The Spud Goodman Show

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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 mid-1990s. The program debuted on public access channels in the Seattle/Tacoma market in February of 1985 as "Can We Talk??" but soon incorporated the host's name in its title. The host, Spud Goodman, was a hip, cynical and occasionally mean-spirited under achiever. Spud was joined by his co-host and boyhood friend Chick Hunter, who was credulous, sincere and naive. The differing world outlooks of the two men made for good character interplay as well as entertainingly disjointed interviews of the program's guests. The show's guests usually fell into one of two categories: eccentric celebrities or scripted pseudo-celebrities. If was frequently difficult to tell which were which, a situation that added to the show's edginess. In an effort to maintain control of frequently anarchic program, Spud often admonished Chick to "know your role" and limited him to one question per guest. In addition to the public access television show, Spud and Chick also hosted a similarly themed three hour Sunday afternoon call-in show on Tacoma radio station KAMT, and later a half hour pre-recorded radio program syndicated to college radio stations around the US.

After several years of originating from "Spud's apartment" (in fact an ad-hoc studio constructed in the basement of an abandoned Eagles Club in downtown Tacoma) the program moved to the facilities of TCI Cablevision in Seattle, where it was broadcast live. Featuring genuine celebrities in addition to the 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. The program soon moved from TCI's public access channel to their local origination channel, which allowed sponsor tie-ins and other synergies. It was at this time that the show began to acquire the repertory company that carried it through to its end. Accordion Joe, the world's only accordion playing Elvis impersonator, served as the show's "orchestra." Spud and Chick were soon joined by Spud's parents and other relatives and hangers-on, all hoping for a chance at fame. 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 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.

Following the live program, Spud resurfaced in "Spud on Sports", in which he interviewed professional athletes and other sports boosters in a pre-recorded format. He also had a 13-week pre-recorded series called "The Other Spud Goodman Show" which was built around the theme of his "failure" with the live show, and his attempts to resurrect his career by establishing a cult of personality for himself.

Spud Goodman finally made the transition from "cable hell" to the broadcast spectrum in 1992 when he began a three-year run at KTZZ-TV in Seattle.^[1] By this time the program had grown even more ambitious than the live version on cable, and although it was pre-recorded without a studio audience, it maintained much of the circus atmosphere of the live show. Since KTZZ operated on a shoestring budget, the program was heavily dependent on volunteer staff working in all aspects of production. By the mid 1990s, however, the handwriting was on the wall for locally-produced variety programs, and after a three-year run the management of KTZZ reluctantly pulled the plug.

Spud's show was to have one more run, however; not as a local program but as a fixture on TV network Fox's new "Foxnet" cable network which Fox saw as a means to get its prime time programming into markets without Fox affiliates. 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.