A Letter From the Editor: The times they are a-changin’

For those who call BTSC their one-stop-shop for all things Pittsburgh Steelers, you’ve probably noticed some changes here over the past few months. Maybe they were subtle at first, but the past week you’ve likely noticed a drastic change in volume on the page.

There is a reason for that. Let me explain.

In January those of us who did podcasts for the BTSC podcast network received an email that we were no longer going to be supported by SB Nation/VOX Media. In other words, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.

We had built such a strong audience, we weren’t about to turn our backs on them. So, we decided to try and find a new home. Several meetings took place with podcast hosting companies, and this is when we thought about the other Pittsburgh professional sports teams’ podcasts.

Did they have a home?

I spoke to both the Pittsburgh Pirates and Pittsburgh Penguins podcasts and found out they were told the same thing we were.

Our next thought was to create a Pittsburgh network, but why stop there? When SB Nation parted ways with their podcasts it meant roughly 95% of their podcast feeds were let go. Where are they going to go? We started to put in some calls around the network, and were fortunate enough to get some contact information for other feeds who were looking for a home.

We had the idea, we had the experienced content creators, but did we know the first thing about running this type of operation?

Not a clue.

This was when we were fortunate enough that our own K.T. Smith put us in contact with a man who knows how to run this operation. Thankfully, after a couple phone calls he said this was a project he was willing to take on.

That was when Fans First Sports Network (FFSN) was born, and so was the Steel Curtain Network (SCN) as we had to re-brand our podcast platform.

From the moment this all took place, I knew there would eventually be an FFSN website, and we would be providing some Steelers content for said website. FFSN got off the ground in mid-March as a company, and the website is now live (check it out HERE).

Long story short, the CEO of FFSN approached me and said he’d like to have my entire “team” of writers come over to FFSN and write about the Steelers. I put the offer out to the entire staff, and the vast majority have agreed to come over,

With that being said, this is the last week of regular content from us here at BTSC. As of 7/15 we will be contributing Steelers content solely for the Steel Curtain Network.

How can you find us? Well, you can click on the above link and go to the NFL pages and click on Pittsburgh Steelers. You can also go to steelcurtainnetwork.com and that will take you directly to our work.

Will there be anything different? In a way yes, and in a way no.

At SCN the focus will be on quality over quantity. To be completely honest with you, the reader, I’m sick of trying to compete with aggregators. It makes me sick to my stomach when I see one of K.T. Smith or Shannon White’s articles which they spend hours upon hours on, only to get washed away because of a quota that needs to be reached.

Now, don’t take that as we won’t be covering the news. We will. Will it be different? Not really, but we’ll experiment on what works best for us in this new environment.

The site itself will change visually over the next few weeks/months and hopefully be in tip-top shape before the start of the season. There will be a comment section for you to interact, and while there might be some hiccups in that regard, we expect open threads to be a thing when the season rolls around.

At this point, I’m sure there are a lot of questions from the audience who consumed our content all these years. I’ll do my best to answer each and everyone one of them in the comment section below, and I hope you all will come over to SCN and give us a shot with this new site and new approach to the same great Steelers coverage you’ve gotten accustomed to over the years.

Lastly, I wanted to take the time to thank everyone who has contributed over the years here at BTSC. Their hard work and dedication was unmatched, in my opinion. But I couldn’t end this article without thanking you, the readers. Every person who reads these articles, we would have ceased to exist a long time ago if not for you.

With all that being said, we aren’t really going anywhere. We’re just moving to a new neighborhood. Hopefully we see you there!