You're Listening to the Weather Channel
Hey everyone! Chris here again, AKA Dated, and this time I wanted to talk a bit about our new podcast series, “The Weather Channel”. I want to talk about what this thing even is for those who might be new around here, as well as what my intentions are with it, what the inspiration for it is, and all that good stuff.
So to start things off, I’ll talk about what this project is. The Weather Channel is a radio-themed podcast in which the eponymous “Weather Man” gives you updates regarding the news and weather, as well as playing a few songs. The twist being that these reports are coming from a strange town in which all manor of creatures, paranormal events, bizarre customs, and eldritch horror are commonplace. This series started out as a number of skits from the Dated albums “The Weather Channel” 1 & 2, on which there were many 1-2 minute long “weather report” clips which would play in between every few songs. These skits proved to be fairly popular as weird bits of media amongst fans of the the label, and they established a sort of “lore” which other mixes and releases have tied into somewhat. There was a foundation there for a larger narrative and more material, so a full podcast program felt like the logical next step.
Before I get into what my plans for the podcast are and where it is going, I want to talk a bit about the inspiration behind it, as that will make it easier to describe how this is different from other similar media. The most obvious source of inspiration for this podcast would probably be the “Welcome to Night Vale” podcast, however I would say it has has less of an influence than some might think. I’m a fan of that podcast, though I’ve only listened to ten or so episodes, but it has more or less been something in the back of my mind more than a primary source of inspiration. I would say that my biggest influence from that program is Cecil Baldwin’s delivery. I would say that as far as subject matter in my actual writing goes, my main influences are actually more in-line with the larger analog horror genre, and things like Local 58, Gemini Home Entertainment, and things like that. I am also very influenced by older horror cartoons from the 90s and 2000s, such as Courage the Cowardly Dog. While this is a common theme in something like Night Vale as well, there was a real trend when I was growing up of shows for kids that centered around scary stories, all of which just sort of expected what they were depicting as totally possible, and they would just jump from story to story, assuming that you were along for the ride with no explanation as to how any of it would work. Some stand out series in this vein were “Freaky Stories” and “Tales from the Crypt Keeper”. In more modern times, the reddit board r/NoSleep has also played a role in my inspiration, as it is similarly a place for people to tell stories in first-person as if they are recounting actual events that the writers have experienced, and the readers of the board are expected to suspend their disbelief and just accept that all of the stories are true. This tradition of extreme suspension of disbelief extends to analog horror as well, which is always more fun when you treat it as if it were real media, and you are part of its world.
So that brings me to what my plans are for this series, and how I believe it will stand out from the rest. The biggest difference for this podcast when compared to something like Night Vale, at least for now, is the short-form nature of the individual updates. I don’t have any plans at the moment for multi-episode narratives in which you need to have heard a past episode to know what is going on, and I don’t plan to have long stories within any of the episodes which take up a substantial portion of the episode. That isn’t to say there won’t be recurring characters, locations or events, but that there wont be some ongoing saga with crucial plot points found in earlier episodes, which you would have to have heard in order to fully know what is going on. This is also not to say that every news or weather update will be super short, some will be longer than others, but I always want to keep that feeling of each episode giving you a lot of different information, as if it is really covering all the recent happenings of this strange town. Another plan for this series, as many of you may have seen, is that I will be creating little lore tie-ins and other bits of media elsewhere on the channel. Our ‘emergency weather update” videos are a bit of visual analog horror which will generally foreshadow something from a future episode, or generally tie into the lore of the podcast. There will also be references and tie-ins found here and there on future musical projects, as ‘The Weather Channel” tapes had done before, though some of these will be less obvious than others.
And that’s all I have to say for now! At the time of writing this, the script for episode 2 is finished, and I’m about to begin recording it. There may also be another emergency weather update on its way soon.
For those looking to check out the series, you can find all the links to it on various streaming services here: https://illadvisedrecords.com/the-weather-channel
Have a question about the podcast? Just want to tell me what you think of it? Drop a comment below!