The Debris Show: CTV Era Ends

Buried internal issues and all, the show kept rolling along and growing every week. By this time, Bridget and I had met a lot of local chasers, and often times one or more of them would come over on show night to hang out. Soon, every show had a live studio audience, just people who wanted to hang out and be a part of the event. From this, we got the idea to start having guests on the show. Connor McCrorey, a new chaser who was living in DFW at the time, made an appearance. Other local guys such as Justin Cullum, Gene Yates, and Erik Burns also appeared on the show in varying capacities. Then folks from out of town wanted in on the action. Ben Holcomb was in Oklahoma, visiting from Michigan, and drove another three hours south from his vacation spot to be on the show. Our friends Gary and Lucy Blinebury came out from Indiana, and stayed a few days with us while on their travel vacation. Lucy is originally from overseas, and being female, made for a fascinating guest to finish out 2009.

During that December stretch when show popularity soared and guests were plenty, I became increasingly boisterous on the show. I was venting on every topic in chasing that caught my attention, as I would normally do anyway, and now people were actually tuning in to watch me do it. I was having fun, and I was holding back less and less. Before long, it became obvious that the mutual loyalty between CTV and The Debris Show was starting to jeopardize their credibility while holding us back. Erik had been on the show one night, calling out a local DFW news station who had screwed him over on a piece of video he'd sold them. We received a message very quickly from Steve to have him stand down, because the station he was talking about also happened to be a big CTV customer. At that point I knew, even before it was brought to me officially, that our days on CTV were numbered. It was a friendly parting, but necessary for both parties involved. The Lucy episode would be our last on the CTV stream service, and we went out with a bang, thanking CTV for all their support, and basically saying "farewell". Beyond that moment, none of us knew what the future of the show would hold.

Once our relationship with CTV ended, so did our string of guests. It was the Holiday Season, so most people were doing "normal life" things, while we didn't have a platform for even doing a show. I put David to work, researching both Livestream and Ustream, the two major free streaming services at the time. I told him to try each one, and make a decision as to which would work the best for us. This was another mistake on my part, because it further reinforced Bridget's notion that I was taking the show out of her hands and placing it into David's. But truthfully, I just assumed that with her school work during the day, she simply wouldn't have time. Yet another mistake on my part, born of assumption. (Are you seeing the pattern yet?)

About a week later, David reported back to me that we would be going with Ustream. I was secretly hoping it would be Ustream, because Bridget and I had opened an account there about a month prior, when we first sensed that things with CTV would be ending eventually. She and I were somewhat familiar with it, which I thought was important; the show was already under enough of David's control, we didn't need to let it slip completely away. As David's grip on the show had increased, so had his tendency to act out. His antics on the show had slowly started to move over into the real world, and they weren't nearly as amusing when we weren't broadcasting to an audience. He was slowly starting to show his true colors, but by the time I figured it out, he was more or less entrenched in the inner workings of the show. A few friends had warned me that it was a bad idea to bring him into the fold, but for whatever reason, I had believed in David Reimer. Over the next few months, as the show began yet another change of direction, he would prove me wrong.