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Succotash


Succotash, the Comedy Soundcast Soundcast, was launched 12 years ago (April, 2011) with the idea of promoting comedy soundcasts in what was then a marketplace still trying to find its way. By featuring short clips of shows being produced by funny folks both known and unknown, we like to feel that we maybe had a little tiny, eeny weeny, itsy bitsy bit to do with helping to ignite the torch of soundcasts across the globe! (But then we've always had a rather high opinion of ourselves...)

Original show host and executive producer Marc Hershon, along with co-host Tyson Saner, booth announcer Bill Heywatt, engineer/producer Joe Paulino, musical director Scott Carvey, and booth assistant Kenny Durgis have been keeping the flame alive o'er these many years.

Jan 16, 2018

Hey, reader. It’s me, Marc Hershon, the host and executive producer for Succotash, the Comedy Soundcast Soundcast. In this installment, I'm bringing you the show we recorded live this past weekend at the 17th Annual San Francisco Sketchfest in just a moment. 

It's a fun episode, featuring a couple of my favorite past guests: Matt Weinhold, of the Monster Party soundcast, and Mark Pitta, of the late After Hours soundcast. (Weirdly, both of these guys were former roommates of mine at one time, which had nothing to do with them both being booked here. Or did it?)This is epi 162 and it’s going to be the last installment of Succotash for a while or maybe forever. 

We also had a surprise third guest who was in the audience: Josh Gilliland, host of the Legal Geeks soundcast, who was tagging along with Matt. Turns out that Josh is the brother of another past guest of our show, Gabriel Diani, and I was delighted to invite him up to join us. 

And, although he was unable to join us live due to being out in Hawaii dodging a mythological missile, we were about able to feature our final Burst O' Durst featuring Will Durst, our resident political comedian's predictions for the coming year.

Our announcer, Bill Heywatt, was in his glory and shares a tale of radioactive frogs in addition to handing the emcee chores and reading a commercial for the new #MeToo Ladies Trousers for Men from our sponsor, Henderson's Pants.

As you'll hear in this installment, this is to be the LAST episode of Succotash, for at least a while or forever, I'm not exactly sure. 

We’re taking this break or hiatus or vacation or holiday or whatever you want to call it just a few months shy of our 7th anniversary in Soundcastland. Whether you’re a longtime listener or you just found us, I want to thank you for listening and supporting Succotash. 

When I started doing this show with my producer, Joe Paulino, in his Studio P – the Home of the Hit – here in Sausalito, California, I really didn’t think about it lasting for any particular length of time. My original concept was to create a comedy soundcast that would serve to promote other people’s comedy shows, and to spread the word about the amazing entertainment value of soundcasts in general. 

I think we succeeded. 

When we started, barely 15% of American had even heard of soundcasts, or podcasts as they used to be known, let alone regularly downloaded and listened to them. And there were about 50,000 shows out there. Now the number of regular listeners is over 40% and there are more than 300,000 soundcasts available, featuring every genre of which you could think.

Comedy soundcasts, and networks carrying them, have proliferated so fast that we kind of can’t keep up by sampling the eight or ten we could do in our show. And I’ve had more and more people asking me if featuring those shows without explicit permission is even legal. Frankly, I don’t know. Since we’re not profiting by that content – we’re never had any sponsor besides Henderson’s Pants and they don’t ever pay us – we’re more like a entertainment news program which would, at least in my scanty understanding of the law, constitute fair use. 

So we’re going to wind things down for a bit. I may bring Succotash back as it has been, or with some minor changes, in a bit. I may release some special episodes from time to time which would likely be interviews with comics or soundcasters or actors or what have you. And I’m definitely cooking up some new soundcast ideas.

I’ll still be reviewing shows for Splitsider.com and I will likely get back to doing my reviews for HuffPost as well. And if you want to reach out to me for any reason, I’m still around. The marc@succotashshow.com email will still go through. And our site will stay up as well. Just don’t expect to be bombarded with the number of tweets we normally put out.

Thanks again for listening. I’ve enjoyed doing this show for the past seven years and I’ve loved getting to interact with you on whatever basis that’s been, even if you’ve only ever listened and we have not exchanged a single word.

(Stay tuned after the end of the live show, as I have one final Cavalcade of Gratitude where I thank some recent retweeters as well as some folks who have been around supporting this show for a lot of our run. I'm sure I missed a ton of people in that rundown and for that, my sincere apologies.)

All right. Let’s get on with the (final) show, recorded live at S.F. Sketchfest 2018!

— Marc Hershon