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.

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.

Local radio and opportunities for niche programming are disappearing.

Dr. Demento was syndicated, not local. He is definately niche.

It is a shame that it is harder to find a place for something different in this world.

Too bad there is not some system that can allow people to connect and search for content using computers.

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.

I also live in a small town and if it weren't for the clear channel stations, I'd receive no radio stations (we have weak local stations with lots of static).

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

He's a legend, radio will miss him.

"Star Trekking, across the universe..."

Rolely polely fishheads - eat 'em up ... YUM! After MANY years my 30+ son and I still share that as a greeting ... time to make some new memories!

Thank you Dr. D for 40 years of steady laughter in a box. Your show wasn't perfect, and you weren't perfect. But in your love of music and laughter and imperfection, you built something beautiful and enduring that touched many lives. I only dream to do so well with my short visit to this little rock. You brought a bit of joy to countless people, usually when they needed it most. You taught us that it was ok to be different, to think differently, and even to really enjoy the differences. To revel in life. For that, you will always have our gratitude.

I loved Addotta's work. Continuous bad puns to silly music.

"...He said I'd blown a seal. I said, 'fix the damn thing and leave my personal life out of it, OK, pal?'..."

That and "Life in the Slaw Lane" were brilliant. It's too bad I can't find my old cassettes of Kip Addotta, he had a lot of other funny songs, though none of them half as funny as "Wet Dream" or "Slaw Lane".

Doctor Demento and Larry Glick were staples of my youth.

Yes, because as we all know, the only value of something is how much money it's worth.

LMAO - this brings back some OLD memories for me, circa 1984 (while I was a freshman in college). I had come into my dorm room quite late @ night one evening (a bit buzzed from a few beers I was having with some pals of mine then)... my then roommate (now deceased, God rest his soul (he was a good man)), was sleeping.

I was being an ass, & I then decided to turn on my stereo, & lo and behold, what was on? The Dr. Demento show!

Hehehe, & they were then playing "I BELIEVE IN BUGS", lmao...

Anyhow/anyways: That tune woke my former roommate from his sleep, which ordinarily meant "trouble"... but, when he heard it? LOL, even HE started laughing his you-know-what off, from that silly tune!

(Ordinarily, we'd have "gotten into it" due to my waking he as I did in this case, with "music"... guess it's "PROOF" that "music (such as it was in THIS tune, lol) hath charms to soothe the savage beast")

I was never a "huge regular follower" of this radio show, but when I DID listen to it? It was consistently always good for a huge laugh 9/10 times!

APK

P.S.=> Hehe, all in all? It was nice to have "relived" this old memory this brought up "from the mental archives" here... So, thanks for that much in this article on /. ... apk

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.

Blah blah blah corporatism yay! blah blah blah sucking business penis blah blah blah. Sound better to you? Monopolies are baaad,mkay? See how you couldn't hardly find AMD Athlon PCs when Intel was putting out shitty Netburst, or how MSFT crushed legitimate competition by tying sales per PC manufactured. Do we need to hire Sexual Harassment Panda to do a little jingle to spell it out for you?

As for TFA, while the Doc was always an acquired taste, because some of his stuff was funny and some was just...well demented, it is a shame to see another piece of our collective past bite the dust. Sadly like the poster before the corporatism yay! guy ever since Clear channel bought out every station in my area it has been nothing but shitty radio 24/7/365. Thank the Great Electron for MP3 car stereos, that way I never have to be exposed to the complete and total foulness that is Clear Channel. I wouldn't wish that dreck on anyone...well maybe the anon coward that I'm responding to. I bet after a couple of weeks of forced CC listening he'd be crying like a bitty baby!

The pop stations near me played Weird Al and he was a massive hit on MTV (/me remembers music on MTV...) but if you meant Weird Al wouldn't have done what he did without Dr Demento, then I agree - in fact, I believe the live show where Another One Rides the Bus was largely his breakthrough (he had minor hits before that - My Bologna and such) and he was inspired by the show.

The live and demo recordings were fun, too - in fact, the demo version of Happy Birthday recorded on Dr Demento is FAR better than the one on the first album, which was overproduced, mixed poorly, and lost the guitar and vocal edginess (in fact, it is rather cheesy).