Both wacky and invasive! Another considerably over-length stroll through memory lane; this time, instead of the odd jobs, a very candid and personal discussion of possibly the one and only job where I was ever firing on all cylinders. Also: lots of musings on a Star Trek Section 31 series (including how it might actually work), a wrap-up of the thirteenth Doctor’s first season on Doctor Who, the Orville, Short Treks, and soundtracks, plus some shutdown shout-outs, an attack of the killer gall bladder, and much more. (2:37:37)
The Pharis Wheel: transmitters, Woody! Low-power transmitters as far as the eye can see! E-mail us at CompuServe! (Copy of one of the original TARGA files for a legal ID done on a computer intended to provide weather graphics.)
Continue to e-mail us at CompuServe! IN SPAAAAACE! (Copy of another of the original TARGA files for a legal ID done on a computer intended to provide weather graphics.)
Do you want to build a sports-oriented TV station? It doesn’t have to be a sports-oriented TV station.
A spot that nobody asked for that kind of changed my life:
The Invasion begins!
The original UPN 32 Prime Time Invasion logo by Jody Frase; copy of the original graphic file.
…and the football you rode in on, Green Bay!
My desk in the promo group office on the second floor. Lots of laughs were had here. Looks like some pink grapefruit juice was being swilled here too. My dietary choices at the time were…not recommended.
True fact: I keep this very, very well-worn piece of paper around to remind me that…hey, we did it. Maybe that makes me as sad as Al Bundy humping the leg of his high school football victory years after the fact, but still.
Once the Invasion was established, the “lineup” spots for each night were spruced up a bit. Holy cow, we were kind of a hit.
How to plan an Invasion (or pretty much anything else): this dry erase board was how we kept track of whether or not we had current promos for a given show. Promos might be missing for a variety of reasons – the control room might have missed a satellite feed, or, in some cases when a syndication vendor was giving up on a show, they’d stop bothering with episodic spots.
Pretty awesome spot from early 1999, promoting Deep Space Nine (but riffing on The Phantom Menace trailer):
“Production Room B” – when you didn’t necessarily need the Avid. Usually used to edit local station tags on syndicator-provided promos for various shows.
The WACY “Windows” campaign that only its mother (father?) could love; keep in mind, with all the references to “loading” and “streaming” shows (which is precisely what happens now), this was in 1999:
(In the KPBI/KFDF production room with that rack of production equipment that included the Amiga 4000/Video Toaster 4000 stack. Back where it all started.)
Links:
- Those books about Doctor Who I’ve written? And that very funny Fatherhood, Fandom and Fading Out book? They’re in theLogBook.com Store!
- UPN – or at least its sci-fi and related programming – lives on in theLogBook Episode Guides. (To be expanded upon when I get those Deadly Games and Seven Days DVDs…)
- WACY is still around, incidentally…complete with a very brief mention of having carried “UPN programming and several children’s programs”…but not one word about its brief reign as a fast-rising local sci-fi channel. Guess I’m the only one proud of that, huh?
- But Logopedia remembers WACkY 32.
- My review of the book Season Finale: The Unexpected Rise and Fall of the WB and UPN, required reading for those who want the inside dirt on the late 20th century’s version of the DuMont Network.
- Come to think of it, there’s an excellent book about the actual DuMont Network too.
- Music by Jahzzar