Saturday morning, listeners of John Gruber and Dan Benjamin’s ‘The Talk Show’ podcast were greeted with a new episode, this time without Dan and on another network that wasn’t Dan’s either - the show had moved to Mule Radio.

This took everyone by surprise in that neither host had said anything was wrong up until that point - or that this was going to happen. It all happened pretty quickly as well, within the span of a week.

The really weird thing about all of this is that neither host has really discussed this in much detail - anywhere. Not on their respective sites (Daring Fireball, Big Week, Hivelogic, 5by5 Blog) or on their twitter accounts (@gruber and @danbenjamin).

Clearly Gruber was more prepared for this since he had to sort things out with his new network (Mule Radio), record a new podcast, decide how he was going to present it to the world (a single post on his website) and how he was going to respond to the fall out (ignore it). Which leads me to believe that it was clearly John who instigated this move.

The silence from Dan is completely uncharacteristic and I feel part of it is that first of all he’s a bit stunned by it and doesn’t want to say anything…yet. Eventually I think he’ll need to say something, he runs a podcasting network, that streams it’s content live. It’s only a matter of time.

###Reasons Obviously there has been a lot of interest, you can find a review of the situation (complete with relevant tweets) and potential reasons for the split.

I highly doubt this is a personal thing, because they’ve been doing this for many years (in various incarnations), so I doubt that John woke up one morning and realised he can’t stand Dan’s voice or demeanour.

There has been lots of speculation that this is down to money. Ultimately it’s about money, but I think that’s only part of the truth. I think more importantly is that I believe this all stems from Gruber not agreeing with a particular business decision by Dan. There’s a moral ground here and it appears to me that Gruber maybe on the higher level.

The reason I’m being specific is because John has left the network, none of the other hosts have left, so it has to be something between the two only.

###Why do I think that? Gruber isn’t a poor guy. He’s not going to be throwing away a friendship over a few 1000 dollars. He’s making $7500 per week just on the sponsorship advertising from his site. He’s going throw away a good thing for what $5000 from some t-shirts - or a slice of an app that is no Angry Birds or Tiny Wings?

Gruber would need to be reasonably upset to decide enough is enough. You only do that when you feel like you’ve been unfairly treated - and there was nothing the other party could do to make it right. Now here’s the other part. Gruber kept ‘The Talk Show’ name. He took that with him. He presented the old artwork before it was updated and used on the 5by5 network.

I’m not sure if that was written in the contract between Gruber and Dan, that the name is copyrighted to Gruber (since he came up with it?) or if Dan felt that he could/should give that name up since the issue stemmed from his part.

###What’s was the straw that broke the camel’s back? That’s the main question here. That’s the one everyone is curious to find out about. What did Dan do that was so outrageous to Gruber and not to any of the other hosts on 5by5? The answer could be something that every host would presumably have, a contract.

I would imagine that there be a standard contract for all 5by5 hosts - which includes terms about the use of the artwork, the name, money paid out etc. I think something happened during the negotiations in renewing Gruber’s contract. 28th July 2010, nearly two years ago is when the talk show started it’s new lease on life. Maybe the original contract was only for 2 years. Maybe there was a breakdown when negotiations began to renew the contract.

Those that hate Gruber might say that he was getting greedy and Dan wasn’t playing ball. That’s is entirely plausible. Another view might be that Gruber felt insulted by what was being proposed. That when the original contract was negotiated, 5by5 was a much smaller business. The landscape is different, in no small part due to ‘The Talk Show’.

To anyone who says “Eh, he only had to turn up and speak”, is missing the point. When’s the last time those people recorded 120 episodes of a podcast (including the old show)? It takes time and it takes commitment.

###Why do I care I kept asking myself the same question. Why do I even care. I care because the show wasn’t the John Gruber show, it was the Dan and John show. It was a show that I would listen to, even if I didn’t listen to another podcast that entire week. I listened to them on my long commutes and on a Saturday morning while making breakfast.

All good things come to an end - I’m not saying that they should do it indefinitely. What I would have felt appropriate is if the show was given a proper send off. The show deserved better and the audience deserved better.

Update 1: I thought I’d add this in because maybe the post above seems to defend Gruber at the expense of Dan. That wasn’t what this post was trying to achieve. I’ve been reading a lot of comments and posts from various people, and it appeared to me as though there was a point of view that wasn’t covered.

I wanted to present the point of view that John and Dan would have to negotiate terms for them to continue working together - typically captured in a contract. Without that contract there’s no way in knowing what those terms were/are. This post never claimed to know those terms. The reason for their breakup didn’t have to be some scheme by Gruber to get a piece of 5by5 or whatever. The reasons could be (and probably are) more complicated. The most important point about all of this is that contracts are negotiated every day. I had to do the same thing, every one does it in one form or another. People make decisions based on what they feel is right for them. The post never made up reasons.

How am I affected? Just like the thousands of other ‘Talk Show’ listeners, I won’t be able to listen to one of my favourite podcasts (and possibly the longest one I’ve been subscribed to).