My odd television watching habits
Continuing my reading on television that took me to the history of the Du Mont network and the history of the Fox network, I read the book on the histories of the WB and UPN networks.
To review. Paramount had long thought about entering a broadcast network, and back in the 1970s thought of anchoring one with a new Star Trek series. They punted, probably justifiably so, the phrase “fourth network” had long been a joke in the industry. Jump into the 1990s, and both Warner Brothers and Paramount were eyeing certain future deregulatory moves that would make it look necessary to maintain leverage for future tv projects by establishing television networks.
To go through the history of the ups and downs of their fortunes. UPN started out hugely based off of Star Trek: Voyager. The WB slugged out the gate with a sitcom from second rate Wayans Brothers and a rip off of Married With Children. In the end, it wasn’t good that UPN’s fortunes were glued to a third rate Star Trek series, and that was undermined by Paramount having more invested in getting their money’s worth of that enterprise than the network — such that they shipped it in syndication sans UPN. Also undermining UPN was that the joint ownernship with a large tv station group Chris Craft tied them down, actually in the same way Paramount hurt Du Mont. Still, even as they burned out bad Paramount action shows, thanks to Trek and a good African American sitcom Moesha — they maintained a healthy fifth place complacency in beating the WB in the ratings.
The WB found themselves a working niche when they picked up the ABC canceled TGIF-ish sitcom “Sister Sister”, and a whole-some family oriented drama “7th Heaven”. FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT!! Then they bought Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson’s Creek. Their niche was then tweaked a little bit. Ages 12 through 25, more female than male — lots of teenage angst coming of age.
So, they surged ahead in the ratings. Found their way onto Entertainment magazine covers. And gloated as UPN faltered badly. But, as so happens, WB stuck themselves right into their formula in looking for new versions of their various hits — which although resemble this Twilight parody in certain ways, still present the generic problem that their audience ages along and moves on as a new age group wants something new from their older sister (Twilight, for instance). And their teenage stars age on and want to do different things.
UPN paid a mint for the rights to Buffy, and broke their bank. (It didn’t hurt too much that at this point Murdoch had bought the most important of UPN’s station affiliation groups, Fox producing Buffy.) And they let Vince McMahon buy out Thursday night to broadcast Wrestling. But a third rate Trek, now faltering Buffy, and Wrestling don’t really add up to stability.
UPN and WB limped along. Corporate mergers and acquisitions and splinterings found UPN a sister network to CBS. Mooves plucked the programmer that turned Lifetime around , Dawn Ostroff, to head the mess that was UPN. And she did. Marginally.
At this point both networks found it tough to beat Univision in the ratings, and as such merged to form “CBS” “WB” — CW!
What’s on that network? Tuesday nights apparently bring us… 90210 and Melrose Place. Well, you see the stamp of the Lifetime Director, but… What is this? Fox in 1993?
Okay. History out of the way, one odd excerpt jumped out at me for reasons:
Hal Protter was an experienced local television station manager working at an independent station in St. Louis before he was brought in to the WB to help get the network’r raggedly line up of affiliates into shape. Protter had a pilot’s license, which allowed him easy access to off-the-beaten-track markets. His specialty was the toughest cases — helping out the start-up stations that were new to their markets and looking to the WB to put them on the map. Under Kellner’s leadership, the WB was aggressive in encouraging entrepreneurs of all stripes to invest in brand new stations. “Hal would deal with people who owned a chain of laundromats or made their money discovering oil and now wanted to own a television station,” says longtime WB executive Rusty Mintz. “He’d fly into Witchita Falls and find a way to stick a satellite on the top of a liquor store.” –54 – 55
Remember “Channel America”? Of course you don’t.
One day, my family skipped about the dial, and found our way to “Channel 60”. Where we watched an old episode of “What’s My Line”, which finished with everyone getting the line except the final celebrity contestant — Lucy Ball — and the oh-so-sweet punchline “I Love Lucy”.
But there was no reason to keep a decent reception for this station. If I recall right, I once watched an episode — in prime-time on “Channel America” — of “The Flying Nun”. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I suppose Channel America boiled down to a low rent “TV Classics” channel?
Flash forward to some summer or other. Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, 3 am abouts, my brother stumbled upon their broadcasts of “Vintage Cartoons”. Great program for the simple amusement of watching someone somewhere splice up a lot of old mostly public domain cartoons from the first four decades of the century into 30 minutes.   Early attempts at animation, crude and sometimes surreal. Mutt and Jeff seemed to roll right into the realm of pure stream of conciousness. Today, I could easily look up the Betty Boop cartoon where she heads up to “Grampa’s House”, collecting odd people along the way. This one was shown two nights in a row or so — once the full length, the other with most of the people she picked up to lead to grampa’s house cut out. Gotta fit the half hour! I don’t recall what the punchline was. Look it up on youtube.
The tv listings showed that it was also on in the afternoon. And therein lied a truism about this show. It was not nearly as interesting at 3 pm as it was at 3 am. Perhaps some marijuana would’ve re-created the 3 am effect, but I’ve always been pretty darned drug free (and at any rate was not a teenager as of yet).
A few viewings of that show, and you move on. Turn the damned tv off.
A few years later, I now have a small screen tv set in my room. And something very strange: this low powered television station… comes in with a near perfect reception into my room. It doesn’t come in anywhere else in this house. At about the WB television network’s inception, the station becomes a WB affiliate. Interesting. Maybe the clear reception that is freakishly limited to my room is part of the WB’s target marketing?
The thing is, of course, I didn’t really have too much interest in any of their primetime offering. A couple years later, I would have to catch up on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which at the time I had a bad impression from what turned out to have been the Alan A Smithee-esque movie. They did have a stellar cartoon line-up, though! It was on Sunday mornings. Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid, and Superman. Good viewing for after church.
I don’t remember when Mystery Science Theater 3000 aired, but that too was splendid. Promising, but turned out not to live up to its promise, was a — probably Saturday night but I don’t remember — primetime broadcast of Anime movies. It failed live up to its promise because the library consisted of… four movies? Only one of them I would recommend.
The thing that turned out interesting, and here I veer into the curious facet of television viewing that slides next to the quote on Allan Du Mont — “Du Mont is always stimulated by Milton Berle’s horizontal resolution, if not his jokes.” — I watched for satellite feed junctures. The WB programming was in full a satellite pick-up of Los Angeles station KTLA, complete with call letters in station breaks. I discovered something oddly interesting — KTLA broadcast Dodgers games. This station didn’t, but it caught the pick-up of KTLA and accidentally aired Dodgers game broadcasts before someone at some headquarters would abruptly have to switch the satellite feed to whatever other feed they meant to pick up. This always fascinated me, and it unvariably happened.
Beyond the carte of cartoons, and a couple of satellite feed junctures, the other item I paid some attention to… Overnight, they broadcast — for no discernable reason, I guess they had to air something, NASA TV feed. I kept it on while I fell asleep, NASA astronauts screwing in screws and doing other very routine missions on their ships. I suppose this is the new “Vintage Cartoons” thing.
Eventually, I moved on. I turned the channel to the Channel 70-83 former translator band now cell phone feed. Instead of routine NASA missions I heard — while I basically slept — routine grocery store lists from anonymous neighbors talking on their cell phone.
I don’t think that channel exists anymore. I don’t know what to make of that station, and am generally curious to know what the heck that was, and why it did some things. And how in the world did I have such a clear reception when nothing else in the house picked anything up.