List of TigerTails Radio episodes

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The following is a summary of episodes from the broadcast history of TigerTails Radio.

Season One[edit]

TigerTails Radio was started because TK Tiger felt that most Internet radio was rubbish, as all the stations he found were MP3 playlists with no one presenting the show. Teaming up with Blaster Hedgie, TK decided to "put the voice" back in to Internet radio by running a furry radio station for an entire year. The first airdate was 20 July 2004.

For the first few broadcasts, TigerTails Radio was just talk radio, but MP3s soon found their way into the show as TK purchased more equipment. By the end of Season One, the show was running two feeds: one in mono for dial-up users, and a second in stereo for those on broadband. The broadcasting location changed four months before the end of the season. Due to some swift PC building and a little luck there was no break in transmission and only the listeners who were also watching the webcam knew of the change from Studio A to Studio B.

Season One aired for three hours, every night of the week. When neither TK nor BH hosted the show, a reserve co-host was drafted in to cover. Replacement hosts included other UK furs Lazerus101, Tungro, SouthPaw, and Goten.

After 365 shows, TigerTails Radio celebrated its first birthday, and was killed off by TK, as it had achieved his goal of airing every single day since its creation.

ShepFact[edit]

During Season One, TK decided it was a good idea to have content supplied by the listeners. One listener was a fountain of knowledge who had just appeared on the Furry scene named Shep Shepherd. Every day Shep would supply the show with a fact, which either host would read out during the ShepFact music (a 50 second version of the Blue Peter theme). Shep would then put the fact in his LiveJournal, and TK would update the TigerTails Radio website. When Shep was in the studio, he often prepared extra special ShepFacts for the show. To this day, Shep continues to post a daily ShepFact to his journal.

Memorable shows[edit]

The 80's Disco Night[edit]

The most memorable show from Season One was the 80's Disco. This is the only show the cast have a full archive of. The show ran for eight hours, 9PM until 5AM UK time. The main show was the normal three hours, but it was bookended by non-stop 80's music. The studio was turned into a dance-floor, complete with food, drinks, disco lights, and a mirror ball. A large number of guests turned up for the show, though few lasted the whole eight hours. A non-furry friend of Blaster Hedgie archived the show and posted it to the studio.

Karaoke Night[edit]

To celebrate the changing of the year from 2004 to 2005, TigerTails Radio held a karaoke night. Music was provided by the studio's PS2 and various editions of the game SingStar. A large number of gusts came to see the new year in, and many took part in the singing. Notable performances included Klepsydra singing "Ace Of Spades", Leinir performing "Ain't No Sunshine", and TK's version of "Affirmation" - which he hated, but a few listeners enjoyed enough to ask him to repeat the song. He refused, and it became a running gag to ask TK to sing Affirmation. Klepsydra's "Ace Of Spades" was voted the best song of the night.

The Waffle Night[edit]

Near the end of Season One, a visit to the studio by Lazerus101 inspired the cast to relive the old talk radio style of show. The conversation was fast and flowing, to the point where the entire show had passed without anyone remembering to play any music. Only one listener complained about this, while others wrote in to say how much they had enjoyed the show.

TigerTails Radio Comic Relief Gunge-a-thon 1[edit]

12 March 2005 was the night of the UK childrens' charity Comic Relief (also known as "Red Nose Day".) TK decided it would be a good idea to raise money for this good cause by throwing 8 litres (US: liter) of BBC gunge over the regular cast members. TK Tiger press-ganged Bungle BearSkunk, Blaster Hedgie, and Lazerus101 into taking part as victims. Guests in the studio could donate money to pour the bucket of gunge over the cast member sat in "the hot seat" - which was a very cold seat as the gungings took place outside on a cold spring night.

Dark Lordess poured a bucket of orange gunge over TK first. An hour later Lazerus101 dumped 8 litres of blue gunge over BH. Another hour followed before TK got to be on the pouring end of the bucket, as he covered Bungle in a second blue bucket. Finally at around 1:30am, Laz received a bucket of orange gunge from TimmyPup, who had donated £100 via the TigerTails Radio's portion of the Comic Relief website, kindly setup by SouthPaw. The show raised £301 in total.

The was one of the final shows broadcast from TigerTails Entertainment Studio A, and most of the fallout could still be seen on the patio and lawn area despite rigorous cleaning efforts.

The Final Show[edit]

TigerTails Radio celebrated its first birthday on 20 July 2005. During this show, TK made the announcement that this would be the last TigerTails Radio broadcast for Season One. The show turned in to a party, with people remembering their favorite shows, or sections from the show. After the show ended, the cast (chiefly TK, Blaster Hedgie and Shep Shepherd) waited a few moments before broadcasting an extra section for another hour of random fun. The show finally ended for real with TK reprising his karaoke night performance of "Affirmation".

Season Two[edit]

Over half a year after TigerTails Radio was pulled off the air, Blaster Hedgie asked TK Tiger if he fancied restarting the radio show. TK agreed, and got to work preparing everything for Season Two of TigerTails Radio. This time the show would not be aired every night, but only when both TK and BH had the time to spare. This created a sporadic show schedule, so TK decided to archive each show and offer them for download for those who missed an episode.

Technical issues[edit]

Season Two aired 36 shows. The last show was the second Comic Relief Gunge show. Many technical problems stopped Season 2 from reaching its target of 100 shows, with two hard disk failures in the broadcast machine, the loss of the show archive server, amp and mixer problems, and the loss of the broadcast server.

Memorable shows[edit]

Show #367[edit]

22nd of February 2006 was the date of the pilot show, numbered Episode #0. It wasn't meant to be a true show, but a live dry-run to test the new equipment. It got a good number of listeners, even without advertising. The show ran for the full three hours, and featured Silver Tomcat live via Skype, a new feature. It also spawned the concept of pre-season test shows, which would continue into the later seasons.

Show #403 - The TigerTails Radio Comic Relief Gunge-a-thon 2[edit]

Episode 36 and the final show of the season. After raising over £300 in 2005, everyone involved thought it would be a good idea to try and raise the same amount, if not more, when Comic Relief 2007 rolled around. Three months of planning came together on 16 March 2007, when the second Gunge-a-thon took place. Ten furs, including the four victims from last time, took part - each getting a bucket of BBC gunge and a second bucket of something else.

The BBC gunge was poured by a friend of TK from the world of theatre. Like before, those in the studio could donate to pour a second bucket over the victim. A few victims' second bucket had been decided before the event thanks to online donations. These included Jowgenetsu's gunging with porridge at the hands of Lord Voldemort as Jowgenetsu looked like Harry Potter.

Furs gunged were Lazerus101, SouthPaw, Jowgenetsu, Xell, Tungro, Bungle BearSkunk, WolfPaw, Tryst, Blaster Hedgie, and finally TK Tiger.

The night raised £700 for Comic Relief, more than double the 2005 effort, and £200 more than the night's target of £500.

Season Three[edit]

Season Three of TigerTails Radio began airing on 17 September 2007, starting with another Episode #0. It didn't go smoothly and a few problems were discovered and ironed out. The studio lost its Internet connection on the date Episode #1 was due to air due to a change in ISP. Episode #0.5 aired on Monday 19 November, using the studio's brand new (and much faster) Internet connection. This test show went without major incident, and Sacred was even able to call in to the studio via Skype without the technical difficulties previously involved.

A problem with spyware caused a big headache for TK shortly before Episode #5 was due to air, as it killed the broadcast machine. Episode #5 was not only Season Three's first Theme Night (TV Theme Tunes in this case), but it was also the Christmas Eve/Day show. A hasty install of XP (on a failing hard disk) failed to resolve the problem, forcing TK to reinstate an old piece of show equipment replaced after Season 1. Blaster Hedgie's laptop had been used to provide the music for the show but was replaced by the Skype PC in Season Two and vinyl records in Season Three. It served as a broadcast machine until TK fixed the normal broadcast computer.

While a schedule of airing dates was be listed on the front page of the TigerTails Radio website, the cast tried to air a show every Monday if possible. It was agreed that a regular air-date would help the show gain repeat listeners, while extra shows could be added mid-week if needed. TigerTails Radio 24 (see TTR24 below) saw listeners in to 2008 instead of a regular show, with Season Three restarted on Monday 7 January.

Episode #14 was the first show to take advantage of the BritFur FM server, allowing TigerTails Radio to broadcast in stereo for the first time since late Season One. The BritFur stream was broadcast in 128kbps stereo, whereas Pridelands was still broadcast in 56kbps mono. As of Episode #16, the show archive was recorded in stereo.

Episode #22 was the first show to introduce a musical underscore to each show, and also a change in format (see Memorable Show #22). This format was maintained until Show #29.

On the morning of Episode #29, six days before the show's fourth birthday, long-standing co-host BH decided to stand down from TigerTails Radio. His LiveJournal post on the matter lists his work schedule as one reason for deciding to quit, as well as feeling that he was no longer up to the task of being entertaining. [1] BH had failed to appear on every show since Episode #25, so his announcement was no surprise. His departure saw TK take the show back to its pirate roots for a while while a new co-host was sourced.

After a period of time, regular guest Eeve3 became the new co-host, while another member of TK's household, Xavier, became the new regular guest. Records were replaced by MP3s again after the motor in the record player became unreliable, and the rest of the season did not return to the musical-underscore format of the PSP days. After Episode #43, plans to end Season Three at Show #52 were decided, with TTR24 taking over the slot until a good working arrangement for Season Four could be decided upon.

Memorable shows[edit]

Show #422[edit]

Dubbed the EPIC SHOW OF POWER by Dante the Jedi in the #tigertailsradio AnthroChat IRC channel, Episode #17 was a small celebration of Easter 2008 that quickly got out of hand. Southpaw visited the studio for the first time in Season 3, Hedgie actually got something right for a change, and the show Blankety Blank actually ran like the TV show for the first time since the team started doing it. After the show ended, TK decided to broadcast a little extra music to scare the people still connected in to going to bed.

TK played "classic" old records like Mr Blobby, Rupert The Bear, The Addams Groove, and a collection of Black Lace songs. Eventually, he resorted to letting Hedgie sing on the show, even digging out Affirmation (not seen since the end of Season One). Listeners were then invited to message the studio to show they were still listening. Responding listeners were (in no order): Kyyanno, Mhisani, CW Tyger, Dante the Jedi, Split Persona and Owl, though server stats at the time reported nine users connected to the streams. Finally, after an extra two hours, TK called it a night and ended the broadcast for real, ending after a second round of the National Anthem (played at the end of every show since Season One Show #1) and a firm instruction of "Go To Bed", followed by a brief message announcing there will be "No Extra Part 2". Finally, the connections to Pridelands and BritFur were disconnected.

The archive (in the original .ogg format) was 148MB in size, compared to the show's normal archive size of around 90MB.

Show #427[edit]

Nicknamed the Dead Show in a LiveJournal post by TK before the show aired, Episode #22 was the first show of Season Three to run without any copyrighted music. It was also the first show ever to have backing music for the entire show. The new format came thanks to technical failures in two of the show's fleet of PCs (taking three hard-disks with them). The show was a very basic affair, with the opening jingle and the entire night's backing music being supplied by TK's PlayStation Portable. There was no Skype or messengers running, and IRC was op-less as the secondary IRC machine was the only IRC PC running. The show ended with TK playing the National Anthem live using BH's Keytar, as the .ogg version normally played wasn't converted and put on the PSP in time.

This show was three hours of talking, much like the Waffle Night of Season One. Though constant buffering problems kept the listener count down, those who did battle through the skipping gave enough positive feedback to convince TK to keep the format and turn TigerTails Radio in to BritFur FM's first Talk Show, which also meant that TigerTails Radio was no longer a pirate radio show.

Mustan provided the Blankety Blank questions for the night, which was won by TK (winning 50 blanks).

Show #446[edit]

Episode 41, also known as "The Drunk Show!", in which TigerTails Radio took a somewhat more alcohol-fueled look at the world for one night only, sponsored by Dante the Jedi. Having work in the morning, TK was drinking Tiger Beer (so he wouldn't get too drunk), Eeve3 was on vodka-based drinks, the teetotal Jowgenetsu was on Coke, while guests Lazerus, FoxieDragon and Draconder were drinking vodka, pear cider and beer respectively.

The evening ended with Eeve3 being more drunk than she had ever been in her life, and a rather merry FoxieDragon being escorted home by Lazerus and Jowgenetsu. Eeve3 woke up still drunk; after suffering her hangover she vowed never to drink that much again, ever!

Theme nights[edit]

While Season One had a theme night every Saturday, the idea was ditched for Season Two. Season Three saw the return of the theme night idea. The original plan was to have a theme night every fifth show, but that ultimately did not happen. The theme nights were:

  • Episode #05 - TV Themes
  • Episode #10 - Novelty Singles
  • Episode #15 - Video Games
  • Episode #20 - Movies and Musicals
  • Episode #28 - Experimental Music
  • Episode #32 - The Music of Michael Jackson

Pre-Season Four[edit]

TTR24 lasted until January 2009, whereupon a series of Pre-Season Four shows began. A new mixer and a condenser microphone had been obtained over the Christmas period, and TK was keen to play with his new toys. Using a mic stand stolen from BH's copy of Rock Band and a good number of cable ties, TK managed to rig up a system where three microphones could be used, with a fourth mic hanging from TK's headphone cable. With the microphones no longer on the table, laptops could be brought in, and IRC corner was moved from afar to the centre of the action.

A new phono to USB adapter had also been obtained, allowing the show to be broadcast on one PC via USB (eliminating Sound Card Hiss) while a PC connected to the phono output could archive everything. An old PC was found, and the archiving software installed. The USB audio input, however, caused one of the show's webcams to fail (due to driver conflicts) resulting in the show only having a single webcam where there had been two in Season Three.

Finally, thanks to the new mixer having a cross-fader, TK's PSP could make a come-back with the backing music. The laptop formally belonging to BH was once again used to supply the normal music. It was also used to let TK play in IRC. The backing music was again Creative Commons, and mostly sourced from the artist Sanxion7.

9 Pre-Season Four shows ran, with Show #9 being the first to reintroduce Skype on a dedicated PC since the trial runs of Season Three. Show #9 was also the first show to introduce a second new mixer which allowed for increased volumes on the microphones (a problem plaguing the other Pre-Season Four shows), more sound effects, and the allowance for more things to be plugged in. Another mixer was rescued from the Season Three left-overs and used for the Skype PC. Fellow BritFur broadcaster Stuart Otterson joined the final Pre-Season Four show via Skype, winning the call-in game of "Twenty Questions" on his final chance.

Season Four[edit]

Season Four started on March 16 2009. The show continued to use Shoutcast, and supported podcasting via a hand-coded RSS feed. The first podcast went live in late February, and was a segment of Pre-Season Four show #6. The segment was a trial run of a feature named That Time of the Month; a topical (and amusing) news quiz designed to give BH an excuse to come out retirement once a month. That Time of the Month was due to be done on the last show of each month, with the cast reviewing that month's news, however the concept wasn't well received by the listeners and was dropped by the second month of broadcasting.

The Pre-Season Four shows helped the cast bash out a rough schedule for each show, which was maintained throughout Season Four. The first 30 minutes were spent with the opening song and the cast talking about their week, as well as any important news that may have affected them. The second half of the first hour was spent on the Gaming News, a segment catching up on the week's activities in the Gaming Industry. This was followed by updates on the Xavier Retro Gaming Challenge, another new segment for Season Four. The last hour was started with a Skype game, which was followed by review segment Done and Dusted. Any remaining time was filled with random chat and music, before ending the show with the British National Anthem.

Other plans for Season Four had included the TigerTails Radio Comic Relief Gunge-a-thon 3, which had been put-back due to the economic downturn. The lack of economical growth, however, resulted in the event being postponed again.

The first update of the Yahoo360 blog in 2009 revealed the first show of Season Four was Show #472, counting all full shows since the very first show of Season One on July 20 2004. On Monday 20 July 2009, TigerTails Radio hit Show #490, and became 5 years old. There was a small celebration in the studio and the show featured clips from the past, messages from absent co-host Eeve3 and BritFur host Stuart Otterson, and even BH appeared live for the first time since show #476.

Season Four is also well remembered for being the season that spawned the "it's never a dildo" in-joke. One of the Skype games played was 20 Questions, and the question of "is it a dildo?" was asked often enough for the confirmation of "it's not a dildo, it's never a dildo" to be offered for free before the questions began. This meme managed to carry over to future seasons, especially seasons where Quiplash is played, featuring in full in Episode 03 of Season 15's game of Quiplash.

Memorable shows[edit]

Show #490[edit]

It's rare that July 20 falls upon a show week, but in 2009 it did. This lead to a show celebrating TigerTails Radio's 5th anniversary, or birthday as the staff call it. Unfortunately, the studio was a building site due to a dry rot problem in an adjoining room. Despite the problems with the studio, the cast carried on and delivered a show playing songs and jingles from previous years, talking about times gone by, and starting the show with Season One opening song "Happy Days" - the full length version of the Happy Days TV theme tune. This was Episode 19 of the season.

Show #500[edit]

Just ten shows after the birthday came another celebration - Show #500! For this event, the studio was thrown in to chaos as the cast decided to re-enact previous celebration shows by playing video games instead of playing music. Instead of the karaoke show from Season One, the cast decided to play Rock Band instead. TK set up a video camera in the studio to record the mad flailing of the cast as they set upon the game with gusto with the intention of uploading to YouTube. Most of the staff attempted an instrument, Eeve3 tried bass guitar, BH and Laz did some singing, TK had some fun on lead guitar and drums, while Xavier tried everything other than bass guitar. The final song of the night was Xavier singing "Kids in America", and nearly killing his voice doing so. This was Episode 29 of the season.

Show #520[edit]

Not so much a memorable show, but the first show to be entirely broadcast as a live video feed, after a change in BritFur's host resulted in a lack of broadcasting server. This was rectified by jumping over to LiveStream and broadcasting via that. The show went very well, and proved to TK that a live video stream could one day replace the studio web cam. This was Episode 49 of the season.

Show #523[edit]

Episode 52 of the season, the final show, and one that didn't want to end. Going on for almost four hours, the last episode of Season Four was both a party, and a revisit of Season Three's drunk show. Joining TK, Xavier, and Eeve3 in the studio was Salamander3, enjoying his second time as a guest host. This episode was dual-broadcast, both on BritFur.FM and LiveStream, so the listeners could become watchers for the final show. Much alcohol was consumed throughout the night, and two archive mp3s had to be produced. The first two hours featured all the normal segments of the show, while the rest of the show devolved in to the drunken ramblings of the hosts with the songs played during the main show becoming the backing music. The final few minutes of the show was spent on a massive rampage of thanks, with a drunken Xavier leading the charge before the National Anthem was played for the last time in Season Four.

Season Five[edit]

Following a few episodes of TTR 24 and 8 pre-season testing shows, Season Five began on May 24 2010. The studio's layout had been redesigned to allow the live video feed, provided by LiveStream, to better see the presenters. The video feed replaced the web cam, although it lasted no more than few shows, as the Internet connection to the studio began to falter, and the bandwidth required for the video diminished. The bandwidth issues were finally resolved just before Episode #20, and the video feed returned from Episode #24. The video was broadcast in a lower quality, however, owning to the processing power required for the previous quality had increased with a newer version of the broadcast software to a level beyond the computer's capacity.

Season Five set out to be the Gaming Season. This meant the music was sourced from video game soundtracks and fan-made remixes. The section of the show for retro gaming challenges was changed, and became the Audiosurf Challenge. Done and Dusted, Review of the Week, and the Gaming News segments remain unchanged, other than the Gaming News was extended to fill at least twice the time it used to, covering from 20 minutes in to the show, and running until the top of the first hour of broadcast. Reviews submitted by the listeners also featured in the Done and Dusted segment, including a weekly game review provided by Felis.

The three presenters of Season Four (TK, Eeve3, and Xavier) returned, while guests Kyyanno and the non-furry Angel DarkSong and Salamander3 have also returned for a few shows.

Technical Difficulties[edit]

Much like Season Two, Season Five has not been without a fair share of technical hiccups during the season of broadcast. The most severe of these issues was the loss of the BritFur server used to broadcast Show #28 (November 29 2010). A spare server provided by VirusNET was used to take-over. Show #29 was broadcast solely on LiveStream, and was the first episode to have done so since Show #49 of Season Four. The broadcasts continued to be exclusive to LiveStream until Show #33, when the team obtained a server of their own (dubbed The TigerTails Entertainment Server mk2) to use. The BritFur returned for Show #35, and the broadcast was dual-broadcast to both BritFur and the TigerTails Entertainment Sever, with the latter stream being re-broadcast by The Paw and new start-up station BeatPortFM. By Show #45 however, the show was once again being broadcast using just the TigerTails Entertainment Server as the BritFur stream again vanished. It was to remain offline for the rest of Season Five.

Other problems have included the loss of the entire Podcast library between the broadcast of Shows #11 and #12. This resulted in the loss of all the Season Four archives from the RSS feed. Connection problems prevented the re-uploading of the Season Five archives until October 1 2010. On November 15 2010 the whole website was down briefly, forcing the use of the TigerTails Entertainment Server (known as The Local Server during Seasons One and Two) for the web traffic. Due to this server being hosted in the studio (on an old Dell P3 500), the Podcast archives were again taken off line. The main site was reinstated a couple of days later, and the archives were one again available.

Memorable shows[edit]

Show #558[edit]

Episode 28 of the season. Happy Birthday to the Playstation2... In Europe. This show was designed to be a nice little party for the ten year anniversary of the PS2 launching in Europe. Eeve3, TK, and Xavier were asked to compile a Top Ten list before the show so some music from each could be sourced and played during the party. Three hours were designated for the show, instead of the normal two, with the plan being that each person's list would take around an hour to get through. However, Eeve3 was unable to attend for the show, and so TK and Xavier were left with a three hour show to fill. Deciding to go through both lists at the same time (taking in turns), the show ended up over running by almost an hour. While Xavier had a varied list of games, half of TK's list were music related games. Both TK and Xavier selected Final Fantasy X as their top game. [2]

When challenged to do a Top Ten Most Hated PS2 Games for Episode 28, TK stated that three hour shows are something best done once in a while, but didn't say that such a show wasn't on the cards.

Show #564[edit]

Episode 33 of the season. The first episode of Season Five to happen in the year 2011 prompted the cast to run another three hour show. On Monday 03 January 2011 the show was a run-down of all the important events which took place in the previous year. The first hour of the show was Xavier talking about the year, month by month, with TK and Eeve3 (aided by Salamander3) throwing in their own commentary on the events as and when they had something to add. The second hour was taken up with television and games of the year while the final hour was the portion of the show where the normal segments were bunched together. The AudioSurf Challenge came first, followed by the Review of the Week, a brief bit of Done and Dusted (provided by Werewolfe reviewing My Dog Tulip, and Felis reviewing Bard's Tale), and finishing up with Role Play chat. This show also marked the first broadcast via the brand new TigerTails Entertainment ShoutCast server.

Show #583 - The TigerTails Radio Comic Relief Gunge-a-thon 3[edit]

Episode 52, the final episode of Season Five emulated the final episode of Season Two by not only running for four hours, but also by being a Gunge-a-thon episode; The first one since Season Two's offering. Like the previous events, this would be a fund raiser with the money going to Comic Relief however this would be the first time that the event took place on a date other than the charity's official Red Nose Day. Because of this, and the global economic crisis, the event's target was far lower than previous events. This was the first gunge event to be broadcast in real time, over LiveStream.

Seven furs were gunged, with TK being the only victim to have taken part in past Gunge-a-thons. TK's friend from the world of theatre reprised his role of gunge co-ordinator, and he was responsible for mixing the correct gunge for the correct victim. Furs gunged (in order) were: Xavier, Eeve3, Werewolfe, Shougo, TK, Anthropuppy, and Felis.

The target of £100 was exceeded by a small amount, bringing the total TigerTails Radio had donated since 2005 to £1106.

After the customary "thank you" shouts were finished, the show ended with the version of the National Anthem sung at the Royal Wedding of Prince William to Catherine Middleton, a change from the normal version used since Season One.

Season Six[edit]

The sixth season was also the first season in TigerTails Entertainment Studio C as the personal situations of the cast had changed, resulting in their moving out of Studio B. Original host Hedgie joined TK in moving to Studio C, while Xavier moved in with his partner, earning him the title of "Former Resident" host. The predicted return date of 18 July 2011 was missed when UK telecom company BT mistakenly installed the phone line for Studio C in to the wrong building, forcing TK to delay the season's start by a month.

Season Six began on 29 August 2011, after a single test show the previous week. This was the first time only one test was needed since Season 2, mostly due to the unchanged nature of the equipment. An immediate problem with Studio C was space, being the smallest studio the show had ever broadcast from. Some creative wrangling by TK allowed everyone to fit in reasonably comfortably, but the dimensions of the room prevented all cast members from appearing on the LiveStream camera at the same time. The camera instead is now moved before each show, focusing on a single cast member and differing each week to prevent cast members from complaining about having the camera pointed at them.

Memorable shows[edit]

Show #611[edit]

Episode 27 of the season. With a studio filled with the usual freaks and oddballs, it was decided to ditch the normal Audiosurf challenge segment of the show in favour of bringing in a new game for one week only. The game was Blockbusters, as TK had been chatting to a YouTuber who had provided him with all the tools needed to get a game up and running. The two players on the blue team were Salamander3 and Floating Lime, while (in traditional Blockbusters fashion) Felis was the solo member of the white team. Hedgie was the question master, giving the contestants various video game related questions. TK was running the show behind the scenes, broadcasting the live video feed of the game to the viewers watching the LiveStream feed. Xavier took it upon himself to be assistant host, and heckler. The game ran on a Flash based game board, with the buzzers from the video game Buzz for the players to press in order to answer the questions. Joy2Key interfaced between the buzzers and the game board, but only worked when the game was the active window. Pressing the buttons when IRC was the active window in TK's PC caused the letters W and B to be typed out into channel, which caused the in-channel-joke of wbwbbwbwwbwwbbbwwbwwbwbwbwb key mashings to appear from listeners during the latter half of Season 6. Blockbusters was also featured in episodes #28 and #29.

Season Seven[edit]

The seventh season introduced a few changes behind the scenes to the way things happened. First thing was a change in the Shoutcast host used for the TigerTails Entertainment server pushed their prices up too far to remain a viable option, forcing TK to move to a new supplier. This happened days before the first test show, causing a brief moment of panic recoding of the website. A brief glitch in the website host, hosted for free by simbaspaws.org, caused all TigerTails Entertainment sites to be unavailable on the day of the final test, so an inexpensive web host was found for the main TigerTails site, while the TigerTails Radio site was moved to the blogging service Posterous. The move to Posterous was originally the plan for Season Six, but the proposed site was not ready in time. The live video stream was moved from LiveStream to Google Hangouts On Air to provide the webcam viewers with a better frame rate, as well as give TK the ability to archive a video podcast to YouTube (aka the TubeCast). The final change happened on the first non-test episode, which involved moving all the jingle and sound effects from a PC to a second Sony PlayStation Portable, meaning that PSP consoles handled both backing music and non-cast foreground audio.

Due to a change of address, long standing host Eeve3 was forced to leave the cast between Season Six and Season Seven. Felis, a regular guest and contributor from Season Six, became a main host in her absence. Blaster Hedgie offered to become a regular guest when his work schedule would allow. This would be the first season to see him as a regular face in the cast since 2008. As a result of Xavier's wedding during the break between seasons and changes in his personal life, the time of the show was changed to start from 8pm instead of 9pm. This allowed Xavier, who had to commute to the studio, to get home at a reasonable hour.

Season Seven began on 19 November 2012, after 3 test shows which were mostly tests of some new wiring techniques for the equipment and the Hangouts On Air software. The main studio layout was changed again, to reflect that the camera had been upgraded to a stationary camcorder instead of a webcam. All presenters other than TK faced the camera, akin to news reporters behind a desk. TK sat off-camera, in another room, where he controlled the equipment, cued the non-cast audio, and monitored all the broadcasting software. Season Seven was also the first season to entirely drop music (aside from backing music) to avoid running in to licensing issues with the TubeCasts. As an added bonus, new jingles were obtained for Season Seven, making it the first since Season Two to have jingles made for it.

Memorable shows[edit]

Show #648[edit]

Broadcast on the final day of 2012, and after the regular Episode of Season Seven, the cast of TK, Felis, and guest host Angel DarkSong saw in the year 2013 with a New Year Special. This show followed almost immediately after the regularly scheduled broadcast (Show #647 in total) and ran until shortly after 2013 began. Xavier was absent from the studio because he wanted to spend the time with his family. 2013 would be the first year he would see as a married man.

There was no plan or organisation to the show, and it soon devolved in to somewhat of a unplanned "drunk show" thanks to the purchasing of alcoholic beverages during the brief gap between #647 and #648. Angel DarkSong also provided a bottle of Spanish Sparkling Wine as a New Year's gift to the studio, which was opened shortly after the countdown in to 2013. To accommodate for the lag of live broadcasting, the cast celebrated around 30 seconds early to ensure that their countdown was received by the listeners at the true stroke of Midnight. This special episode was also the first time TK made a proper, if brief, appearance on camera.

Show #656[edit]

Known as Episode 15, this show was the first broadcast following the Sony event where they released information about the Playstation4. TK, Xavier, and Felis allowed this news to dominate the Gaming News segment of the show as they broke down some of the hype and speculation. News on the event was followed by various related news stories about reactions to the event from the gaming press, the fans, and Sony themselves. In a rare break from tradition, the Gaming News segment was so full, that it over-ran its time slot and caused a backlog resulting in an overall overrun of 45 minutes, making it the longest show of Season Seven at the time and the longest show since Episode 18 of Season Six.

Despite claims that he is a "Playstation fanboy", TK managed to remain mostly impartial, and even showed excitement for more Surface/SmartGlass compatibility with the new Xbox's games.

Show #694[edit]

Hidden Episode 53, this was the bonus celebration of the end of Season 7. It was originally intended to be a retrospective of the year, as well as being the season's only official Drunk Show. The plot of the show was very quickly derailed by the alcohol, with TK and Xavier indulging without having eaten all day. The show ended up running for longer than 4 hours, with the Google Hangout used to broadcast the YouTube stream cutting out on the 4 hour mark. This episode was also used to experiment with the technology, and former guest Floating Lime was invited into a virtual studio by adding him to the Hangout. Other cast members Felis and Angel Darksong refrained from getting as drunk as the main hosts. At the end of the night, Felis had to work with TK to haphazardly end the show, as TK was no longer able to focus on the software. Currently this episode is not available online.

Season Eight[edit]

The end of Season Seven heralded a few changes in TigerTails Entertainment Studio C. The first of which was a complete room reformatting so that TK actually had some space to press all the buttons that ran the show. The second was the eventual movement of the cast from around a table, to the sofa. This had the benefit of giving the cast a comfortable space to sit, and it had a much better background for the webcam. A third change was to move away from Google Hangouts and actually do a proper live-stream to YouTube. This meant that TK had to learn about broadcasting to the platform properly, and also bring in a second broadcast machine (not done since Season One) to run the video feed. With the occupants of the sofa being on the main camera, a picture-in-picture effect is used to have a camera in TK's "booth" so he can no longer escape being on the YouTube stream.

A few cast changes happened as well. Xavier moved away from the area, meaning he could no longer commute to the studio for the show. He still appears as a regular cast member as a voice through a hidden Google Hangout. AngelDarksong became a full cast member from the ranks of guest to replace his studio presence, and to give Felis someone to interact with in camera. Hedgie continued to be a regular guest, whenever his work schedule would allow it.

Season Eight was also the first season to introduce the concept of hats for the cast members. With Felis dressing smartly for each episode, TK decided to join in with the smarter attire for the early episodes of the season. This resulted in various hat styles being worn by the cast members. As the trend wore off, it became a running gag for IRC members to demand the appearance of hats on the camera, most notably from listener RedK. Often, TK would oblige these requests and not only find a hat from himself but sometimes distribute hats to the remaining (and hat-less) members of the cast.

Technical Difficulties[edit]

During the early portion of Season Eight, the webhost TK had selected to host all the TigerTails sites announced it would be closing down in August 2014. This prompted TK to seek out a new host and slowly migrate the website and data to the new provider. This proved to be a harder job than TK anticipated, and while the site experienced little downtime during the transition there was a long spell where the site was not updated while the move took place. The move was finally completed just before Episode #18.

The PC being used to broadcast the YouTube feed also suffered from an internal noise problem, which would give the YouTube feed an audible and high-pitched buzzing. To date, and despite many attempts to correct the problem, a solution to this has not been discovered. The audio feed for the Shoutcast stream (and therefore the podcast), however, was not affected.

Memorable shows[edit]

Show #718[edit]

Monday 21 July 2014 was the chance to celebrate a rather important milestone in TigerTails Radio's history. The show reached its 10th anniversary, though the cast continued the tradition of calling it a birthday. This episode was one of the few where Xavier could make it down the to the studio to take part in person. This episode swiftly turned into another drunk show, with TK and Xavier booking time off work to make sure they did not have to worry about the hangover on the Tuesday morning. Having learnt his lesson from the previous drunk show, TK stayed mostly sober, and limited his drinking so he could continue operating the show's controls. Felis and AngelDarkson, however, took charge as lead drunkards for the night. While a hard disk failure on the archive drive prevented any archive clips being played, Eeve3 and Salamander3 both provided messages for the show. Anthropuppy phoned in and, with a little wrangling of speakerphones to microphones, managed to wish the show a happy 10th before taking TK off air for a while to discuss how to repair the failed hard disk. Despite the show starting 7 minutes late and having Xavier destroy everything at the beginning, the runtime managed to go on for an extra hour and a half before the traditional ending of the National Anthem played out to call the show to a close.

Season Nine[edit]

Testing for Season Nine began on 06 July 2015, which featured TK alone in his booth, with a camera jammed in the doorway, and everything breaking. The season started properly 2 shows later on 20 July 2015, 11 years after the first show went to air. Like the previous season, Xavier still called into the show via a hidden Google Hangout, while guests could occupy the sofa. Early episodes were broadcast in 1080p, but this stressed the broadcast machine enough to drop frames in the YouTube feed so Episode 04 onwards were broadcast at 720p at 50 or 60fps.

Following the tradition of playing games with the audience, Season Nine introduced Jackbox games into the mix; mostly Quiplash (and later Quiplash XL). This was run from an under powered laptop via a long HDMI cable. As a result the game ran slower than it was meant to however it proved popular enough to make a consistent feature. As Xavier was unable to hear the game from his remote location, TK would read the questions out loud once the game's host had so that Xavier could join in the banter caused by the answers without having to wait for his device to catch up.

The final show of Season Nine aired on 11 July 2016 and had Southpaw joining Felis on the sofa. Following the season, a special episode was created to celebrate the 12th anniversary of TigerTails Radio.

Season Ten[edit]

Season 10 aired from 21 November 2016 (Episode 00) to 04 December 2017 (Episode 52). This season introduced Discord as a replacement for the Google Hangout method for Xavier dialling in, and also allowed for easier access for guests to appear on air. It would run alongside the IRC server until the end of the season, where the IRC server was then dropped due to everyone having migrated to Discord during the course of the 52 episodes.

Season Eleven[edit]

Season Eleven ran for 52 episodes from 23 April 2018 until 29 April 2019. The large gap between seasons was in part due to the domain host for TigerTails Radio closing down without responding to requests to move the domain. After working with the UK domain controller Nominet to restore access, TK was able to get the site back up and running in time for the season to start.

Memorable shows[edit]

Show #886[edit]

To celebrate reaching 100 YouTube subscribers, the cast put on another charity gunging event. Instead of Comic Relief being the charity of choice, this time the event was held in support of the Dogs Trust. Broadcast from a "secret location" (later revealed to be Echo's house) on 05 November 2018, each cast member suffered six buckets of BBC gunge in a multitude of colours. Xavier was the first to suffer the slop, followed by Echo, TK, and then Hedgie. As the final tally on the night had reached the target of £500, TK was gunged a second time. For this second gunging he wore a cheap lion fursuit which had been purchased with the intent of being ruined with gunge (akin to the antics of Tilt Longtail). £550 was raised on the night, with a final total of £806 being raised once gift aid and donation matching from the cast's work places were taken into account. The lion fursuit survived its gungy encounter and, as of the time of writing, is still owned by TK. TK would later get revenge for Xavier's unexpected announcement of the gunge-a-thon a few months later by doing a 300 subscriber pie-ing standalone video, where Xavier collected ten pies to the face on 26 March 2019.

Season Twelve[edit]

Season Twelve started with a test show on 09 September 2019 as minor modifications had been made to the studio layout to improve TK's viability on the camera feed. The start time of the show also moved from 8pm to 8.30pm, to allow for a shift in TK's work pattern. This had the effect of reducing the show by half an hour. To make this work, the long standing news segments (both gaming and current events) were dropped from the schedule. Jackbox games would still start at 9pm, but be replaced once a month by a game of Rocket League, which had recently allowed cross-platform play. The test show proved that the modifications worked, as well as reveal new thumbnails, title cards, and song cards.

The season kicked off properly on 16 September 2019 and would usually have Echo (and occasionally) Hedgie on the sofa, and TK at the control desk. Xavier would still dial in remotely using Discord. This would all change on 06 January 2020 when during Episode 17 TK and Hedgie announced they were being evicted from the studio to allow the restaurant next door to expand. Xavier and his wife was also being evicted from their home as the landlords were selling up, so after the Episode 18, the show took a mid-season break to allow the move to happen. Pooling their resources, the evicted cast members moved in together and Xavier rejoined TK and Hedgie in the same building once more for the first time since Season 5. Episode 19 happened on 20 April 2020 in the all new Studio D, during the height of the Covid-19 lock-down in the UK. Thanks to the restrictions on movement, Echo replaced Xavier as the dial-in host. The move also put paid to the Rocket League tournament due to the cast not wanting to play Split-Screen and Xavier's PS4 is used by others during show time.

Season Twelve was also the season TigerTails Radio hit 16 years since the first show. Episode 32 was turned into a minor celebration party. Complete with cake.

Season Thirteen[edit]

Like Season Twelve, Season Thirteen had been the subject of a minor studio remodelling to allow TK to have better visibility and to appear on camera. This was done via a second camera which focused solely on TK and could be cut to on the fly as it had its own place in the vision mixer. The studio also had a lighting upgrade, with four DMX512 RGB spotlights being added to the setup. The broadcast PC was also upgraded, allowing the show to be broadcast at 1080p/60 frames per second for the first time since Season Nine. Due to the increased difficulties in finding music compatible with being played on YouTube, most episodes of Season 13 featured only a single song at the start of the episode with no others throughout the rest of the show. The test show was broadcast on February 22 2021, with the first true episode happening a week later. As a result in a change of life circumstances, and the continued effects of the Covid-19 restrictions, Echo only featured in a handful of episodes during Season 13.

To celebrate 17 years of TigerTails Radio, Episode 21 was a minor celebration episode, again with cake.

The final episode of the season featured a return of Echo as a in-studio guest host, and featured everyone dressed up smartly. Echo looked like an undertaker, Xavier was in a waistcoat and shirt, Hedgie wore his pink suit, and TK dressed in his formal Scottish wear complete with kilt and dress sporran.

Memorable Episodes[edit]

Show #1000[edit]

TigerTails Radio hit the milestone of 1000 episodes on Nov 15 2021, during Episode 38 of Season 13. The show started with TK giving a little message that things were not quite ready, which was an excuse to show off some artwork created by artist Zodd (artist of the webcomic Gaypardo). Another pre-show segment happened before the a custom celebrationary jingle for the show kicked things off properly. The cast had dressed up for the show, with Hedge wearing a pink suit, TK dressed in lederhosen, and Xavier dressed as a generic anime style character. The show featured guests from the history of TigerTails Radio, with Southpaw, Froggy (previously known as Rapido), White Virus (ex-BritFur.FM broadcaster), and Echo. There was a gunge highlights reel, a single game of Quiplash, and the return of the game Russian Roulette for the first time since Season 2.

Show #1011[edit]

Episode 49 of Season 13 saw the show happen on the eve of Chinese New Year. This is not usually celebrated on the show, however it was the eve of the Year of the Tiger. So it was time to go all-out with the tiger themed clothing. So Xavier donned a tiger themed shirt and tiger ears, TK also had a tiger themed shirt and body painted as a tiger, while Hedgie wore a tiger themed wrestling singlet and tiger mask. Much to the amusement of the viewers who were chatting in the Discord channel at the time. Other than that, the show was a usual show. Having taken TK about two and a half hours to apply all the paint, it took almost as long to fully remove once the show had ended.

Season Fourteen[edit]

With the longest gap between seasons since the end of Season One, Season Fourteen arrived five months after Season Thirteen ended. The first season test show aired on 18 July 2022, just two days before the show turned eighteen years old. The traditional studio rebuild had taken longer than usual thanks to the effects of Covid still affecting some elements of shipping in the UK. New furniture was required in the studio and it took longer than expected to have it delivered. This delay allowed TK to make some improvements, however. Two extra monitors were added to his control desk, now granting four monitors to run the show with, giving much better access to the various chats and controls during the show. A lot of the transitional segments were moved to OBS instead of being done via the video mixer, and a green screen was introduced behind the main camera cast, giving the effect of the show having something resembling production values. TK was also able to introduce some on-screen graphics and for the first time ever, the Discord and YouTube comments could be seen behind the cast, as well as alerts for new subscribers or donations. The musical segment was moved from the start of the show to just before the audience interaction portion, and a pre-stream music loop was introduced. Finally, new graphics were created (by editing existing assets) to have a pre-show and post-show title card show up. The result of the changes meant that there was no longer a need for a separate Discord PC and the show was able to fully broadcast from a single computer for the first time.

Memorable Episodes[edit]

Show #1040[edit]

Also known as Season 14 Episode 25, this was the first episode broadcast from Studio E. Following the renovation of Studio D's studio, Hedgie decided he wished to buy a flat of his own. In late November 2022, he managed to secure a property and caused the mass exodus from Studio D. There was a mid-season break between Episode 24 and Episode 25 while TK moved the studio (with the help of Echo) from the house to a (rented) flat of his very own, which was dubbed the "True Studio E" after Echo dubbed his home as Studio E during the Dogs Trust Gunge-a-thon. Xavier and his wife moved to their own rented flat which became a Satellite Studio, much in the way things had been done during the seasons at Studio C. Thanks to the magic of Discord, TK and Xavier were able appear on screen together via webcams however as Xavier owned the powerful PC that was used to run the streaming software, broadcasting duties fell to TK's gaming laptop, which was most unhappy about the new responsibility it had found itself undertaking. Still, things worked well enough for a show to run well enough for TK to consider the show to be a success.

Show #1063[edit]

Season 14 Episode 48 was the episode which celebrated 19 years of TigerTails Radio. While the show's actual anniversary had happened a few days before hand, it was not on a broadcast day, so the event was celebrated on the following Monday. A small party was organised, with TK hosting local hosts Hedgie and Echo (who arrived with his partner and occasional listener Nyx Wolf), while Xavier and Charleston Rat appeared via webcam as per normal. The show took on the normal format, with everyone getting their review of the week done, Jackbox gaming done, and Done and Dusted even managed to make an appearance. Between the two Jackbox games, there was time for some champagne and cake (or just champagne in Xavier's case). This episode was the first since the move to Studio E which had three cast members in the broadcast studio, thus using all the headset microphones TK had purchased while at Studio D. This was also the first time the donation system was used as Charleston donated £5 for the celebration.

Season Fifteen[edit]

Season Fifteen started with a test show on 30 October 2023 following a gap of nine weeks off air once Season Fourteen ended. Plans to upgrade the broadcasting equipment ended up falling through things carried forward from the previous season as that had proven to work. The main visual change was how the cast were presented on screen, with the person speaking now being given the screen, instead of everyone being on screen at all times. This allowed for a live preview of the show to be broadcast to all cast members, so they could see what TK could see without having to rely on watching the YouTube feed and suffering the brief lag that introduced. The show's format also changed slightly, with Done and Dusted being brought to between the two JackBox games, instead of afterwards. This could then be swapped out with the Dall-E challenge whenever there was nothing to review between games. The season began properly with Episode 01 on 06 November 2023.

Memorable Episodes[edit]

Show #1069[edit]

Episode 01 of Season 15 saw the show get its first special guest (outside of a former cast member returning for a show, or a pre-existing friend of the show dropping in). Award winning author Kyell Gold joined the cast for the show as Episode 01 took place during the first week of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Kyell gave some good insights into his writing processes, as well as plugging his book The Price of Thorns as it was scheduled to come out a few days later. TK would later talk about the episode, commenting that it was the first time he had experienced nerves throughout the show due to TigerTails Radio not normally playing host to guests quite as well renowned. The experience had given him the confidence to approach a couple of other authors to appear on the show and he hoped to be revealing more soon. This would be followed a couple of weeks later with the TigerTails Radio social accounts advertising another special guest author, Huskyteer, scheduled to appear on Season 15 Episode 04 (Show #1072).

References[edit]

  1. Blaster Hedgie Leaves The Show on LiveJournal
  2. The Top Ten list for Season 5 Episode 27
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