Lots of exciting things happening in Coverville-land! I’m going to take a moment to update you on some things that are happening with a few of my shows, as well as DVD shipments.

First off, and I teased about this in Twitter, I’ve been thinking about a change in format to the weekly Coverville episodes. There are a couple factors that I’ve been considering in order to make this format change:

1. Sundays are becoming increasingly busier, making it difficult to produce a show. You’ll notice that ever since I’ve gotten back from Coverville 500, doing the all-request show on Sunday night has been hit or miss. The weekends, for the most part, are family time, and after a full day of doing things with family and friends, I was often too wiped out to record a show. And as I mentioned before, I won’t record a show if I’m not feeling up to it, because I think it’ll come through. Plain and simple.

2. Based on the emails I receive, and an informal Twitter survey, a large number of listeners are a few shows behind. Producing three shows a week is not only tricky for me, it’s tricky for the average listener to stay current. For example, Leo Laporte and Veronica Belmont have both confided in me that they’ve either stopped listening to Coverville, or at least slowed down, because I produce too many shows.

But giving up the request shows? It’ll never happen. The Tuesday night theme shows? I need those too. And don’t even think about bumping off the Thursday night Cover Stories. So, I’ll be spicing (splicing?) up the variety of the shows and adding a set of requests to the beginnings of the Tuesday and Thursday night shows, and then moving Musically Challenged to the end of the Tuesday night show. As always, the consistency of the show is important to me, and I’ll make sure that the requests I pick go with the overall flows of both shows.

For those of you (like me) who are visual, it’ll go from this:

To this:

We’ll try it for a few weeks and see how it goes. Please, PLEASE offer your feedback. This show has become what it is today because of your feedback, and I constantly recognize and appreciate that fact. we’ll start with tomorrow night’s show. And bear with me for the first couple episodes – it may take a couple for me to get the swing of things.

Next, let’s talk about Today in Music History. I’ve decided to move TIMH from The Podcast Network to be a true part of the Coverville Media “umbrella”, which also includes Lyrics Undercover (and hopefully someday, the relaunch of the Not Lame Podcast). The Podcast Network has been great to work with, and I appreciate the experience and exposure that they were able to provide for the show. However, I realized that if want to continue to make a living through podcasting full-time, I need to take the show and its potential growth and manage it myself.

The new web address of Today In Music History is http://TodayInMusicHistory.Coverville.com, and the new feed is:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TodayInMusicHistory

Another project I’ve been working on has been The Wii Show, with Charlie George. This was a weekly show that focused on news, opinions and reviews for the Nintendo Wii. As Charlie and I would record each show, we’d find ourselves tangentially mentioning other platforms, most notably the other two next generation consoles, XBox 360, and Playstation 3. So we’ve decided to create a new weekly show, Tired Thumbs, to cover those other consoles along with the Wii. And because things are better in threes, we’ve asked a third host, Sara, to join us for the show and provide her insight, as well as a woman gamer’s perspective. In addition to the standard MP3 version of the show, we’ll produce an AAC version which will allow you to jump to specific content in case you’re only interested in news and information about one console. Please stay tuned to this very blog for information about the launch of Tired Thumbs.

If you were a subscriber to The Wii Show, you’ll be happy to know that it’s not going anywhere. The show will continue to be a part of The Podcast Network, with new hosts, and I encourage you to continue to enjoy what it has to offer.

Finally, I wanted to give you an update on the Coverville 500 DVDs. I’ve been sending them out in the order in which the donations were received, and so far, I’ve completed the month of July. I’m shipping out a major portion each week, and I believe I’m staying on track to have all of them shipped by the end of October. If you made your donation in July, and you haven’t received your DVDs by the end of this week (within the U.S.) or next week (outside the U.S.), please let me know.

Again, thanks for your time, and your continued support of the show. With so many podcasts to choose from, I can’t put into words how much I appreciate that you take the time to listen to mine. Please continue to listen, enjoy, send in your feedback and your requests, and spread the word to anyone who will listen.