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| Henry Winkler and Peter Scolari on Happy Days. |
I edit the holy hell out of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast. We record the shows on Saturdays at noon and talk for about 35-40 minutes. That recording then gets whittled down to about 20 minutes of usable audio, which I then augment with about five minutes worth of clips from Happy Days plus various other movies, songs, commercials, etc. This includes the closing music, which I try to keep under a minute. The end goal is a show that runs about 25 minutes total.
I don't think a podcast about Happy Days should run significantly longer than the actual show. Minus commercials, an episode of the ABC sitcom runs about 25 minutes, so I use that as a template for our podcast. In its early episodes, These Days Are Ours was much more slow-paced and rambling, but now I try to be more respectful of the listener's time. I'm glad that anyone listens to TDAO. I don't want to overstay my welcome.
Some of the pruning is obvious. I try to get rid of as much vocal static ("uh," "um," "well," "like," "you know," etc.) as I can without making us sound like robots. Both my cohost and I flub our lines quite a bit, and there are plenty of awkward pauses and dead spaces. It's a tougher call when it comes to digressions from the main topic. This week, for instance, our review of Season 10's "May the Best Man Win" led to a lot of side topics. In editing this edition of the podcast, I chopped out (or severely limited) our discussions of: Elizabeth Taylor's career, Wagner's "Bridal Chorus," marriage manuals, Tom Bosley's real-life parenting skills, and mambo music.
Did I make the right call in getting rid of this material? Or was I correct to keep things short and sweet? Judge for yourself by pushing the play button below.