Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Liana K and Steven Kerzner: Toronto Mike'd #237

Episode Date: May 17, 2017

Mike chats with Liana K and Steven Kerzner about Live from Canada – it's Ed the Sock!, Liana's Lady Bits, Gamergate, what went wrong at MuchMusic, the Hard Rock Cafe closing and why Canada prefers to eat her own.

The following program contains adult themes, nudity and coarse language. Viewer and parental discretion is advised. Welcome to episode 237 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a local independent brewery producing fresh craft beer. And propertyinthesix.com, Toronto Real Estate Done Right. I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com, and joining me this week is Steve Kersner, also known as Ed the Sock, and Leanna Kersner, also known as Leanna K. Are there any other aliases I should be aware of?

None that are PG. Now, Leanna, this is the first time you've been in the Toronto Mike Studios. It is. It is. With all the beer. Yeah, we'll get to that. What are your first impressions? Is it at all what you imagined? It's appropriately climate controlled for gingers, so I'm very happy. We're bred for cold, dark places. That's right.

Because outside, it's like, I guess, like 30 degrees out there. Oh, it's gross. I don't like it. Yeah, close enough to 26 degrees. The first day that it's been like that, too. It's true. And down here, I noticed it's, yeah, it's still cool down here. So just imagine you had come in, like, January. You would be, like, wearing your winter jacket down here. That's what I think. So, uh, Steve, I'm going to tell everybody listening.

We did a deep dive a couple of years back. We talked to you. We also talked to Ed and that was episode 94. So if people want to do the, you know, sort of the bio of Ed the Sock, the ongoing history, if I may, apologies to Alan Cross, of Ed the Sock, episode 94. Sure. I had a lot of feedback. I have to tell you that I got a lot of feedback from people. There's a lot of people that listen to you. How many? Can you count them on two hands? I think I can count them on, even if I include my toes. I did get a tremendous number of people who heard me on this podcast.

So you do have an audience. Your episode was very popular, actually, because for a long time, back when I used to care about statistics and stuff, I would look at what are the most popular episodes. And you were always right up there. It was one of those that kept gaining steam. Even today, somebody's listening to episode 94 for the first time.

Great. Thanks for coming back. Why wouldn't I? Thanks for having us. I don't know, but sometimes they don't come back. Leanna, we're going to... I mean, I got lots of questions for you. It's great to meet you.

You two are both in show business and I just want to... Can I share a little story? I don't know if this is like a show business story, but it happened to me last week relating to this podcast. So can I share a little? It's your show. Sharing is caring. Yeah, that's right.

You can't stop me is what you're saying. More or less. I appreciate that you asked. All right. You know Hugh Dillon? Yes. I do know Hugh. And tell me, so is Hugh a good guy?

In my estimation, Hugh is a good guy. I've only heard good things. So I have some, I know people who know Hugh Dillon, and it's all like super positive. Apparently he's a great guy. Yeah, all my experiences with him have been great. So he's, I guess he's doing like a PR tour. His PR people got in contact with me,

and they're like, we basically, do you want Hugh Dillon to come on or whatever? And I'm like, yeah, I love Hugh Dillon. I love Headstones. I love his stuff. So we,

me and the PR person, I never speak to Hugh. That's the key part of this story. I never ever have connections with Hugh Dillon. Who is this, Courtney? The PR person?

Yeah. I'm dealing with him too. Maybe we shouldn't name drop until we find out whether the story is good or bad. Yeah, I actually was going to purposely be vague about the PR company and the name. Nice job, Steven. You ruined the internet. Like there's nobody out there named Courtney.

Courtney is a popular name in the PR industry. I didn't even say it was a male or female. That's right. That's right. And this is, by the way, my favorite headstone song. I love this song. Yeah, it's great. It's one of the early ones too.

All right. So we arranged. In fact, they were coming coming Hugh was coming over tomorrow with the PR rep by his side and they were coming here at a certain time all arranged so I do my homework

you know that's what I do I do my homework I'm all prepared I have my sound clips and everything I'm all set and then I get an email

from the PR rep and she's like okay we only have 30 minutes now because I like to do longer as you know and then I said I phoned her I like to do longer, as you know. And then I said, I phoned her.

I didn't do this by email. I got on the phone. I'm speaking to her directly, and I'm like, can I get 45? 45, I can compress it or whatever. And she's like, okay, I can give you 45. So that's a big victory for me. I got 45 minutes of Hugh Dillon. This long story is about to wrap up.

Steve's falling asleep over here. Holy smokes. Are we getting somewhere here? It's getting there. It's getting there. It's getting there. Then I said to her on the phone, I said, you're not going to,

you know, drop me for something bigger, are you? And she laughs and said, no way, we're going to see you on whatever, Wednesday or Thursday

or whatever. Then the very next day I got an email from the same PR rep. I even tweeted it, but it was like, mumble, the consent,

basically, we can no longer do this. Maybe when we have more time at the end of the tour we can circle back. They use the term circle back. I hate circle back. I don't like circle back. I hear it too much. Has anyone ever circled back when they claim? Never. The thing is it's a very, very

wide circle. That's the thing. That's the one thing I miss about music as opposed to working in video games is at least people in music write you back to say no. In games, they just don't respond. Oh, I know. It just doesn't happen.

Was that the point of that story? Well, here's the point of the story is Hugh Dillon's not coming in, so I made a decision, because this is actually one of several bad experiences I've had with a PR person. I'm no longer having guests on this show unless I have direct contact.

I don't care if it's email, text, or phone, or smoke signals, but if I don't directly talk to you, Steve, I'm not having you on. If I have to deal with your people only, don't wait, because too often they drop you for something bigger because you're just a guy in his basement.

Well, that they perceive as bigger. It's not necessarily bigger. Right. Yeah. And it looks better, I guess, to say, hey, we have you on this Rogers communication outlet

or whatever, even though I might have more listeners. It doesn't matter. Well, a lot of people are still adapting to the idea that new media, like a guy in his basement,

can have the coverage area and the exposure that used to be limited to, you know, multi-million dollar studios. A lot of people still have that sort of prejudice in their head. Well, it's just bad. It's outdated information.

They tend to overload on terrestrial radio and television, not recognizing that people who listen to podcasts, people who engage via the Internet, they don't watch TV. They don't listen to terrestrial radio. People are very loyal to the mediums they prefer. I say this as a YouTuber. And so a savvy PR person would make sure they weren't doing too much of the same thing. But there is still this cult of television coverage that, yeah, the minute, we're seeing this

in gaming a lot too, the minute television is interested or the minute some Chicago radio station is interested, they drop you for that coverage. And that listenership may only have a cursory interest in what they know video games exist, for instance, they know some indie band exists, but they don't really care. Right. Yeah.

That's why Liana has such a tremendous engagement with her audience, is that there's a dialogue. And Liana makes a point of talking to them and with them, whereas on radio, out it goes. There is no interaction. And the media today, people want to interact. And that's why her engagement rate on her YouTube channel is so crazy high. If you guys ever had a layer between you,

if you guys ever had a PR layer that you utilized for promoting? I do have somebody, a business advisor that does intake for me, but normally what he does is he screens it. Is that Steve, by the way? No, no. It's a fellow in Virginia. Yeah, it is a very Republican by the way no no it's a fellow in virginia yeah it is a very republican gentleman named courtney yeah no not named courtney not courtney um but uh yeah he does

intake but once we sort of decide this is something we want to do then it gets passed off to me and and i take it from there sometimes they'll set it up but we find it's it's too much broken telephone as well like it's too easy to oh they didn didn't get my Skype name or I didn't get theirs or something like that. And it just cluster, you know, what's really, really quickly. So I do prefer the direct approach. I also like to establish a rapport before we start because then you don't have to spend the 20 minutes on air making someone comfortable. That's a great point. You're right. If you're literally the first time you've ever communicated is when you press record. It can take a little while to, yeah, establish a rapport.

Warm up. Yeah. So I'm anti-PR and I just wondered if I was maybe overreacting a little bit. Listen, a PR person's strength, their power comes not from saying yes, but from saying no. See, I know some great PR people who are not like that, to fly the flag for my girl Stephanie and my boy Jay and people like that.

They're amazing. Cynthia is also great, too. Yeah, Cynthia is awesome. But good PR people, like good anything else, are rarer than people who are not so good at their jobs. And yeah, there are a few PR people who I can't even say their name without going, curses!

So don't paint them all with the same brush. Yeah, there are some good ones out there. Gotcha. I'm going to promote my Patreon.com. Yay, Patreon! And then later in the show, I've got some hard questions for you two about crowdfunding various independent projects. Well, Leanna knows far better than I do.

Oh, it's been an education. Yeah. How many days left in yours? We're in the homestretch right now. We just hit the midpoint, so we're like 15 and a half days. No, sorry, 14 and a half. We're on day 15. Is this the Lady Bits Kickstarter campaign? It is,

yes. Okay, good, because I have Lady Bits questions for you later. I have questions for you, Leanna, about your Lady Bits. Ask me about my Lady Bits. Is that okay, Steve? Can I ask you about your Lady Bits? Absolutely. I'm very proud of her Lady Bits. The last time I had a husband and wife when I recorded was Hazel May from Toronto Blue Jays

baseball podcast. Oh, yes. She came down and she brought her monster-sized husband, Kevin Barker, former Toronto Blue Jays. He was like 6'6". How did he fit down here? He wouldn't go on mic, actually, which was too bad.

He sat over there and I think he was down there as the muscle to make sure like i didn't go out of my lane or something like i treated his wife's going into the into a basement with a stranger so yeah so you think that's uh okay uh he was an intimidating presence and it's actually the only time in the history of the show 237 episodes that one of my questions i did not ask one of the questions i had on my notes. Oh, because you're getting a hairy eyeball.

I had a question about a certain lawsuit that Brian Burke and then the big guy is kind of staring me down and I almost wonder if he was there so I would not ask that question. That's what I was wondering. See, I have a unique feeling

towards hard questions. If an interviewer asks you a hard question, it gives you the opportunity to answer them well. If they dodge, then you never get the ability to tell your side of something difficult. And I quite welcome well-phrased, challenging questions because why are we here otherwise? I may eat my words by the end of this podcast.

You have no idea. When I ask you about your lady bits, it's going to get harder. I've been asked stranger things. And I should point out, my question wasn't anything derogatory or anything unfair. It was actually about the Streisand effect.

Oh, yeah. Right. I have real questions about the Streisand effect because my instincts are to leave that and it just disappears into the internet rumor mill where things are pumped all the time. Not necessarily. Should we explain the Streisand?

Yeah, go ahead. The Streisand effect is a phenomenon and is a very real thing, especially on the internet, especially in my line of work, where if you try to suppress a story, it makes the story bigger, especially if you actively remove content. Something like

what the Hugh Dillon publicist did and the ensuing bit at the beginning of this show. That is the Streisand effect. Had she given you the interview, it would have gone off no problem because she didn't give you the interview and she actively withdrew it. You got pissed. You talked about it. And now she's got actively bad PR for her client when otherwise it would probably have been a more positive experience. Specifically with Hazel here, the Streisand effect I'm referring to is that, for those who don't know, there was a rumor around Brian Burke and Hazel May that was showing up in a lot of online forums and blogs. In fact, I got a cease and desist because it was in the comments. I didn't write it, but it was in the comments.

Oh, that sucks. And I happily removed it. In fact, that lawyer, it was Brian Berg's lawyer who said, please give me, we demand the IP address of the commenter. And I refused to give any IP address. And then I never heard back. So this is ancient history now, I think. Yeah, people push and hoping that you'll bend.

And they fish. And when you don't, they just drop off. Yeah, they fish. Because I know they don't have the right to ask. I happily deleted it. So I wondered if Brian Berg ended up suing a bunch of anonymous online commenters and stuff, which made this quite a big story. And I think a lot of people heard of the rumor because of the big news around the lawsuit. And I just felt like the Streisand effect was in play.

That this story had become much bigger because they were going after these anonymous commenters instead of just waiting it out. But I did not ask that question of hazel okay well steven's uh well used to me saying steven stay out of it when i get certain things so we have a very different relationship than it sounds like the dynamic there well yeah she uh of course when i hear nasty things uh about liana on the internet i want to step in and ring their their necks. But Leanna says, you know, leave it. She knows how to handle it. And she does. I still want to kill these people, but that's just a natural thing. But Leanna has figured out a way to often defang these people, too. Well, it's also, I mean, I am a feminist. I'm a very proud feminist.

And that puts a lot of people off because it is an F word, but that's part of the reason I use it. I like profanity. What does it mean to you? Because isn't that suggesting that men and women are equal? Like, is there more to it than that?

Yes, well... Because aren't we all, like, I'm a feminist. It's very complicated. Go ahead. I practice a form of feminism. I call mosaic feminism, which means every woman's experience is a piece in the board. And it makes this very beautiful picture that we call humanity.

You know, and men have a role to play. I don't believe in the term feminist allies. I think it's stupid. Like unless you're playing Star Wars, what is this allies? Like if you're, if you're doing global geopolitics, then you have allies. This is a concept concept like this is not a no boys allowed thing and um you know i'm i'm transgender inclusive some feminists aren't they believe interesting the only true women are cisgendered women you know women who are born of a vagina well i actually had an issue with lady bits where a subredditdit accused me of being trans exclusive because my show was called LadyBits. And and I said, I never said the name of the show was Vagina. If you if you are, you know, a trans woman and you have a penis, then your penis is your LadyBits.

Like I welcome all LadyBits kind of thing. And I thought it was so silly that they would pick that fight instead of, but there are some people who are very reactive. But for instance, you know, some feminists would want their husband to jump in and defend their honor. Well, I believe that is a form of benevolent sexism.

If he was being attacked, I would not be expected to jump in and defend him. There are certain issues, you know, like certain political figures whose wives have to, usually sexual things, they expect the wife to stand there, but it tends to be a silent role. They don't expect the wife to provide comment. She just has to stand there and look, you know look modest, look supportive. We don't use our words. And so because of that realization, because I always go, okay, if the roles were reversed, would I be expected to jump in here? And if not, I tell them to stay out because it's got to be, when we are dealing with words here, we are not dealing with a physical strength issue

or peeing standing up, which I seriously wish I could do. It's way harder to pee in the woods for women. But if it's just words, I can handle it just as much as any guy can. And I really resent the idea that we should be treated differently in that regard. Of course, there are individual sensitivities that you have to take into account. Certain words have more charge for women than for men, but that's an individual thing. Some guys absolutely hate certain words. Other guys are fine with it, you know?

I don't mean to interrupt, except what I'm hearing is that you're looking for women and men to be treated equally. Funny that. Yeah, which is why I think, yeah, I'm a feminist too. Steve, are you a feminist? With that, that was the definition, absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah, I think the problem is a lot of people, and when Ed the Sock did a thing about feminists and why some guys are so afraid of it, the virulence that I got back, basically what I was told is that the feminists described in the video, which are women who just want a fair playing field, those aren't real feminists. The ones who are the most extreme voices, the loudest yelling, most cartoonish, those are the feminists.

The people who are reasonable, like Leanna said, let's just have an equal playing field, they're just egalitarian. They're not feminists. equal playing field, they're just egalitarian. They're not feminists. So it's an interesting way to demonize feminism by saying only the worst voices count as feminists and those who call themselves feminists but are reasonable, well, they're not feminists. It's an interesting way of trying to curate an opinion so that you can hate something, knee-jerk. And really, these guys are no different

than the loud voices on the feminist side. Loud voices, they're loud, and you really need to start listening to, and the press pays too much attention to the loud ones because it's a 24-hour news cycle. They need color. They always put the crazies on air, and it's awful. So you don't get the most reasonable representation.

It isn't going to cause a debate. For those who can't see us right now, I have two beautiful swing arms in this room, and I'm using one, Leanna's using the other. So, Steve, I'm thinking you might have to get a little closer to that guy. I have to get closer again? I think you've actually got to change the angle on your microphone. Excuse me, let me adjust your phallic object.

It really is a phallic object, too. Yeah, here comes the... While they're adjusting Steve's set here, and it's okay, he's married to her, patreon.com slash Toronto Mike. That's where you go to help crowdfund this

project so we can keep this going. Patreon.com slash Toronto Mike. But I want to give a special big thanks to Michael J. Lang. Michael J. Lang listens, and he actually email transferred me some money because he didn't want to do patreon.com, which I totally respect.

So if anybody wants to be creative like Michael J. Lang, give me a shout. We'll do that. So thank you, Michael. And let's hear you, Steve. Is this better? Yeah. That's better. By the way, and I should say, right off the top, because we haven't, I should tell you, Michael. And let's hear you, Steve. Is this better? Yeah.

Yeah, that's better. By the way, and I should say, right off the top, because we haven't, I should tell you, I've told you this in episode 94, but I am a huge Ed the Sock fan. And the more I hear from you online,

that's the voice we need more of in this country. Like, what a fantastic perspective and delivery where it's entertaining, it's thought-provoking. More often than not, you nail it. Like, this is just... Well, then you'll enjoy the FU network, which we'll talk about eventually later, I guess.

Yeah, for sure. But it's a whole online network that has that same perspective. Sort of the spirit animal is Ed the Sock. Because, yeah, we do need that. And quite frankly, it's the same stuff that Leanna's doing on video gaming and feminism, which is a reasonable voice that cuts through the noise and uses humor to emphasize some

interesting points that otherwise people might shy away from. Otherwise it would be dry. You keep it interesting and fun. And before we... Let's get the beer in your possession here. Okay. So in front of each of you, there's a six-pack of beer.

Don't count them because you're going to tell me now. There's only five in this six-pack. There's a five in mine. Red leaf lager. Is this the opposite of a baker's dozen? That'll all make sense. It'll all crystallize shortly. Okay, Harry Potter.

There's a convention going on this weekend called MistyCon that would be very, very interested in this. It's a big Harry Potter convention. Oh, it's got a wizard on it. I'm not there. Yeah, because the beer's a wizard, Harry. Another red leaf.

Okay, Leanna's examining. No, that's great. Let's hear these. Canuck Pale Ale. Oh, the lumberjack. I've been vaguely obsessed with that song, Log Driver. Oh, pompous ass English ale. I love Log Driver. Oh, excellent. Why did I've been vaguely obsessed with that song, Log Driver. Oh, pompous ass English ale. I love Log Driver.

Oh, excellent. Why did I get all the red leaves? You know, coincidence, I think. I just took them out of the box. Well, you know, I don't drink anyway, so you can have mine. That's 10 beer for Leanna. So you're taking home that. That's courtesy of Great Lakes Beer.

Steve, last time you were here, did I have the beer sponsorship? Did you go home with any beer? I don't remember any beer the last time. Yeah, she would remember it. Because I'm allergic to alcohol, so I don't ever have any. So she would be the one that would have it. But, you know, it's the summer. We have a deck.

People will be coming over. You always need beer, even if you're not going to partake. But Leanna looks happy anyway. So the reason there's five beer instead of six is because you're each taking home a pint glass. Oh. Yeah, that's courtesy of Brian. Brian is from propertyinthesix.com. So that's why I leave the empty slot so you could put the cup in there.

Oh, these are so nice. They're nice, right? Quality pint glasses so you can pour some Great Lakes beer in there and enjoy that on the patio. I'm going to play a brand new, debuting, the new PropertyInTheSix.com jingle, and I would love to hear what you guys think of this. You've got to be completely honest with me.

Here we go. PropertyInTheSix.com PropertyInTheSix.com There you go. If I played that a few times, would that earworm? It would be effective. Something like that is actually effective. It will stick in your head.

Because the most effective things aren't the things that are the most pleasing to you. Always. No, I asked for honesty, Leanna. They're the things that stick. She's having a good time with that. You know, there's a snoring device that's advertised on XM Radio, and the spokesperson is this obnoxious New Jersey guy

who I hated at first, but now it's like, hey, Jimmy, and it sticks in your head. And the important thing is, you're going to remember the name of this guy's website because it's there. And that's the thing. This is earworming.

It is effective. I would just add the repetition into the jingle. So rule of three. So do melody, harmony, harmony. Like melody, variation, variation. So do exactly it. Just do two other variations on your little sting there. So I'm going to play that six seconds again here.

And then I'm going to play that six seconds again here and then I'm going to tell you propertyinthesix.com Then you can follow it up like propertyinthesix.com and harmonize on the end there. So I had a few days with this. So I played it a few times and then I played it for my kids and my wife.

And I have to admit, I found myself like when i was on a bike ride or something like i would just sort of break into a property in the six.com yeah so see it works it works okay i'm telling you it works it has to just stick in your in your head doesn't have to be elegant this became a musical episode i like it yeah so brian by the way brian, uh, and Brian is a real estate sales representative of PSR brokerage. And Brian says the market has changed dramatically with more listings available as sellers are attempting to cash in on record high prices to be successful.

Now in selling your home, it will take more than a sign on your lawn. Call Brian at 416-873-0292 to find out how. And don't forget to visit propertyinthesix.com. Out of respect to Brian, I didn't join my voice there because I'm terrible at singing. Maybe we need to hear Ed sing that part. That's even worse. He has on his card Better Call Brian instead of Better Call Saul. Okay. Very good.

Where were we? It should be like Better Try on Brian. He's listening to this, so he's taking notes, I hope. This is some good stuff. Brian's getting a whole focus group on this podcast. Take a try on Brian. There you go. Leanna, I have my question. So you're married to this gentleman here? You guys on Brian. There you go. Leanna, I have my question.

So you're married to this gentleman here? This is a, you guys are married. That's the rumor. Married couple. Is that a rumor? That's the rumor. Is that a fact? So can you tell me a little bit about like how you met and then how it sort of evolves into love and marriage?

Can we go back and learn a bit of that? I don't know how, I don't know if you can answer the how of that. It just does. I can say what happened, but how is very metaphysical in that, well, when a boy and a girl love each other very much. But yeah, we met in a really garbage bar

and it worked anyway. And I got into a physical fight with my ex-boyfriend and he saw it and I threw him through a door. Threw the boyfriend through the door, not me. Yeah, not him. And that's probably all you need to know about this massive overshare. It went from there. It was a kind of an X-Men comic.

Yeah, in a sense. We met, I was doing Ed at a bar that doesn't exist anymore every week, and Leanna showed up with her boyfriend, and we took a like into each other, and the boyfriend took a powder, and he didn't like it, so Leanna pushed him through a door. No, it didn't matter that we broke up. He was fine with that.

It's that there was somebody else that wasn't him. So many breakups are like that. I don't want you, but I don't want anyone else taking you either. That's a terrible sentiment. Yeah, but yeah, that happened. And as scary as anything,

for a guy to have this, if I can't have you, no one can. There's nothing scarier than a guy who... Oh, it's not just guys that does that. Actually, I think the one scarier thing is a woman who has that uh attitude because women get a lot of passes by society that men don't in that regard and it's much harder to get that to stop rabbit boiling oh my god yeah fatal attraction so uh how do you okay so you end up working on one of Ed's shows. So which show, because there are different iterations of the Ed the Sock shows, was it? I know eventually we'll get to, of course, Ed and Red's night party.

You're Red. So, but you worked behind the scenes in a previous incarnation? Yeah, it was actually during a lengthy hiatus between season two and season three. And Ed was doing a show at the just for laughs festival and so that was really the first thing i recall working on in a meaningful way and by working it means not getting paid for six months i mean that's my that's my big advice to anybody who wants to break into entertainment just work for free and i think that's true of really any career people have it in their head that oh then you become the guy who works for free while you also become the guy who has a resume with actual

experience I mean especially in video games you come out of school you have the exact same portfolio as anybody else the only way to diversify your portfolio is through work experience and so we did that and then then the show came back and it it i don't think it was ever really an intentional thing it was i was always creative i was always sort of into writing and and um my background was theater english literature and anthropology which i think is no more perfect combination for the ed the sock brand and so it was little things like, hey, you've got dancers on the show. Can we make them more interesting? Can we make them something that, you know,

women can enjoy as much as men? Because you take a half-naked woman, that's for the guys. You add feathers, ruffles, and sequins, and, you know, really pretty makeup, then you've got something the ladies can enjoy too. And so it, you know, it pretty makeup, then you've got something the ladies can enjoy too. And so it, you know, it kind of organically built from there, I ended up just picking up the ball when other

people dropped it. And gradually just sort of, you know, started off as sort of a writer means you sit in and come up with jokes as quickly as you possibly can under very high pressure circumstances. And I am very good because I tend to be sarcastic. And so when things are tense, yeah, stop. Things are, you know, I tend to have an ability. It's one thing to be funny when you feel like it. It's another thing to be funny when you need to be. They're very different skills. And so then I started producing because I realized very quickly that as a comedian,

you don't get to do what you want to do unless you also self-produce. And just sort of moved up. And I used to say that the only job I haven't done in television is camera, but then I started doing that when I moved to YouTube. And so I'm a D20 right now to use the Dungeons and Dragons thing. I'm a 20-sided dice in terms of skill set in die or die? Dice, I always get that wrong. Die.

Die, yeah. In terms of television skills, I got all it covered. And the interesting thing is that when I met Leanna, she was known for her brain because she's remarkably intelligent and not for being funny. Yeah. And it was sort of a journey for her to discover that she was funny because she's the funniest person I know,

the only person that can make me laugh consistently. And it was sort of a transformation as she realized, no, wait, I am funny. I can be confident in this. I am funny. I'm not just what people pigeonhole me as as being this brain. I'm funny.

Yeah, that's not entirely true. I always enjoyed comedy. I just didn't tend to get a lot of credit for it because we did things when I was in Girl Guides. We did a play. We had to adapt a fairy tale. So instead of it being Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, it was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which, you know, tie shoes on your knees and Dwarf on golf. Yeah, Dwarf on golf. So it was Dwarf on fairy tales. And I played all the dwarfs. But of course, the girl who

played Snow White was the leader's daughter and so she was the one I had this tendency because I was a very shy kid I still have days where I'm like I want to see no one don't look at me you know but uh I I was fine with other people kind of stealing the show I'd craft craft it and kind of make it happen, but I didn't need the credit at the end. What I gradually realized is, no, in order to succeed in this industry, people need to see what you're doing. People need to appreciate what you're doing so you're front of mind. So I kind of had to get better at being active. You know, they call it leaning in right now.

I don't like that term because I'm top heavy. I tend to fall over when I do that. I was going to say top heavy. Hold on. So let me, I've been hearing you. Okay, so you were pigeonholed as smart. Yeah. And then there's a discovery, maybe some confidence that,

oh, you're also funny. I watched Ed and Red's night party. Also aesthetically pleasing. Which was, that was the weirdest journey. That was a weird thing for her, yeah. Because this is part of what got me into my current line of work. You can be smart, funny, or pretty.

Maybe pick two as a woman. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it's not fair. You can't be three for three. People won't give you the credit for it. Well, first of all, no woman. They'll as a woman. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because it's not fair. You can't be three for three. People won't give you the credit for it. Well, first of all, no woman is ever pretty enough by modern standards, right? Because that doesn't sell product. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, so it's always, they're always telling you to change something.

And the minute you start going, I don't want to change anything, it's, oh, you're arrogant. Was it tough for you? And maybe I'll preface this by playing the intro to the, I think, season 10. But let's just listen. Right off the top, you heard the Mark Daly intro. So I chopped that off the top of one of your... Oh, really? That was awesome.

He was an awesome, awesome man. Well, what kind of guy was he? Only because to me, he's the voice. Well, to a lot of people in Toronto, he's the voice. He was a guy with a big heart, a huge sense of humor. Yeah. Yeah, very smart, very warm. I think he was sort of the beating heart of City TV.

And it's no coincidence that after he passed, City TV just seemed to just become a corpse. Man, I wish I could have met Mark Daly because so many nights waiting for Porky's to come on and it was his voice, okay? Let me know what's coming up. I love his sense of humor, that guy. All right, let's hear him again here

in the intro to one of your shows with Leanna here. The following program contains adult themes, nudity, and coarse language. Viewer and parental discretion is advised. It's party time! Memories. Put down your clicker and pick up your liquor! It's time for Ed's night party!

This is one I'd hope to play. Ed's a dog, and my co-host, Deanna King! Tonight, the sci-fi geeks of Heaven on Earth and the rest of us in the set of TV's Andromeda. I get a tour of the mothership with Commander Kevin Sorbo. Plus, these two feeling fillies heat up our hot tub. It's funny, I still remember the camera moves.

Yeah, yeah. Just based on the sounds. Yeah. It's funny, I still remember the camera moves, just based on the sounds. That was a little truncated. That fade out was a little truncated. Good evening, welcome to Ed's Night Party. Now, for the last six years, this would have been the moment when I'd introduce my buddy, Craig Campbell. But to all things, there is a season, and six of them is a pretty good run.

If you're looking for Craig, you can find him all over Europe doing standup comedy. He's pretty distinctive. Just look for someone that looks a lot like Sasquatch. And now, please welcome my new co-host, Leanna Kaye! And this is where I was terrified I was gonna fall down the stairs. Yeah!

Whoo! Hello there. And behind the scenes thing here, this was about when a camera came into my face on the Jimmy Jib. And I'm like, I don't know how to speak like me. Thank you. Wow.

Yeah. Because I've been writing for seven years. Well, I have secondhand nerves hearing about that. Yeah. No, it's, I remember this going. Okay, so you're a smart, funny, talented woman. Was it difficult for you to put certain assets on display in sort of that angle? Difficult. That's an interesting...

In a way, it was because you know some people are not going to get it and some people are not going to judge it. And the reason every woman knows that is because we've done it, you know, before we sort of come into our own. Women are fiercely competitive in that regard because we're trained to be. And so I did kind of know that this was a risk. I also felt, though, because of the nature of the program, we've got all these women dancing on podiums. And, you know, I don't think the hot tub was in yet. I think it was.

Okay. But, you know, there's women in the hot tub. I felt like it would be wrong if I didn't do it as well. Like that would be a clearly different thing from everybody else. And I felt that was the wrong message to send. from everybody else. And I felt that was the wrong message to send. If it's okay for these other, you know, mostly younger, mostly thinner girls to do it, then I would do it as well. Just as a leadership thing, I never wanted them to feel like they were being exploited or objectified or anything like that. It was very important to me that anytime anybody on the set

wanted to talk, but especially these young women, that they were allowed. We had a roving microphone. So if they had something to say, they said it. Actually, Ed the Sock made a joke, and I faded out a little early,

but there's a crack in there where you mentioned the difference between Leanna and some comparable woman in a bikini or whatever, where you said the difference is Leanna gets to talk. Like you actually were able to express opinions and... Well, that was her role, was to talk with Ed. But any of the women in the hot tub, they always got to talk.

And if the dancers had something they wanted to say to contribute, they got to talk. They all had names. We all knew who they were. They weren't simply objects. They were cast members of the show. Yeah, and that's the big difference between somebody being sexy and sexually objectified, that they are not a replaceable object on a set,

you know, equivalent to a lamp or a set piece. They are a person who's allowed to have opinions. They had their own personalities, distinct personalities. When in your run together does the News Talk 1010 show happen? That's when City TV was purchased by Rogers. We did

a season there. They wanted to completely rejig their channel, change the brand, and Ed was integral to the previous brand, so we're done there. A lot of cool stuff was tossed out the window. Everything cool was tossed out the window. Everything cool was tossed out the window. And Leanna and I went to, we had an interview at News Talk,

and they wanted us to do the show together. Initially, it was supposed to be Ed and Leanna, and the program director said, how about making it Steve and Leanna? And so we did. And we did that for, I think it was two years. Sunday nights with Leanna and Stephen. Yeah, we did Sunday nights. And then we also...

We were the lead into John Tory, who is now the mayor. Yeah, that's right. And then during the summer, we would take weeks to do fill-ins and stuff. And an interesting experience. Now, so what is the key difference? So in this show, it's not even Steve, you're Stephen. That's like, you know, that's a whole different level of seriousness. Well, I always introduce myself as show, it's not even Steve, you're Steven. That's a whole different level of seriousness.

Well, I always introduce myself as Steven, but everyone calls me Steve. So I can keep calling you Steve. Yeah, everyone does. I don't even notice anymore if there's an N or not an N. I call him Steven.

Everybody else is Steve. So he knows I'm talking to him. Because there can be three Stevens in a room. Four Steve, well, three Steves and one Steven. You know, it's kind of like Michael in that way.

Because I have a brother, four Steve, well, three Steve's in one. You know, it's kind of like Michael in that way where there's, cause I have a brother, Steven or Dave. Yeah. Yeah. Certain ages. Yeah. There's a lot of, although my brother does pH.

I see you do that. You got the V. I got the V. Yeah. I got the V. Yeah. All right. So,

um, that's when you're Steven, as opposed to Ed, the sock, is it, is the difference more than just, um, how you're over the talk,

you know, your delivery and your... Oh, yeah. They're completely different people. That's what I'm wondering because... Yeah, you're better off asking her than asking me. Leanna, tell me the difference between Ed and Steven. Well, I never wrote for Steven. I never put words in Steven's mouth.

Shut up, Steven. No comments. Yeah, I take words out of Steven's mouth. Shut up, Stephen. No comments. No comment. Yeah, I take words out of Stephen's mouth. I put them into Ed's. That Ed has different opinions on certain subjects than Stephen does. Ed has different reactions to things than Stephen does. It's just like there's Stephen Colbert and there's steven colbert and they're not the same person i think that a lot of people expected that guy from the

the you know comedy central show to be the guy but i feel he's morphing into that guy like i feel and i even noticed this if i may with the ed the sock persona lately because i follow ed the sock on twitter and i'm following the digital youtube stuff and everything i don't know tell me if i'm wrong but steven's opinions and ed's opinions seem to be morphing together. Is there still a divide in opinions? Well, I'm not. As Ed, I would never promote something that I find offensive as myself. Well, that's not true.

I just overstate things. That's not true. Let's hear the example, though. No, that's not true. I mean, that whole it's a man thing we did on our new show. You wouldn't say that seriously because you don't subscribe to that stuff. I mean, that's precisely the stuff that Stephen's just like, no, we have a complete gender role reversal in a lot of things.

But Ed is very much, yeah, it's a guy wrestling a shark. That's great. Yeah, and Leanna's referring guy wrestling a shark. That's great, you know? Leanna is referring to a show called Live from Canada. It's Ed the Sock, which has been on from the Hard Rock every Thursday since November, but we're moving, obviously, as the Hard Rock's closing. Tonight, apparently,

is the farewell show at the Hard Rock. That's right. So where are you moving to? We stream live on Facebook at facebook.com slash ed.thesock and also our YouTube channel, FUNetworkTV. We don't know where we're moving to, in short. Right now, to be honest with you, my head is much more in the Kickstarter with Lady Bits

because I really believe in that project. That's an FUNetwork program because the FUNetwork is designed to bring voices in that challenge orthodoxy. And there's been an orthodoxy amongst feminists with regards to video games for the past few years. And it caused a lot of problems because it was rather rigid and a little bit the context wasn't really there and the humor wasn't there. rigid and a little bit, the context wasn't really there and the humor wasn't there. And so I really believe now that this person who was behind it all has

retired, that we have the opportunity to take that conversation about the role of women characters in gaming and the role of women in the industry and to turn it into a positive conversation with humor and where everybody can participate. And that's why I believe so much in Lady Bits and why

we're really happy that the Kickstarter reached its first plateau. We want to get to the next plateau so we can produce more episodes of it when it starts. Okay, so before I go back to live from Canada, I'm going to do some LadyBits stuff. But first, Leanna, about video games. So people who don't know, you've alluded to this, but you write about video games?

I write and do five days a week on YouTube. And I asked, actually, I had this conversation with you, Stephen, when you were over here last time, and I'm still a little bit shady. Is it too late for you to explain Gamergate to me? Is the statute of limitations expired on Gamergate? No, because it's going through another wave. This is the game that doesn't end. As a guy who, the last video game

I played was Mario Kart on my Wii. Excellent. That's more recent than some people I talked to. Is that right? Okay, because 2009 is when I picked up this Wii.

I played that too. My kids like it. That's mainly why we play it. We all play it together. Please explain to me, like on that guy I just described, tell me Gamergate

because it was all over my Twitter feed and I was hearing about Gamergate but I never dove deep enough to kind of understand it well it's interesting that you mentioned the Streisand effect because that was a huge part of the dynamic uh Gamergate was a giant internet fight that got um you know that brave little tailor thing where I killed two with one with one blow and it's two flies and oh he killed two monsters with one blow kind of thing that was

kind of gamergate it was a personal situation that blew up because it was a messy breakup and guy accuses girl cheating on him but then in this very long emotional uh this is what happened blog This Is What Happened blog post, he accused her of trading sexual favors for positive coverage with a member of the games press. And she was a game developer. Now, this roiled for a few weeks. It probably would have stayed there. Had there not been, on the same day, it was August 28th or something like that, I think 2014, but a series of about a dozen very similar articles all landed in the same like 24-hour time period. And so accusations started swirling of collusion among the games press.

We should point out what the articles were about. Well, it was some sort of attack on the gamer identity, that gamers were somehow bad. Gamers were all male, all straight, all cisgendered, which for people who don't know, that means not transgendered. which for people who don't know, that means like not transgendered. Misogynist neckbeards was the slur. If you don't know what that neckbeard thing means, don't worry about it. And did this come from the boyfriend, the jilted boyfriend was a male gamer, so this was aimed at him? No, it was because of the backlash because a whole bunch of people,

well, what ended up eventually happening is that the prominent feminist in video games right now, a woman by the name of Anita Sarkeesian, released one of her Tropes vs. Women videos about this time where everything was still at a mid-boil. Tropes vs. Women was about the tropes in video games, which depicted women badly. And they were very negative on games. They did not make games look good at all. They made games look bad in an unfair way, in my opinion. But that's just my opinion.

But all that anger with nowhere to go, when it hurt. And there's sort of this death spiral. It's like Harry Potter and voldemort with the gaming community and anita sarkeesian that there's almost this expectation that there will be this vitriol flung at her every time she she drops a video and so it was it was only like two or three days after that in other words enough time for it to get into the bloodstream of the gaming press that these articles dropped. You know, it was, if you have an understanding of the media, no different than, you know, Donald Trump talking to the Russians about classified information and it showing up in all the papers the next day. and it's showing up in all the papers the next day.

The games press just has a longer news cycle because there's less experience, there's smaller staffs, and let's face it, it's not as important as national security, right? But that really was all it was. But I completely understand why people, and because the process of video game development and the video games press is very opaque. People don't know how it works through no fault of their own. We haven't done enough outreach to explain to people

how our jobs actually work. And so the tendrils in history go back to a controversy called Retake Mass Effect. It goes back to something called Gertzman Gate, something called Dorito Gateman Gate, something called Dorito Gate. There's all these lingering tensions and hostilities within the gaming community that just kind of blew up in this moment. Now, instead of going, okay, you guys are mad and we get it and we kind of deserve it to an extent, which is what I did. The games press retaliated.

And there became these figureheads, which are all women, even though men were getting dumped on just as badly as we were, who ended up on ABC News and MSNBC and all this stuff. It went totally mainstream. Yeah, talking about how horrible things are for women in gaming and i'm sitting here going oh come on a bunch of people yelled at you on the internet and a lot of people in gaming don't have any experience outside of gaming and because i worked in music programming because i did late night because i did talk radio oh man 14 year old girls can be more savage than gamers any day of the week. Let me tell you, you insult their favorite boy band, look out, it's on.

Yeah, that's, I mean, I would just, the way I saw Gamergate was that gamers, there were these articles that came out that said the gamer identity, that they don't get to dominate gaming anymore, the neckbeards, the hardcore, they don't get, they're over

and gaming is going to open up to more women and it's going to do it by these very draconian methods and then, so the guys became afraid that women were going to come in basically the guy who got shoved in his locker and made his locker his kingdom, now the

cool kids are coming in and saying no it's our locker this was their kingdom and they were afraid that because of the political pressure from the loud feminist voices, games were going to be altered so that they weren't as fun or they weren't the same games that they were before. It really went beyond that, though.

You said it's making a comeback somehow? Yeah. How can that be? The woman at the center of the whole thing, and I don't say her name for a reason, but she released a book. And of course, it's relitigating the whole thing. And this is the woman who was accused

by her boyfriend or whatever of exchanging sexual favors for positive reviews of the game she developed. And the unfortunate thing is they have confirmed that there was a sexual relationship, but it was only a few dates. You know,

could you imagine if Bill Clinton said, oh, I only got a blowjob a few times? It doesn't matter. You review games, right? Yes, I do. So have you ever...

This is not my... I'm not going where you think I'm going. I'm actually going to ask... We're not going to talk about blowjobs anymore? Damn it. I wasn't going to ask

if you... But are you ever pressured by the video game company to give a positive review? There's constant pressure. Obviously the PR people want positive reviews. It doesn't mean you have to give them... Would they offer money or something?

Not to me. Have you ever given a positive review because of some pressure of some kind? No, I'm far too stubborn. You don't know her. Yeah, there's no way. But people do. There are YouTubers who have millions of subscribers and they are paid.

And in the contracts they sign, they are not allowed to show any crashes, any bugs, anything like that. You're basically doing media. Now, there was a period, government legislation always lags behind technological realities. And so since that happened, the FCC has required everyone to disclose. Even if you get a free copy of the game for review purposes, you have to...

So not just money, but actual goods. Anybody who is going to be swayed because they got a free copy of a game should not be a games reviewer. Now, it is true. You know, you see a movie for free. Honestly, I just have a blog, okay? But I can't, many times I go see this movie

and they don't say, oh, you have to positively review it. But I never felt I needed to disclose that I didn't pay to see this movie. And they don't say, oh, you have to positively review it. But I never felt I needed to disclose that I didn't pay to see the movie. Well, in gaming, if you're too continuously harsh on something, they do yank your access. Would the critic for the Toronto Star pay to see the new Star Wars

that he's going to review? No. But I think it's a given when it's that traditional media that there are screenings and that they don't play favorites. Like if this is the critic and they criticize a Warner Brothers film,

Warner Brothers isn't going to not allow this person in to the next film because they allow that paper, the person from that paper or wherever, to go in and see all the films. So there's not a quid pro quo that people can be afraid of. And there were past scandals where game companies were caught putting

leverage on an online publication. I can imagine. See, no one's ever offered me sexual favors for a positive review. This was actually financial pressure that if you keep this game as a 6 out of 10 instead of bumping it up to an 8, we are going to yank our advertising. It's one of those

things. And this is the Streisand effect again. It's, it's really, it's really, it's a short sighted, remember I said there are good publicists and bad publicists, that's a bad publicist move. The reality is that even if you get a bad review, it can be positive for you. Um, I am not a fan of numeric scores on anything because I think people should have to read what you wrote. Because, you know, even if I didn't like something overall, there may be an element of it I think is really great. You can blame Siskel and Ebert for that because they made it a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

I think prior to that, I feel like you had to read the... Well, it's actually the out of 10 or the five star system. It actually makes no sense. What's really the objective difference between an 8.5 and a 9? Right. You know, you get up there. Is it worth your money or is it not? Now, games have to get past a very, very high threshold because in Canada, it's 80 bucks to buy a game at full price.

That's why I only play Mario Kart. I can't afford it. That's why I only play Mario Kart. I can't afford it. Well, and Nintendo's doing a lot of games for the DS systems and the new Nintendo Switch that are well below that. They come out at $40 and $50 for a reason, but it is a much greater investment of time

than a movie that you go, you sit there for, it's like three hours now, but then you're done. If a game sucks, that's 35 hours of your life you can't get back so this uh the game brigade just real quickly so what i gathered from like the fact i do visit reddit and i that's where i learned what a neck beard is i learned it from reddit right so is this a neck beard is this war between like uh feminists and neck beards like is it is it itbeards, it's over now. No, it's not. The truce is called in this battle here?

No. We can't all get along? I thought it had calmed down a lot more than it has in the process of doing this Kickstarter. I found out there's still a lot of trepidation. There's still a lot of hurt feelings. It may be a ceasefire, but it's certainly not a peace treaty. Okay. It may be a ceasefire, but it's certainly not a peace treaty.

And that's definitely one of the things I want to do with the Lady Bits series. Okay, good. Thank you. What a segue here. Please tell me everything about Lady Bits in this Kickstarter campaign. Lady Bits is a show that examines women in gaming, thinking the questions are really more important than the answers. I ask some tough questions. People say, they're not so tough. But no, they're tough questions. They lead to battles. And so I'm basically going to argue with myself for a half hour,

giving sort of a point, counterpoint, kind of in these various really fun characters. And I don't come to a conclusion at the end. It's like, here's one viewpoint. Here's another viewpoint. Let's treat them as equally valid in terms of giving them an opportunity to present their best evidence and let the viewer decide for themselves what they think on that issue because to me the most important thing is that people engage and walk away feeling like

they understand the issue a little bit better than they did at the beginning of that half hour. What answer they come to, it is more important for me for them to process through it than to come up with the answer I like or don't like. In a lot of cases in these questions, I don't really have a strong opinion one way or the other. Well, this is such a difference from the stuff that was coming out from Anita Sarkeesian, where there was an absolute, this is right, and if you disagree, you are a horrible person. There's an orthodoxy and a purity, and if you disagree, you're an anti-feminist, even if you're a feminist. You're a terrible person, terrible morals.

Lady Bits is trying to take the conversation, you said, is there peace now? It does build a middle ground. Liana's daily videos do that, build a middle ground. See, I don't think it's a middle ground. I just think it's making the conversation an actual conversation. Right now, it's not. It's a bunch of people getting on soapboxes in these various echo chambers,

and they're not having an exchange of ideas. Reddit's a terrible format to try to have a debate because of that upvote system. Science has shown the minute you get that upvote, downvote thing, people start performing to a crowd instead of having a nuanced argument. They are writing for that upvote, and that leads to extremes in thinking, that leads to groupthink, that leads to an echo chamber because people don't want to speak up with an unpopular view

because it'll just get downvoted, right? Well, you mentioned some of the questions, you know, that you're going to ask tough questions. Maybe you should run through some of them so people know. I mean, my favorite is, not my favorite, one of my favorites,

the first one is, does the size of Lara Croft's breast Well, that's not the question. really, well. It's, is the, Lara Croft went through a reboot. Lara Croft, excuse my Canadian accent, went through a reboot in 2013 i know

that's wrong uh but they made her younger with smaller boobs you know more realistic body proportions and everybody went more feminist game yay more female friendly and she is so vulnerable and gets beat up constantly and you know my point i'm like i am going to be a skeptic here so the scene she's in the siberia she's in a siberian winter and she's running around looting dead bobbies for bodies for ammo shivering but she never takes off one of their coats and it's this state of forced vulnerability and i'm like wait a minute this is inequality you know i mean you'd never see a male character because they're supposed to exude strength shivering in a ridiculous manner like it isn't just oh man it's cold no luke would slice open the animal and crawl inside precisely or

you know nathan drake in uncharted or joel in the last of us wears a blinking coat you know we have all this stuff about dressing appropriately. Dressing appropriately for the weather is one of these things. And so that's sort of the back and forth. So it's okay. So you put these half hour videos together

and how often is there a, going to be a new half an hour video? Is this like a weekly thing? What is it? The schedule is going to be every three weeks. When I did my first YouTube structured series, it was called A Gamer's Guide to Feminism. And I found that any quicker than two, three weeks,

people fell behind. And so I want to let people stay current on it. And so if we bring in a ton of money and hit one of the later stretch goals, then it will be every two weeks. But right now we're shooting for every three weeks, starting in the fall. Okay, so let's talk money.

And then I have a question about putting these videos together because this is something I flirted with, but a Kickstarter campaign. So what's the target and where are you at? And what exactly is that for? Well, my original target was, uh,

$16,500. And that was basically, you have to factor in Kickstarter's fees, which are pretty heavy. They double dip. You get a fee from Kickstarter they take and then you get a processing fee. So it's 5% and then 3%.

So you're basically getting taxed before you get taxed. That is double dipping. I'm not going to complain but just putting it out there on top of that it is we have to build the set i need the time to write it um you know costumes wardrobe all makeup all the stuff black wrap gels top spun all the stuff that light bulbs that goes into the uh the production somebody to to track down and

book the uh the guests and well we may or may not get that. We're not there yet. Share that person with me if you don't mind. Yeah, that's a stretch goal. But we are at $20,000 now. Wow. So we are aiming for that $25,000 stretch goal, which takes it from six episodes plus a special backers only episode

to 12 episodes plus a special backers only episode. Okay, so that number, I'm happy to hear that number just because my big fear, I don't know what this says about me, but my big fear if I do something like this

and I did with Patreon is that nobody's going to throw a quarter in the bucket. Like it's like, it's like if I threw a party, my fear is nobody's going to show up at my party. Yeah.

But I mean, you've at least, you hit a very respectable figure there that I, I think that's pretty good because your target was 16 and a half and you're at 20 something. You hit that within six days. Wow.

Yeah, it funded in six days. I mean, what I did was if you give 10 bucks, we put your name on the set because I want to show the world that here's hundreds of gamers who are backing this project. Like I want a physical like monolith like in 2001 A Space Odyssey, right? Just no, look, the narrative is wrong these these are people i mean my money's is 90 males so a lot of these are guys because you know console and pc gaming is still male dominated but they care enough to kick a couple bucks my way if people uh go to one of the higher funding tiers the the cheaper ones are sold out, but for 75 bucks or higher, you get access to these online

focus groups where we're actually going to brainstorm the opinions that will be presented on the program. So people aren't just throwing money at me. They're basically subscribing to a service that gives them what they said they wanted, which was a voice. And so it's almost like representative programming and gaming in a way that I don't believe has been done before. Comment sections don't work the same way as a dedicated group of people who can actually have a real-time conversation, you know, in a structured enough environment that everybody doesn't have to worry about some idiot troll coming in and demolishing the conversation.

Sorry, Leanna also has a Patreon going, and she does videos five days a week. Patreons only get the Thursday one. That's the trick, right? You've got to hold something for the patrons. If they're participating, they should get something extra. Membership should mean something. That's where I'm going wrong You've got to hold something for the patrons. If they're participating, they should get something extra. Membership should mean something. That's where I'm going wrong.

It's interesting, though. A lot of my patrons say, we don't need anything. We just want to support your work. There is a group, especially online, that recognizes that in order to get independent voices, in order to get the voices they support, they have to support them. They see it as buying a newspaper subscription. It's like the Jesse Brown model, of where, you know, same spirit, I guess. And how did you choose Kickstarter and Patreon?

Like, did you investigate the various options and then realize that was the best for your needs? I went through this exercise recently and I ended up going to Patreon. But I'm curious, like, how you ended up choosing Kickstarter particularly and then Patreon, or is it just... Well, I did Patreon first. It's because there's a level of security with financial transactions online that Patreon has the liability. I don't. I don't have the time to handle my own e-commerce. And so basically that's what Patreon is. It's a monthly subscription-based e-commerce solution for creators. Now, Patreon is controversial because of politics.

People feel like they are curating based on moral and political grounds. So some people will not use Patreon. And that's okay. That's why I do other ways. But you have a big U.S. following. Yes. So for me, for example, it's very Canadian for obvious reasons. And I noticed there's no Canadian dollar.

It's a US dollar. Oh, no, Kickstarter is Canadian dollars. No, I meant Patreon. Yeah, Patreon is just US dollars. So I get a lot of people who are just upset about that. And then they ask for alternative ways. Yeah, I've heard that too. I mean, it doesn't really matter why they don't want to use a payment method you the whole trick on the internet

is bringing in relatively small amounts of money from enough sources that hey you can make a living at the end of the day no that's great yeah so kickstarter is for very much contained specific projects that you can create a really good story oh real quick, if somebody listening now is like, I got to kick some money in that Kickstarter, where do you push them to? Well, you can either go to my Twitter, RedLianaK, go to my Facebook, LianaKRed. RedLianaK was taken on Facebook.

But then it's the Lady Bits Kickstarter. Please Google Lady Bits Liana, not just Lady Bits. You will get very interesting search results if you don't put my name in but it'll take you right there that's funny yeah uh okay and when you make these videos so um at some point if i ever have time i don't know when this will be i want to like experiment with video i've actually done nothing with video uh who who is it you liana who's doing the editing? Yeah. Okay. So what software

are you using? Adobe Premiere Pro because it's a monthly subscription that makes it way more affordable than dropping a few thousand bucks for a professional editing system. It has its quirks, but it works well enough. What's a learning curve? This is my question. Is it something that

if, let's say say you're fairly proficient in like something like Photoshop or whatever, like how long would it take you to figure out something? Well, the layer-based element of Photoshop is similar. I think it's more like something like GarageBand or iMovie. But there's plenty of great online tutorials for it, like step-by-step videos and things like that. So if you have to figure out

how to do something, and now they actually have a how-to. They have a little tutorial when you download the software for the first time. So it will show you the basics right then and there. Let's say you've written the show

and you've filmed all your parts and you're putting, like for a half an hour episode of Lady Bits, what do you figure that'll take you in video editing time? Oh boy.

A lot more. Yeah. You figure it's about an hour a minute when i was doing gamer's guide i i could do them every two to three weeks one 20 to 30 minute episode so it does take that long because you have to do research reshoots you have to make sure the music works if the music is going to work at all it really depends on your audience i have a lot of um viewers on the autism spectrum and anything that's even remotely distracting in your video production really bothers them so i i have to be considerate of that i have people with epilepsy because of my my past you know uh work and so i have to have warnings on it if there's any flash frames whatsoever. Things like that add to the time.

And it's also just something like this that is packaged. And it's not like a daily kind of grind video. You do have to have those extra production values. You do have to get it right. You have to get the timing down. You just reminded me why I haven't gone down this rabbit hole yet.

So much more work. That's the one thing I loved about radio is you can show up and oh, you know, your hair is not done, your face is a wreck, whatever. And you're fine. So you mentioned this earlier, but Lady Bits is like part of the

FU network. Yeah, it's the first announced series besides the Ed the Sock one we've been network. Yeah, it's the first announced series besides the Ed the Sock one we've been doing. Okay, so the Ed the Sock one is called Live from Canada. Yes. And that's the one that was at the Hard Rock Cafe. That's right. And they closed it on you.

So sad that it's closing, not just because we lose a place, but because Toronto's losing a place. That we're losing a piece of culture, a place that celebrated Canadian music. The architecture inside is beautiful, and the people who work there have been very, very cooperative. They've been partners with us in this venture,

so I'm very sad. That's shit luck, right? Because, I mean, I'm reading all about how you're there, and it's like, this is happening, and then next thing you know what I'm reading, like, oh, by the way, shoppers, right? Is it becoming a shoppers? Yeah, it's becoming a shoppers.

Well, we're thinking about doing our show from the cosmetics aisle. $420. Yeah, that's why they're doing it. I think shoppers expect to become a dispensary for marijuana. No, for sure. And where better than Dundas Square for them to set up their little pot set.

Oh, man. Can you tell me a little bit, because I follow you on Twitter, I was reading about, I guess, is it a cease and desist? What did you get from Bell Media from the Much Music? Talk to me about this, Steve. Well, the launch video for FUN, the FU Network, FU stands for For Us, by the way, but people can make it whatever they want, was a video called Who Murdered Much Music? was a video called Who Murdered Much Music? And the reason for that is that the rationale behind the FU network is that if Much Music hadn't lost its way years ago,

if it had continued to diversify its content into politics and social things as they were doing, it continued to be early adopters of new technology, new media. If they'd done all that, what would it look like today? And the product is the FU Network, which is a channel that is dedicated to dynamic, interactive, authentic, live, unpredictable programming. You know, much music used to feel like it belonged to all of Canada, because it did. Those big open windows were a welcome mat to everybody. Didn't matter what you looked like,

where you were from, it was just a general welcome. And we've lost that in Canada. A wall has been built between Canadians and our media. There is really nothing that truly reflects us, who we are on a day-to-day, street-level basis anymore. It's gone. It's an elite tower. It's an ivory tower.

And so we're knocking down that wall. And we're saying that the style of... This isn't about doing music videos. This is about the style of content, which was completely self-aware and in the moment. The stuff everyone wants on the internet, that's what this is. And nobody can copyright that.

So we're going to go... We're going back. We're taking the style of what MuchMusic was, the ethos of what it was, and building that forward through programming that is going to reflect our slogan, which is smart ass begins with smart. And where did the Bell Media stuff come in? Oh yeah, the Bell Media thing. So in order to announce why we're doing the FU Network, we did a video called Who Murdered MuchMusic? And I pointed the finger, not at the specific persons, I didn't name them because nobody knows the name, nobody cares, but where it went wrong, where it died, and how it died,

and why we're doing the FU Network and how we're going to revive it. So that was the video. And then they issued what's called a copyright strike, which is not, you can have somebody claim that you used their copyrighted content in your video and what that means is that the monetization will go to them unless you protest. Copyright strike is much more severe. Copyright strike, first of all, it dropped the video from YouTube.

It eliminated it. I didn't even have access to it. And it prevented us from broadcasting live for 90 days and said that if you wish to protest this, if you think that this is done in error, be prepared for the other side to sue you. Like, just tremendous, heavy, 800-pound gorilla pressure against you even protesting it. And, you know, it was exactly the narrative.

It's big corporate media, cold corporate media, trying to shut down the little guy, trying to revive what was. It turns out, I mean, I contacted the president of Bell, who I happen to know, not friends, but we know each other. He put me in touch with someone who works at Bell, who was there when it was chum. And we worked it out. In the end, I think the bottom line was that it was an algorithm

that picked up that much music was being used and issued a strike. But is it like the logo? That's what they said. They were trying to find a reason they didn't overreact. And so they said, it's the logo. It's the trademark logo. And I said, okay, so the trademark logo

that you don't use for the channel name that you don't use anymore. You know, it was clearly this was just trying to find some justification for what they did as opposed to just saying, hey, it was flagged incorrectly, you know, whatever. They said, you know, you have fair use of the clips. Go ahead.

They should have just said, you know, it was a mistake and lifted the copyright strike. But they didn't. And talk about the Streisand effect earlier. And so I made the media aware of this because this is the narrative of what we're trying. This is a perfect illustration of what we're trying to do.

And Entertainment Tonight did a story. And the copyright strike was lifted, but Bell wound up giving us a lot more awareness for the network than we would have got on our own. It's dry as a seedle, comes together. Yeah, so I thank them. I thank them. And again, it is a case of a computer probably flagged it.

Yeah, some algorithm maybe. Human beings aren't responsible for our TV anymore in Canada. It's focus groups, it's machines, it's algorithms. There's nobody who has a vested interest, a gut feeling that something should be on or a story they want to tell. It's just really cold marketing.

Now, I know I'm talking to Stephen right now and not Ed, but is there a... Feel free if you want to go off on what happened to Much Music. Future guests, very soon actually, in a couple of weeks, Jay Gold. Yes.

Joel, yeah, I can call him Jay Gold, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so. He has a funny story about how Moses made him become Jay Gold, which I'm very interested to hear. I don't think even I know that story. He's teased me with it. So Joel Goldstein is a...

Goldberg. Goldberg. Yes, Joel Goldberg. Joel something Jewish. Yes, that's story. He's teased me with it. So Joel Goldstein is a... Goldberg. Goldberg. Yes, Joel Goldberg. Joel something Jewish. Yes, that's right. That's right. Joel Jewish last name. He has a story.

Basically, what happened was management changed and new management came in that wasn't equipped in the same way to understanding the rhythms of what the audience want or respecting the audience whatsoever. Sorry, Leanna. Sorry, go ahead. I have something to add.

So I was told by the person in charge of programming, not the vice president of programming, but the person in charge of day-to-day programming, the person told me, our viewers are stupid and just want shit, so we're just going to give them shit. So any interest in producing anything of quality or intelligence or connection, out the window. Help me with the timelines.

Also recently, I'm here, I'm dropping some names, but Denise Donlin was over here recently. So in the timelines, because she leaves for Sony. That's right. Is it her successor or are we going further? It's her successor. Well, it's not her direct successor. It's someone who worked for her direct successor. Just in my mind, I'm trying to get the timelines of where it all falls.

Yeah, who had a tremendous amount of power. Okay, you're also talking about a period in history where media was changing significantly, and it very much affected music programming. And when much music should have gone one direction, meaning more internet-friendly, it went precisely the opposite. That's right. They became more and more of a walled garden instead of a space.

Like Much Music was what we'd call now a maker space. You know, a whole bunch of people came in and just made stuff that went directly to air. Every single day people could walk in off the street you know precisely that thing you were talking about earlier and instead of embracing that and going this is the future and we are going to make content that people can watch anywhere it's the content that matters so moving more towards interviews and live programming stuff that you can't get anywhere else and really going playing to those strengths they're like no we're gonna be glossier and we're gonna move more towards that youth lifestyle programming that mtv was doing with

a mass a much bigger u.s cable market and a lot more money yeah the the person i'm talking about had mtv on in the in the office and every time you went in they said why can't we do that we should do shows like that. And once you start following like that. You got five million dollars? Once you start following like that. So they used the excuse of the internet saying, well, the reason the numbers are going down is people don't want to watch music videos anymore.

Right. That was their excuse. The bullshit about that is that Leanna and I produced a show called Fromage every year. Which was the best. Thank you. People still love that show. Yeah, and Leanna never got enough credit for it. It wouldn't have happened without her. But that show used the same videos

that had been played to death all year long, over and over in high rotation. But we contextualized the videos differently. See, I'd go one step further. People were more friendly to those videos that were played to death, you know, A rotation, because they knew that shellacking

was coming at the end of the year. And it was a self-awareness that, yes, we are flogging this dead horse. Yeah, I looked forward to it every Christmas. It was a Christmas, New Year's tradition for people. We still hear that, that families watched it together, which is heartening. That's funny.

And it was also, dollar for dollar, their most successful in-house production. Wow. More than the MMVAs. But the point being that they didn't watch for the videos. They watched for what we did with the videos. They watched for how we interact and contextualize. They watched the VJs for how they contextualized

and interacted with music news and videos. This business about no one's watching music videos, well, it was never, if they thought that people were only watching for music videos, why didn't they just run music videos with no VJs? Like, it was just lazy. They were watching for the populism.

I mean, populism has a really bad name now. You hear these elitist shows just sneering the word, but populism has its place. The little guy, the little gal has to feel like somebody's still representing them. There's a bigger wave than that. But, you know, the people cannot feel like they don't matter in the grand scheme of things and what shows like fromage did what much music did back in the day with shows like rsvp with that interactivity they made regular people feel like they mattered periodically throughout the year that their viewpoints and their positions and they helped program the channel you know in that way they were completely interactive now uh steven liana i think it was about a year ago maybe less maybe it was last fall that uh that way. They were completely interactive. Now, Stephen, Leanna, I think it was about a year ago,

maybe less, maybe it was last fall, that Christopher Ward had his book launch. That's right, yeah. So I was invited there, because I had a whole PR kerfuffle with the Christopher Ward's PR that was pushing his book. Oh, no. So anyway, we ended up doing an episode together, but only because we cut

PR out of the loop. Yeah, that's Christopher. No fuss like that. So, and funny thing is, Jay Gold was like hosting that at night and I saw a lot of, I was there and Denise Donlan and Laurie Brown and Master T.

Master T. Tony. A lot of Ziggy. It was like a much music reunion, essentially. Yeah, people coming up and giving memories. So, how come you never went up? I wasn't asked. Because you just came to support?

Yeah, Leanna and I were just there to support. Well, I mean, they interviewed me for a bit of the book. Ed came in towards the very end of the period he was writing about. Right. Because it was a very specific period. But the interesting thing also is that when they had the book launch party by Penguin and CTV, all the VJs, even technical staff and stuff, were invited to this party.

Not me, not Leanna, neither of us. And when they did, Much Music did its, I don't know if it was 25th or 30th anniversary special, there was not one bit of Ed DeSoc in it. And if you ask them why, they say, there's so many good things, we couldn't include all of it, which is just bullshit. Yeah, that's like circling back.

A lot of people associate much music with Ed the Sock. So to have none of it in there, it's just ongoing. They've got some kind of problem. I think the problem is that Ed represents their lack of control. You know, Ed represents something that... There's something I noticed that even because you asked a question, and I believe it was in Ed's voice as opposed to your demeanor. Oh, there was something being yelled at.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not employees anymore. So I'm near the front. I'm like, Ed, the SOG is here. Like, I hear it. But they didn't bite on it. It seemed to me rather convenient that they didn't. That had nothing to do with it. I just sensed some cold shoulder coming your way. I wasn't happy. Thank you for that concern, but no.

From that group, never a cold shoulder. Not at all. That was absolutely just circumstance. I don't think they knew for sure if we'd be there. And prior to today, that was the only interaction I've ever had with Leanna. It was so memorable, you probably did not recall. That night was...

I was kind of having an allergy attack because of the theater it was in, so I don't really remember much of it. Was that the Royal? That was at the Royal, right? No, it was at the Hot Dogs. It's the Hot Dogs Theater now. The one at Bathurst and Ballure. The last time I was there was for a burlesque show. Why do I think it was at the Royal?

I think it was at the Royal. I think it was at the Royal. Was it on College? I'm trying to remember biking there. Oh, wait, you're right. It was on College. Because the Royal smells like mold.

You're right. It is on College. You're right. It wasn't the hot dogs. It was that one. Wow. I'm going to ask a question about my dear friend.

So you mentioned your YouTube issues and the cease and desist or whatever you called it, the copyright thing. Copyright strike. Right. And I have a friend,

Ed Conroy, who you might know better as Retro Ontario. very much. And he was on recently and actually last episode and he was telling his story about how,

you know, he shares lots of old copyrighted stuff from McDonald's or Coke or whatever. He's a treasure. Yeah. Quite honestly,

he's an anthropological treasure. He was a big part of that night, actually, we're talking about it. I just realized. Absolutely. And he works with, quite honestly. He's an anthropological treasure. He was a big part of that night, actually. We're talking about it. I just realized. I think he works with Jay Gould now. It all comes full circle. But Ed Conroy told me that only once

in his history, it was recent, he got the copyright claim or whatever was made by somebody. The person who did it was Frank D'Angelo. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Not terribly surprising. It was an old Apple Juice ad with Wendell Clark, like from 1997. Oh, he may not have the rights to run that anymore. That may have something to do with it. Because that was a very contained campaign. But the thing is, Ed actually explained to me that

you only get three strikes in this YouTube system. That's right. And then you're done. And it flushes everything. And you know, can you imagine the hours you talk about how long it is to edit your videos? Can you imagine how much time? I was thinking, Ed's got one strike now, thanks to Frank D'Angelo. And I bring it up now, not just because you mentioned your story with Bell Media

and that algorithm, but because Pucks and Beer on Twitter sent me a question for you. Pucks and Beer, which is a great Canadian handle there. Pucks and Beer. Pucks and Beer. Ed was on Being Frank. What is the connection? Frank seems to pop up on many of your podcasts.

I think what he's alluding to there is when I talk to somebody who has a Frank connection, I bring up frank d'angelo and i'm bringing it up with you now okay because you've both been on being frank yeah you were on once right leona oh i was on if you can call it that i mostly sat there he pays to have that aired on ch yes yeah and and he i'm just saying it's not it's not a organic to have guests on that can hear him talk about himself. Some people buy fast cars. Some people buy personal planes. Frank buys airtime.

And he's not hurting anyone with it. But the connection is that Frank, when they had Steelback Brewery that he ran, was a major sponsor of our show on City TV. And they paid their bills? Listen, that wasn't my department. I'm assuming so. Leanna, no idea. No, they did. And so the relationship began there.

And he started doing his show. And quite honestly, I mean, I thought, first of all, it was at a time where I wasn't doing much with it anyway. And you always want to keep your chops fresh. And I thought it was interesting that he was doing this in the basement of his restaurant. I wanted to take a look at how somebody would do that.

Now, he wound up doing it very expensively, so it wound up not giving me the... Because I was thinking about the FU Network even then. It would never do it that way. But that was the connection. And then it was sort of fun because Ed would take shots at Frank. I'm not sure Frank got them all the time, though I think that in the edited version,

a lot of those comments disappeared. Did you ever worry for your safety? No, never. No. Never. The thing about Frank, people need to realize, is Frank puts on a lot of bluster, but underneath it all, he's not a bad guy, a scary guy.

It's just a lot of Joe Pesci, wise guy, surface stuff. But Frank underneath it all, if I thought that he was what some people think he is, I would never have had anything to do with him. But the guy that I know actually has a pretty big heart. If you don't know him, some of the things he says... See, I don't know him. I guess he doesn't do himself favors sometimes with the way he comes across,

because he legitimately, as who he is, is a good guy. I'm actually surprised. I'm happy to hear this, but I am surprised. I was never poorly treated by Frank at all. He is a very difficult boss, I think, sometimes with people that were on the show. But that came from, and I can understand this, being the star of the show and being nervous and wanting everything to look good. And being Frank.

And being Frank. Because his name is on it, his face is on it, and if it doesn't go well or the way he likes, then he's the one that eats it, not the people behind the scenes. So I understand why he would be anxious. Lord knows that I indulged in that. I'm embarrassed about it now. But when you're younger, you lose a little bit of perspective. Or I did when I was younger. I lost some perspective about that stuff.

So, yeah, it happens. I do not believe that he is the person that some people think he is. Glad to hear that. You're welcome. I just want you to be honest. Have either of you ever seen a Frank D'Angelo movie? We've seen the trailers.

I don't think that counts, though. But no, as much as people dog on that show, we turned it on one night. We were in Niagara or something like that. We turned it on and it just happened to be on.

We couldn't stop watching. It was compelling. The trailer? The trailers. I want to see the movies. We couldn't stop watching. It was compelling. The trailer? The trailers. I want to see the movies. I don't know, but if you looked up Vanity Project

in the dictionary, I just see a picture of being Frank. See, I think Vanity Project gets a bad name, though. Okay, but he's singing? I don't know. I only read the reviews

because they entertain me. I've never actually seen a Frank Daniels movie. The thing about Vanity Project is Vanity Project can be seen as ego or they can be seen as someone who really believes in themselves enough to have invested their own money in producing it. Lord knows when I believed in Ed the Sock before other people did,

and I happened, I was fortunate, I ran a cable company. I could do that. I could make a show. But you could, you know, otherwise I would have, I guess, been going into the cable company and doing the show. And that would have been a vanity project in a sense, because you have to sometimes invest in your ideas till other people recognize that it's an idea you should invest in too. And Canada's terrible for eating its own when it comes to developing talent. And so that's why I jump on like, whoa, hey, let's talk. Because I have very dear friends.

Because I picture, remember the Simpsons when Monty Burns put together that movie for the film festival that's what I that's what I think but okay look those vanity projects

are actually paying people in creating jobs locally in an entertainment industry that desperately needed it at the time it's starting to recover now and also James Caan

probably needed some cash too well I mean and you know sure there's some of those faces that we haven't seen in a while that were on the show. You know, and listen, there's a tremendous stock in nostalgia these days.

For sure. I mean, Roseanne just announced it's coming back. The reality is, though, now nobody picks things up on spec. Nobody, you don't come in. Disney is one of the few companies that will develop a good idea. And so you have to have something produced so you can show it to somebody. Is that why everything now is a sequel or a reboot?

Yeah. Is that the, because it's proven, like it's road proven? Getting a new idea. You want a TV show, you want a film. The best thing to do is to make your own independent property. I mean, look at that show on Netflix, Dear White People. That was an independent film that they basically reshot as a Netflix series with a few different people, but they never would have picked that show up based on a pitch.

Yeah, pitches die in most places because whenever we've pitched something and the person in the room with us thinks it's great and says, okay, I'm going to bring this to the committee. I know, okay, thank you. I will not. This is dead. That's the circle back. Yeah, the circle back. Committees are where ideas go not just to die, but to be stabbed to death because nobody wants to be the one who seems like the cheery

fool who says, I really believe in this. Because they don't give a shit. They just don't want to green light something that's going to cost them their jobs. They don't give a shit about the quality of the production. It's easier for them to just all shit on something because then it's not made and they're not risking losing their jobs or getting in trouble for greenlighting something that didn't work.

Whereas TV, any creative industry, if you minimize risk too much, you have no product. I mean, you could say The Lord of the Rings was a giant vanity project on Peter Jackson's part. Like who in their right mind makes a movie like that and three at a time and you shoot it in New Zealand? Oh, what narcissism. You shoot it from the country you're in. But now he's a visionary, right? Like, oh, what a vanity project.

You want to make a personal computer that's graphically designed. There's a graphic interface and it's a single piece and it's actually something that looks cool in your home. What a vanity project on Steve Jobs and Steve wozniak's part right like things are vanity projects until they hit ed uh steven actually can i call you ed steven steven uh if if you got an offer for example let's say yeah i know you're not in the warmest terms of bill media but what's their uh streaming service called crave Crave TV, right? Crave TV, yeah.

If Crave TV wants to bring back Ed the Sock or something, would you consider abandoning your independent project for something like that where you maybe have less control? Or is it more important to you now that you own each part of your Ed the Sock productions? Well, we've always owned it. Even when it was with Chum and City and Much Music, we always owned Ed the Sock.

So there's no fear of giving it up. But you had full creative control throughout. Okay, so that's a deal breaker for you. Well, there's a price for everything. You have to be reasonable. People think, oh, Ed just said whatever he wants. No, you have to be reasonable. There are reasonable limits,

and there's reasonable business limits as well. You can't just, you know, a kite rises against the wind. You need a little bit of limit. And I have nothing against Bell Media. Right. Honestly, I have friends who work there. I see them struggling, certainly with the Much Music brand, which is now just Much.

I see them struggling with it, and I feel badly because I know we could fix it. But I have absolutely nothing against Bell Media. We have Crave TV at home. Yeah, they do some really interesting stuff. The Wire's on there. Yeah. Letter Kenny.

Yeah, we've got nothing against Bell Media or any big media. There is a really important place for them in the marketplace, bringing us those expensive shows. But while you like Cadillacs, there's got to be room for a Chevy. And right now, there's no Chevys. It's all Audis and high-end Maseratis. But there's no Chevy. And that's what we're building with the FU network. We're building the Chevy. More people drive Chevys.

And if they're smart, it's not either or. It's like we were saying earlier, people who want to watch things on the internet for various reasons because they're watching from Starbucks aren't going to watch Crave TV. That is, you know, I like my big screen TV at home. I want my, you know, 5.1 surround sound soundbar. You know, you want the big home theater experience. It's a very different way of watching content. There's no reason you can't do both with the right sort of production pipeline. Yeah. And the thing is that in the States, they've recognized that the value that is there in brands that people have already welcomed into their home and like, the value in revisiting that is strong. I mean, we've seen how many things have revived in the US. Fuller House, right? Yeah, Fuller House. The X-Files came back and may come back again.

Roseanne. There's so many things we could name. And yet in Canada, I always say that in Canada, we bury our treasures. And nobody in Canada is looking at – I mean, when I go to talk to development people, they're always like, what do you have that isn't Ed DeSoc? Like, they just don't want to talk to us. Is it some mentality of been there, done that? No, actually, quite the opposite.

I've never been told, well, we think that nobody's interested. What I've been told is your brand is too strong. One place actually told me your brand is too strong. Only a Canadian TV industry can that be a sentence that's uttered. But I think more people, they want to be responsible for bringing in something new, so they're the ones who get the credit for creating it. Listen, there's a great reality show, or type of reality

show, a Curb Your Enthusiasm type show out there that could have Ed and Red in it. A Canadian version of it, but one that's exportable, because we never did stuff that was parochially Canadian. They have not yet in Canada discovered the value Canadian version of it, but one that's exportable because we never did stuff that was parochially Canadian. But, you know,

they have not yet in Canada discovered the value in the inherent investment that's already been made in these products. So good on you, though, for going on your own and creating the FU network which will bring us Lady Bits. Yes, it will.

And then at some point when Lady Bits is rocking and rolling, you'll get back to live from Canada and you'll record it from my basement. From your basement. We're continuing live from Canada. That's not going away. We're going to take a hiatus while we find a new place and refurbish our equipment.

Oh, that's the first I'm hearing this. That's interesting. See, exclusive. We're going to check it out to Sean. I thought we were just going to do it off my computer at home. Who knows? We may do something. But the show will continue, and Lady Bits is a separate stream,

a separate production stream. That's why the Kickstarter is so important, just because we need to have funding coming in for the various projects. Right, diversify. We're reaching out now to libraries across the country, because the cable companies have closed their cable access stations. You mentioned you were, what was your terminology? You were managing a cable operation when

you started at the SOG. That's right. I don't know if that particular one, but I know in Durham region and Mississauga or whatever, they're shutting their doors, these cable tents. Yeah. I mean, they basically shut their doors years ago as far as a place that was alternative. So many of the people that have sat in this

basement and talked to me came from community programming. And I feel bad that it's disappearing. And so I've been in touch with libraries, some very successfully. We're having discussions about reviving or maintaining some level of community access in

those various communities through their libraries, many of which have audio-visual equipment themselves, but no structure for using it. But the community access I miss and that I would like to revive for the FU network is the idiosyncratic, interesting stuff, not the stuff that tries to polish itself so that it looks like everything else on television. Well, it also, those little mom-and-pop shops, you know, effective community newspapers, effective community advertising, that used to be the place they placed ads.

They still do that in the U.S. But now in Canada, what have you got? You have Twitter ads, which, okay, you make clocks how many of your, you know, potential customers are on Twitter. But then you have these massive, expensive national campaigns, and it doesn't do you any good if you're a brick-and-mortar shop to advertise in New Brunswick if you're in Richmond Hill.

And so this loss of community programming has really hurt those independent owner-operator businesses that could use geofenced advertising advertising for lack of a better term. I don't want to see that. I don't want to see what MuchMusic was go away and Canadians be deprived of that and new younger people never knew it. They deserve the chance to

I always say that I was in cable when it was the Wild West and MuchMusic and City TV when it was the Wild West and the order of the day was create, create, create. I want people who are younger people to have the chance to participate in that as well, to be encouraged to take creative risks. And that's why we're going to have FU network places through libraries, at least initially, across the country.

We want people to have the chance to get mentored in how to actually make media. It's not enough to have a phone that you can shoot things on and put on YouTube. How to make content good, it takes work. Because it's easy doesn't mean it's good. That's right. That's a good point. One last question for Ed the Sock. I don't know if he's here, but Ed the Sock is one.

This is by George James on Twitter. Ed the Sock is one. If he was a pair of socks, who would the other sock be? Is there a pair to Ed? We don't do ethnic humor. Well, it would be that evil alternate dimension Ed with the goatee. With the goatee, yeah. And he'd be nice.

And the different braid. He'd be nice and shy and quiet. That's like Wario, right? Wario? Yeah, like Wario to Mario. Exactly. Or that episode of South Park where they all have their doubles. So I want to just say,

at RedLianaK is her Twitter, at EdTheSock is Ed's, and LadyBits, we'll have Kickstarter, LadyBits, Liana Kersner. And please help us support the FU Network. And thank you guys for coming, and I'm going to repeat those Twitter handles in a second if you did miss them.

But Liana, did you have a good time in your first foray into the Yeah, and I didn't hit myself in the eye with this microphone, so I'm very proud of myself. Excellent mic technique. I tend to be a little bit klutzy with these things, and that's putting it lightly. And I'm sorry, Stephen, that

I gave you the crappy microphone. I broke your back trying to... That's okay. I had less to say. You said a lot in episode 94 where people are going to go right now and revisit that one. And that brings us to the end of our 237th show. You can follow me on Twitter.

I'm at Toronto Mike. Ed is at Ed the Sock. Leanna K is at Leanna K. It's so convenient. At Red Leanna K. Is that right? How did I screw that up? I thought I copied and pasted it. At Red Leanna K is at Leanna K. It's so convenient. At Red Leanna K. Is that right? How did I screw that up? I thought I copied and pasted it.

At Red Leanna K. Red Leanna K. And our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. And propertyinthesix.com. Propertyinthesix.com. Is at Brian Gerstein. See you all next week. Everything is coming up

rosy and gray Yeah, the wind is cold but the smell of snow won't stay today And your smile is fine and it's just like mine and it won't go away Cause everything is

rosy and gray Well I've been told that there's a sucker born every day But I wonder who Yeah I wonder who