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“What? How is that possible? We have a lot of bandwidth.”

“We thought so too. Apparently, we had more than enough for the average streams. We were not prepared for virality.”

“Virality?”

I knew from Tess and Margo’s show that they always made sure to get good clips and soundbites to share on their socials to try to drive new listeners or viewers to their podcast. Every once in a while, one would go mildly viral, causing a surge of views, comments, and revenue for the girls.

“I was not aware that our new show has an ongoing fandom.”

That word sounded so awkward coming from his lips.

“Silas’s show?” I asked. “It’s somewhat new. But they have been very vocal in the comments section.”

“It’s moved out of the comments section. Apparently, someone has been splicing together parts of the show and putting them up as short videos online. Not only have those original videos gone viral, but people are acting out the arguments. And those videos are going viral. Enough for everyone to want to tune in and listen.”

Enough of them to crash our servers?

That was… that was a lot of listeners.

We’d increased our bandwidth a few years back when a famous fae pop star was going to do the first (and so far, only) interview of her career with one of our hosts.

Even that hadn’t crashed our servers.

I needed him to leave so I could get online and look into these videos. Even if some part of me cringed at the idea of hearing my voice in some viral video. Or coming out of someone else’s mouth.

“Well, that’s great news. I know you had concerns about the show.”

“I did. It’s a good thing you convinced us to hold off on cancellation. I might be able to tell the missus that we can get that Hamptons home after all. But I do think we need to jump on this right away.”

“Jump on what?”

“Marketing. Capitalizing on the moment.”

This was so not my department. Sure, we ran some ads. But I outsourced that to graphic designers and then just paid for the ad slots on billboards or social media.

At the end of the day, we didn’t really need to market. Each podcaster who recorded at our station was its own sort of advertisement. As for the actual radio side of things, no one ran ads for that anymore. People just… tuned in. Or didn’t.

“What kind of marketing were you thinking?” I asked. I reached for my pad and pen.

“Social media. You have access to those accounts, correct?”

“Correct.” And I’d literally only ever used them to repost things from our talent.

“Good. Well. Get on that.” It was pointless to ask what ‘that’ was. I was reasonably sure even he didn’t know what he meant. “And merch.”

“Merch? For Silas’s show?”

“Yes. And the station. And the… slinking stuff.”

“Slinking?”

“You know, when people want two people to get together.”

“Oh, shipping. Shipping merch?” What would that even entail? People didn’t even know what Silas and ‘Madison’ looked like.

“Yes. Get that sorted. As soon as possible. Before someone else makes a line.”

“I will get right on top of that.” After binge-watching some videos on exactly how to do all that.