He's Jeffrey Cranor wrote a play called Welcome to the Nightvale. It was a huge success personally, but it made a $4,000 loss. So the production company suggested making a podcast - they called it Welcome to Nightvale They were outsiders, they weren’t radio people but they could write and use a microphone. They looked around for other podcasts which were doing this but found none in 2012.
They thought no one would listen.
50 people downloaded the first episode, though at that point it was basically just their friends. The audience grew steadily and downloads numbered in the low thousands. The goal was 100,000 downloads, but they quickly exceeded it, reaching 150,000 downloads in 12 months. Way more than those who had seen the play!
At that point Jeffrey did not know how they had made it! Tumblr happened…
Listeners started uploading fan art to Tumblr. It was a huge success and it all fed back to the podcast. The energy of the online community created a tidal wave of listeners.
In 2019 things have changed in podcasting and Nightvale Presents wouldn't happen in the way it happened in 2012. Jeffrey knows this and he's trying to maintain engagement with listeners using new technologies, whilst launching new podcasts as part of his production company Nightvale Presents.