To The Fans of How We Made Your Mother and Specifically Fans Who are Wondering Why The Podcast is No Longer on Youtube —

Hi. How are you? Me? I’m okay, though I just learned I’ve been hitting my backhand incorrectly my whole life, so that sucks. But what I’m so much more than okay about is the incredible response we have gotten from HIMYM fans around the world to our podcast, How We Made Your Mother. The outpouring of heartfelt stories about how the TV show has been a part of your live and how the podcast has now become a small part of them as well. The response has been unbelievably positive.

With. One. Tiny. Exception. 

Why is the show no longer on YouTube? It’s a good question. We spoke about it at the very beginning of the first episode of Season 2, and then again towards the end of Season 2 / Episode 13. But I just wanted to spell it all out for you here, for this reason: We do this show for you. Craig and Josh continue to be blown away by how much HIMYM has continued to mean to folks and by how many new viewers find it every year. And because I know that this decision to stop posting video has not been overly popular, an explanation is called for:

In short: Making the video takes much much more time.

I’m a an editor, and have edited several feature films, countless How I Made Your Mother DVD extras, and a few music videos (directed by Mr. Radnor himself). So, editing is something I do. And we record our podcast on a platform called Riverside, which is a fancy kind of Zoom, and which can capture up to 4K video. With all that, we thought: Why don’t we make a video version as well! And then, after about 40 episodes… the answer to that became clear.

While I won’t put the internet to sleep with a detailed explanation of why editing video is so much more time consuming than editing just audio, I’ll say this: Downloading and syncing all the video files takes about 10 times as long as downloading and syncing the just audio files. With video, I have to manually choose what you are going to watch: Just Josh? Just Craig? Josh and Craig? Josh and Craig and Alek? (And with a guest, add on 4 or 5 more permutations.) With audio only there is zero of that kind of work to do. And yes, we do edit the podcast. Every line you see on the image above represents some piece of work that was done. We remove some things, we clean some things up, and with video, that takes several steps. With audio, it takes very little at all. And there’s more when it comes to combining the final mixed audio with the final video, exporting it and zzzzzzzzz….

You get it.

We are a very small operation. There’s me. There’s Doug who coordinates with Audacy, with advertisers, with accountants and lawyers, etc. There’s Emily who produces our social media and combs through thousands of your submissions to find the voice notes and written letters we present on the show. And there’s Alex who mixed the audio so that it sound lovely in your ears. Am I forgetting anyone? Oh right. Josh and Craig.

But when it comes to editing, that’s just me. And at this point, it’s simply too time consuming. Especially now that I have to work on this backhand.

But wait, you release video clips! Can’t you just release the whole episode that way?

Great question. Those clips are 30-60 second “magic clips” that are generated by Riverside, and then edited a bit more by Emily. There is no version of the entire show edited the way we want to release it that exists. 

But wait, do you have to do such fancy editing? Maybe just show both of them in split screen the whole time? 

We will only release what we think is the highest quality version of this show. That matters to us deeply. Just putting up what would almost be raw (if slightly edited) footage would not live up to that standard. And we will not trust AI to make our creative decisions.

But wait, can’t you just release the audio on YouTube?

Right now, we cannot. Simple answer is that those “listens” don’t get counted towards our overall numbers. This is a business, and while we all already feel artistically successful, an important measure of success for the business side is the number of listens. And YouTube audio just doesn’t get counted.

I think that about covers it! I’ll tell you this: We WILL be releasing certain episodes on YouTube. So please do subscribe to it. 

I grew up listening to old time (and then-present-time) radio. I was a member of a theater company who performed radio shows. I love the radio. And I love that in a world overrun by 10-second video clips, radio is popular again, in the form of podcasts. We are proud of what we make for your ears, and we hope you love listening to it as much as we love making it (and as much as you loved watching it).

Sincerely,

Alek Lev
Producer (and Editor)
How We Made Your Mother