The End of the Dr. Demento Show On Radio

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."

Comments

Re:I'm ignorant

[Anonymous Coward]

Local radio and opportunities for niche programming are disappearing. We are left with Clear Channel drones broadcasting across the nation the same drab crap. The free market is going after the lowest denominator. Personally, I did not like Dr Demento but a large number of slashdotters probably do. It is a shame that it is harder to find a place for something different in this world.

I live in a small town. Clear Channel is one more way to erode something unique. The corporate whores at the FCC have decide to server their corporate masters, and this is just one more sympton.

Re:I'm ignorant

[gclef]

Dr. Demento ran a syndicated radio show that focussed on the weird, offbeat, and just silly. Weird Al got his start there, for example. A large number of people in the geek community grew up listening to his show, especially as it's had a forty year run.

What's being lost? A bit of the unique, a bit of the oddball and unusual. Radio has become that little bit more boring and bland.

Thanks Mr. Hansen!

[VValdo]

I listened to him on every Sunday,
The Funny Five and music skits,
But now that his show is all finished,
I can't help but feeling like
Shaving cream, be nice and clean
Shave every day and you'll always look keen!

Thanks Dr. D!

W

Re:I'm ignorant

[discord5]

The corporate whores at the FCC have decide to server their corporate masters

Yes, I too have servered my corporate masters every now and then. From great distances I have hurled 1U, 2U and every now and then 4U servers towards their heads. Sadly, despite their weight and looking very sturdy, servers break too easily for servering my corporate masters on a regular basis.

I'm planning to bring out a book in a year or two: How to server man.

FWIW, I make the same typo nearly all the time ;)

Wow

[jayhawk88]

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.

Re:I'm ignorant

[ultrasound]

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.