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fiogf49gjkf0d Submitted to a radio blogging website.
Here's my column.
There has been a longtime absence of funny music as a regular genre on the San Diego airwaves. The exceptions are
when sometimes they can be found on some of the morning drive time shows or on some of the AM talkers such as
Rush Limbaugh (where Paul Shanklin's satirical works can be heard).
Yes, we can sometimes hear the funny songs during those times if we're lucky, but how about thinking of
playing them during the other day part hours such as middays and afternoon drive and on the FM side of the dial.
Since about 1997, I've been experiencing the evolution of funny music since the Internet became the place
where new and emerging funny music artists can be discovered at the same time that commercial radio has
decided to take far fewer chances on funny music as a regular part of their play lists. The lyrics are smart,
make commentaries on geek culture, and make satirical jabs at pop music artists and other figures just to name
three.
A whole culture of funny music has evolved over the past two years mostly on the Internet-only side.
There's a 24/7 stream called dementiaradio.org that plays funny music. There's The Fump at fump.com
that features almost 2,000 funny songs you can stream and buy featuring some of the biggest names
in the genre of funny music, aka dementia, named for Dr. Demento (found at drdemento.com).
There's even a weekly Top 20 survey that counts down the most popular funny songs of the week,
and it's been on since January of 2005 when yours truly created The Dementia Top 20, programmed,
and hosted it until 2007 when I retired, and its successor, DJ Particle, has been running the DT20
since then; it's now part of her own show as "Mad Music Top 20 Revenge" where she plays most
of the newer funny songs and counts down the Top 20.
Lastly, but now least, there's another website run by Captain Wayne called madmusic.com where
listeners can stream over 1,600 episodes of funny music shows on demand.
With all of this rich amount of funny music totaling into the low tens of thousands of recordings as
of 2015, as 24 hour funny music format for broadcast radio should be considered as at least an offering
on an HD2 or HD3 sub channel to test the idea out (also made available on streams via the station's
websites), and if they prove popular, they can graduate onto a main HD1 (and analog) channel.
With geek culture a part of everybody's lives, and there's no sign of Comic Con, Star Trek,
Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, cos playing, and others fading away anytime soon, radio should take
a chance on a 24/7 funny music format. The listeners buy the same things non-geeks buy: cars,
insurance, etc. etc.
Dementia. The final frontier. What radio station could go where no other has gone before?
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