About The Show
At first blush, you might think Low Budget FM was a radio show where two guys talked about poor people, what to do when you’re poor, tips for handling said poorness — stuff like that. That’s not right. I can see where you’d get that idea, though.
Come at it from a different angle. Maybe Low Budget FM was a radio show where two poor guys bitched about not having any money. Actually that seems like it would make a lot more sense, right? That’s not it either.
Maybe it was a show where two normal guys talked about normal things, but they didn’t spend a lot of money on the show itself. Sort of like a low budget independent comedy… you know, like that movie Garden State. Maybe this was secretly a Zach Braff vehicle.
Bingo. Low Budget FM was an independent comedy starring the eminently-talented Zach Braff (“Scrubs”). Watch for it in theaters this winter.
The Self-Absorbed History of The Show
Low Budget FM began life as a one-hour demo show on 103.7 FREE FM in San Diego, where Marc Chambers and Tod Perry essentially filled in for a CD player. After working together at 97.1 FREE FM in Los Angeles for over a year, the duo felt oddly comfortable working within the FM Talk format, and the show was what they’d later term a “runaway success.”
It wasn’t long after this early morning audition that the two received a more-permanent Saturdays from 7-9pm slot, joining the ranks of Sam Phillips and Kevin Roberts while shivering in the shadows of FM Talk juggernauts Adam Carolla, Frosty, Heidi & Frank and Tom Leykis.
While the show itself continued to grow, the ratings-challenged 103.7 FREE FM and its prohibitively-expensive FM Talk format was eschewed in favor of an iPod on shuffle. The fledgling talk show was left homeless, and Marc Chambers returned to the employ of Jack Silver and the FM Talk Mothership of KLSX in Los Angeles.
Almost two years passed. The economy worsened, and eventually even the mothership herself couldn’t stay afloat. On February 20th, 2009 at 5:00pm Pacific Time, 97.1 KLSX The FM Talk Station was no more. From the ashes came podcast-only flavors of many former talkers, including The Adam Carolla Podcast, Frosty, Heidi & Frank Uncensored, The Pretty Good Podcast and others.
Marc and Tod saw the opportunity for Low Budget to be reborn, and the podcast came into being. It ran, on and off, until 2019, piling up the hundreds of episodes you’ll find in the archive. They’re all free. Enjoy.
A Note About The Archive
Low Budget FM was an improvised comedy show, recorded between 2007 and 2019 and presented here as it aired — unedited, off-the-cuff, and very much a product of its moment.
That means strong language throughout, adult subject matter, and bits that were written to be provocative. Some jokes land differently now than they did then, and a few we’d tell differently — or not at all — today. They’re kept intact rather than quietly sanded down, because an archive that’s been tidied up isn’t really an archive.
It was comedy, performed in character, for an adult audience. Take it in that spirit.