March 29, 2011 (Colorado Springs, CO) –The MTGCast Network (http://www.mtgcast.com/) has long been known as the Premier Magic the Gathering Podcasting Network, and is considered to be one of the single largest providers of information to the Magic the Gathering enthusiasts and fans world-wide. In 2006, Dominic Hodgson started MTGCast with an idea of making a public radio show for Magic the Gathering. In those early days, as word started to spread of the existence of MTGCast, Tom Gustafson, Gavin Verhey, and Christopher E. Otwell joined the MTGCast Network as regular contributors covering many different roles and needs. Since the retirement of Dominic Hodgson in 2008, Tom Gustafson and Christopher E. Otwell took over the day-to-day operations of everything related to the MTGCast Network and brand name, as the Co-Owners of the Network.

The MTGCast Network has grown from a listener base that consisted of ‘tens of tens’ for the two shows that launched the network in 2006, Monday Night Magic (MNM) and Road Warrior Otwell (RWO), to unexpected achievements over the years. In 2011, we have grown to the point that we have are now approaching a regular listener base of nearly ‘tens of thousands’ covering dozens of regularly published shows on the MTGCast Network. Monday Night Magic has long been considered the main flagship show of MTGCast providing weekly news and editorial insight into the world of Magic the Gathering, and is primarily hosted by Tom Gustafson with a gaggle of co-hosts that appear on the weekly show in a regular manner. Published every Monday Night for the past 5+ years, Monday Night Magic has surpassed over 250 total episodes thus far and currently holds the unofficial record for most episodes of a Magic the Gathering themed Podcast. The co-hosts for MNM over the years have included Tristan Gregson, Robert Martin, Gavin Verhey, Conley Woods, Christopher E. Otwell, Jack LaCroix, Eric McCormick, Marcel White, Derek Knabenbauer, and a few others. While RWO has not been actively published in over a year, it remains as one of the first Magic Podcasts to have been published for over 100 episodes as well and has since been retired in lieu of other podcast related pursuits for MTGCast.

Since those early days in 2006, the MTGCast Network has thrived by offering a unique service to the Magic community by providing anybody on the Internet, the forum to publish a Podcast covering any number of topics ranging from News to Comedy to Editorials, and even Music or Poetry. If anyone produces a Magic podcast and wants to find a forum to publish it, MTGCast will provide that forum. As I have often stated as my Moto for MTGCast, “If they produce it, then I will publish it”, or as inspired by the immortal words of Frank Kusumoto, “Study and grow strong”. Similar to The Magic Dojo did back in the day; I endeavor to provide a free forum for Magic Players to express themselves, and allow each person to make a name for themselves via a publicly available free forum. I also want to publicly offer a ‘THANK YOU’ to the dozens of different Podcasts that have supported our efforts over the years. For a complete list of the Podcasts available, visit http://www.mtgcast.com/ and check both the Active Shows tab and the Archived Shows tab for the entire list of shows that we have been publishing over the years. There is an invaluable wealth of information provided by these contributors. Many of our most frequently downloaded shows during the past several months include Scrubland, Djinn’s Playground, Limited Resources, Dredging for Humor, The Eh Team, MNM, Men of Magic, The Hardcast, ManaScrewed, and many others. A special honorable mention also goes to Robert Martin who has helped multiple special projects for the MTGCast Network over the past 12 months as well. In March 2011, MTGCast also put its first step into the arena of Live Event Coverage and Commentary for Magic the Gathering with the advent of the MTGCastLive initiative that Christopher E. Otwell, Robert Martin, Tom Gustafson, and Nick Bonham have worked on bringing to fruition.

On March 29, 2011, the MTGCast Network has reached a milestone in Podcasting like none other. Since October 2008, the MTGCast Network has recorded over 4 Million Podcast Downloads by our background FTP server. Considering that if an average Podcast is approximately 60 MB in size, then that means over 2,400,000,000,000,000 bytes have been downloaded since 2008, or approximately 2.4 petabytes of data.