Help support theLogBook.com!

Since it first transitioned from being a series of text files handed around from dial-up bulletin board system to dial-up bulletin board system, theLogBook.com has been supported by its webmaster, with the help of readers of the site, listeners of the podcasts, and viewers of the video content. We are members of a number of affiliate programs (more on that in a moment) that do help support the site a little bit, but 99% of what keeps the site running is site visitors like you who have joined the Patreon to support the site on an ongoing basis.

A breakdown of how the site at least attempts to earn its keep:

The combined total of the Patreon support, sales of original merch, and affiliate programs has paid the bills (domain renewal and site hosting / storage) for theLogBook for the entire past ten years of the Patreon’s existence. Anything left from that is literally helping to keep my lights on and my bills paid.

On de-emphasizing streaming service affiliations

Brace yourself for some editorializing. theLogBook.com is taking a physical-media-first approach to affiliations. At one time the site was also part of the affiliate programs for Hulu and HBO Max, and got kicked off of those programs for not meeting their desired metrics. Fair enough. Paramount Plus has also significantly changed their own affiliate compensation structure over time, probably due to their own financial, regulatory and legislative woes. Paramount Plus used to carry a lot of the water here; nowadays, not so much.

But also, as a veteran of local TV, which is now becoming an endangered animal (and threatening to take things like local news and local weather with it when it finally goes under in the tidal wave of media mega-mergers), I’ve come to realize that streaming was the worst idea ever to hit television. For a couple of years, fueled by pandemic isolation and binge-watching, streaming was kind of glorious. Talented and often marginalized voices who didn’t previously have a seat at the mass media table got to add their ideas to the mass media buffet line, and that was good. Then the purse strings tightened and those voices seemed to almost uniformly be the first to lose those seats.

The proliferation of media didn’t need streaming to happen. Most of your local stations have digital subchannels that could have been used for that. Instead, streaming TV has left broadcast TV in a desperately poor state, and isn’t doing too well itself. Streaming mortgaged the entire future of broadcast media in the United States (and elsewhere) for – checks calendars – maybe all of three boom years of success. And now even streaming services are on the ropes. What did it accomplish? Now we’re losing local news, which is vital to local civic engagement, and cutting back on that leads to… well… <waves arms around at the entire current decade>. Streaming, or “new media” as all of the union contract language calls it, also seems to be a very slippery customer when it comes to paying residuals to the writers, performers, directors, and other talents behind the material of which it needs a constant supply. Streaming is kind of awful all around.

While I recognize the pitfalls of just accumulating stuff, I prefer to emphasize physical media over streaming media if it’s available, and in line with that thinking, physical media is chiefly what the affiliate links on this site point to. It’s too difficult to keep track of what’s streaming where (I’m looking at you, “the home of all Star Trek, unless that Star Trek is Star Trek: Prodigy or random clumps of the Star Trek movie library during even-numbered months”) and to keep changing pointers throughout the episode guides. As such, streaming links that do still exist may be outdated, and will be phased out over time.

If you’re so iffy on the entities behind the affiliate programs, why join them?

I am balancing my ethical responsibility to get this project to pay for itself as much as it possibly can, hopefully taking at least a little bit of the load off of the Patreon and other supporters, with allowing you to also make your own responsible ethical decisions about where you spend your money.

Special thanks

Thanks to everyone who has ever supported theLogBook with their dollars, or with their time and effort and creativity and enthusiasm. (I really miss those days.) Thanks to everyone who’s ever visited the site and thought, “wow, that’s [amazing / neato / a huge time sink / confusing / an adult male walrus somewhat incongruously wearing a policewoman’s hat, and yet I respect all of its life choices that led it to this moment]”. Thanks to everyone who’s ever spread the word about the site.

Thanks to you for still sitting here reading this. I’m grateful simply to still be sitting here writing this.

Earl Green
theLogBook.com creator / curator / head writer