It's a daunting task, trying to encapsulate the career of Richard Paul "Dokk" Meggs in less than 2,000 words. His is a story ready made for a non-fiction business retrospective; indeed, when they write the history of the adult Internet, Dokk will surely have a chapter all to himself.
The reality is this: what today is the medium of 24-hour adult Webmaster talk radio can be directly linked to Dokk. If adult Internet radio was once the Wild West then Dokk was the sheriff who rode into town to restore order. Who could have really known the impact when he started Albumside.com, the very first 24-hour Webmaster radio station? He can even recall the exact date of its premiere: June 3, 1999.
With Albumside, Dokk didn't just fill a communications void. He built a powerful foundation, launching a new generation of adult pundits, wacky characters, and Howard Stern replicas.
Today, working from his plush 1,200 square-foot studio space in Lake Lanier, Ga., Dokk produces a network of adult talk radio from coast-to-coast. Like a great conductor, Dokk orchestrates an audio and video symphony of diverse entertainment, from The DMoney Show (www.d-moneyshow.com) and Pillow Talk (www.theadultwebmaster.com) to Behind the Porn (www.behindtheporn.com) and The Hump Day Lunch Hour with YNOTBob (www.ynotbob.com).
In all, almost 20 shows are scheduled Monday through Friday, with an exhaustive archive of content which runs 24/7. The baritone-voiced Dokk also steps in front of the camera on Ripped Apart, the first regularly scheduled television show about the workings of the adult Internet, and NetSurprise Party (www.adultnetsurprise.com). But Dokk does like to take the weekends off.
All of Dokk's business and creative exploits have been developed under the Software Monster banner, which began as a bulletin board system in 1996 and then evolved into an ISP.
For the one-time private investigator who went on to spend six years in the strip club trade, his initial foray into the adult Internet was nothing short of random. "The boss came in and threw down an advertisement for someone selling live video services and said, 'Can we do this cheaper?' said Dokk. "That's when I went out and bought the Kinetics Quickcam and we got a twenty-dollar a month dial-up account and started a pay site."
Recalling the make-it-up-as-we-go approach of those early years, Dokk's recollection of the experience is succinct: "Everything was new."
Once Dokk had his new venture off the ground, he made contact with industry leader "Fantasyman," who at the time was having problems maintaining broadcast feeds on the air for Sharky Live.
"I had been testing Windows Media servers at that point, so I took over as an effort to try and improve the service and streaming media for their show," says Dokk, who was a longtime co-host of the show, which later became Webmaster Live and now is known as FM Radio Live (www.webmasterlive.com).
As for the famed Albumside Website, Dokk says the idea originally came about based on an old college radio station and a show called Album Side, where they would play the entire side of an album, back when vinyl LPs were still in fashion. "As soon as I got the site up, I found out that under broadcasting regulations I couldn't do that... so immediately, but unintentionally, we started gravitating to talk shows. What essentially we did was take two basic elements, one which is IRC chat, and the radio show.
"In one sense it's very raw," Dokk says of the instant recognition of talk radio. "It hasn't been homogenized. It hasn't been processed and pasteurized by proofreaders and editors. The way that it comes out of a person's mouth is the way that it is."
Dokk's thinking is that popularity of the adult sector of talk radio was a natural progression developed from the community element so important in the tapestry of the Internet. "The key must be, and I'm guessing, is interaction. And it's interaction that cannot be serviced any other way in combination with a chat room and the style we do it because that way it is truly two-way radio."
Dokk says the technology of the industry has advanced beyond anything he might have imagined it to be. "I think today as it exists it actually exceeds my capability to describe it," he says. "It has taken on a life of its own, sustains itself, grows... and I'm now at this point getting swept along with the ride, waiting with everyone else, waiting to see where it's going to go."
And just as technology improves rapidly, so to will the number of Webmasters/consumers/surfers who seek out the medium of Internet radio. "That concept has been in my mind since day one," says Dokk, "and that's why we have five speeds on the audio feeds."
Dokk believes the people who listen to the shows have just as much to do with the development of the station and the programming as anything else. "I am going to get feedback from listeners, from the people who produce the shows, and the people that hear about the shows and all of this is rolled right back into modifying anything that needs to be changed or adapted...and I let the market guide me," says Dokk.
And though the programming of the adult Internet has diversified into numerous niches and genres, it's those who find equilibrium between news and entertainment that thrive. "It is a carefully balanced mix between the two and those that achieve the best mix enjoy the most success," Dokk believes.
Dokk also speaks of the importance in keeping the attention of the Webmasters, whom he describes as "a very eclectic audience."
He adds, "They're intelligent. They are used to not waiting for things. They're very Internet savvy. This is not a surfer audience. They're as an eclectic a group as one would ever gather together."
Not surprisingly, Dokk also oversees The Adult Webmaster Events (www.adult-webmaster-events.com), where he travels all over the U.S., moderating seminars. "I'm there to discover the truth... achieve and strike a balance between entertainment and hard news," he says.
Indeed, Dokk is one of a few who have sparked true change in the business. And though he remains progressive in thinking, he believes that the necessity of a situation is the mother of invention. Case-in-point: Dokk was the first to introduce paid advertising on Webmaster shows. "Before that time there was no viable financial model," he says. "No one knew what to charge. No one knew what to pay. There was no third-party show production or broadcast or show preparation or any of that type of service."
On the wackier side, Dokk says he came up with the very first sponsored pee breaks. "I remembered from my days in the strip clubs that women had tiny bladders and they couldn't sit down and listen to a two or three hour show. So, every thirty or forty-five minutes we'll take a five-minute pee break and let everybody go pee, drink a beer and get a smoke, whatever. And people love it."
Networks, take notice.
"I've been real fortunate to be able to make magic all these years," says Dokk, describing his work as "absolute pure joy."
"I have 165 Websites, and I keep them in case I ever have to go back to work again," he says with a chuckle.
And what about the origins of his now famous moniker? "I had spent six years in the strip clubs, and when I went in to apply for the job, I was sitting at the table and the manager asked, 'What is your stage name?' and I said, 'What are you talking about?' About that time, a girl walked past and he asked her who does this guy look like? And she said, 'Doc from The Love Boat.' So, he changed the spelling a bit and that's how it arrived. It was many, many years ago and it just stuck."
And while he hasn't yet come to a crossroads requiring any important career decisions, Dokk says his future will most certainly involve some facet of communications.
"I can definitely say that I see myself in multimedia broadcasting, multimedia services, multimedia streaming, whether it be audio, video, radio, dynamic HTML... whatever," he says. "I have always felt that's the future, and I still believe it now. And I probably would have gravitated more towards video technologies, but just chance happened to make things turn out differently."
There is so much more to say. Consider this the prologue.
