Presenting... Light The I

Yeah, so here's what I've been doing for the last six months. I mean, I was still writing the preview and covering games and digging through NERDstats and everything, but with my other available time, I've been working on a new Illini show. Is it a podcast? Is it a YouTube show? It's all of that. This post will explain everything that's going on.

Scott Beatty and I (you know Scott from Illini Baseball broadcasts and Illini pregame shows and Sportstalk on WDWS) began talking in June about doing this. If you heard him announce on Sportstalk on Friday that this would be his final week and to stay tuned for something new, this is the something new.

We didn't want to just do a podcast. We wanted to do a "show" and we felt like it should live on YouTube instead of local radio. And if there was going to be video, we didn't want to do the "Zoom call" kind of podcast with everyone looking into a laptop camera. Which meant that we needed to find a studio.

We also needed to find producers. My biggest fear in doing this would be that my article output on IlliniBoard would suffer. So we needed to set up a system where I can just show up at the studio three times per week, record the episode, and then let our producers handle the distribution. I wanted to only add 3-4 hours to my week, not 15.

Basically, we wanted this thing to live and breathe the campus and community. So we've hired two part-time producers from the journalism program - Mazie Gierat and Ella Peterson. They've both called BTN Student U games and are also experienced at producing and directing. They will be producing our show.

The studio will also be on campus. We are partnering with the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (CITL) in the Armory to use their studio for production of the show. Again, since June, Scott and I have been discussing how the DNA of this thing needs to be orange and blue throughout and CITL has proven to be the perfect partner for that.

There is also a title sponsor for this project: U of I Community Credit Union. Yes, also with an orange-and-blue logo. Yes, also on campus. Yes, also Illini fans producing credit cards and debit cards with a block I on the front. As I explain in this first episode, they were the first call I made when we had this idea because they're the prefect partner for this kind of project.

Do you see where I'm going with this? Two alums who live in the area, one the baseball play-by-play guy and another driving an Illini fire engine around town. Two producers from the journalism program. A university studio on campus. A sponsor headquartered in the Research Park on campus. And, eventually, other sponsors who want to exist within that structure.

What better name, then, than Light The I? It comes from our little lighting ceremony on top of Engine 77 after football wins. When people ask me what I do for a living, I just send them this:

So why not take that ethos and make it a podcast? And why not distribute it as both audio and video? And why not start it... right now?

The first episode is linked below. As of this writing, I'm still getting this message for the podcast feeds...

...so it might take 24 hours before you can listen to the first episode as a podcast. You can't send in those requests until you have an episode to upload, and you can't upload an episode until you have the first one recorded.

Every episode will be on YouTube, though (the best way to consume this "podcast" will always be the video), so that link is below. I know you hear this all the time on YouTube, but if you could subscribe to the channel, it would help us out a ton.

That's enough of me writing. You should start listening. The link to watch the first episode is right here:

And the link to listen to the episode is right here:

Enjoy!

And LIGHT THE I.