Masters Cast

Infobox Podcast
title = Masters Cast
host = Jon Kallis Josh de Lioncourt Katy Cartee Haile Martin Penny James Eatock
url = http://www.masterscast.com/
rss = feed://masterscast.com/feed/masterscast.xml
status = Monthly
length = 1 hour (average)
began = October 16, 2005
ended = Ongoing
genre = Movies and Television podcasts

Masters Cast, the first He-Man and She-Ra podcast, is a monthly/bimonthly Internet radio show that focuses on the highly popular Mattel action figure property, Masters of the Universe, often focusing on the cartoons and other literature based on the original toyline. The hosts include fans Jon Kallis, Josh de Lioncourt, and Katy Cartee Haile - all who have been active in the online Masters of the Universe and Princess of Power communities for over ten years. Beginning in 2007, the podcast added hosts James Eatock and Martin Penny to the line up as Josh was retiring from the show. Other fans are also encouraged to call in and participate in the show. The topics of the podcast vary from month to month, but are always focused on some aspect of Masters of the Universe. [cite web|title=www.masterscast.com|url= [http://www.masterscast.com|accessdate=2007-09-26]

The tag line for the podcast is "Podcast of Power".

History

The podcast was created by Jon Kallis and Josh de Lioncourt in September of 2005. Once Katy Cartee Haile was onboard, Masters Cast ran its first broadcast that focused on the history of Masters of the Universe on October 16 2005. At first, a new broadcast came out every two or three weeks, but over the next two and a half years the time between broadcasts increased to that of a month or more. As of April 23, 2008, thirty broadcasts (episodes averaging an hour in length) have been produced. [cite web|title=www.podcastalley.com|url= [http://www.podcastalley.com/podcast_details.php?pod_id=11297|accessdate=2007-09-25] Master Cast's subscribers include some international listeners.

Masters Cast has interviewed key players who created and worked on various aspects of Masters of the Universe and She-Ra including Filmation co-founder and executive producer Lou Scheimer, singer and voice actress Erika Scheimer, staff writer and She-Ra creator Larry DiTillio, The New Adventures of He-Man's co-creator and head writer Jack Olesker, and He-Man artist Emiliano Santalucia. Lou Scheimer even provides the introduction for each Masters Cast episode, beginning with episode 19, in his King Randor voice.

On July 21, 2006, Masters Cast was interviewed and profiled at the San Diego Comic-Con International. Cameras followed them throughout the day for television project titled "Fanatical".

All of the hosts have been involved with the Masters of the Universe fan community for quite some time. Jon Kallis, James Eatock, and Martin Penny are all involved with He-Man.org, the largest He-Man online community. Jon was even drawn into the Masters of the Universe revival comic book series.

Some of the hosts of Masters Cast appear in some of the documentaries on the recently released Filmation He-Man and She-Ra DVD season sets, such as the San Diego Comicon documentary in which they appear with many other fans. Parts of an interview with Josh de Lioncourt appear on several other sets. James Eatock, who was responsible for some of the design and content on the DVD sets, appears in some of the documentaries as well. Jon Kallis appears in the San Diego Comic Con documentary and in various "easter eggs".

The fact that no new broadcasts appeared between April and August 2007 seemed to indicate that the podcast was approaching an end date. However, after a "lost episode" was posted in August, a brand new broadcast appeared in September, which covered the DVD release of She-Ra Season 2. After that, Masters Cast took a brief hiatus and have returned in 2008, intending to resume their normal schedule of episode releases.

how Format

After the introduction, which features music by Josh de Lioncourt (often revamped versions of the original He-Man score from the Filmation show), Jon Kallis and his two or three co-hosts introduce the topic. A voicemail segment often follows, in which listeners call in to give their opinions. Kallis occasionally reads e-mails from listeners that he finds particularly relevant of interesting. After that, the main discussion follows. The hosts always end each episode by saying "Good Journey" (a quote from the 1987 live-action Masters of the Universe film.)

The length of each broadcast varies from between forty minutes to an hour and twenty. Jon Kallis has stated he wants to keep them under eighty minutes so that they will fit on a standard audio CD. Some broadcasts were called "Special Mini Casts" and were usually ten minutes the long; although the fact that there first mini cast, at about forty minutes long, ended up being longer than their previous "regular" broadcast resulted in much teasing from the listeners.

Distribution and licensing

Generally, the show can be downloaded for free. It is available as MP3. All new episodes are announced on the Masters Cast website, along with on iTunes, Odeo, and Yahoo to name a few.

All episodes are licensed under the Creative Commons license - Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5.

Topics

The Podcast covers a fairly wide range of material, from the history of the Masters of the Universe and its larger context in society, as well as toys, TV series, music, audiobooks, and films which are part of the franchise. Individual episodes of the different series are discussed in the DVD review episodes. In addition to evaluating the design of the merchandise, the hosts of Masters Cast also discuss, in great detail, the characters, stories and other philosophical aspects of the series and franchise. They generally try to unite fans of the classic He-Man, She-Ra, the New Adventures, the 2002 relaunch, and other versions of Masters of the Universe, as there is at least one host who has been on the show who is an expert on one or all of these different series. [Masters Cast, episodes 1-28]

References

External links

* [http://www.masterscast.com/ Masters Cast Official Website]