We missed this.
The thing where you open a window, write some words, and send it into the ether for people to read. Preferably on a work computer, if we're spitballing ideal situations here. We love it when people read our work, but when it's on company time? That almost equals the thrill of shoplifting. (Almost.)
That's why we – hi, we're Spencer Hall and Holly Anderson – are starting Channel 6. We write, we make podcasts, we make television, and we sometimes like to talk ourselves into knots for exactly seven minutes and no more. We do a lot of different kinds of storytelling, all the time, mostly about the games we love, but are prone to chasing laser pointers out of the lecture hall.
We've found homes we like along the way, throughout our careers, and spots where we like to camp, but there's always some wandering, both from subject to subject and from format to format. There should be a place for that online. All that brings us back to where we started, which, you might recall, is why we're here. Hi, again.
Channel 6 is the hive we have painstakingly constructed under the eaves of the internet.
This fledgling contraption is a channel in the sense that this post is our broadcast: A place for everything we like to do, for the people who like what we do, with nothing and nobody else in between. We've always loved the sense of signal modulation, and the kinds of places where you might not be sure what you were getting into, but could be assured of walking away with a story.
Channel 6 makes two promises to you, the consumer.
This is all stuff we want to do that we enjoy doing
Our first promise is that we won't do anything we don't want to do, and that we don't think you won't enjoy, either. There are no Takes we simply must declaim, no Events we are mandated to cover, no junkets ever ever ever. This is the open range, and we go where we want to go. You'll hopefully find a lot of football yarnsmithing here, and spun tales from the great outdoors filed from only the most palatial of interstate gas stations. The balance of power, we sincerely hope, will get real weird, in a hurry.
The second promise we want to make is the Channel 6 Guarantee.
Two things a week
For your money and attention, we offer in return: Two Things A Week. In the effort to keep everyone happily distracted and entertained, including ourselves, we will make at least two things a week for you, our beloved readers. Could there be more? Perhaps. Will there be less? Never, because we have just created the Channel 6 Guarantee.
What kinds of things?
We're so glad you asked, Rhetorical Device.
POSTS. Ah, sweet posts. We missed you most of all. The lifeblood of the workaday internet river, and the stones that divert that blood. Sure. That's the great thing about a blog! It's mostly about one thing, until it's not.
Newsletters. Some people like to read their posts in the form of emails. We do not particularly understand why, but we will do this, because we want the people paying for this to be happy.
Podcasts! Interviews, single-t0pic discussions, emergency podcasts, the works. We have a Soundcloud for all of it, and will be putting any and all audio content there for subscribers. Will some of this be exactly seven minutes devoted to passionate oratory laying out why Love Island UK is the greatest television program ever made? PERHAPS. (Absolutely, yes.)
Stories? Actual, you know, articles? Longer essays we just want to give to you, our special sweet readers, because we're sick of pitching them to people who ask us what a "haint" is?
~Special projects~ A place to put the oddball projects we want to try just to see what happens. Could you be getting a serialized novel about a fraudulent medical examiner who solves crimes from a houseboat, for instance? We might already be five chapters deep into writing it ... but only by subscribing could one be completely sure this was happening.
Two. Things. A. Week. This is our solemn vow to you: To make things we like for people who like them.
Where do I sign up, and how much is this going to cost me?
Click the subscribe button right there in the lower right corner of the screen. Subscriptions, for now, come in one tier only: Ten dollars a month or one hundred for the whole year, for those who like us but love savings. We're going to put our wild and beautiful brains' whole entire asses into this. In return, we ask that you buy us the equivalent of a couple of beers with tip for the effort.
Is this going to be fun?
Well. We'll all find out together, won't we? We hope so. If it isn't fun, we've done it wrong. And we don't plan on doing this wrong, but even if we do it wrong? It'll be the "accidentally made the waterslide too powerful and shot the kids into the neighbors' pool" kind of wrong. The internet should still have enough wilderness in it for that kind of fun, for surprise, for little places with big horizons and just enough resources to thrive.
That's what this little UHF station of a website, broadcasting without a license, is going to be for us. Channel 6: It's probably on fire, and that's fine, because we're getting it all on camera.
