MONDAY UPDATE: NORTH!

Sorry we weren’t able to get a BYAMPOD out this week. Life seems to be structured in such a way that if we dare to miss a day or two – such as last Thursday, for the h Natural gig – it throws everything into disarray. Also doesn't help if you're hungover the next day. 

I’ll be honest… after the last few weeks, and some of the comments about us online, I think a week of BYAMPOD ‘cooling off’ would benefit everyone!

Anyway.

We are away for much of this week; babysitting tomorrow, and then filming a bunch of stuff for Digitiser.

We were originally heading up to Cumbria for a single video, but the more I dug into the area we were going to, the more there were other places we couldn’t resist visiting.

It became a bit of a headache planning it all, and – don’t hate me - I ended up turning to ChatGPT to help.

It’s for this sort of thing that I find AI the most useful; I put in all the places we intended to visit, and then asked it to plot a route that made the most sense. For all the understandable, and utterly justified, fear around AI – especially in my industry - it still can be invaluable when it comes to making planning and research that much faster.

The route does mean we’ll be filming slightly out of sequence, but that’s what proper telly does anyway, right?

So, we’re starting off in the Yorkshire Dales, heading up to the Borders, crossing over into Scotland, back down to the Lake District, and then over to the west coast. Inevitably, we’ll end up having to drop some of the sequences we’ve got planned, but we’re nothing if not adaptable. 

If all goes roughly to plan, we should get three very different videos out of the trip.

We’re also going to try to do some sort of live stream in the next month – just to reconnect with the old desk format. We’ve also got a trip booked at the end of the month with Dan Does for a new Supernatural World. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get our dates to work to get it out in time for Halloween, but it’ll be out that same week.

DIGI LEVEL 2

Part of stockpiling all of this is so that I can spend a month getting Digi Level 2 finished. Trying to fit that in while also filming new Digi videos – and, y’know, life – is proving impossible, so I need to find a way to carve out some time. 

I’ve also finally decided that it’ll likely appear on its own channel – probably what is now our rarely-viewed second channel. That channel will get a rebrand, and any gaming stuff we’ve done in the past will move over to there too.

This will inevitably mean it’ll get a few less viewers, but I want to avoid a situation like last time where loads of gaming people swarm to the main channel, and our subscribers soar overnight, and then we get years of steady attrition as they become bewildered/annoyed with our subsequent direction. See also those who only tune into Digi for Gannon and Eli; there’s a lot of Cheapshow crossover in Digi Level 2.

In all honesty, after the long slog of trying to establish modern-era Digi, and discover what we want it to be – and with us finally, FINALLY seeing signs that we’re doing something right, and loving it, and that people might actually be watching for Sanja and I, rather than the guests, I just don’t want to muddy the waters any further for the time being. 

Righty. I need to finish up my notes and pack some shirts. Keep an eye on my Instagram for pics throughout the week, and I'll be back with another update before the weekend.

Paul