99% Invisible

Kickstarter Video for Season 3 of 99% Invisible

Brief

99% Invisible's Season 3 Kickstarter features host Roman Mars outlining the show's reach (about 60 episodes, 3 million downloads by end of 2010) and a funding shortfall caused by a tenfold increase in hosting costs. Mars frames the campaign as necessary to pay collaborators, sustain production, and enable expanded reporting and a new model for public-radio funding, with designer thank-you gifts as incentives.

Source evidence

title: "Kickstarter Video for Season 3 of 99% Invisible"
author: "99% Invisible"
sourcetype: podcast
content
hash: 16ab4d63e775d508b41b1a27b18ecc204b097bd9850a643fa675720c4da3bbde

extraction_method: podscripts

This is 99% Invisible.
I'm Roman Mars.
99% Invisible is a radio show I created about architecture and design.
Since these are disciplines that usually appreciate it through the eyes, you might be thinking.
Well, that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard.
Fair enough.
It turns out I don't need pictures to talk about design.
Although it's nice to have them look at my cool launch bed like this.

SSS for sound.
I like making stories that tell us about who we are, to the lens of the things we build.
Since 99% of visible launch to the end of 2010, the show has been downloaded over 3 million
times.
There's been no marketing budget, it's an independent production done literally in my
house at night.
I think that in these nearly 60 episodes my collaborators and I have proven that we can make something as good as the best things on public radio.
Now I just want to pay everybody.

If we hit our Kickstarter goal, I can meet the basic needs for the budget for the new season.
The great thing about being unexpectedly popular is that you're popular,
and the bad thing about being unexpectedly popular is that it's expensive.
The cost of my podcast hosting went up 10 fold this year.
If we can make that budget, I can keep the machine running.
So that's where I set the goal of the campaign.
But if we can blow that away and raise more, I can do so much more.
I want to make more episodes.

More stories like this.
We're poking around looking at secret things in the capital.
It sounds like this.
An aviary of chrome-thirted ravens taunting you as you descend into your workday.
Not to mention critical life lessons. Always read the plaque.
That is the secret to life, my friends.
I want to go after more sources of funding, which is shockingly time consuming and expensive.
I want to do nothing less than create a new model for creating innovative public radio.

But to do that, I need your help.
Any amount that you can contribute will make a huge difference.
Some really talented designers have worked below scale to create some nice thank you gifts
to entice you to join us in this production.
We created things that even if you didn't know the show that well, you'd want these items
anyway.
So check them out.
And thanks. you