The
Slime Society was formed in January 1995 by Ric
de Barros with the goal of having an actual YCDTOTV fan club,
complete with newsletters, stickers, videos and the like. Ric
started a massive letter writing campaign to dig up as much inside
information about the show that he could, and CJOH-TV in Ottawa,
Ontario, Canada was the most help. Not only did CJOH executives
send him pictures of the cast, but they also got Ric in touch
with the show's creator, Roger Price, who was living in Malta
at that time. He was totally ecstatic about there actually being
a YCDTOTV fan club, and he provided Ric with a wealth of information
about the show and the cast.
In March 1995, Ric brought The Slime Society
onto the Internet as the YCDTOTV "HOMEPAGE" - the generic name
that most sites used back then. His only support back then was
T.C. Kirkham, the president of The
Tomorrow People fan club (another show by Roger
Price). The site was an instant success, complete with a fully-functioning
message board that Ric programmed himself. It was through his
Web site that Ric met up with Thomas Hendricks and Rob C. Homa,
whom he asked to assist in making the site and forming the fan
club. The three of them all had so much information on the show
that the site became, and still is, one of the most complete Web
sites for a television series to date.
By June 1995, Alanis
Morissette's You Oughta Know
was in heavy rotation and word got out that she was on YCDTOTV.
It was during this time that the site was averaging 1000+ hits
a day, and Ric even had a spin-off site called The
Alanis Web (which was the very first Alanis Morissette
Web site ... before Maverick even had one for her). Also, in June
1995, The Slime Society invited Peter
Butler on board, a native Canadian, who was the resident 1989
and 1990 seasons' guru (as Tom, Rob, and Ric were the "old school"
gurus), and Peter also had a lot of Whatever
Turns You On info.
During
the summer of 1995, right before Peter came in the picture, Rob
left to focus on school, and it was just Ric and Tom for a while.
However, Tom lost Internet access, so Peter and Ric held The
Slime Society together by themselves for the remainder
of the year. By then (even though the fan club was advertised
on the Web site and registered with the National Association of
Fan Clubs), they realized that while the site was doing well,
there was a total lack of interest in people wanting to join an
actual fan club with membership dues and such, even though they
offered a big membership that included a quarterly video-zine.
Ric then focused on it being mainly a Web site. Peter lost Internet
access around the time that Tom returned into the picture, so
it was back to Ric and Tom doing the site.
Ric
and Tom continued to run the site until 1997, when Chris Gough
came aboard to help manage and update the site. In the spring
of 1999, Chris took over as Webmaster, engineering the design
overhaul of the site.
In May 1999, the YCDTOTV Web site reached one of its goals by
obtaining its own domain at YCDTOTV.com. Also, Rob resurfaced
on the net, and Ric, Tom, Rob and Chris continued updating the
site. Shortly after the redesign of YCDTOTV.com in May of 1999,
Charles Hodges and Allison Cohen also came aboard The
Slime Society by helping the site with even more
valuable information about the show.
In
the summer of 2003, Will Dyess and Mark Brumfield entered the
scene and helped give the site even more information about Whatever
Turns You On, as well as information on all
the seasons of YCDTOTV, interviews and other nuggets of information.
2005
brought the 10 year anniversary of the YCDTOTV Web site. The site
was optimized for 800x600 screens, and more content was presented
to the public, including more original videos.
Did
you know?
The YCDTOTV Web site had a total of three homes before going to
YCDTOTV.COM, none of which YAHOO listed until now, but we still
managed over 100,000 hits before obtaining our own domain name,
a pretty cool feat if we do say so ourselves. Since the birth
of The Slime Society, we have been recognized by CJOH, show creators
Roger Price & Geoffrey Darby, Sariya Sharp, Stephanie Chow, Jonothan
Gebert, Vanessa Lindores, Doug Ptolemy, Adam Reid, Patrick Mills,
Brodie Osome, Amyas Godfrey, Justin Cammy, Kevin Schenk, Rodney
Helal, Les Lye, Abby Hagyard, Stephanie Bauder's mom, Christine
McGlade, Scott Sandeman, writer Robert Black, Lisa Ruddy, Matthew
Godfrey and many others.
