History
The Spud Goodman Show was a counter-culture talk and music program which was prominent in the Puget Sound area from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s. The program debuted on Public-access television cable TV channels in the Seattle/Tacoma market in February 1985 under the title Can We Talk?? but soon changed the title to incorporate the host's name.
Purporting to originate from Goodman's apartment, the original set was an ad-hoc studio built in the basement of an abandoned Eagles Club in downtown Tacoma. After several years at this location, the program moved to the Public-access television facilities of TCI Cablevision in Seattle, where it was broadcast live. After one season on Public-access television, the show moved to TCI's commercial "local origination" channel which allowed sponsor tie-ins and other production synergies. Featuring genuine celebrities in addition to scripted ones, live music, a live audience and call-ins from viewers, the show became a genuine weekly event in the Seattle television market and frequently played to a standing-room-only house.
Although the program was the highest-rated locally produced cable show in the Seattle market, its popularity also made it a target of some Public-access television advocates who saw its popularity as unfair to their own programs. Rather than accept an unfavorable time slot for the sake of such fairness the program left the air at the height of its popularity. The show made the transition from Public-access television to broadcast television in 1992 when it began a three-year run at KTZZ-TV in Seattle.
Since KTZZ operated on a limited budget, the program was heavily dependent on volunteer staff working in all aspects of production. By the mid-1990s, however, the viability for locally-produced variety programs diminished, and after a three-year run the management of KTZZ reluctantly cancelled the show.
The show was to have one more run, but not as a local production. The Fox TV network had introduced its "Foxnet" cable network as a means to get its prime time programming into markets that did not have Fox stations. Produced on a practically non-existent budget out of rooms rented from a local service club with declining membership, the program enjoyed another three years on Foxnet, a quirky counterpoint to the network's slicker Hollywood offerings.
Read more about this topic: The Spud Goodman Show
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (1735–1826)
“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)