Reportedly born and raised in the United States of New Spain, Joe Franklin arrived in the Sovereignty of Cascadia sometime in 1999, shortly after which he was hired by Empire Radio to host a late night local news broadcast, The Last Word. Famously, after a particularly slow January news day, Joe dispensed with that night’s script and spent an hour talking about “news” that he had been hearing from ordinary people on the street, in bars and coffee shops, in gas stations and train stations, and anywhere else where people might speak freely about “what’s really going on.” The broadcast created a small sensation, and Empire Radio decided that rather than firing Joe, they would reassign him to a brand new show, the Joe Show, in which news from ordinary people would be featured every week. The Joe Show became Cascadia’s highest-rated radio show in 2007, and it preserved that ranking up until its cancellation.
The Joe Show aired from 2000-2014, during which time its subject matter increasingly favored rumors of occult, unnatural, and other unexplained phenomena, along with an occasional scandal surrounding a public figure. Joe was fired from the Joe Show in 2014, and the show was cancelled after accusations that Joe had entered into an unprofessional relationship with the subject of one of his reports, Bridget Patel, culminating in his unexpected marriage to Ms. Patel. Bridget Patel Franklin passed away from natural causes on December 31, 2014. Joe would subsequently be forgiven and rehired by Empire Media to host an all-new Joe Show in late 2015.