10 years of The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd
Ten years.
November, 7, 2014 marks the ten year anniversary of The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd as a podcast. True, the radio show started in April of 2004, streaming on Dementia Radio, an all comedy music internet radio station, but things exploded we put our first few episodes out on a podcast feed.
Podcasting was brand new. I don’t know where, but I read an article that mentioned it in September of 2004. I spent most of October researching exactly how to do it and then, on November 7, 2014, EPISODE #101 of The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd was pushed out into the podcast world.
In those days there were not that many podcasts and the joke among podcasters was, in order to tell someone about the podcast, you had to first explain what exactly podcasting was. In those early days, it seemed, there were a few types of Podcasts. There were the folks like Dawn & Drew who took the whole ‘no FCC rules thing’ and ran with it, producing shows that were blue, to put it lightly. On the other end of the spectrum were the God-casters, priests who would podcast their weekly sermons. And somewhere in the middle of all that was The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd. We were the first podcast that was geared towards kids and, because of that, our popularity really exploded.
I remember when we got our first email feedback. We were floored that people were actually listening to our show. Then we got an email saying that the writer’s kids loved the show. We immediately swore, right there, to take all double entendre out of future episodes (SEE: Wright Brothers’ Nuts) and make it as family friendly as possible.
From the very beginning, the show featured guest stars, mostly friends who were comedians. Our first big celebrity get though, was Leslie Carrara-Rudolph, puppeteer for Sesame Street. Then Barbara Holiday, my manager at the time, suggested she could get Arrested Development’s Jeffery Tambor. We jumped on the chance and he was more than happy to do it. Chris Hardwick was also in that episode and I remember him standing in my living room saying, “What’s a podcast?” Just look at him now.
From then on, we were extremely lucky in the stars we had on the show. Don Novello became a friend, as did Chuck McCann. Joel Hodgson and Frank Conniff, both of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 did voices for us and Frank was the guest star who returned the most times and played the most characters. The highlight was getting to work with two heroes, both legends in the voiceover world, June Foray and Stan Freberg. I will remember those sessions for a very long time.
Our show went from twelve listeners to over 85,000 a month at it’s peak. The podcast helped us meet people from all over the world, some of whom I am still in contact to this day. It opened the door for me doing the podcast for The Jim Henson Company, which opened up the door for me to become a puppeteer with the company.
Even though there hasn’t been a new show since 2008, outside of Dr. Steve’s Thanksgiving songs, the show still gets tons of downloads every week and every once in awhile, I get an email, much like that first one, that makes me smile because I know that Doug and I created something pretty special that touched a lot of people.
So, happy ten years Dr. Floyd. Here’s hoping the time a space cube keeps going for another ten!
Congratulations!