► Tell us about you and your podcast
‘Mary Farfisa’s Outer Space Radio Theater’ is a series of sci-fi comedy radio plays for children.
Mary Farfisa is an eight-year-old space-girl who travels the Galaxies on her space-horse, Briscoe. She goes from planet to planet, searching for “songs and sounds and music and noise” to share with the rest of the Universe. Mary catches the songs and sounds and music and noise in her “audio lasso.” Then she brings them to the Listener’s Library – an intergalactic collection of sounds, curated by music-loving super-beings called the Listeners.
Mary’s musical assignments take her many places: to a planet of living bells… into the past to collect the sounds of vanished interplanetary dinosaurs … and to a space rodeo on an asteroid, where music students rope, ride and catch the musical instruments they dream of playing in an orchestra.
The scripts are realized by a full cast of voice actors, with original songs and sound effects. Each episode is a half hour long.
► Why & how did you start this podcast?
I have been a cartoonist, writer and illustrator for decades. Mary Farfisa is the “audio cartoon” I’ve always wanted to make. I created the show, I write all the scripts, and I play the role of Briscoe the Spacehorse.
I’m old enough to have seen the first airing of Charles Schulz’ ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ in 1965. I was seven years old. I really loved it! It made me want to create my own cast of cartoon characters, and tell their stories in comic books, and animation.
‘Mary Farfisa’s Outer Space Radio Theater’ was born in 2016, when a new community radio station, Radio Sunnyside, opened up in my hometown of Flagstaff, Arizona. They were looking for new shows to air.
I’d been drawing Mary Farfisa comics since 2012, and I thought it had the makings of a great radio series for kids. I pitched Mary Farfisa to Radio Sunnyside, and they were very receptive. Mary Farfisa ran for two years as a weekly Saturday morning show.
The first two shows were done live. After that, I started producing them ‘in studio’ and went to the station every week to put them on air. I also played a half hour of songs and comedy records kids after each episode. I reached out to local actors and musicians to play all the parts. It was all on a volunteer basis. I was very fortunate to find so many talented people to bring the scripts to life.
In 2018, I discontinued the show on Radio Sunnyside. I had over thirty finished half-hour radio plays by then, and hours of recorded but unproduced audio material.
In 2020, I re-edited all the existing shows into thirty half-hour podcasts, and launched Mary Farfisa as a podcast. The show has gathered an enthusiastic group of listeners in its new life, and it’s gratifying that my locally produced radio show now has listeners literally all over the world.
► How'd you find the time and funding to do this podcast?
Time management can be a challenge, as I do have a regular nine to five job, in addition to freelance art commissions I do in the evenings. I spend a lot of time re-mixing and reefing the original plays. I also do a lot of artwork to promote the podcast, and a Mary Farfisa comic book series online at tapas.io/jimcheff.
The saving grace, I suppose, is that I have been working on Mary Farfisa material since 2012. I have piles of sketchbooks, notes, and recorded bits of material to draw form to create finished material.
I now release a new podcast episode every two weeks. The podcast is now on at Kids Listen, Itunes, Listen Notes, Spotify and Crater Community Radio. I am also mixing new Mary Farfisa episodes from the hours of unused material I have in the Mary Farfisa ‘archives.’
The show has no advertisers, and is funded by myself, so it is produced on a modest budget. The justification for this is that there are few things I can spend my money on that are this much fun to do.
The show has always been produced on a modest budget. It is recorded and edited in my small home recording studio, on a Mac, with a Yeti microphone. The actors have all been volunteers, but my wife always put out a big spread of home-cooked food for every Tuesday night recording session.
► What do you gain from podcasting?
Financially, not too much. I decided not to deal with the complexities of sponsorship and advertising when I launched Mary Farfisa as a podcast. I hope that the podcast will attract listeners to the Mary Farfisa books and coloring books, which I do sell online on Amazon, and at my online shop (pfminimart.com/stores/jim-cheff-comics-and-books). I also accept commissions for art and illustrations, and would love to provide artwork for other podcasters who might see my artwork for Mary Farfisa (jimcheff.portfoliobox.net).
An album of songs from the show, ‘Songs and Sounds and Music and Noise,’ is currently for sale on Bandcamp. But the proceeds for this will be donated to a children’s charity. It’s always a good thing to contribute to worthy causes, but in this case it also allows me to avoid the complexities of distributing income to the many talented people who collaborated on the songs. I think we are all fine if some money from the show goes back to the kids we worked so hard to entertain.
As a podcast, downloads were modest for the first few episodes. But they increased dramatically as I added the RSS feed to more and more platforms, like Kids Listen, Itunes, Spotify and Listen Notes.
I got a big bump this summer, when the School Library Journal included Mary Farfisa in two consecutive lists of recommended podcasts for kids. Then Apple Podcasts included the show in a list of their recommended Kids and Family shows, and the downloads really increased, as did the number of followers.
The podcast now gets around 300 downloads a month -- modest by Internet standards, but still satisfying, and the number is increasing every week. I’ve also made some lovely contacts with other children’s podcasters, and become involved in cross-promoting Mary Farfisa with other great kid shows like ‘Buttons and Figs.’
► How does your podcasting process look like?
I had promised Radio Sunnyside a new Mary Farfisa play every week for the first seven shows. The pace was a little insane! But the cast became a more efficient team with each play we did. There was the ‘core’ cast of Cara Alboucq, Leslie Baker, Katie King, Nancy Andrews and April Stalder and myself. We were always joined by two or three ‘guest’ actors. I would mail out scripts just ahead of our recording sessions.
We would get together at 7:00 pm on Tuesday nights, and by the end of the evening, another Mary Farfisa episode had been completed. In a lot of cases, the smaller roles were not given out till everyone had arrived, and my living room would be buzzing with people coming up with weird voices, or working out how to make a crazy sound. It was hectic, but a lot of fun.
Neighbors grew accustomed to see cast members’ cars gather outside, and watch them enter and exit our little house with scripts, musical instruments, kids, and pets, even.
I would call the actors into the recording room in small groups. We would work through the script in order, page by page. Between their scenes, the actors would sit in the living room and enjoy the food and each other’s company.
After the recording, I would spend the rest of the week reviewing and editing the dialog, and adding sound effects and music before the show would air on Saturday.
As improvised as the execution of the plays could be, we always worked from a tight, finished script. And I had always been clear on the tone of the show, and the direction the stories would or would not, take.
‘Mary Farfisa’s Outer Space Radio Theater’ would depict Outer Space as a fun, creative place, full of artists, poets, musicians and dreamers. There would be no space battles and very few real villains. Characters might behave badly, but there would be no violence, and no problems that couldn’t be solved through peaceful measures. Outer Space would be a place where the Imagination had room to stretch out, and grow as big as it needed to be.
► How do you market your show?
The podcast is now on Kids Listen, Itunes, Listen Notes, Spotify and Crater Community Radio. I maintain a Mary Farfisa Facebook page, where I post artwork and announcements for each show. But I find word of mouth and personal networking to be a better tool for growing and maintaining an audience.
► What advice would you share with aspiring (new) podcasters?
Learn to speak effectively about your show. Become comfortable talking about it. No matter what venues you use to approach your show, a listener’s first encounter with it will begin with your description. Preparing an ‘elevator pitch’ is extremely helpful. Be able to describe your show in a few quick, memorable sentences. We all have tons of things to say about our podcasts, but a few concise, well-worded sentences will make people want to listen than a meandering, nebulous description of everything you ever wanted your show to be.
Add your RSS feed to as many podcast platforms as you can. But don’t rely too much on social media to build your audience. Simply being ‘online’ is not enough. Word of mouth is often more effective in building an audience.
And, reach out to other creators! Cross promotion and one on one networking can have amazing results – and, make the whole podcasting experience a lot more fun.