First, here are my goals: I want the cast to be informative, entertaining, varied, fresh, personal, engaging, genteel, high audio quality, and low cost. Obviously, there will be trade-offs. Here's a little more on each goal.
Informative. I like to learn and I like to share my knowledge with others. the more you know about something, the more you can appreciate it. I want to pass on some information about the music we hear. In order to do that, I need to know something about the music that gets played. I admit I like spreading the word about the great music of the past that has largely been forgotten.
Entertaining. As your host, I try to be worth watching as I conduct the cast. Being a little more expressive is part of that. I try to program quality music consistent with the other goals. The themes offer viewers the opportunity to exercise their brain, to get some kudos for making good requests, and for participation in general (see "Engaging").
Varied. I've always enjoyed many different types of music. It's boring to focus on just one style or one era. There's a lot of great music out there. I want to partake of it all. I think most OtC viewers feel the same way.
Fresh. By "fresh" I mean that I want to hear music that is unfamiliar to me, even though most of it is decades old. That is another purpose of the themes: to force us away from the familiar. Familiar music is everywhere. Let's hear something different. The OtC slogan is "Great music seldom heard".
Personal. Radio is a personal medium. Even though there is a video component to the cast, OtC is essentially interactive radio. I try to share parts of my life that I think will be of general interest. I try to be honest, genuine, and open. What you see on cam is pretty much the person I am in real life. Regular viewers see me for lots of hours. I figure they want to know who this person is they spend so much time looking at and listening to. It's not an ego thing. I tend to avoid the spotlight rather than seek it. Going the other way, I like for the viewers to be comfortable sharing information about themselves. It's nice to feel connected.
Engaging. This has some overlap with "Entertaining" and "Personal". The themes let people be engaged in a structured way. Just chat itself is engaging. The Gils-Playlist site is another effort at creating engagement.
Genteel. I struggled with fining the right word for this one. I want the cast to be friendly, inclusive, respectful, and positive. Vulgarity, "drama", and divisive topics are all discouraged. Plenty of other sites tolerate or encourage that sort of thing. We don't want that.
High Audio Quality. This one speaks for itself. It's a music cast. It has to sound good.
Low Cost. This one also speaks for itself. I'm not in a position to spend a lot of money on this hobby of mine. I need to achieve my other goals as well as possible on a shoestring budget.
That's about it for the goals. I realize this post has gotten rather long, so let me continue the discussion in Part 2, which will appear above this post.