Van Hemlock.com

The big advantage with 2 feeds is that my automatic "store the latest 10 casts" will keep 20 on my phone. Plus, the news side is more Jon than Tim, so you get to design a Jon logo! I'm sure Tim will be very supportive of your graphical skillz :).

I think a second feed would be great. I'll certainly subscribe to both, though, but being able to easily separate them would be good.

Go for it!
Sounds like a good plan, and the "problem" you mentioned above is negligible. Having to click an extra time as a one-time thing to subscribe to the new feed? If that is too hard for some listeners the don't DESERVE to have access to podcasts at all. ;)

I don't mind switching to a separate feed for news. If you really want to be fancy you could offer three: combined, news, and discussion. Tekzilla does something similar offering separate feeds for their daily and weekly shows.

blue kae was faster than me, but that was my thought too. i would like to keep the combined feed, but i don't see why there couldn't be all variants.

Agree with Blue Kae. Keep the combined feed and offer two new separate feeds as alternatives. Two reasons:

1) You want to keep any ratings, reviews and/or rank that you have on various services like iTunes. You don't want to lose the more casual, intermittent listeners that aren't keeping up on Twitter, Virgin Worlds or this site...the kind of people that two months from now would just wonder what had changed and shrug. Also, you almost certainly have a small but significant percentage of subscribers that no longer listen to *any* podcasts and never bothered to unsubscribe. Someday, you might have an opportunity to evolve this into something more commercial or springboard into something else, and numbers matter.

2) For people like me that that are subscribed to over 30 podcasts, please don't add yet another feed for iTunes to slowly poll or to further wear out the scroll wheel on my bitty Nano. ;) I listen to both and will continue to do so.

It would be easier to keep it on one feed, but I wouldnt mind a second feed. I'd subscribe to both ofcourse ;).

I'd address your thoughts one at the time:

Benefit:
We don't dominate the virgin worlds podcast page with the same picture quite so much :)

So what if you did? No, really. It is up to the the other people over at VW to produce their podcasts and get up there. And VW is pretty dead as a concept now anyway. I still support it financially, and will do so as long as I see fit. The fact that almost every podcast now has its own web page is telling enough. Not to rag on VW, it is a great idea, a great effort and worthy of praise and support. Hopefully Brent (and others) will find the energy to pick up the torch (again). ... Wait... You mean that one whow would not be apart of the collective? Which one? Or is that "with the same picture"? ;-)

People can only subscribe to one or other show if they want to
That could be achieved as is.

Problems:
People will need to resubscribe to the news show
That not a problem. Not even a slight inconvenience.

Anybody have any comments? Ideas?
In my mind the show is already split. The logo and music is all that links the two. And it has been up before to change music. So I'm all for it. You're doing spiffing work and the show is only getting better, broader and more interesting. Kudos.

I'm easy - if you open another feed, I'll just subscribe to that as well.

I think It's a good idea, although you'll need to call it something different, as it's more of a Jon cast than a Van Hemlock one.
Gotta call it:
"Shute For The Moon!"
It's catchty and modest!

I second Akely's Virgin Worlds comment. World domination!

Sounds like a plan, it wouldn't hurt anyway so nothing stopping you imho.

Late responders club! Okay, what about calling it something like Episode 81.5 Or something. Or just make it it's own completely different podcast but I'm not a great fan of that idea.