Native Southerner and Darren Austin Live host Darren Austin is taking his act back home – he will begin a new show, The Darren Austin Show, from a new base, Adult Entertainment Broadcasting Network, after he moves officially to the company September 11.
Austin's final Darren Austin Live for CECash was done August 25. The South Carolina native told AVN Online his move is almost entirely to do with returning to his roots, where his parents still live and from where his sister is only three hours away in West Virginia. But while he also cited friendships he developed among AEBN people, Austin also insisted his decision had nothing to do with CECash itself.
"It's coming as a shock to a lot of people," said Austin, who has also been CE Gay's marketing director. "A lot of people were not expecting me to ever leave, and it has nothing to do with the current company I am with. It's a personal decision, and it's a personal opportunity to grow, not only in the industry but personally speaking. But at this point everyone's in shock."
Austin went out with a bigger bang than even he expected: his final Darren Austin Live featured a segment on the Ku Klux Klan which jammed telephone lines and e-mail. Not that he's afraid of controversy. He's promising his forthcoming AEBN show won't shy away from controversy, even if it won't necessarily seek it out.
"No labels, no limits – I don't want to be considered, oh, it's the gay show in the industry," Austin said. "I don't like labels in this industry of 'this is gay, this is straight.' So much business is lost, and a lot of people who are gay friendly don't politically know how to approach the subject. So my new slogan is 'No labels, no limits'."
AEBN's GayStreams account executive, Jeffrey Delvechio, said Austin also sought a chance to produce his show in a bigger way, from a bigger facility, if given the chance.
"We're going to blow it up big," Delvechio said. "The first few shows will be kind of small, we'll take it from there and make it as big as we can get it for the big gay community." He said the timing was also a key factor, between AEBN finishing a very large facility for broadcast and filming and an opening available when Austin indicated he was himself open to a career move that would also bring him home.
"We actually had a position available to come in and help take over the gay market and move into other possibilities, and Darren was interested," he said. "We have some new ideas that are going to make it bigger than what it was. And he saw the opportunity and he jumped on that. He's also a good friend of mine, he has a great personality, we work very well together."
Video production factored into the move especially, both men said. "We're going to be producing his show in house, we have a whole studio built for him, we're going to be doing lot production," Delvechio said. "We're going to do radio and lot production at the same time. Video production as well, which piques his interest because he's an actor. We kind of want to help him move toward his goal, because he's always been there for us, anything we asked for and anything he asked us for, we always worked hand in hand."
"We're going to videostream the new show," said Austin, who's no stranger to acting before the camera – his credits include appearances in films like Die Hard 3 and Sweet Justice, and television shows like Veronica's Closet and Boy Meets World. "So you can actually hear and see the show as it's going on."
But, for all the professional advance that will come to him, Austin said, the big motivator was home. "It's closer to family. It's going back home," he said. "I'm going home to my real family and my friends at AEBN who I've been friends with for awhile, so it's familiar territory to me. The South, my friends, my family."
Austin was triggered particularly because of his own familiar signoff, closing every segment of the now-former Darren Austin Live.
"In life, no one else has your back, so you have to have your own," he said. "You have to take care of you. Every show I closed, I close with the saying, 'Be good to you.' And I've preached this for so long, sp let's come down off the pulpit and start practicing it for myself. Practice what you preach."
