DAVID EDGAR: RUNNIN ‘ DOWN A DREAM – PART 3
This week, with Rangers heading out for the Florida cup in Orlando, I have decided to mix it up a touch.
I spoke with David Edgar, former spokesman of the Rangers trust and, for the last seven years, the voice of Heart & Hand.
Heart & Hand’s flagship shows on a Monday and Friday, attracts audiences of well over 100,000, and can also boast to hold the most downloaded podcast episode ever in Scotland, following a recent interview with ex-Rangers player Kevin Thomson.
Recently Heart & Hand evolved to a new subscription platform, one that provides daily updates and a varying mix of content. So you can go to @rangersnewsuk for your articles and Heart & Hand for breaking news and everything else.
We have covered many topics from the evolution of the podcast, to what’s coming up next, and a host of other topics in a four part special.
We now look at upcoming shows and just how the ideas came about.
MORE RANGERS STORIES
SH: You mentioned the success of the Advocaat Years show, was that something you had the idea for first before the idea of a subscription service? And how do you get ideas for shows?
DE: I toyed with the idea of the subscription service for a long time but I never felt the time was right but then once we decided to do it we thought: Well, what are we going to do that’s different? Well the daily update, that is easy, but what else? What do we not do on the show? We had not done historical stuff up until that point so we thought why not give it a go.
Someone suggested the Advocaat Years and, again, this is the good thing about having people to bounce ideas off. Wee Stuart, who is a friend of mine, said to me: “You know I’ve been doing loads of research into that period, I’m really into it.” And then it hit me. Me and Hoggy can do the old guy thing because we lived through it but there will be a lot of fans who didn’t get to see it live, like Stuart as a younger, so why don’t we do that.
The head to heads, that was from a friend of mine who said I’ve got an idea for a show. All the shows we’re doing at least start off with that idea, if you like, with a section, history, event dates, comedy etc. You start off with a genre then go: OK well what can we talk about here?
SH: Have you got any ideas for upcoming shows and what we can expect next?
DE: It goes again right back to what I said at the start. Are you interested in it? Do you want to talk about it? If you don’t, why are you bothering? So, for instance, I wouldn’t talk about something I didn’t have any interest in. Like a guy said to me that he’d love a show every week about the Rangers’ youth teams and I’ll need to get someone to do that because it’s not something I’ve ever followed.
SH: It’s got to be something your passionate about.
DE: Exactly and I know there are guys out there who follow them. So if any of those people out there read this and want to do a show, then get in contact with me.
Advocaat was coming up to 20 years so we thought let’s do that and this year we’ll be doing the UEFA cup run in 2008. We will do that on the night of each game and we will correspond with something ten years ago all the way up to the final.
So, there are always opportunities to do things but the idea is that somebody will say something like: What about this for a format? The great thing is we can do trial and error if it isn’t working.
I’m surprised that people took so well to the Advocaat Years as we had so many worries about it. That’s kind of strange, you know, two guys talking about it and one guy asking questions but it worked and people liked it. Someone said in the comments box last week: “I love the fact that wee Stuart mentioned at the end of episode 3, well that’s us at the end of August,” but it was never planned, it’s just the way it came out.
I was worried, Steven, that it was too slow. I’d say to listeners: “Do you want us to speed this up? Do you want us to do this month by month and we’ll just rattle through everything?” They responded with: “But then you won’t be able to talk about the things that you are branching off to talk about.” So, we’ve just listened to them. OK, if that’s what they want, then that’s what we’ll do.
SH: Your q&a format on international weeks have proved another huge success, how did that come about?
DE: Again, what came out of the pod was that was that people were asking questions about the show and I said OK let’s do a Q&A, let’s do a bonus show, we’ll add something else and, again, that’s just about the evolution and about having the site that one guy controls. I.e. that means that we can do stuff instantly and we can change on the hop and that, I think, is really important and I am very pleased with the reaction.
My thank you, again, to David. Please let us know your thoughts. We will be back with our final instalment tomorrow, covering the live shows and a host of other topics.
If you’ve missed any of the instalments just head over to @Rangersnewsuk or either of the Twitter feeds below:
@steven_harrigan
@rangersnewsuk
@ibroxrocks
Steven Harrigan.