The Count Floyd character originated on the Canadian sketch show SCTV, but also later appeared on The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley (clips of which were used on Cartoon Planet), as well as Rush’s Signals and Grace Under Pressure tours.
The premise was that employees at this very low-budget TV station had to double up on jobs, so news anchor Floyd Robertson was also the host of SCTV’s Monster Chiller Horror Theatre, wearing a cheap Transylvanian vampire costume and speaking in a stereotypical Bela Lugosi type accent.
The 1958-59 Friday night program "The Thirteenth Hour," broadcast over KDKA-TV Channel 2 featured the vampire-like "Igor," actually KDKA staff announcer George Eisenhauer whose costume bore no small resemblance to Count Floyd's.
Much as Robertson's co-anchor, Earl Camembert (portrayed by Eugene Levy), was partially inspired by American newsman Irv Weinstein (as well as by CBC news reader Earl Cameron, who anchored CBC TV's "The National" newscast from 1959 until 1965), Robertson's doubling as Count Floyd appears to have been at least partially inspired by Weinstein's weather anchor, Tom Jolls, who likewise doubled as the astronaut children's show host Commander Tom.
The main running gag of the sketch was that the station would usually provide truly awful films for the show that were not in the least bit scary, including such genres as biopics with very scant relation to horror (Madame Blitzman),[1] softcore pornography with a horror theme (Dr. Tongue's 3D House of Stewardesses) and Swedish independent ("Ingmar Burgman"'s Whispers of the Wolf which starred "Leave Ullman"), forcing Floyd to struggle to hype them to his mostly juvenile audience.
Occasionally, the films provided to Count Floyd would have absolutely no connection to horror at all—on one memorable occasion, he was stuck trying to plug The Odd Couple, on another, Four for Texas.
During the Signals and Grace Under Pressure tours by Rush, a video played on the rear screen of Count Floyd introducing "The Weapon", “a scary song with real special effects” which could only be enjoyed if the listener was wearing 3D glasses.
One audio recording, Count Floyd (RCA MFL1-8501), was released in 1982 featuring tracks such as "Reggae Christmas Eve in Transylvania" and "The Gory Story of Duane and Debbie".
In the Halloween episode of Flaherty's later show Freaks and Geeks he appears in a vampire costume and reprises the same voice in allusion, scaring away many young trick or treaters.