The power of old TV Guides

A couple of months ago, I stumbled upon this web site, covering the history of one of the TV stations in my hometown of Tampa, created by a man who was an employee at the station during the 1970s. (It was the CBS affiliate back in the olden days, and now it's the Fox affiliate.) I e-mailed him and asked him if he'd be interested in any scans of old "Big 13" ads from my old TV Guides. He was, so I scanned what I could find and e-mailed the scans to him.

He now works as an editor at Columbia-Tristar Television Distribution, on the Sony Pictures lot, and he was so impressed that he invited me to lunch. Today, I took him up on his offer, and drove down to Culver City to meet him.

He showed me something he'd recently been working on, a promo video for advertisers for Columbia-Tristar's syndicated sitcom reruns ("Seinfeld," "Just Shoot Me." "The Steve Harvey Show," and "Married...with Children"), and then we walked over to the lot and he showed me around. We walked into the sound stage that was set up for the new version of "Pyramid," the game show, and although much of the set had tarps over it, I could definitely tell that it's not going to be primarily red and blue like the previous versions; it's going to look more like "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."

Then we ate at the commissary and talked about TV history, including the fact that the NBC affiliate in Tampa, at least in the late '60s/early '70s, ran its own audio-only promos during the network's "the following program is brought to you in living color on NBC" announcements that preceded just about every show. I still can't decide if this is more or less egregious than the time the aforementioned "Big 13" pre-empted a CBS "Peanuts" special for a syndicated "Benny Hill" special, but I'm actually leaning towards more egregious because it was ongoing, and because that NBC announcement had a very nice flute-heavy tune behind it.

So, in conclusion, the lesson is that you should offer materials for people's web sites if you can, because you might get a free lunch out of the deal.