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Dr. Demento to Retire After 55 Years On the Air

Ed Nielson

Ed Nielson

Yes we know. This same thread was started in June:


Demento's time in radio really ended in the 90s. He was a holdover from the progressive rock radio days in the 70s. Back then radio stations played comedy from Firesign Theater and music by bands such as the Holy Modal Rounders and the Bonzo Dog Band. When KMET flipped to jazz, Demento continued his show on syndicated radio. Like most of the novelty music he played, the novelty wore out after a few years. The syndicated show on-air ended a while ago. He's continued it online. Now that's ending as well. The question is what he does with his huge archive.
 
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TheBigA said:
The syndicated show on-air ended a while ago.
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Westwood One dropped him way back in 1992. He continued with a smaller syndicator (On The Radio Productions), for another eight years, then self-syndicated until mid-2010, when he went to online distribution only (which had been pay-for-play for four years already by then).

For the past four months, the weekly show has been repeats as a retrospective series. The last "new" show was yesterday (October 11) and was a countdown of the top 40 most requested songs during the 55 year run of the show.

Barret Hansen is a really nice guy if you know him outside of the show. We have exchanged birthday greetings via e-mail for more years than I care to remember (we're both getting old).

I should also point out that after KMET became KTWV, the live broadcast version (which was four hours long, compared to the two hour syndicated version) continued in L.A. for another ten years ... first on KLSX and then on KSCA after the former flipped from Classic Rock to Talk. The live shows ended when KSCA was sold and went Spanish language; Dr. D did a couple of specials afterwards on KSWD during its brief existence.
 
K.M. Richards said:
Westwood One dropped him way back in 1992.
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The story I was told was that Weird Al met him at Westwood One. Al heard the show on the radio, called the station, and they told him Demento was in Culver City. Al got a job in the mailroom there so he could meet Demento. He quit not long afterwards.
 
K.M. Richards said:
Westwood One dropped him way back in 1992. He continued with a smaller syndicator (On The Radio Productions), for another eight years, then self-syndicated until mid-2010, when he went to online distribution only (which had been pay-for-play for four years already by then).

For the past four months, the weekly show has been repeats as a retrospective series. The last "new" show was yesterday (October 11) and was a countdown of the top 40 most requested songs during the 55 year run of the show.

Barret Hansen is a really nice guy if you know him outside of the show. We have exchanged birthday greetings via e-mail for more years than I care to remember (we're both getting old).

I should also point out that after KMET became KTWV, the live broadcast version (which was four hours long, compared to the two hour syndicated version) continued in L.A. for another ten years ... first on KLSX and then on KSCA after the former flipped from Classic Rock to Talk. The live shows ended when KSCA was sold and went Spanish language; Dr. D did a couple of specials afterwards on KSWD during its brief existence.
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I remember hearing Dr. Demento's last live KMET show while I was still attending Loyola Marymount University in 1982 or 1983. After that, through the remainder of my days at Loyola Marymount, the only show I heard on KMET was his prerecorded nationally distributed shows. Did he return to do more live on-air spots on KMET after I graduated in 1985?
 
You were misinformed, A.

Al had sent him tapes of his earliest parodies as far back as 1976, when he was still a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (after Hansen spoke at Cal Poly). Dr. D aired a couple, and a star was born.

The fact that throws the timeline you were told off is that Al's first single "Another One Rides The Bus" (which had first been performed live on the program of September 14, 1980) was released in March, 1981. It was the title track of an EP which was funded by Hansen.

Yankovic did work in the mail room at WWOne in the 1980s, but that had nothing to do with his friendship or contributions to the show.

And yes, I have confirmed all of that with both of them personally.
 
ted chittenden said:
I remember hearing Dr. Demento's last live KMET show while I was still attending Loyola Marymount University in 1982 or 1983. After that, through the remainder of my days at Loyola Marymount, the only show I heard on KMET was his prerecorded nationally distributed shows. Did he return to do more live on-air spots on KMET after I graduated in 1985?
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I know at least some of his KLSX and KSCA shows were live. The specials on KSWD all were.
 
K.M. Richards said:
I know at least some of his KLSX and KSCA shows were live. The specials on KSWD all were.
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Okay, courtesy of the Dr. Demento playlists page, here are the answers:

Dr. Demento's last live KMET show (first time around) was on May 22, 1983, per


and I did get to listen to most of that show.

There was one more local show during this period but Dr. Demento was touring with "Weird" Al Yankovik. It aired on May 22, 1983:


Note that no tape exists of this show and at least two of the extras on the top ten countdown might not have been played. I did not hear this show.

Dr. Demento was also supposed to have a prerecorded KMET show on May 29, 1983 but that was preempted:


There was a 4-hour show prepared for June 5, 1983, but it never aired:


The local live version of the Dr. Demento show didn't reappear until May 12, 1985, this time running for 2 hours starting at 10pm:


I didn't hear this as I was studying for my finals that week and the week that followed.

Anyway, this should clear up when Dr. Demento was and wasn't live on KMET between 1983 and 1985.
 
I thought it was interesting that for a time, Demento worked at a couple of record labels in LA. He was part of the marketing department at Warner Brothers that wrote creative advertising to get people to listen to their new artists. In a way, that's kind of what his radio show was about. Some stations had people like that, who were music insiders and knew the back-story behind the music.
 
TheBigA said:
He was part of the marketing department at Warner Brothers that wrote creative advertising to get people to listen to their new artists.
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In fact, while at Warner Brothers, he invented the famous "loss leaders" that sampled the label's artists, advertised entirely on the inner record sleeve, at $2.00 per two-disc set.
 
K.M. Richards said:
In fact, while at Warner Brothers, he invented the famous "loss leaders" that sampled the label's artists, advertised entirely on the inner record sleeve, at $2.00 per two-disc set.
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I've got a few of those in the ol' vinyl collection. Gotta yank them off the shelf and dust them off after all these years. Those guys introduced me to some interesting artists/songs. That was quite the marketing gambit, I had no idea Demento was behind it.
 
K.M. Richards said:
The live shows ended when KSCA was sold and went Spanish language;
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Interestingly, that show's cancellation alone generated more angry calls to the new operators of KSCA than the ending of the AAA format.

What that proves is that interesting "benchmark" specialty shows late at night or in off-peak weekend hours do create brand loyalty... and in the PPM world, help to get radios set to a station right before the work week begins.
 
davideduardo said:
What that proves is that interesting "benchmark" specialty shows late at night or in off-peak weekend hours do create brand loyalty... and in the PPM world, help to get radios set to a station right before the work week begins.
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Which is why (even though we are in a diary market) we replay AT40: The 80s on KRKE from 8:00pm to midnight, and even run a tag at the end of the morning airing directing listeners to that second play "in case you missed any part of the countdown".

I don't know exactly how many people will have 93.7 pretuned on Monday morning, but I do everything I can think of to get as many as possible.
 


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