This time on Ron’s Amazing Stories – The Blog, we take a minute to appreciate TuneIn Radio. They have played a part in history of the show since 2013. When I first started the podcast in 2011 I didn’t have any idea of what I was doing. I certainly didn’t understand social media, how it worked or how to promote the podcast. I had to teach myself everything, and it was a slow start. You have much to learn when creating a podcast. What hardware do I need? What software? What is compression? What bit rate to record at? What music can I play?  Who is going to host my podcast? HTML what?  RSS, CSS, Iframes, enclosures…… it’s enough to make you go mad!

Then you have to decide what your podcast is going to be about. You have to research, find out what’s hot, and what’s not. Ask yourself, “What do I know that other people might like?”  AND, if you don’t ask, “Am I passionate about this?” You will never make it in the podcast world. If you don’t love what your talking about it will become work and nothing more than a bunch words thrown together. Once you figure all of that out, then the work begins. How do I get my podcast out there? Thank goodness there are people who care about your work as much as you do.

Liberated Syndication (libsyn) pioneered the system to host and publish podcasts in 2004, and since then has grown to be the largest leading podcast network with over 2.6 billion downloads in 2014. Libsyn hosts over 25,000 shows with 44 million monthly audience members. This is where Ron’s Amazing Stories ended up. Libsyn provides everything your podcast needs, except the listeners. It’s your job to grow your podcast. Back in 2013 I was still struggling to get listeners. iTunes is great, but they will accept just about anybody and everybody. There are a billion subscriptions spread across 250,000 unique podcasts, and more than 8 million episodes have been published in the iTunes Store to date. You are a small fish in a ocean of small fishes.

Step in companies like TuneIn Radio.

TuneIn Radio is a privately held company based in San Francisco, California, founded by Bill Moore in 2002. TuneIn has more than 100,000 broadcast radio stations and four million on-demand programs and podcasts from around the world. In May 2014, TuneIn announced that its service had over 50 million monthly active users. Surely a company of this size would not care about the little guy. Well, it is because of TuneIn that Ron’s Amazing Stories exists today. I added my little tiny show to them and it took off. Within the next week I had over 400 subscribers. I was so thrilled to finally have an audience and that drove me to create better content. Today Ron’s Amazing Stories runs on live radio in nine cities and averages 14,000 downloads per week on the internet. I still have only have about 500 subscribers on TuneIn, but it was their passion for the little guy jumped started me and the show.

Thank-you TuneIn Radio for being there for me!

-Ron

This Week’s Podcast:

On the podcast this week we have a couple of adventure tales told by the people who lived them. They all come from a little known radio series called World Adventurers Club. You can listen to this podcast on Thursday at Ron’s Amazing Stories, download it from iTunes, stream it on TuneIn Radio or listen to it on your radio Saturday night at 6pm Eastern time. Check your local listing or find the station closest to you at this link.

The Calendar:

March 30 – The Horror Express #15
April 06 – The Ghost of Berlin, NV.  – (RAS #281)
April 13 – The Kaleidoscope – (RAS #282)
April 20 – World Adventurers Club – (RAS #283)
April 27 – RAS Spring Break!

Ever hear of the Dionne Quintuplets? My searches for OTR information takes me all over the planet. I found the following article and just had to have it for you guys. So, I decided to reprint here on Ron’s Amazing Stories. Normally, I would give credit to whomever wrote it, but I could not find out who originally did that. I found this article on an obscure site and the website owner had no idea where it came from. So, for better or worse here it is (with no edits by me). If you know it’s origin please let me know. I would love to give them my thanks and of course credit.

-Ron

Dionne Quintuplets Make Sales – by Unknown

With the “Great Depression” gripping the lives of the American people, the decade of the 1930’s was a dark period in American history. Jobs were scarce; dust storms raised havoc in the Midwest, and the morale was at an all time low. It was a time the people needed something anything to get them out of their despair. That miracle took place in 1934 at Callander, Ontario (Canada) with the birth of the Dionne Quintuplets (Yvonne, Marie, Annette, Emilie, and Cecile).The fascination of the babies spread like wildfire. The small Ontario town quickly became a tourist attraction, and the Dionne Quintuplets were instant celebrities. Sharing the spotlight with the children was Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe, who delivered the babies on that historical day and later became their guardian.

With the interest at a fever pitch, advertising agencies sought Dafoe to feature the babies in the advertising of their respective products. In no time, the Dionne Quintuplets and Dafoe became the 1930’s answer to Arthur Godfrey for effective advertising. In magazine ads, they all had their pictures taken for the products they were selling. However, advertising on the radio proved to be a challenge. Simply put, the children were much too young to say the words about the products they were selling on the air. To get around this small problem, the announcer simply mentioned that Dafoe “selected” the products for them. For example, he selected Colgate Dental Cream, because it cleaned the children’s teeth thoroughly, yet gently, and Palmolive Soap because of its gentle olive oil content. Both Colgate Dental Cream and Palmolive Soap were already top selling brands and with Dafoe and the quins in their corners, both products were more popular than ever .

In 1937, Palmolive Soap combined the people’s interest in the quins with their interest in radio premiums. On Columbia’s PALMOLIVE BEAUTY BOX THEATER, announcer Jean Paul King described an offer that would “Thrill Your Children”— and maybe thrill a few adults as well. The premium was A Day With The Quins, a cut out book with natural color pictures of the Dionne Quintuplets. There were 4 pages with 63 different outfits the children could cut out and dress the quins. Although the premium was designed for the children, their parents also had a gift. The cutout book cover was a copy of a full color oil painting of the Dionne Quins saying goodnight to Dafoe. It could be placed in a frame and hung on the wall. In order to receive this premium, the listeners sent in the black bands from 3 Palmolive Soap wrappers (no money was required). To the surprise of absolutely no one, the response for this premium was overwhelming. If any copies of this premium survive today, it would be a valuable collector’s item. As the 1940’s began, the public’s interest in the Dionne Quintuplets started to decline. They continued to have their names mentioned in radio commercials, and their faces pictured in magazine ads well into the decade. Noticeably missing from the 1940’s advertising was Dr. Dafoe, who died in 1943.

The Dionne Quintuplets Today

My mother and her family visited the quins in late 1930s. She said they had them set-up behind glass windows, so you could view them. How very strange that seems to me today. The quintuplets left the family home upon turning 18 years old in 1952. Three went on to marry and have children. Annette and Cécile, are the only two remaining sisters of the Dionne quintuplets. They appeared for pictures early this month in 2017.

This Week’s Podcast:

On the podcast this week we will have two stories from Tom who is a listener from Berlin Germany. Also, our OTR story just might be one of the best ever on the program and of course we will continue with the next Five Minute Mystery. You can listen to this podcast on Thursday at Ron’s Amazing Stories, download it from iTunes, stream it on TuneIn Radio or listen to it on your radio Saturday night at 6pm Eastern time. Check your local listing or find the station closest to you at this link.

The Calendar:

March 30 – The Horror Express #15
April 06 – The Ghost of Berlin, NV.  – (RAS #281)
April 13 – The Kaleidoscope – (RAS #282)
April 20 – Tune-In Radio Special – (RAS #283)
April 27 – RAS Spring Break