, out in Scarsdale. I had to drive back and forth three times to Scarsdale just to transport a bunch of cardboard! So we could make Robot suits out of them and fist fight each other on public access. It’s a beautiful thing, but it’s no joke - we get by on determination and heart. Money helps!

This is the type of thing we deal with! It’s not the end of the world, but it’s the REALITY.

SO - any t-shirt you buy gives us five bucks. And that’s awesome. Now I know a lot of the t-shirts are simple black on white, and people don’t love that. Believe me, I get it! But to be frank, it’s the most basic thing and kind of what we can afford right now. Even if you don’t plan on ever wearing a shirt, it’s a good memento of the show and it’s how you can show us some support. It allows me to give you something in return for generously wanting to support the show. I don’t think of the t-shirts as shirts when I mail them out - I think of them as me being able to physically give you something, for me to place something in your hands as a sign of appreciation that you want to support us. It’s my way of letting you know - you’re holding this thing, it was once stored in my house, and the whole reason it exists is so you and I can link up on this crazy project we’re now both definitely a part of.

Is that cheesy? Hippie dippy? Sure. I don’t care. It’s my philosophy on this stuff.

So know - if you buy up a bunch of shirts, that’s the number one way to monetarily support the show right now. It feels a little dumb typing this out and knowing that people who want to donate money don’t get to just donate as much as they want, but again, I’m not sure that we’re at a place where that’s a cool thing to do right now. I’ve also thought about trying to crowd-source individual bits somehow, but again, it really just doesn’t sit right with me to just take money from your hands without putting something back in your hands in return.

Plus, I will say - the pictures of the Bananaman shirt we originally put up were horrible. That’s a cool ass shirt. The Animal Panel shirt Emma Noble just drew? Awesome shirt. The new Murf shirts? Great shirts. I hope you will buy them and like them and wear them. And even if you won’t like them or wear them, I hope you will buy them. :)

IN CLOSING - BUILDING THE CHRIS GETHARD SHOW HAS BEEN THE MOST REWARDING EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE.

In the course of building this dumb world over time, I’ve been able to work with some of the people I’ve long considered my very best friends and have seen their pictures show up in the New York Times with Diddy as a result of it. I’ve been able to put some of the very best young improvisors in New York City up on stage, and out on TV, and have been able to link up with them creatively in all sorts of weird ways. I’ve met odd filmmakers, odd musicians, odd music bookers who allow their good and unique taste to fill out our show. I’ve had phone conversations and email exchanges and online interactions with hundreds upon hundreds of people who share a similar mindset to me - and I spent most of my life feeling like there isn’t one person out there who thinks the way that I do. I get to see some of the best up and coming comedians do the weirdest work they’ll ever do and I get to associate my name with them in a very small, dumb way before they go on to become huge, massive successes. I meet up with JD and Noah and Dru once a weekend to brainstorm ideas for this thing, and each week we wind up at some point keeled over with laughter because we’ve come up with an idea bizarre enough that it strikes even us as too fucking strange. And in some cases, like Robot Fights or Random Andrew and the Hero’s Journey, we actually go through with them anyway. It’s so stupid, but so fun, that we get to do this.

It’s cheesy to say, but already, even if this show goes nowhere else, I think we’ve built something to be proud of and something very unique, all of us. I come from an improv background, and one of the stories from that world that inspires me the most is that when Del Close was dying, he received a phone call from the Upright Citizens Brigade, who were stuck filming in New York and couldn’t visit him in Chicago in time. To paraphrase, he told them “We did it. We built a theater of the heart.” This is so cheesy, but I feel like we are building a TV show of the heart. Losers worldwide are fueling this thing, and it’s sometimes a train wreck and sometimes boring and usually a logistical headache, and then once in a blue moon occasionally goes above and beyond what any of us are expecting in a very positive way, but it always, ALWAYS comes from the heart.

There are about thirty people in New York City who come together every Wednesday night and scramble to build this thing that we send out into the world and that you guys connect with on some level, and those thirty people stick with it because they believe in it. I can’t tell you how much it means to me, and to all of us in that studio, that people have rallied around this thing. You’d be so surprised at how much we know you guys. We discuss our favorite callers. We see the things you guys put online. It means everything. It’s why I’m so excited to let you guys know about how we’re changing things and bringing you more content and a better infrastructure. It’s why I know I can lay out the things you can do to help, because it’s a community that borders on a weird amorphous internet family. It is everything to me right now, and I will never be able to explain to all of you - from JD also killing himself to make it happen, to Shannon who’s stuck by me all these years, all the way down to some kid in the middle of Kansas who’s never emailed or called in but who I know theoretically is out there, it means so much to me.

With total sincerity and excitement about moving into phase two of the delivery of this show,

Chris Gethard