The End of Fan Audio News Source Coming?
(source: Fan Audio News Source, 05-17-07)

In the wake of the end of ChronoRadio (the first Rayzur's Edge Audio radio show to begin in 2002, but the third to have no ended behind the ill-fated Other Voices and full run of Fan Audio Made Easy), Nathan P. Butler of Rayzur's Edge Audio is now reconsidering the viability of Fan Audio News Source (FANS).

FANS began last September to act as a news recap program for Star Wars Fanworks, and came to include four segments per episode: news (recapping news already presented on Fanworks, one month at a time); answers to fan audio questions; a featured fan audio project; and an audio checklist of that month's Star Wars fan audio releases. The series has thus far run for eight episodes, covering news from August 2006 through April 2007.

Butler's current assessment, based on limited but elaborate feedback, is that the series' audience is generally only those who already visit the Fanworks website enough to make the news segment redundant, while the checklist, in and of itself, is not anything more than what one can easily keep track of via the Fanworks site or more elaborate podcatching software like iTunes.

The Answers to Your Fan Audio Questions segment, in many ways, was meant to expand upon topics listeners wanted to learn about that were not otherwised covered in Fan Audio Made Easy. However, most questions are now being generated by the host, due to lack of audience questions. Butler feels that this would be something better served through some other kind of tutorial project in the future, if warrarted.

Meanwhile, the featured project notion has gotten a great boost recently with discussion about a possible new project from Things are Looking Up's Jim Perry, currently entitled the Fan Audio Journal, which would act as a sort of retrospective feature series about the genre, featuring various projects. Even before considerations about the end of FANS, this concept was intriguing enough to Butler to begin planning to remove the featured project segment from FANS in deference to Fan Audio Journal.

In other words, for various reasons, including those above, it is likely, at this point, that Fan Audio News Source will soon be cancelled. Best estimates suggest that the series will either end with its current release (FANS #8) or possibly continue for one more episode, though the former option is more likely.

We'll keep you informed as things develop.