The Brief True Story of a Real Fake Show

Back in 2008, Mikey Rotella and myself were writing for a fledgling horror website called Horrornews.net. We penned a few horror reviews, a couple articles and I had a daily column highlighting videos from around the web.

Soon, we were asked by the site’s owners if we’d be interested in co-hosting a new kind of internet radio show they wanted to start called a “podcast.” Naturally, we agreed, not really knowing what the hell that was.

Whomever was supposed to “produce” this program dropped out in the 11th hour and I was asked to jump in and man the ship, so to speak. With that, I became familiar with a platform called Blog Talk Radio. Not sure if that’s still a thing. Probably not. Oh wow,  I guess they just shut it down in January of 2025. Weird.

Anyway, how it worked was the hosts and guests would call an assigned number at a scheduled time and the service would connect the calls together a record the session. It would then process and post the result to its servers, and like that, you had a podcast ready for streaming.

The backend of this platform, where the admin could manage all the incoming calls, also had a rudimentary sound board, where you could upload your own sound clips to play during the show. I assume this would be used for bumper music and prerecorded interviews and such.

Naturally, as any of you Shindig Radio listeners may have guessed, I had other ideas.

I quickly tapped my buddy Graham C. Schofield to record sound clips of an announcer type character introducing us and making fun of Mikey. I uploaded these sounds on the sly and played them during the program and we all had a good laugh.

Our tenure as the co-host of Horrornews.net’s Podcast From Hell, however, was relatively short lived. I believe we only recorded 4 episodes over a span of a few months. It had something to do with us being goofballs and not caring about recent and upcoming horror movies. Also, Mikey told a pyshic lady named Mama Lisa her name sounded like a pizzeria and that upset our other co-host. Didn’t upset Mama Lisa mind you, just our co-host. But the damage was done.

However, I was strangely intrigued by this soundboard style call-in Radio platform. So much untapped potential. One could call in and interact with big chunks of prerecorded material and put on an entire stage-play-style radio program and the site would take care of the rest. And like that, Realive Radio was born.

Mikey, Graham and myself set about recording different characters and bits that would be mixed with fake commercials and movie trailers and radio buffoonery. I would call-in and play these sound clips and it would give the appearance that you were listening to a real radio show, or as much as you could give that impression through a recorded phone call.

As you might imagine, it was fairly labor intensive, and we only produced 4 episodes of the program over the course of 2 years. But it was a fun and creative time we all really enjoyed.

Collected below are those 4 episode in their entirety, re-edited from their original airing to include all the clips in their pre-broadcast form.

Thanks of reading, thanks for listening. It’s Realive Radio. Get the fuck down on it.