This week, Craig Bailey's syndicated radio show Floydian Slip will reaching an important milestone when it broadcasts its 1000th show. Brain Damage spoke to Bailey about the show's successful tenure spanning more than 25 years.

Brain Damage: Craig, anything special planned for the 1000th episode of Floydian Slip?

Well, if I really knew how to do this any better than I'm doing it now, I wouldn't have waited 999 episodes to do it! We do have a couple special things coming up: I'll play some audio from Show #1 from 1989 – kinda like showing your naked baby photos to the world – and we'll have a few people close to the band pop in for some quick "Hellos."

BD: How many years have you been on the air now total (assuming there have been periods it has been off the air)?

The show started in January 1989 and then went dark for five years during my first job out of college, where it didn't fit the station's format. I started it back up in 1994 and it's been on pretty much ever since. So 26 years since I started the show and 21 years non-stop.

BD: Did you ever think the show wouldn't survive, e.g., when it was dropped after a format change at its home station in Vermont?

Yeah, each time there was an ownership change at WCPV (Champ 101.3), (the Burlington, Vermont FM radio station where I did the show almost 14 years), I wondered if the new owners would drop the show.

Actually, there was a brief period of time early on during my time with Champ that I was prepared to become a volunteer: the show had lost its local sponsor, and the station wasn't willing to pay me to produce the show without it bringing in some revenue. I thought doing it without pay was a better solution than coming off the air until another sponsor could be found. If memory serves, they found another sponsor before my last paycheck.

BD: Who has been your most interesting guest since the show started?

I'd have to say Nick Mason: he's been the only member of the band who's made an appearance. Unfortunately, I only had 15 minutes with him and I suspect he was in the middle of a press push for "The Endless River," so he was probably tired of answering questions (though you'd never know it from his demeanor). Still, I'd like to get him, or one of the other guys, outside of a promotional push for any single project.

Gerald Scarfe was a great interview, too... especially when you consider his PR person had failed to let him know I would be calling.

BD: What has been the biggest surprise news since you've been doing the show?

Roger's gig with the guys at Live 8. I really didn't think that would ever happen. "The Endless River" would probably be a close second. Aside from that, sadly, the passings of Syd and Rick.

BD: What has been the most difficult part of putting a show like this together week after week?

The week-by-week work I do to produce the show runs like clockwork. It's really not difficult at all, and it's something I always look forward to – but in order for the week-to-week stuff to run so smoothly, I had to do a ton of work up-front to set the stage: a lot of planning and fairly complex programming and database work for my website to allow delivery of the show to affiliates to be largely automated and for the show to be scaleable.

The amount of work I do each week to produce the show doesn't grow at all as I bring on more stations to the network, which is vital to this whole thing working.

BD: How many affiliates is it on now?

Once upon a time, I could have listed all the stations and their times. Nice problem to have: now I can't! I believe we're on about 65 stations now and, as usual, we have a couple in the wings that are likely to sign on sometime soon.

You can see a schedule of weekly local broadcasts and online streams for Floydian Slip at floydianslip.com.