▸ Why shows die
The camera was never the problem.
Every company that quits a show quits for the same four reasons. None of them are production. We've rebuilt enough of these to know what actually kills them.
Episode one gets three weeks of thought. Episode nine gets a calendar invite and a hope. Without a real run-of-show — segment structure, episode length, recurring bits — every recording is a first draft and the effort curve never comes down. The show doesn't get cancelled. It gets rescheduled until it's gone.
A title isn't a description of what happened in the room. It's the entire distribution strategy, and the thumbnail is the rest of it. Companies that hand-make each one eventually stop making them well — nobody notices the month it slips, and the channel's click-through quietly halves.
It lands on the channel, gets posted once, and dies there. No shorts, no cutdowns, no audio, no LinkedIn cadence, nothing on the site. One recording should produce a month of surface area across every place your buyers actually are. Most produce one upload and a link in a newsletter.
Around month four somebody senior asks what the show is doing for pipeline. Without an answer, the show loses that argument every single time — not because it wasn't working, but because nobody was measuring the thing it was actually doing. This is the real cause of death, and it's the one most production shops don't consider their job.
▸ The Build
Everything that has to exist before episode one.
This is the part that compounds whether or not you keep running it with us, and it's the part almost nobody else does. Most shops start at the camera. The camera is the easy half.
What the show is about is not the same as what you sell, and the gap between those two things decides whether anyone watches. The shows that work are worth watching on their own terms. The ones that die are a commercial with chapters. We find the thing your company knows that the category needs explained, and we build the show on that.
Segment structure, episode length, recurring bits, how it opens, how it ends, what happens when a guest is thin. Built so that episode twenty-four is as easy to make as episode two — which is the only way a show survives its first year.
A repeatable naming and packaging pattern with real rules, so the twelfth episode is packaged as well as the first. This is the highest-leverage surface on the entire channel and the first thing to rot without a system behind it.
Trailer, art, playlists, descriptions, chapters, the searchable scaffolding underneath all of it — structured so that YouTube and the answer engines can both tell what your company actually knows. A show nobody can find is a very expensive internal video.
Each episode, in what form, on what schedule, to which surface: shorts, LinkedIn, audio syndication, the site, sales follow-up. Written down before we start — and then run by us, not handed to you as a plan. Distribution is where almost every show quietly fails, and it is not a document, it is a job somebody has to do every week.
We shoot the first two episodes as part of the build, so the format gets pressure-tested against real footage and a real person before the cadence starts. Formats always change after the first session. Better that it happens on our clock.
▸ The Run
One morning a month. Twenty-four episodes a year.
We come to your office. Three cameras, broadcast audio, our crew, our gear. No studio to book, no commute, no production day for your team to run. You walk down the hall and talk for a few hours, and we handle everything after that.
On location, at your office
Three-camera setup, broadcast audio, lit and run by our crew. In before mid-morning, out by lunch, two full episodes in the can. The only thing on your calendar is the conversation.
Cut, packaged, posted
Multicam edit, titles and thumbnails from your system, descriptions, chapters, upload, scheduling — then posted out to your channels on the cadence we set in the build. Nobody on your team touches a timeline, a publish button, or a posting calendar.
Sixteen to twenty per session
Vertical cuts built for sound-off viewing, captioned to carry themselves without audio. One morning becomes two months of surface area on LinkedIn and Shorts instead of a single upload.
What it's actually doing
Every month, in writing: what the library is doing in search, what the answer engines are surfacing when buyers ask about your category, and what showed up in sales conversations. This is the part that keeps a show alive past month four.
▸ Why us
Editing became free. That's a problem for everyone who sells it.
A year ago, cutting two episodes and a stack of shorts was thirty hours of skilled labor, and that labor was most of what a podcast company charged you for. It isn't thirty hours anymore. We rebuilt our post pipeline around it, and the edit is now the cheapest thing we do.
Some of that shows up in the price below. Most of it we'd rather give back as capacity — more shorts, and distribution we actually run instead of hand you a plan for. But the bigger consequence is this: once the production is commoditized, the production stops being anyone's reason to hire anyone. What's left is the part that was always scarce.
What the show is about, and why anyone outside your building would care. Most shows never answer this. It's why most shows are unwatchable.
The show has to say something your category hasn't already heard. That's a strategy problem. No amount of production solves it.
Making it is a third of the work. We do the other two thirds — packaging it and putting it in front of people, on schedule, without asking you.
Lighting, sound, framing, pacing. Nothing commoditized taste, and the difference lands inside the first ten seconds.
We've made this work for national brands, for mid-market companies nobody outside their industry has heard of, and for businesses on one street in one town. The range is the point — not as a client list, but because judgment has to come from somewhere, and ours was bought on budgets that could afford to buy it.
That's the whole trade. The machine got cheap. The judgment didn't.
▸ The work
Three shows we run right now.
A medical device manufacturer, a commercial real estate lender, and a roofing contractor. Same system, three industries that have nothing in common, three audiences who'd never watch each other's show. That's the range we meant.
Inside the Build
Medtech · contract manufacturing
A device CDMO explaining how medical products actually get made — the engineering calls, the tolerances, the parts of the process their customers never see. Built for engineers and procurement leads who research alone before they ever contact a supplier.
Chameleon of the Capstack
Commercial real estate finance
C-PACE financing is genuinely hard to explain, which is exactly why the show works. Developers and capital markets people arrive at the sales conversation already understanding where it sits in the stack — a conversation that used to take three calls.
All Around
Roofing, siding and exteriors · Minnesota
Proof this isn't only a mid-market play. A local exterior contractor with a real point of view about how the trade actually works, which turns out to be far more persuasive than another before-and-after gallery.
More at youtube.com/@turndownco.
▸ Pricing
Build it once. Run it on a term.
Twin Cities metro travel is included; outside the metro is billed at cost and quoted before we book anything. Twelve-month term standard; six months runs $4,900 a month. Annual prepay runs eleven months instead of twelve. Plus applicable sales tax.
One time, before episode one
Concept, format architecture, title and thumbnail system, channel build, distribution system, and the first recording session. Documented and yours, whether or not you run it with us.
Per month, from · twelve-month term
Two people, one location, one setup — where most companies should start. One session, two episodes, sixteen to twenty shorts, publishing, distribution, and the monthly read. First year starts at $58,900 all in. More produced formats — guests, multiple setups, field segments — run $5,500 and up.
Per month, from
For companies treating the show as owned media rather than a channel line item. Field segments beyond the interview set, guest booking run end to end, a custom motion package, and quarterly strategy.
▸ Why a show
Your best thinking currently reaches the twelve people in the room.
Your founder explains the category better than your website does. Everyone inside the company knows it. That explanation is the most valuable asset you own, and right now it gets delivered by hand — one sales call, one conference panel, one dinner at a time. It doesn't scale, and when that person is busy or gone, it doesn't survive either.
Twenty-four episodes a year turns it into something else. A library that's searchable, quotable, and citable. Something a buyer finds at eleven at night, six months before they ever fill out a form, and something ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini read when someone asks them who's credible in your category. That's the recommendation layer, and it's where complex B2B companies are found now.
The difference matters more than it sounds. Ads stop the day you stop paying for them. A library doesn't. Episode four is still working for you the month you shoot episode thirty — quietly, without a media budget, to people you'll never meet until they show up already convinced.
That's the whole reason we're in this business. Not content. Infrastructure.
▸ Fit
This is the wrong call if…
We'd rather tell you now than four months in. If any of these are true, say so on the form and we'll point you somewhere better — including to someone who isn't us.
A show runs on one person being willing to have a real opinion, monthly, on the record. If that person is reluctant, the show will feel reluctant and no amount of production fixes it. Find out cheaply first with a Story Sprint — one shoot day, four pieces, no term.
Four episodes proves nothing except that four episodes is hard. A library needs enough surface area to get found, and that takes most of a year. A show that stops at episode four is a sunk cost for you and a bad case study for us.
A show compounds. It doesn't rescue. If the number is due in ninety days, spend the money on positioning and a site that converts the traffic you already have — start with the Foundational Sprint — and build the show when the quarter isn't on fire.
Then you want a crew, not us, and there are excellent freelancers in this market who'll do it well for less than we charge. Happy to refer one. What we sell is the format, the packaging, the distribution, and the accountability for whether it works — the camera is the part we're least precious about.
▸ FAQ
Common questions.
A recurring show — video and audio — for B2B companies, built and run by Turndown, a media studio in the Twin Cities. We design the format and the channel first, then produce it on a monthly cadence: one half-day at your office, three cameras, two finished episodes, sixteen to twenty shorts, and all the packaging, publishing and distribution. $8,500 to build it, from $4,200 a month to run it on a twelve-month term. Most of our clients are in medtech, manufacturing, financial services and the trades, and most of them had never put anyone on camera before we started.
One morning a month produces twenty-four episodes a year. That's six half-days annually — less time than most executives already give to conference panels that reach forty people and then evaporate. We come to the office, we set up around their schedule, and the only preparation required is knowing what they think. If a half-day a month is genuinely impossible, the show isn't the constraint; the calendar is, and we should talk about that honestly before you sign anything.
You don't, at the start, and any shop that promises you a number is selling you a number. What we'll commit to is this: the library becomes searchable, quotable, and surfaceable by the tools your buyers actually use, and you get a written read every month on what it's doing instead of being asked to take it on faith. The companies whose shows work are the ones that kept going long enough for the library to compound — which is exactly why the term and the monthly read exist.
Yes to the first, no to the second. Two chairs or four, it's the same cameras, the same multicam sync, the same edit, the same shorts package, and the same publishing. Headcount in the room barely moves what the work costs, so pricing it by the seat would just be theater. The price moves on term length, not on how many people are talking.
Because month-to-month is how shows die. When every month is a fresh yes-or-no decision, the show competes with whatever is on fire that week, and by the third busy month it loses. Six months is available at $4,900 — but know what you're buying. Six months is twelve episodes, and shows die between episode six and ten. A six-month term expires at almost exactly the moment of maximum doubt: before the library has compounded, before there's a read worth defending in a budget meeting. Twelve months costs less per month and it's the term that actually gets you to the part where this works. Take six if you want six. We'd just rather you knew what the number means.
No. That's the point of coming to you. We shoot on location at your office — a conference room, a shop floor, a lab, whatever room actually says something about the company. Real environments read as more credible than a rented studio anyway, and nobody on your team loses half a day to travel. We handle lighting, sound treatment, and the look. You provide a room and coffee.
Usually, and often it's the better version of this engagement — the back catalog is worth more than people think once it's packaged and structured properly. The build works the same way: we diagnose why it stalled, rebuild the format and the packaging system, restructure the channel and the existing library, then start the cadence. We run three recurring series right now and two of them started as something a client had already tried alone.
You do. All of it — raw footage, finished episodes, the channel, the artwork, and the documented format and packaging system. If you decide after a year to run it in-house, you have everything you need to do that, and we'll walk your team through it. We'd rather be kept because the work is good than because leaving is expensive.
Ours is $8,500 to build the show, then $4,200 to $5,500 a month to run it depending on how produced the format is — twenty-four episodes a year with capture, editing, shorts, packaging, publishing and distribution included. There is no per-episode or per-day rate, deliberately. Day rates are how companies end up with a hard drive full of footage and no show. If your budget is smaller than this, a Story Sprint at $15,000 gets you a set of pieces without the ongoing commitment, and a Website Sprint at $10,000 is often the better first dollar anyway.
We are based in the Twin Cities and most of our shows shoot in the metro, where travel is included. We do travel — cost is quoted before we book anything, and for clients further out we normally batch two or three sessions into a single trip so you are not paying for the same flights twice. The build itself happens remotely either way.
Eight shows at a time, maximum. Past that the crew stops being senior and the whole argument for hiring us falls apart. Tell us about your company and we'll tell you the next honest start date — the build takes about three weeks before the first session, and the cadence starts the month after.
▸ Start a show
Tell us who'd be on camera.
We'll come back within one business day with a straight read on whether a show is the right move for you right now, and what it would be about. If it isn't the right call, we'll say so and tell you what we'd do instead.