The ForceCast

The Force-Cast is the official podcast of TheForce.net and Rebelscum.com. Regular episodes, which run anywhere from fifty minutes to two hours long, are released every Friday. The Force-Cast features the latest news, interviews, events and opinions from the Star Wars fan community. The show is hosted by Jason Swank and Peter Nadel, with occasional guest spots from collecting guru Dan Curto, Jimmy Mac a.k.a. "The Man", Rebelscum's own Jovial Jay Shepard, and Official Fan Club President Dustin Roberts.



History
Originally, the Force-Cast was done by Erik Blythe, but he had to stop production of the episodes due to external conflicts. After a contest done by TheForce.Net's Dustin Roberts, Jason and Pete were selected to continue the show.

Show rundown
The main sections of the show consist of:


 * Intro: Jason and Pete open the show, and sometimes correct themselves as pointed out by listeners.
 * Billy Dee Clip of the Week: Jason and Pete play a clip of Lando Calrissian actor Billy Dee Williams playing the part of Toussaint Dubois on General Hospital: Night Shift.
 * Headlines: the two hosts will run through the events of the past week that related to Star Wars.
 * Indy Coverage: Jason and Pete update the audience on any news pertaining to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
 * Collecting: the Force-Cast gang, which sometimes includes collector Dan Curto, goes over collecting and merchandise announcements.
 * The Outrageously Unthinkable Story of the Week: Inspired by Sio Bibble's quote, "It's outrageous! It's unthinkable!" and accompanied by a musical introduction of its own, this section features a story that is deemed too hilarious or unfathomable to put in the general news section.
 * Listener calls/mail: Jason and Pete play voicemails and read emails from listeners, and respond to them.
 * Live call-ins: occurring throughout each episode, and only when the Force-Cast is recording via TalkShoe.

Micro-casts
The Force-Cast frequently releases Micro-Casts spanning a plethora of topics.


 * What's New In the EU?
 * A Galaxy of Music
 * Interviews
 * Convention coverage (Celebrations, Comic-Cons, etc.)
 * Announced on the October 4th Force-Cast: A new collecting micro-cast hosted by Dan Curto

Listener interaction
At the end of every regular Friday episode, The Force-Cast crew plays voicemails and reads emails from Star Wars fans. Their voicemail number is (330) 871-4TFN, their Skype username is forcecast, and their email address is podcast@theforce.net.

Live tapings
Jason and Pete have started streaming their regular shows live through a website called TalkShoe. Fans of the show can download the TalkShoe client, listen in on the live taping, and take part in the recording by waiting in a queue to speak.

ThotMarket property
The Force-Cast is now represented by a stock property on a website called ThotMarket. On this website, users can buy and sell fake stock in properties that are created to represent blogs, websites, services, movie franchises, and commercial entities. As of August 29, 2007, at 9:32 PM EST, the stock value for the Force-Cast was at a shocking high of $136.53. This was the result of Jason and Pete mentioning the website on their August 24 episode. Unfortunately, the share price dropped abruptly, leaving it at $0.40 as of September 4, 2007, at 7:53 PM EST.

Rebelscum forums
The official forums of Rebelscum.com have a section for the Force-Cast, where listeners post threads about topics from the show, general Star Wars news, and all things related to the podcast. Here, fans of the show can post with in-jokes from previous episodes, questions for the hosts, and any other input they have for the show. In the past, there have been several trivia contests, some of them with prizes and some of them just for fun.

List of all celebrity guests

 * September 1, 2006 - Composer Steve Parsons
 * September 8 and 15, 2006 - SW Fan Club President Dustin Roberts
 * September 22, 29, and October 6, 2006 - Artist Joe Corroney
 * October 13, 20, 27, and November 3, 2006 - Fanboys Director Kyle Newman
 * November 10 and 17, 2006 - Author Drew Karpyshyn
 * November 22, 2006 - Boba Fett Actor Jeremy Bulloch
 * January 17, 2007 - 501st Legion members Albin Johnson, Mark Fordham, Darren Blum, and Dean Plantamura
 * January 26, 2007 and February 2, 2007- You Can Draw Star Wars! Artists Bonnie Burton, Tom Hodges, and Matt Busch
 * February 14, 2007 - Mara Jade model Shannon McRandle
 * February 21, 2007 - Author Timothy Zahn
 * February 23, 2007 - One Man Star Wars performer Charlie Ross
 * March 5, 2007 - Comic book artists John Ostrander and Jan Duursema
 * March 12, 2007 - Red 5 Comics artists Paul Ens and Scott Chitwood
 * March 14, 2007 - Musician Suckadelic
 * March 21, 2007 - Evasive Action webstrip artists Paul Ens and Scott Chitwood
 * April 23, 2007 - Atom Films representative Chris Albrecht
 * April 27, 2007 - Lucasfilm Director of Fan Relations Steve Sansweet
 * May 16, 2007 - Celebration IV Artists Allison Sohn, Cat Staggs, William O'Neill, Tom Hodges, Russell Walks, Dave Dorman, Mark Brooks, Joe Corroney, Adam Hughes, and Grant Gould
 * May 21, 2007 - Celebration IV-related personalities Stan Stice, John Scoleri, Shane Turgeon, Gus Lopez, Cris and Courtney Macht, Kyle Newman, Kevin Burns, and Beth Segarra
 * May 28, 2007 - Celebration IV-related personalities Cris and Courtney Macht, Dan Madsen, and Don Bies
 * June 1, 2007 - Lando Calrissian actor Billy Dee Williams
 * June 27, 2007 - Artist Randy Martinez
 * June 29, 2007 - Artist Tom Hodges

Previous contests
The Force-Cast frequently receives Star Wars goodies from groups and individuals affiliated with Star Wars merchandise or media. Some of these items are made into prizes for Force-Cast contests. Some notable contests follow:


 * Pledge of Allegiance: Upon receiving two signed copies of Timothy Zahn's book Allegiance, Jason and Pete created the Pledge of Allegiance contest. Listeners were invited to pledge their allegiance to the Force-Cast in a voicemail; the two best pledges would receive first place and those people would get the signed copies of Allegiance. After extending the deadline for submissions by an extra week, Jason and Pete finally picked two winners from Maryland, Mike and Eric.
 * Legacy Revealed Contest (forums): When Jason and Pete got several promotional items from the History Channel for their upcoming documentary, The Legacy Revealed, they put together a contest to win the promo goods. T-Shirts, posters, and trading card packs were included, with listeners vying for the first response post to several trivia questions from the show hosts.
 * Battlefront: Renegade Squadron Giveaway: The first giveaway conducted in a live Talkshoe chat. After doing a Micro-Cast interview with two LucasArts developers, Jason and Pete got a copy of their new game, Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron.  Shortly thereafter, in the next live episode of the show, the duo announced that they would be giving away the game to the first person to call in with the names of the two developers from LucasArts.  The game eventually went to devoted listener and organizer of the Force-Cast's fantasy football league, JediShua.