Alongside that, I found out that the music I used in my videos, including the "Network Series" which I had just put a lot of effort into, required an expensive license in order to be broadcast in a YouTube video. When I had first began using it, the TOS for the music site didn't really specify this, because YouTube wasn't really much of a thing yet. It was Royalty Free music, so I figured I could use it. When I started seeing videos and reading blogs which warned about using it, I was afraid that I might lose the majority of my work on Youtube, so, you know, I was a bit discouraged.
At one point, while stuck in traffic, I decided to listen to KUFO, just for nostalgia sake. After listening for a while, I realized that I wasn't hearing the Marconi Show, I was hearing the Cort and Fatboy Show. Marconi had been ditched, and Cort and Fatboy had taken over his old slot as the main afternoon show. I found that KUFO had seemingly grown up with me. Cort and Fatboy, despite Fatboy's ridiculous nickname (he's actually a little guy, for one thing) catered less to a collegian frat-boy mentality, and more to a nerd demographic. They were essentially the anti-Marconi, and their listeners were relieved to have Marconi out of there.
I became a fan, and listened to Cort and Fatboy on a regular basis. The entire station seemed to be on the same page as me, now. The morning program was hosted by an erudite, yet funny guy, named Rick Emerson, and his crew. It turned out that Cort and Fatboy, teemed up with the Rick Emerson crew, had a lot of involvement in the Portland community. I relinked my blog to KUFO, and began following them on Twitter. I became involved in their whole social media circle, and Bobby "Fatboy" Roberts became a reader of J-Dubb's Theatre. This circle included a podcaster named, Robert Wagner, who ran a whole Portland-based podcasting network.
During this time, I became less interested in YouTube, and more interested in the Portland media scene. There was a big collaborative effort at that time to attempt to link the old media with the bloggers and podcasters of new media. I linked up on social media with some media people of both venues, and began to focus more on Portland related events. My videos dwindled to around one a month, and largely reflected my disenchantment with the new YouTube.
At this time, I retired the old banner from 2006, for a new one, which I still use in some form or another to this day, including the end cards at the end of my videos.
Then, one day in October, I logged on to Twitter to see talk of Cort and Fatboy having been fired. The next morning, It was confirmed that the Rick Emerson crew had also been let go. I found out that the majority of Portland's radio stations had been purchased by an evil corporation called, Alpha Broadcasting (now part of the merged company, Alpha Media). Apparently, Alpha Broadcasting's technical manual for what a rock station's demographic wants, didn't match up with the current programming on KUFO. So, they replaced the programming director.
The new programming director canned the talent and replaced them. To add insult to injury, they were replaced by none other than our old pal, Marconi, who once again took the main slot of the day. But he turned out to be the lesser of the evils. The station also brought on a DJ from Seattle named, Ricker, who made Marconi look like Martha Stewart, and a former Howard Stern intern named, Kidd Chris. At this time, I re-unlinked J-Dubb's Theatre from the KUFO page. These changes would lead to the demise of KUFO.
There was a lot of outrage in the Portland community. Bloggers, podcasters, and traditional media journalists expressed their disappointment. I covered this story on J-Dubb's Theatre, as well as invented a couple of Urban Dictionary definitions for KUFO. It was a lot of fun watching these definitions go viral. Both my article and my definitions were linked to in an article by Culture Pulp. This probably doesn't mean anything to you, the reader, but it was a big deal to me at the time.
Cort and Fatboy brought back "The Cort and Fatboy Show" as a podcast, and eventually began broadcasting over Robert Wagner's podcasting network. They began hosting their local events again. As well, Greg Nibler and Sarah X. Dylan, formerly of the "Rick Emerson Show", started a podcast called "Funemployment Radio." This podcast grew in popularity to an international renowned, won some web awards for top ten comedy podcasts, and is still going strong, six years later.
By the beginning of 2010, I was no longer making videos...
Continued...
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