A podcast about two gays that have come out late and discuss navigating through life in the gay world over a bottle of wine
"...make sure you take time to really hone in on what it is you want, the content and what you want to get out of it."
Today Ronnie Malyon and Danny Avital, the creators of Read Between The Wines share their story of comedy podcast.
► Tell us about you and your podcast
Our names are Ronnie Malyon and Danny Avital and we are the hosts of Read Between The Wines. The podcast centres around two gay guys who are a couple and have come out of the closet quite late in life and talk about their lives now as gay guys and learning to navigate life in the gay world (from the outrageous and explicit to the utterly hilarious) all over a bottle of wine.
As two members of the gay community who have unfortunately faced some negative hostility in our lives and appreciate the world is tough at the moment so our podcast is all about having fun and seeing the lighter side of life. Most LGBT podcasts we listen to are quite serious in tone so for us we really wanted ours to be a tongue in cheek/see the lighter side of life and have a platform to be as scandalous, hilarious and sometimes explicit.
Our listeners are pretty much a 50/50 mix of female and male. Initially we started the pod to appeal to members of the LGBTQ community however we have realised that a lot of women love the podcast too.
► Why & how did you start this podcast?
Our podcast was always created to give us a sense of escapism from life which is a pretty tough gig for everyone. As two former 'heterosexuals' we wanted to create a platform to discuss our experiences navigating through the gay world (from the good to the bad) and have others that either can relate or those who admire and are curious to hear what we get up to.
We have listened to many podcasts run by gay hosts and a lot of the podcasts are very serious in tone and tackle hard hitting subjects which of course is very important but for us we wanted to give people a sense of escapism with us and just listen to the funny side of life.
We initially started the podcast with two tiny mics and a desk and had hopes of just getting an episode out. Since then through our own work we have built our own studio and have had a successful live podcast recording in London. We have big hopes and ambitions of success ,we really want to get this podcast out to everyone and dream of continuing success with the podcast and also future live shows.
The idea of doing the podcast began in January 2023 and took 4 months of working out how we wanted it to run, logistics of the pod, subject matter, intended audience etc. We launched the 1st episode in April 2023.
► How'd you find the time and funding to do this podcast?
Funding is all self funded, we felt strong on doing this as we were initially doing this podcast for us and an escape from our lives so the podcast has been completely self funded which we are very proud of.
We release an episode typically once a week, if we are away we sometimes have a short break but typically it's once a week. In terms of producing an episode this typically begins straight after we record the previous episode. The start of the week will typically be a round up of the news and we begin to map out the podcast. We have meetings together to discuss our ideas for the episode, we take notes all week about the week we have had along with any specific things or people we need to shout out. We also gather stories from listeners that reach out to us ready for us to read these out in the segment. By Friday we finalise the episode ready to record Monday.
We both do work full time so it's difficult to fit it in but we love our podcast and work really hard on it so we do find the time, do we have time to sleep? Maybe not but we ensure the podcast is always factored into our week and lives.
Everything is self funded and from hosting and editing. We bought the equipment, the studio lighting, the recording equipment, and editing software. We self-fund our live shows and self fund anything we need to evolve the podcast. We have spent around £6000 on this and all are self funded.
► What do you gain from podcasting?
I think for us, hearing and seeing people who have listened reach out to us to say they love the episodes and seeing us totally fill a venue for our live episode gives us the biggest sense of satisfaction and pride which is the main thing we gain from this podcast. The goal is to reach more people which would also be an important gain for us.
We do not take sponsorship currently but am not ruling this out ,we would enter to sponsorship with relevant sponsors.
Podcasting benefits us because it brings people together, from people in the LGBTQ community as well as allies and fans of us.
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► How does your podcasting process look like?
We upload our podcast on to the Spotify for podcasters tool and the RSS feed links this to all other streaming platforms. We use a mix of microphones and sound editing hardware.
We do not have guests however we read out stories and confessions from others. We would not rule out guests in the future.
► How do you market your show?
Listeners are mainly from Spotify and apple podcasts however we do have people listeners from other web browser platforms. Current stats are 55.9% from Spotify, 24.3% from apple podcasts, 13.4% from web browsers and 6.4% from others.
Listeners can find out shows from our link tree on our socials as well as our TikTok page and our page on X. I don't think our socials are the most useful anymore .
► What advice would you share with aspiring (new) podcasters?
My advice would be, if you have a dream about starting a podcast please go for it, make sure you take time to really hone in on what it is you want, the content and what you want to get out of it.
Connect with other podcasters, don't be afraid to ask questions, get help and opinions and most importantly keep your passion alive and at the forefront of your mind.
We have faced barriers since starting our journey, sound issues, slow stats on some weeks as well as having to balance this with our full time work, but as i have said remember why you are doing it, its because what you love.
► Where can we learn more about you & your podcasts?
Host:
https://www.instagram.com/ronniemalyon/
https://www.instagram.com/a_vital_danny
Tiktok: @RBTWOFFICIAL
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