By Toni Callas MCT
PHILADELPHIA – Jeff and Heidi Sims thought their oldest son, Andrew, would become a computer tech. After all, he’s taken apart the family computer more times than they can count.
Then they thought the Shawnee High School senior might become a television producer.
“We used to call him Gelman, like on `(Live With) Regis and Kelly,’ because he spent so much time at the school’s television studio,” Heidi Sims said, referring to the show’s ever-present producer, Michael Gelman.
But now Andrew Sims is testing a new career possibility: professional podcaster.
Barefoot in his bedroom in Medford, Pa., this 17-year-old, ruddy-faced teen reaches more than 45,000 Harry Potter fans each week with MuggleCast.com, an hourlong podcast in which Sims and six co-hosts chat about theories and story lines surrounding author J.K. Rowlings’ boy wizard.
The venture has gained them fame, a little fortune, and a handful of free trips.
“We’ve been to Las Vegas and New York City this summer, and we are going to England and California next month,” Sims said. “It’s a lot of fun, and I get paid. Other kids work at restaurants for the summer; I do this.”
With 52 episodes under their belts, Sims and “we” – teen co-hosts Ben Schoen in Kansas, Jamie Lawrence in England, Laura Thompson in Georgia, Kevin Steck in Connecticut, Micah Tannenbaum in New York, and Eric Scull in Reading, Pa. – are part of a booming trend in which a group of unknowns can become underground stars.
“It’s crazy,” Heidi Sims said. “We go to these book signings, and there are these girls screaming at them like they are celebrities, wanting their autographs.”
Podcasting seems a natural fit for these Generation Y-ers, but everyone from Gen X-ers to baby boomers has a hand in it, said Ted Demopoulos, a Fortune 500 business and technology consultant.
“There’s a podcast for every niche, from Harry Potter to knitting,” said Demopoulos, who also is the author of “What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting” and creates in-house podcasts for businesses. “It can be produced so cheaply and easily, and most anyone can do it. All you need is a microphone, software and access to the Internet.”
Chris Cavallari, founder of the fledgling New Jersey Podcasters Association, called podcasting the great equalizer.
“Before, if you wanted to get your message out, you needed print or radio or broadcasting mediums,” he said. “Most people don’t have access to that. With podcasting, people can say what they want. “And, yes, there is a lot of junk out there, but it’s going to change the way we view the Internet.”
Sims came up with the MuggleCast idea and launched it last summer.
He pitched it to the founder of MuggleNet.com, where for three years he volunteered as Web-site manager. Emerson Spartz, 19, a University of Notre Dame student who launched MuggleNet when he was 12, told Sims to go for it.
“I can’t lie; at first I thought it was a bad idea,” Spartz said. “I just didn’t think anyone would want to listen to a bunch of kids talking about Harry Potter. I was dead wrong.”
MuggleCast is doing well. While many podcasts earn almost nothing, Demopoulos said, MuggleCast earns revenue. It makes money through T-shirt sales, after a printing group out of Georgia saw how well the podcast was doing and offered to design T-shirts for the show for free. Now, the hosts get $6 on each $15 shirt sold.
The site also garners about $750 a month from reading advertisements for GoDaddy.com, an Internet domain-name broker. Sims and Schoen also earn $800 a month for maintaining the site.
Visibility is high, too. This month, the show is No. 3 on the Apple iTunes top-100 list of “Arts” podcasts. And it’s enjoying an overall rank of 46th out of tens of thousands on the same site.
