Welcome to The Earwolf Challenge!
Well, here we are. The long awaited release of The Earwolf Challenge! For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Frank Cappello and I’m a producer for Earwolf. I started working for Earwolf in January when Jeff Ullrich hired me to ship the t-shirts they sold every week. I guess I did a good enough job shipping t-shirts that eventually Jeff made me an audio engineer and a producer – an obvious transition.
Then in March Jeff asked myself and my buddy Peter Moses, who at the time was the research assistant for Sklarbro Country, if we’d be interested in producing The Earwolf Challenge. Um…. yes? OF COURSE we’d be interested in producing a podcast for Earwolf.
“Just hang on a second, there.” Jeff sagely mused. “It’s not all going to be frolics in comedy meadows and delicious podcasting candies. It’s going to be a lot of work.”
“Yea yea yea, Jeff. Whatever you say. We’re in!”
That was the beginning of the end.
Earwolf announced “Project Tippy-Toe” where we asked for comedy podcasters to send us applications for a “super secret Earwolf project”. We were inundated with podcasts; over 120 to be exact – and we listened to all of them. Needless to say, it took a long fucking time; emphasis on the “fucking.”
After we sifted through the silt and the shit (silt being the good ones), we found the ten best podcasts to compete in the challenge. Matt Besser graciously agreed to be the host of the show, and we flew the ten competitors to Los Angeles and put them up in a local mansion.* Thus is where we begin the show.
The biggest challenge was finding two times a week where we could have everyone available for recordings. That includes myself, Peter, Matt and ALL TEN PODCASTS. We had to have everyone available for a solid two hours, twice a week while we record in the studio conducting the interviews with the competing podcasts via Skype. This was not an easy feat, keep in mind that the contestants for The Earwolf Challenge come from all over the world (well, nine of them are from the U.S. and we have one podcast from Australia, but that’s still pretty diverse!). Needless to say recording the episodes has been a nerve-wracking experience.
But now we’re here! The release date! The date I thought would never come! I sincerely hope that everyone enjoys this first week of episodes. More blood, sweat and tears went into these episodes than one would hope for a podcast. This week is an introductory week – a chance for you all to get to know these podcasts before we start eliminating the shit out of them. And then next week, THE CHALLENGE BEGINS!
*Not True