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The Pinball Show Ep 173 BONUS: Diving Deeper Into The Future Of The Pinball Network... Or Lack Thereof?!

Pinball Show Patreon Feed·podcast_episode·36m 47s·analyzed·Apr 8, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Pinball Show hosts reflect on five-year TPN shutdown: success, burnout, and lessons learned.

Summary

Dennis Kusel and Zach Manning discuss the dissolution of The Pinball Network (TPN), a five-year-old content creator collective founded in 2020. The hosts reflect on TPN's origins, early success during the pandemic, administrative burdens, interpersonal conflicts, and eventual decision to wind down operations. They detail the stress of managing a volunteer-driven network, the failed streaming initiatives, podcast RSS management challenges, and the controversial Pinball Awards project before concluding that TPN's original purpose has been served.

Key Claims

  • TPN was officially launched in February 2020, with a surge of interest during pandemic lockdowns

    high confidence · Dennis and Zach discussing founding timeline; lockdowns happened end of March 2020

  • The five founding members of TPN were Zach Manning, Dennis Kusel, Greg Bone, Jason Faller, and Ken Cromwell

    high confidence · Zach and Dennis explicitly naming founding team members early in conversation

  • Even the lowest-performing TPN podcasts guaranteed 1,000+ listens per episode in the first year

    medium confidence · Dennis stating 'our worst podcast on the network, everyone had over 1,000 listens an episode' within first week

  • Ken Cromwell left TPN within approximately the first 10 episodes after taking a job at Jersey Jack Pinball

    high confidence · Dennis and Zach recalling early departures: 'Ken got a job at JJP before we even really – within the first ten episodes'

  • An unnamed entity made a buyout offer for TPN during the pandemic era, contingent on the founders continuing The Pinball Show

    medium confidence · Dennis mentioning 'a buyout offer' which Zach and he declined because they didn't want to be 'beholden to some company'

  • TPN faced organized opposition in its early days, including accusations of excluding women despite Crystal Gimnick's involvement

    medium confidence · Zach recounting 'an aggressive campaign deliberately designed to try and destroy the network in its infancy' with false exclusion claims

  • The announcement of TPN's dissolution was leaked via Triple Drain Podcast before the official rollout plan was executed

    high confidence · Dennis describing confusion when Joel, Travis, and Tom announced they were leaving TPN on Triple Drain: 'this was sloppy' compared to their planned announcement

  • The 2024 Pinball Awards was TPN's final major project, held at Pin Barn with Spooky sponsorship and live production

    high confidence · Both hosts discussing 'that last year we did it, we went to the pin barn' with positive reception and exhaustion afterward

Notable Quotes

  • “Peak TPN was probably...the Stern sponsorships and all that for the streamers that you put together. That was like our last big, ambitious effort as a network.”

    Dennis Kusel@ 7:10 — Identifies the high-water mark of TPN's operational scope before decline

  • “I have never been as miserable in pinball as I was when we founded TPN. 100% agree. It was the closest I ever came to quitting.”

    Zach Manning and Dennis Kusel@ 9:56 — Reveals emotional toll of founding period, acknowledges mutual distress and near-exits

  • “I started recording with you weekly, and it burned me out so bad...I just realized it was that I was spending so much time on TPN that I hated pinball.”

    Dennis Kusel@ 15:23 — Demonstrates burnout scale; shows how TPN work invaded core hobby enjoyment

  • “Why are we fighting one another? What is going on here? Let's all join up and then we can do more as a team than we can individually...that was my big dream.”

    Zach Manning@ 2:21 — Articulates original vision and motivation for creating TPN as industry collective

  • “It's like running a guild in an MMO or something...it's just so, my God, all this stuff that – it was not fun to manage.”

    Dennis Kusel@ 19:57 — Captures organizational fatigue and ongoing administrative burden metaphor

  • “They came out, and they said that they were leaving TPN. And I messaged Joel, and I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? Because the thought was, let's not be the ones then to ruin the plan about saying TPN is going away.”

    Dennis Kusel@ 26:38 — Reveals miscommunication chaos around dissolution announcement; shows frustration with uncontrolled narrative

  • “The juice wasn't worth the squeeze...we know that it's not really needed anymore.”

Entities

The Pinball Network (TPN)organizationZach ManningpersonDennis KuselpersonGreg BonepersonJason FallerpersonKen CromwellpersonCrystal GimnickpersonJosh JacobspersonAmanda HamiltonpersonDavid Dennisperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Five-year TPN collective formally dissolving after experiencing administrative burnout, member attrition, and loss of original collaborative vision

    high · Hosts confirm decision to end TPN operations; announcement leaked via Triple Drain before official plan; both hosts express relief and fatigue

  • ?

    community_signal: TPN faced deliberate, organized campaign to damage network during founding era with false accusations of excluding women despite having female participants

    medium · Zach: 'an aggressive campaign deliberately designed to try and destroy the network in its infancy'; Dennis lost faith in 'content people' he thought were friendly

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Three of five founding members (Greg Bone, Jason Faller, Ken Cromwell) departed within first ~10 episodes; later shows attributed to stress/opportunity conflicts

    high · Dennis: 'Ken got a job at JJP before we even really – within the first ten episodes. So then he was gone and it was just me and you'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Manual RSS feed management for individual podcast feeds consumed substantial weekly labor; hosting platform lacked API integration, requiring weekly manual processing

    high · Dennis: 'Zach multiple times a week is getting an email upload this podcast...I have to go to my computer and manually make the independent RSS feed connection'

  • ?

    industry_signal: Volunteer-driven content creator network model proved unsustainable due to uneven commitment, member non-compliance with collaborative terms, and free-rider dynamics

Topics

TPN founding, vision, and original missionprimaryPandemic era surge in demand and network growthprimaryStreaming infrastructure and monetization challengesprimaryPodcast RSS management and technical burdenprimaryAdministrative burnout and interpersonal conflictprimaryEarly hostile campaign against TPN and exclusion accusationsprimaryStern sponsorship initiative and streamer commitmentsprimaryPinball Awards as flagship TPN project and industry contributionprimaryNetwork member compliance and collaborative spirit erosionsecondaryBuyout offer and independence decisionsecondary

Sentiment

mixed(0.35)— Hosts express pride in accomplishments (Pinball Awards, initial growth, helping new creators) but overwhelming tone is regretful exhaustion and frustration with management burden, interpersonal conflict, and member non-compliance. Nostalgia and defensiveness about early criticism mixes with relief at closure. Final sentiment: network served its purpose and dissolution is appropriate, though both hosts acknowledge significant emotional and time investment with limited reciprocal commitment from members.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.110

0:00
Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised. Thanks again for the ongoing support as a Pinball Show Club member. Enjoy this exclusive TPS content and make sure to visit the Pinball Show Club Discord to chat about the bonus material. All right, Dennis, now's the time. These exclusive club members want to hear all there is to hear about what in the hell is going on with TPN, the Pinball Network. It all blew up. It's dead. Now that is the sky is falling.
0:30
It is on fire. We set fire to it. Yeah, but it's not due to tariffs. And we're standing outside of the building. You've got a stogie in your mouth, and I've got a can of gasoline with big-ass villain smiles on our face. No. So what happened? We had five years in the pinball network. We created this thing. Do you remember the initial push for this? We're not going to go through all of it. I do. We're not going to go through all of it. So my part in it initially, you had reached out to me because we had been – at this point, we were – well, you had always been the regular host, but I was now consistently doing Twip podcast with you.
1:11
And so you had mentioned to me that you weren't going to continue with that and that you wanted to form up something new and that you had gathered a team, a crack team of people. And that crack team of people – like a heist i like it turned out to be greg bone yeah and jason faller oh the faller and ken cromwell oh yeah and then adding me in so and so we had all these conversations and the you're big because of course it's always a zach thing it's always gonna be zach's big dream
1:42
so zach's big dream was what if there was this network of pinball content creators that would come together help each other out help promote each other's materials uh you know and we could about combining our efforts for revenue sharing and all – basically this idea just like this collective that would try and make content creation better in pencil. Like a bigger push for us media creators, hobbyists that we have a say. It was getting so petty in the – remember the landscape was getting real petty.

Zach Manning@ 29:19 — Summarizes economic and practical reasoning for TPN closure; suggests network's original purpose fulfilled

  • “I will argue with full bias that it is the best online pinball show or award show that has ever happened in this hobby.”

    Dennis Kusel@ 23:34 — Reflects pride in Pinball Awards execution as tangible TPN legacy achievement

  • “We had clear terms when everybody joined...People would forget and not do it. And time would pass.”

    Dennis Kusel@ 19:01 — Identifies pattern of member non-compliance and erosion of collaborative commitment over time

  • “I'm not sure we should keep TPN around. It feels like we're just treading water here.”

    Anonymous admin team member@ 25:30 — Catalyzing comment from within admin team that triggered formal dissolution discussion

    • George Fisher
    person
    Joelperson
    Travis Murieperson
    Tomperson
    Jeffperson
    This Week in Pinball (TWIP)organization
    The Pinball Showproduct
    Silver Ball Chronicles/Storiesproduct
    Final Roundproduct
    Pinball Awardsevent
    Jersey Jack Pinball (JJP)company
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Spooky Pinballcompany
    Pin Barnvenue
    Triple Drain Podcastproduct

    high · Dennis: 'We had clear terms when everybody joined...People would forget and not do it' and members avoided promoting other TPN content despite explicit agreement

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Hosts experienced severe burnout (Dennis: 'hated pinball'; 'closest I ever came to quitting') but now express relief at closure and perspective that TPN's purpose was fulfilled

    high · Dennis reducing from weekly to biweekly shows to recover sanity; final statement: 'the juice wasn't worth the squeeze' and 'we know that it's not really needed anymore'

  • ?

    content_signal: TPN podcast network achieved significant listener baseline during pandemic (1,000+ per episode minimum) and helped launch new creators onto established RSS feed, validating initial podcast strategy

    high · Dennis: 'Even our worst podcast...everyone had over 1,000 listens an episode...within that first period' and benefited from Pinball Show's existing audience

  • ?

    product_strategy: TPN's Pinball Awards (2+ years) became flagship project with improved curation methodology (expert panels vs. popularity voting); 2024 event at Pin Barn praised as best online pinball award show produced

    high · Dennis: 'I will argue with full bias that it is the best online pinball show or award show that has ever happened in this hobby' with professional production and Spooky sponsorship

  • ?

    design_philosophy: TPN's original philosophy was collective action to offset power imbalance with manufacturers and media fragmentation; Zach wanted unified network for mutual promotion and revenue sharing

    high · Zach: 'What if there was this network of pinball content creators...we could do more as a team than we can individually...that's what other industries do, why don't we do that'

  • ?

    community_signal: TPN dissolution announcement mishandled when Triple Drain hosts announced their departures before official TPN shutdown announcement was issued, creating perception of drama and unplanned exit

    high · Dennis: 'this was sloppy' compared to their plan; people now think 'there's drama' when reality was coordinated exit; final round host may not know about shutdown

  • ?

    business_signal: During pandemic era, unidentified entity made acquisition offer for TPN, contingent on founders continuing The Pinball Show; offer declined to maintain independence

    medium · Dennis: 'there was an entity that made a buyout offer...they wanted us to continue doing the pinball show...we would want to break away...we don't want to be beholden to some company'

  • ?

    product_concern: TPN's streaming initiative failed due to Twitch's inability to split revenue by individual streamer, scheduling inconsistency from members, and Zach's burnout managing sponsorship compliance

    high · Dennis: 'Twitch doesn't break it down like that' by streamer; 'people would like try and fade them out' TPN logos; Stern sponsorship era was 'big stressor' and 'draining'

    • 2:17
    It was almost like battle where it's like, wait a minute. Why are we fighting one another? What is going on here? let's all join up and then we we can do more as a team than we can individually fighting one another with or against these manufacturers like we can we can really that's what other industries do why don't we do that that was my and i remember my response because at the time i was like why can't we just have a podcast so was too you're like damn it no i i remember i was like the
    2:49
    The biggest naysayer. Pepperidge Farm remembers. I was the biggest naysayer. Anyway, but my view lost, so we put it all together. And to be fair, from the get-go, it never worked the way we wanted it ideally to. And the reason I say that is because we had two different paths. It's a bifurcated network, basically. There's the streaming path and there's the podcasting path. We had a kind of a video path. That was when – but it wasn't focused. Yeah, there was. I mean, we thought it would be even bigger.
    3:21
    But what people knew us for has been these two paths. The podcast path went pretty much how we thought it would, but the streaming did not. And that really came down to Twitch because we thought about, well, can we – the thinking was maybe streaming all on a combined channel. And we did a little bit of that with like restreaming stuff. Eventually, that was a big experiment that was very draining for Zach actually. uh but before that oh with the uh with the sponsorship yeah yeah yeah yes it gave incentives
    3:52
    but before that we thought well what if everyone had their channel but maybe like one day a week they streamed on tpn and all that the the problem was you know they're all monetized and so thought was well we could monetize the tpn channel which we could like we easily met the criteria but how do you split that money up on youtube you can actually track how much money is made by video and And so you could actually say, hey, they streamed this video, this live stream. They get that money because TPN wasn't going to keep any of it. It was going to go to the content creators.
    4:24
    But Twitch doesn't break it down like that. So we ended up just like doing our logo on the streams. Like you put the TPN logo on if you're a TPN streamer. And that's really all we did with that. And then with the podcast, it went much more to fruition the way we thought. We were removing a big barrier for people. They've never podcast before. They don't know they're going to stick with it. They don't have to pay anything. We have one combined host. And so we put that out with a combined RSS. And the idea there wasn't just absolving the issue with the hosting fees, but rather with everyone on the same network, on the same RSS feed, you will benefit.
    5:03
    Like, quite bluntly, they would benefit from the pinball show being a popular show. That was the idea. And because we already knew that the TWIP podcast was a pretty popular podcast. We're a known commodity. A lot of these were newer people who had never podcast before. And so that was what really drove it. And it worked. It did. The newest podcast got objectively got better numbers than even the most popular external TPN, you know, outside of TPN podcast.
    5:35
    Like it worked better than I think we even imagined it to. Yeah, no, even within the first year, even our. It's going to sound a little mean. Even our worst podcast on the network, everyone had over 1,000 listens an episode. Like the first week? Yeah. It was just a guarantee. Within that first period, you were going to get four-figure listens. It didn't matter if it was your first episode or your third. It didn't matter if you were focused on competitive pinball or you were puppets talking.
    6:07
    It didn't matter. We will get you a pretty hefty baseline. There are a lot of podcasts that have been around a long time in this hobby that do not get those numbers. And so, you know, we started this all up. Like, we officially really started putting it all out there in February of 2020. A lot of the shutdowns happened at the end of March of 2020. And then with the pandemic, there was just a huge amount of demand for streamers.
    6:38
    A lot of people started streaming pinball in their homes with the games they had, and then a lot of other people wanted to start making podcasts because they needed a creative outlet. They couldn't go out anymore. And so we just saw a surge of interest, and that was – it was working. I think it was working pretty well even with all the pivots we had to make to the streaming side in particular. I'd say the decisions to start moving away from it, in my opinion, really peak.
    7:08
    Let me put it this way. Peak TPN was probably that the Stern sponsorships and all that for the streamers that you put together. That was like our last big, ambitious effort as a network. And so Zach did that work. He went in. He found all these sponsors to sponsor people to stream on the TPN channel. We used Restream, so we were also putting it out on Facebook, and so people could watch it in multiple places. It was a scheduled – yeah, every night. We had schedules, and it – my perspective as someone who was not streaming on TPN was there was a lot of work to get that put together, and it was – the commitment was not consistent by the people who were doing it.
    7:56
    Yeah, it was hard. People wanted to break the schedule. And it's like we have these agreements to sponsors. Like you have an obligation now. We have rules in place. This was a year-long thing, though. And so then when people are going along and they're like, it gets back to human nature. And they're like, I'm doing this for fun. It's not a job. If I don't want to stream on Monday, then I'm not going to stream on Monday. Promises be damned. And I just remember, plus getting all the stuff out to everyone and all that that you had to deal with.
    8:27
    To me, that was like when you were what I'll describe as mentally guard broken. That's a fighting game reference. You couldn't block anymore. Your defenses were down at that point. And on top of it all, it did weigh heavy on me personally. I can't speak for you. But we started off with strong opposition, irrational albeit, but still strong opposition. And we fought through that. I'm proud we fought through that. but I was naive.
    8:59
    I still am a little naive to just, I'm much more hardened. But the fact that if I am attached to something, then because I work in this industry there will be a perceived thought that I benefiting from others because of it So if you compound that with the time and effort that I was putting in you as well but I can only speak for myself again compound that with what I feel like I was trying to put in to keep everybody compensated and try to push this forward for the well of everybody
    9:33
    And then the feedback was like, that guy is bad and he's taking advantage of others. And like he's making like it was fucking rough. That was that. Yeah. And I don't even hear with the patron people. I don't want to. I don't want to know. We're not going to talk about the about the founding era. I don't want to give it. Yeah, I have. I will say I have never been as miserable and pinball as I was when we found a TV.
    10:04
    100% agree, yeah. It was the closest I ever came to quitting. So much so that we lost Jason Fowler. And Greg Bone. And they both have come on prior Pinball Show episodes where people can go back and listen to them. Yeah, and they reiterated our feelings. Reiterate that. I mean, it was an aggressive campaign deliberately designed to try and destroy the network in its infancy. And to hurt people. And I don't even know if they thought about it. I know some of it was motivated to hurt you. Yes. I don't know if they really thought about that, but there are these accusations that we were excluding women.
    10:36
    And even after we had Crystal Gimnick involved, but not in the initial trailer and people – We asked women to be involved initially. Here's the thing. What bothered me after all of it, like months later, I found out that there were people who were going – content creators who were going out and knew that we had a lot of diversity baked into this. and they pretended they didn't in order to try and do damage. Emotionally pretended they didn't, yeah. And so I just – I lost a lot of faith, I guess, in a lot of the content people.
    11:09
    People I thought I was relatively friendly with that bothered me. But anyway, so yeah, the founding was rough, but we got through that. We got through it. And after that, I thought by and large, things got a lot more stabilized. So the streaming sponsorship thing, though, I know was a big stressor for you. One of the things – I had a few that were for me. So one of them was – and this was my idea, but there was a lot of demand to have – we don't want to subscribe to an RSS and listen to the puppets. We want to be able to pick and choose our individual shows.
    11:42
    And it's a reasonable response. I was against it. Zach was against it because one of the core ideas of the network was to force more people to get exposed to things they wouldn't otherwise be exposed to. They don't have to listen. To benefit, right. The idea to rising tide benefit everyone. We did end up doing it my way, which was adding the additional RSS feeds because I argued and the numbers bore it out when we were able to see that. It was probably the correct response. It was the correct thing to do. People liked it. Doing this was not most people weren't going to go to the trouble of doing the individual RSSs, like subscribing to them.
    12:16
    And that's true. Only the most heavily promoted ones. So last I feed burner, which is where I use the do where I host these no longer shows those analytics. But Silver Ball Chronicles was the biggest. And I think Final Round was probably the second biggest. And those were only those were the only two shows that really promoted their own feeds. Everyone. A lot of others didn't even seem to realize they had them, even though I had them in a key post on Pennside. So. So anyway, that was a ton of work, but I had to manually maintain it. So. So understand this year after year.
    12:48
    pitty pitty s listener pitty s year after year zach multiple times a week is getting an email upload this podcast like saturday night with dinner like can you upload after it's up and i see it's in the in my podcatcher i have to go to my computer and manually make the independent rss feed connection to that episode because there was the host site we used didn't have an api that would allow us to do it automatically so it just it was very very manual process and again we if
    13:22
    you if you all weren't listening you can always go back but back during like those pandemic years we had a lot of shows it wasn't unusual for us to have three to four podcasts out a week oh yeah i mean yeah just we had a lot of content and then when we would lose you know content creators would leave the network you know either they wanted to be out on their own or they were done podcasting. We'd have new ones. We weren't trying to recruit a bunch of new ones. People were coming to us asking to be in it. And so it was just a lot of work.
    13:54
    So that was one frustration for me. When we opened up, but it's important here, when we did initially do that, it was the idea that it was five founding members that would put on a lot of, because we knew people, if they're not going to get anything in return, even though they are getting exposure and it did help them a lot, Like it was – we didn't expect people to be putting in as much as some of us worked. So we understood that. But when we started, the idea was five of us putting in a lot of the work. And when people dropped out like Valor and Bone and then Ken got a job at JJP before we even really – I mean, what were we, four?
    14:30
    Yeah, like within the first ten episodes. So then he was gone and it was just me and you. It was like, oh, shit. This is a lot of work. on our TPN feed have a few, two or three, I think, and some of these might have been over back with This Week in Pinball, negative reviews about me. And it was, I know when they came in. It was at that point where this was trying to hold this together. I started recording with you weekly, and it burned me out so bad. Zach and I, actually, at one point, I had a huge argument with Zach over, and it was
    15:04
    over an issue uh some guy this is too so causing more causing more drama and i just wanted to put it to bed and and zach wanted to fight back on it and i was i just i lost my temper and i was just like absolutely not i spent an hour already trying to craft this email i want this i want this asshole appeased and i want to move on uh and i just i and i realized it was uh i just i was spending so much time on tpn uh that i hated pinball yeah i just hated it and so uh after
    15:38
    about a week uh i said look zach i i just can't keep doing every week uh that's what's putting me in a bad mood and once i went back to every other week i was good yeah that's our and i was okay again but but i just because you were recording egp as well yes and that was why that was why otherwise yes if i was only doing this once a week sure i would have been able to absorb during pandemic like that it was i way too much because of yeah it was just uh because i'm in public health it's still too much and i was that i was with a small non-profit at the time so i was i
    16:10
    was all by myself so there were other fact i had personal life things that were causing a lot of pressure on me anyway i was working a lot of hours uh but just all of it just anyway uh so that was a little rough point but after that it got a lot smoother i mean i remember josh uh jacobs with Silver Ball Stories was really helping us out. I thought he stepped up and helped with a lot of the administration during that period. We created an admin. Yes, because Zach and I were like, we can't just keep doing this by ourselves. It was too much.
    16:41
    And eventually we got that admin team bigger. Amanda Hamilton, David Dennis, George Fisher. Some big help there. Yeah. So we had people that helped us with that. So that was one of the things. Another thing, I'm not – I probably – I'll just throw this in there, but we had a few people that joined that they just didn't click in very well, and the Discord even kind of got dramatic. Yeah, yeah. And I won't associate that with us deciding to end TPN because that all got resolved a while ago.
    17:11
    But TPN just basically grew so big that the personality started to have conflict within it, and it was mostly behind the scenes but not entirely. and it was just again there were just certain people that they had their own agendas and that's fine it's just they just didn't fit in well and ultimately they all all of them that had that issue ended up choosing to leave but they they got all the benefit they could and then sure couldn't hold the seams anymore so but it depends on the person because there are also people that left that we had no idea they weren't happy because they weren't really communicating it they just
    17:44
    kind of like sometimes people think that you'll see things that you won't see so those were always There are all these administrative things. But I will tell you something. This is why I know we started talking about this about a year ago. One of the things, and maybe some of them subscribe to our Patreon. And I mean, I have no ill will to anyone who is doing stuff with TPN and now doing their own thing. But, and I should have said something. Oh, I know. But I don't know if you know. Okay. Okay One of the core concepts that we already mentioned Zach is that on TPN was to help promote each other Yep And so at the end of every TPS episode I would plug the prior podcast that came out since the last two weeks had passed between TPS episodes
    18:35
    No one else did this on their shows. And it annoyed me. I'm like, where are you guys doing your part? And again, it was that they're getting their benefit and they're not thinking about it. And that's in part my fault. I should have – I don't even want to call it a confrontation. I should have reached out and said, hey, I know some of you guys are recording like monthly and stuff, but the least you could do is promote the other TPN things. Yeah, we had clear terms when everybody joined. Like there's our goals. People would forget and not do it.
    19:07
    And time would pass. It was the same with – we would have like in the pandemic, we'd have streamers and their show would end. And another TPN streamer would be on and they would rate a non-TPN streamer. I'm like, why are you – the point is to promote each other. Why are you not rating your colleague? Or like the logo, have a logo placed on your overlay. That became things where people would like try and fade them out and make them too small and near on transparent. Or if they did something big that was going to get a lot of exposure, they didn't want to associate with TPN.
    19:37
    Yeah, they wanted the credit. And I get mentally where it's all coming from. But it's like, guys, it's – you joined. It was not fun to manage. We weren't. We don't have to manage people. No, that's the thing. Again, this is a hobby. Yeah. I know you work in pinball, Zach, but the TPN is a hobby. There's still a hobby to it, yes. It's just so, my God, it's like running a guild in an MMO or something. It's just like this is all this stuff that – And again, a lot of – and I come down hard on myself, listener, for this, even though I can't really change it, but it is still a factor, is I was naive to the fact that –
    20:15
    And it wasn't fair to the people who were putting in a lot of work on TPN, my friends and stuff that whenever I think other people subconsciously were like, well, I'm not putting in as much or I'm not going to anymore because he benefits from it. He makes money. Like it was the subconscious thing. But that drug down other people and that wasn't fair to them. So it sucked. And I would say at times to you guys, like it sucks that my participation in something does negatively affect you all. Like you all definitely aren't doing anything wrong.
    20:47
    And regardless of what the perceptions of others, if they're true or not, it, yeah, it just, and I've learned, you know, if I'm associated with something, it's just going to go a different way. It's just the way it is. Well, so for me, the last big hurrah of TPN, and it wasn't even really a branded, well, no, I guess it did get branded as TPN, kind of, but it was the last Pinball Awards. The Pinball Awards. What a great idea. It was branded as Pinball Awards.
    21:18
    And you know what? We kicked ass on that. I'm pretty proud of that one, actually. I am too. You know, I just thought I need to put my money, my money being my time, where my mouth is about. I don't, and it had nothing to do with me winning an award or not winning an award or anything. It was, I'm like, in every other industry, people's choice awards are not like the most respected award. There should be something where people who are, quote, unquote, in the know are making decisions.
    21:49
    And just, you know, it had its growing pains. Absolutely. But just like a lot of arguments, the security, though, that we put together when we after the first year and, you know, we did the we did the panels the first year. And there was, you know, there's a whole lot of stuff with that. It was the first year. But when we started bringing in other content people, not TPN people, just anyone, the majority was none. And we were able to guarantee that there wasn't ballot box stuffing and we were able to to bring in these. And we saw the results differed on a number of things versus the Twippies. So you knew you were getting a different result also, which I think was an example of how approach matters in terms of what generates – like we saw small manufacturers winning pinball awards.
    22:29
    Yes. That could never win. Deservedly so, yeah. And, again, it was because the system was designed to try and really bring in experts, not you and asking all your friends to come in and vote on something that they don't know anything about. And I just – I really liked it. But that last year we did it, we went to the pin barn, your pin barns, and we had the hosts, and everyone had their outfits, and we had the giveaways. It was great. Spooky donated all this stuff. And it was clean. It was clean.
    22:59
    It was other than the memorable moment where people would make fun of where one button got bumped, and so Joel appears on the screen, and then he just starts flexing. But compared to all other award shows that have ever occurred in this industry, just that one alone. Compare it, please. It was great. I think on a hosting front, some people might say you and Greg and your first TPF host of the Twippies, maybe that was the gold standard. That's the gold standard, yes.
    23:29
    This was pretty good. Oh, in the production and stuff? I will argue with full. Cut sequences? Yes, I will argue with full bias that it is the best online pinball show or award show that has ever happened in this hobby. It was live. I will say that. I thought we did an awesome job. We felt so good after that and how it went. The reaction online was really, really positive. The viewership was really engaged. And then we were exhausted.
    24:00
    So exhausted. We were exhausted. And then you've got to keep managing. Keep going. And again, I don't want to tie too much of the pinball awards to TPN, but it was the same. We saw the same thing. You do all of this work. The manufacturers can't even be bothered to share the awards online. It's like, why go to all this trouble? The fun only takes it so far. This cost – I mean, you had to pay serious money for those trophies. But it was what was right, and that's what it deserved.
    24:31
    I don't regret doing it. I'm glad I did it because to me, I feel like I proved, just to me, what the world thinks is whatever. But in my own head, I proved that I could do a better award show than what was going on. Yep, and you have every right to be able to say your experience now. Nobody can take it from you. And I liked being able to see if it would have worked the way I wanted it to. And by and large, it did. And so I was really pleased with that. But after that, I was tired.
    25:01
    Now, when Zach was bringing up, you know, I don't know about continuing TPN. This is when I reached the point, you know what, Zach, I don't care. Whatever you want to do. Whenever you want to do it, let me know. And we had talked last year about doing a write-up and pulling the trigger and how to roll it out with everyone. That's the one thing this time around. It was funny. So just as a quick background, we actually had in our admin discussion someone mention, hey, there's a streamer who wants to join TPN. And someone who was not Zach nor I actually responded and said, I'm not sure we should keep TPN around.
    25:38
    It feels like we're just treading water here. And that triggered the discussion. And, yeah, the sentiment seemed to basically be podcasters were like, yeah, let's kind of get out. Administrative podcasters were like, let's get out of this. Streaming was like, well, no, there's no harm in it. Because, again, the streamers is a logo. There's really nothing else. There's no work that we had to do on the back end for it once we got him into the Discord. So anyway, but I thought that we would roll something out.
    26:08
    And instead, all of a sudden, it's getting like triple drain. It gets announced on triple drain. And I'm like, they're my friends. But this was sloppy. This was way sloppier than it should have been. We had a plan. I was really surprised. I mean, I get it. You weren't being particularly responsive on the Discord, Zach, at the time because I think you were on a trip. And we had a plan. We knew how we were going to unroll this, and then I will bust their balls. I don't care. I'll give Joel a hard time. I'll give Travis and Tom, whoever was responding. They came out, and they said that they were leaving TPN.
    26:41
    And I messaged Joel, and I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? Because the thought was, let's not be the ones then to ruin the plan about saying TPN is going away. But when you say you're leaving, now it's, oh, drama. Yeah, no, it looks like we're kicking a man. Cash grab, drama. It's like, oh, no. There's a big falling out. Is Joel going to keep streaming on the flipping out straight? Because it's like, and it had nothing. It was all part of the plan, but we didn't get the announcement out. This is every reason why we should just, we're done. And then, no, but that's, yeah, it's the case in point.
    27:12
    Because then after that, Dave's like, well, you know, with stuff about Chronicles, I need to, like, I need to start moving my stuff over right now. I'm like, I mean, the pins out of the grenade and it's just went into the discord was like, hey, everybody, TPN is going under. Like, whatever. Yeah. We hadn even told the full group of TPN people everything Like they didn know the time I mean we still have on a trauma response team anytime soon We still have podcasts I don even know if Final Round knows about it. Because Jeff
    27:43
    is in our Discord, but he's not regularly in Discord. This might be news to him, but Dennis and I are tired. There's just so much to happen. I'm just like, that was just the case in point. That's quintessential TPM. Let's talk about something agree on a agree to do something and then it just kind of oozes out it happens and i was just like i i talked to zach about it because he's like well you know is there going to be fallout on like think about the drama again i just stayed at my
    28:14
    my meters at zero mode of i don't care zach let them think there's drama um because we even talked about because again it's been a month since we had an episode hey should we put out an episode just about i mean zach and i talked about it was like who cares anymore who cares like they think there's drama they think there's drama and we'll well we'll say what's really happening when we finally record because i mean it's not like it's really going to be any residual impact there's no network to destroy at this point to pull it back into like the summary i think it is because the
    28:45
    the network itself has served the purpose that we set out for initially like we didn't know where it would go and i think it was i'm really proud of what we're able to do and i'm not going to say it surpassed my thoughts because i don't think in that way um i think of end point and what something could become um and honestly we're hard workers so if we wanted it to get there we could have got there but just the juice or the squeeze wasn't worth the juice juice wasn't worth the squeeze so i mean and it was good for what it was and it doesn't hurt that it goes away so we
    29:19
    know that it's not really needed anymore. I mean, feel free to edit this out if you do not want this included, but there was a point again, pandemic era, where there was an entity that made a buyout offer. Yes. Yeah. That wanted to buy the network. And Zach and I talked about it. Sure. But the catch was, of course, that they wanted us to continue doing the pinball show. Yeah. And part of our discussion was, well, we would want to break away. You know, we've already done that. We'll break We can do our own thing. We don't want to be beholden to some company.
    29:50
    Yeah. So it didn't, you know. But hey, it was flattering nonetheless. And it was cool. It was a cool idea. All of it was a neat idea. And it was a lot of teamwork. And it brought a lot of people together. And I hope that you as the listener, if you're still listening, now you can at least appreciate that there are people like yourself listening that care a lot about pinball and about the teamwork and everybody working together. and a kumbaya fucking theoretical idea of making things better for others.
    30:23
    There was a time early in it. Well, really, in those pandemic eras, though, where with so many people, the Discord was so active. And it was, I got to admit, it was pretty cool, like jumping into the streamer one and watching them discussing equipment and different ways to do layouts and trying to help each other solve their problem. There really was a lot of that. And it impacted the hobby. they couldn't ignore the pinball network you couldn't and never before had there been a network esque combination of provide like it was novel it was a cool idea and it gained a lot of momentum
    31:00
    and it changed things it really did enough that a lot multiple people would make fun of it there were always other things calling themselves network and people who were upset that they weren't invited to the network and they're you know there's like oh there's so much about it if you want to be a part of it you can so yeah do you think somebody tries this again you know what yes I do at some stage but I don't think I will ever try it again it will not be here's how it will be successful
    31:32
    because we've been through it I know exactly and I wasn't wrong from the day one when we conceptualized what it would take this hobby needs to be bigger and And there will have to be more financial incentive to do it. So as much as people want to cry about advertisements, guys, if you're wanting to see a network of some type,
    32:03
    whether it's broadcast or anything, money is going to have to be involved. And we tried not to make money involved. And if it was, it was just coming out of our own pockets. but that's the only way it's going to work because again my naivete is that people love something so much that they'll pour all their time into it i was wrong there's a limit to that as there should be but um i just assumed that everybody loved pinball and growing it to the
    32:33
    degree that you and i and other people did and i you know i can't expect that this is just one hobby amongst many that people have. Yeah. The other thing I think as a learning experience from my perspective is while we had a lot of agreements and write-ups and we went and tried to refine them, we should have been more ironclad. We should have thought about more stuff. We should have better defined expectations and made it clear about there's just so many things we never foresaw. Like we never foresaw what to do when a podcast would all of a sudden want to have its own
    33:05
    YouTube version out. Like we never talked about like what to do with that. Like, how does that work? Does it go on the, on the TPN YouTube? Do they maintain their own YouTube? If they maintain their own YouTube, which is what we ended up allowing them to do, that takes away listens from the podcast on the network. So they wanted to do patron listening, their own early access, but it wasn't, we were, we were very late to the Patreon page. We, cause we spent a lot of time deciding if we should and how to put it together.
    33:37
    But, you know, the interest grew on that from from people. And of course, it's like I mean, because of how we structured it in some ways that that worked out in the sense that because we weren't doing a unified revenue. But like we had discussed with our our listen counts across all these shows at the height of our powers, we would have been able to like use Podbean's advertising feature and get podcast ads across the network on everyone's shows. But then there's all these questions of, well, how do you divide that up? Is it a percentage of the number of listens you get?
    34:09
    If so, under what period? Well, at the peak, I looked into monetization because we were going to pitch it to everybody. At the peak of TPN, just for podcasting, I think the revenue that we could have accrued per year was close to, I want to say close to $60,000. Yeah, you mentioned some very high figures, and I was surprised at that. Because of the numbers and the, what is it, PRM, RPM, or whatever. Right, right, right, yeah. Yeah, it was like – I thought it was like $58,000 based on the single entity channel that we were receiving consumption-wise and length, duration, click-through rates and all that stuff, which I thought was super high.
    34:49
    But what a pain in the ass that would have been. Then you have to LLC it. Right, and we went through that early on for the streaming, and we were like looking at, all right, unified TPN Twitch channel, monetize it. Let's figure out if we could track a way to split it. All right, now there's the question of, well, who's going to pay the taxes on this? It's got to come through one person. And no one wanted to bring it in under their individual return. So it's like, oh, so now we have to set up an LLC and someone's going to have to file the taxes on that. And it was just like, this is a lot of work.
    35:19
    We never monetized that channel. When we did the restream and everything with it, we kept it non-monetized because it was just too much of a tax headache. In summary, I can say I want to say thank you to everybody that was involved. Thank you to all of those who consumed anything TPN or even supported TPN. Even thank you to the critics out there and the people who were saying really negative things because it made us work harder and fight through adversity. And I know that I got closer to you as a friend because of TPN, so I wouldn't take that away.
    35:53
    I got closer to a lot of people. And I was able to – I like working with people because it's like my only way to prove to people my level of dedication and who I truly am because there's perceptions about me. So I was able to break all of those perceptions based on people's experience with me. So I wouldn't take anything, any of this back and happy we did it. And I'm very happy, equally happy that we are concluding it because I don't think it's needed anymore at what it was.
    36:26
    So that's the story. You can turn it off now. I'm wondering if people like that. Maybe. If people care about pinball media, that's good stuff. I guess. I mean, it's an interesting behind-the-curtain look at one of the most successful network in pinball.