"We all knew that if given the proper time/backing, that there was no doubt this would take off." Webber's show might have been listenable, but even with the right financial backing was there there is no way the entire webio would have lasted.

Not unless "the right financial backing" means a billionaire hobbyist who was willing to run a vanity project podcast station at a loss indefinitely. I suspect that at least a few guys involved (Chet, Ofman, North) figured that's what Hernandez was.

_________________
Don't take it personally.

I believe Paul Allen was a major investor in Sporting News Radio and was basically running it at a loss for close to a decade. Even a guy with his almost unlimited financial resources got sick of losing money on the venture and eventually folded it up. Interestingly, it was at Sporting News Radio that Spiegel established his reputation as a "national" talent. But he was a "talent" on a station to which no one listened. Sporting News Radio was truly awful, as was Webio.

_________________

Amazingly a lot of the wildfire podcasts still survive on the internet.

http://www.northtonorth.com/pages/wildfire.shtml

There are bound to be some gems in that bulk of shows, North was pretty unhinged at the time.

For example I clicked on the first podcast, he compared him doing to show for wildfire to Vegas hiring Elvis to play there or something completely insane.

Not for nothing, here is the bonkers show he did right after getting canned from the score.

Jen's rolodex, north blowing the servers, etc.

http://www.northtonorth.com/blogs/SoundClips.php

welp, i personally have hosting covered... otherwise idk what old megaupload-esque sites are out there that don't require you to sign up for an account.... i'll have to look into that.

or shit, if you use gmail or something and the mp3s are broken down into hourly segments that are under ~15-20mb or whatever the individual file limit is nowadays, you could just e-mail them to me and i'll get them up there for anyone who wants them.

_________________

My prediction with Webio was that it would end up on one of WCPT's FM repeaters, probably 92.7 out of Arlington Heights. WHOOPS

_________________