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The End of the Dr. Demento Show On Radio

Posted by kdawson on from the aka-barret-eugene-hansen dept.

damnbunni writes "Dr. Demento has announced that his long-running comedy radio show will be ending (except weekly in and around Amarillo, TX). Modern 'format' radio has been less and less friendly to oddball and offbeat programming, and after years of declining station membership the Doctor announced on June 6 that his radio show will be no more. He will still stream weekly shows on Saturday from his website, drdemento.com. While I'm sad to see the show go, nearly 40 years is a good run."

4 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Wow by jayhawk88 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Reading through his website announcements there is like a timeline of and old school radio guy dying. I'm not going to pretend I'm a big Demento fan, but still kind of sad. We're closing up, we're losing money. We got only 100 orders for a last ditch money making idea. We're clearly being hurt by the decline of CD sales. We can't fill orders because we're working with Yahoo Small Business for some reason.

    Just out of curiosity, why the hell is going online/podcast a last-last ditch effort for this guy? He's got a name recognition that would draw people in, and the format would seem to work well for podcasting. At the very least a podcast could drive people to his website and help him sell a few CD's/tshirts. I get he's an old school guy and up until recently still had a terrestrial broadcast to do, but you'd think someone would have come to them at some point and suggested this.

  2. Re:I'm ignorant by ultrasound · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Radio in the UK is growing stronger each year, from http://www.rajar.co.uk/:

    Radio listening reaches all time high as 46.5 million adults tune in to radio each week Radio digital listening hours up 18% and digital share up 19% year on year DAB ownership up 9% year on year to over 1/3 of the population

    Althought the commercial stations complain about the dominance of the BBC, the fact that there are so many quality channels on the BBC (no adverts, mandate to produce quality programming) forces the commercial stations to push similar content quality in order to remain competetive.

  3. I wrote a column on Dr. Demento by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://www.irememberjfk.com/mt/2009/11/dr_demento.php

    He's a legend, radio will miss him.

    "Star Trekking, across the universe..."

  4. Re:A bang or a whimper by mcgrew · · Score: 4, Interesting

    At least we can hear him on Saturdays. He hasn't been on the radio anywhere I've been for years; hooray, internet!

    If it wasn't for Dr. Demento, nobody would have ever heard of Wierd Al. IMO some of Al's older stuff, like the polka versions of Rolling Stones songs, were his best; the stuff he taped at home and mailed to Dr. Demento.

    --
    Free Martian Whores!