Over 20 hours of

Be Funny shows, circa 1980, are about to be released

Regular listeners know that Be Funny is a weekly feature of The Tom Leykis Show that stuns, amazes, and shocks thousands of people every Wednesday at 5 PM Pacific/8 PM Eastern. But, what many don't know is that Be Funny was created by Tom Leykis when he hosted a very early morning (3-7 AM!) call-in show on a New York City FM station in 1980.

On the show a few months back, Tom was wondering out loud about whether any tapes of this show still existed anywhere in the world. Imagine Tom's surprise upon hearing from old friend and one-time Be Funny regular Paul Hiatt that he had a stash of 8-track tapes from the original Be Funny stored away in a carrying case in his garage (pictured above).

Tom arranged for Paul to ship that carrying case to our Burbank studio and the 8-track tapes inside were in absolutely pristine condition.

Of course, the 8-track format is no longer in common use, so Tom found a company a few miles down the road from Burbank in Pasadena that specializes in, among other things, transferring audio content on old formats such as 8-track to digital files.

Everyone was nervous because of the age of the tapes and because of the propensity for 8-track tapes to deteriorate or for the cartridges to disintegrate, so we held our collective breaths for several weeks while the delicate operation took place.

Finally, the good news. Once the operation was complete, all but one of the 18 cartridges had survived the transfer, and the digital results were amazing. The average 8-track cartridge held about 80 minutes of content, so we were left with as many as 22 hours of usable show content.

Tom himself has begun the arduous process of lightly editing the tapes (remember that 8-track tapes had a "clunk" about every 20 minutes as the cartridge changed tracks) and, because the tapes contain a number of obscure references (that may only make sense to people in 1980s New York), Tom's writing a few annotations to go with each episode to explain who characters such as Aunt Marie and The Rootin' Tootin' Cowboy were.

If you enjoy today's Be Funny, you'll really enjoy this look back at how it all sounded way back at the beginning of Tom's talk radio career when he was 23.

These episodes will be released, one at a time, as each episode has been edited, and they can only be heard on Premium Tom or ad-free Super Premium Tom.

If you're already a subscriber, be sure to keep your eye on our on-demand website through your smartphone, tablet or PC so you know when new 1980 Be Funny episodes have been uploaded. Hearing the entire collection is one of your benefits of membership!

And, if you have never subscribed before, to celebrate this momentous event, we're offering an unprecedented 30% off to brand-new annual Super Premium Tom subscribers*. To get your 30% discount on a brand-new annual subscription to Super Premium Tom, simply sign up today by clicking here, then enter promo code BEFUNNY at checkout to save almost $60 on a full year of ad-free Super Premium Tom.

By the way, when you subscribe, you'll also be eligible immediately for substantial discounts on upcoming events such as our upcoming P1 Dodger game, certain merchandise, as well as for every listener event for as long as you subscribe.

*Offer good only to new annual Super Premium Tom subscribers who have never previously subscribed to Premium Tom or Super Premium Tom until September 5, 2016. No other discounts or credits can be applied.