The GGR Networks Story: Chapter One

DAVE: Greetings, Wentyworld Readers! Dangerous Dave here! Occasional blog supporting character and Golden Girls Radio Network co-founder with Dr. J.

DOC: And I’m Dr, J…also a cofounder. Writer, actor, and such.

DAVE: 2024 marks the 20th Anniversary of the founding of our little nickel and dime internet radio frolics! Where does the time go?!

DOC: I can tell already that I am going to be much less helpful than Dave is in recalling anything that happened more than five months ago.

DAVE: This is just the first of a number of special presentations Wenty and I will release in celebration of the milestone. In looking to the future, I think it’s worth revisiting our past.

The genesis of the Golden Girls Radio Hour (our first show) started in August of 2004. I was preparing to ship out for Navy Boot Camp, so Jason and I were soaking up as much quality time together as we could. I brought a video camera to his apartment, and we set it up Mystery Science Theater 3000 style. We muted the TV audio and improvised our own lines to the shows and commercials. One of the shows we watched at that time was the Golden Girls.

DOC: I met Dangerous Dave many, many years ago when he applied for a job as a part-time radio announcer on KCOW. He was a great part-timer and, it turned out, a great friend. We went to a Weird Al Yankovic concert in August of 2003, a trip that we still reference today. That day, a bit less than a year later, when we played MST3K in my apartment…well, it was crazy ridiculous. I was putting all sorts of inappropriate words into the mouths of elderly women in commercials. This is the sign of best friend material…when you both enjoy the same goofy ways to pass an afternoon.

DAVE: This was an important event as it planted a seed of creativity in me. I sat at home one evening and that seed burst into bloom. I had the idea of writing a radio drama series based on everyone’s favorite group of women in Miami. I wrote scripts for the first two episodes and sent them to good ol’ Dr. J for his review.

DOC: Good ol’ Dr. J remembers that a lot of our communication regarding this “Golden Girls Radio” project was conducted on something called “Yahoo Messenger.” We even co-wrote an early episode entirely on a YM chain. Basically, all the technology we used at the beginning–Yahoo Messenger, MySpace, goldengirlsradio.com, etc–is now extinct, defunct or barely kicking. 20 years does make a difference.

DAVE: He read those scripts, wrote a script for the third episode, and sent me a response of approval along with his contribution to the series. We would record and edit these first three episodes as Season One of The Golden Girls Radio Hour. This would be the start of our internet radio empire.

DOC: From the very first episode, there was Kalin Krohe…more on him later. As the show rolled on, we continued to bring our friends, coworkers and family members into the fold as guest voices. Those first few Golden Girls Radio episodes are slightly painful to listen to these days…we were still finding our versions of the characters…and working with sub-par music and sound effects. The only “door open and close” sound effect I could find was from “The Flintstones”. Every aspect of the show got better and better with each season. Of course, sometimes a season meant two episodes…or one!

DAVE: Season Two of the Golden Girls Radio Hour would be recorded and produced the first time I came home on leave from the Navy, and this would become an ongoing tradition each time I came home. Record and produce a new season of Golden Girls Radio.

DOC: I always looked forward to Dave’s visits home…I can still remember spending New Years Day holidays at the radio station recording new episodes. In those early years we used the newsroom to tape shows…it was the only studio with table mics, as opposed to the boom-type microphones disc jockeys used. I have to issue a salute to the makers of Cool Edit Pro, which is now called Adobe Audition. That software was fairly new back in 2004, and the digital editing utility we used before it was so clunky, awkward and janky, it’d have taken 8 weeks to edit one episode.

DAVE: Eventually it would be time to follow the classic sitcom tradition of having a wedding. Rose Nylund would marry her old friend from St. Olaf, Bill Jesperson. This presented a couple of unique opportunities. The first of these would be replacing Rose with a new roommate on Golden Girls Radio, and the second would be our first spinoff show, The St. Olaf Files. The St. Olaf Files features Rose and Bill as St. Olaf’s resident private investigators solving crimes in the beloved hometown.

DOC: It took me a while to get on the spin-off trolley…I was concerned that GGR would not be as good without the Rose character. But we made some really great episodes with possible roomies, and eventually the replacement 4th Golden Girl…Cousin Oliver of “Brady Bunch” fame. As always, Dave had a brilliant notion in spinning Rose off. “St. Olaf Files” is unique among our series, and its best episodes are ahead of us. Having said that, we have engaged in the old “Have your cake and eat it too” gambit by doing several specials with the original four gals…and eventually a reboot of Golden Girls Radio that sits in an alternate universe where Rose never got married and never became a detective.

DAVE: The St. Olaf Files would have a backdoor pilot episode on The Golden Girls Radio Hour. It, of course, was a cliffhanger that rolled into the new series.

The first season of The St. Olaf Files was recorded and produced as a complete season the same way that The Golden Girls Radio Hour had been. This meant intense marathon sessions in the studio recording and editing several episodes in one go.

DOC: “The Golden Girls Radio Hour” has never been an hour long. Just like to point that out. I think we named it that way as a spoof of “The Lutheran Hour”, a religious program which runs 30 minutes. (The Spanish language edition of The Lutheran Hour runs only 15 minutes. Either the latinx community talks twice as fast, or they only need half the amount of religion per week.)

DAVE: It’s worth elaborating on the guest stars we’ve had up to this point in our run.
As Jason mentioned, Kalin Krohe would be our very first guest in the pilot episode of GGR. In the first few seasons of the show our guests largely involved co-workers from the radio station or a few of our community theater buddies.

Notable appearances include: Steven Crabb, Mike Glesinger (making his first appearance as the girls’ beloved and helpful neighbor), Kevin Horn (before his recurring role of Frank Fedardo), Misty Graham, John Kant, Dustin Harris (before taking on series regular role of Templeton the Mailman), Johnna Hjersman, Jennifer Schmid, and Dennis Klinker in the first three seasons.
Twenty years in, and there appears to be no slowing down for the ladies or for GGR Networks. (Though the Golden Girls Radio Hour and St. Olaf Files would both go on a hiatus as we ventured forth into other series.)

What does the future hold for our favorite foursome in Miami? Perhaps a trip to space?! The sky’s the limit, dear reader!

Jason and I invite you to continue to celebrate the 20th Anniversary all year long with us as we present new episodes, new commentaries, further blog entries in this series of recollections, and more!
So, for Dr. J, this is Dangerous Dave writing thanks for reading and…

BOTH: Goodnight everybody!