Hello and welcome to Doof! Media. We’re Scott Daly and Matt Freeman and we make podcasts and online content about movies, TV, books and the stories we love.
If you’re new here, welcome! If you’ve been around for a while, you probably have some questions. Questions like where the hell did The Daly Planet go? What’s a Doof? What the hell have you guys done?
Well, Doof! Media is our relaunch and rebrand…taking everything we loved about The Daly Planet and focusing it into a shiny new package.
In the beginning…
When I started The Daly Planet way back in 2014 I really thought of it simply as a place to express my opinions on movies and occasionally TV. A place to exercise my writing chops and hopefully explain to everyone why I like (or don’t like) movies so damn much. “The Daly Planet” was the perfect name because this was my place. My planet. Also, I really like Superman.
Six months into that whole experiment, I realized I wanted this place to be something more. I wanted to create a community where people could hang out, talk about movies, TV, games, books….whatever. But to build something like that, I needed some help. So I put some feelers out to my friends and family asking them if they’d like to be a part of the website. Lots of people were interested in helping out, but none so much as my college buddy Matt Freeman. He and I ended up teaming up and writing a whole slew of reviews and essays on a wide range of topics (including a review from Matt about a little web serial called Worm). He also helped behind the scenes, transferring our site hosting (twice), managing SOE, and basically doing a bunch of things I never thought of and didn’t know how to do. It wasn’t long before I realized that this wasn’t really my planet anymore. Matt and I were splitting responsibilities, consulting each other on decisions, and generally acting like partners.
In the middle of this whole transition, I decided I wanted to podcast. I, like the rest of the world, had listened to Serial and was now busy diving into the world of audio entertainment, devouring as many podcasts as I could find. Somewhere along the line, I decided “we could do that.” It didn’t matter that we had no equipment, no idea what we were doing, and frankly, probably wouldn’t even be that good at it. I wanted to do a podcast. And Matt, being the wonderful friend and partner that he is, said yes to my ridiculous ideas. The Daly Planet Podcast was born.
Change is needed
Flash forward a few years and here we are. Thanks to our spin-off shows (We’ve Got Worm/Ward) we’ve grown bigger than we ever thought possible and now spend more and more time producing content. It’s basically become a second job for us. But even after all of this success there were a few things constantly nagging me. The first was the name. “The Daly Planet” worked for a small blog written by one dude just tossing his opinions into the void, but it felt weird as the name of a site co-run by two people, and featuring a bunch more, only one of which was named Daly. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that if we were going to continue to grow, we’d need a different name.
The second was the website itself. We designed dalyplanetfilms.com as a place for articles, reviews, and essays because that’s what we originally did. But as we got more and more into podcasting we spent less and less time writing. It’s still something I’d like to get back into one day, but regardless, the current layout just didn’t fit. It was clunky, unwelcoming, and embarrassing. It needed a revamp.
Seizing an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, I decided that now was the time to relaunch and rebrand our growing media empire. But first, we just needed a name.
What’s a Doof?
It’s just Daly and Freeman with two Os in between it. It’s what Gwenyth Paltrow did with her own company “goop” because all the best internet companies have two Os in them. My wife Elyse came up with it as a joke. We laughed about it for a few days. …And then we couldn’t stop thinking about it. The more we thought, the more we realized it accomplished everything we wanted our name to. It captured both Matt and I’s equal involvement in the company. It was silly and irreverent, just like us; showing that while we do serious work here, we don’t take ourselves too seriously. It was memorable (be honest, you’re never gonna forget this name). And, most importantly, it accidentally references Mad Max: Fury Road, the best movie of the 21st century (do not fucking @ me). What started as a joke ended up being exactly what we wanted. And then I made this logo, and it was so perfect we realized we basically had no other choice.
The More Things Change
So, if you’re a long-term supporter of The Daly Planet, you’re probably wondering what else is going to change. Well, in the short term, not much. We’re still going to be producing the podcasts you’ve grown to love. We’ve Got Ward will continue, as will Weaverdice – Vegas and Vow To View. The Daly Planet Podcast, now relaunched as “The Doofcast” will start up again this week as well. The first episode should drop on Friday, though we still haven’t settled on a new schedule yet, so it could change days of the week a few more times as we explore options. The Book Club will continue as well, just under the new branding.
In the long term though, we’re looking at this as a fresh start. Now that I’ve gotten a few of the things nagging me out of the way, this frees us up to focus on what we want this media company to be. We want to produce new shows (and bring back some old ones). We want to seek out new talent to join the Doof! family. We want to dive into some new things as recklessly as we dove into podcasting. We basically want to become the most ridiculously named multimedia conglomerate in the history of the world.
But most importantly we want to continue to focus on what we think we’re best at: talking about the stories we love and trying to figure out why we love them. While there will be some changes around here in the coming months, that is one thing that never will. It’s our bread and butter. It’s what we are. It’s Doof!
We hope you like the new look! Get ready for some fun, Doof Squad (Yeah, that’s what you’re called now….fucking deal with it).
