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.
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