This week we are joined by frequent guest Tim Lybarger from the Neighborhood Archive to talk all about infomercials.
We discuss some of our favorite products, some of our favorite pitchmen and then we spend a moment discussing some of the more ridiculous products we remember seeing info ads for. Also find out if any of us actually bought any of this crap. You’ll be surprised.
Download this episode from iTunes, Stitcher or listen to it on Feedburner.
Or listen to it online here.
I’m a fan of the found footage genre. The genre gets a lot of sh*t from people, but honestly, I think some of these movies are scarier than the “splatter” or “serial killer” movies that are currently released. Anyway, I’m prepping for an appearance on the awesome podcast, The Bloke Show, in which we are going to discuss found footage films so I was trying to think of the first examples of found footage movies I remember seeing. Obviously, Blair Witch Project popped in my head first, but that wasn’t it. I remember seeing something else first. I have a vivid memory of it, especially the ending. But I’ll get to that.
In January 1998, the UPN Network aired the special presentation; Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County.
I don’t remember how or why I watched it, but I did. It was presented very similarly as the Alien Autopsy footage, ie it was promoted as being real. I know we get things like this all the time now, but in 1998, this was, if not unheard of, it was not common.
One thing I want to say to put this in context. This special is, for lack of a better word, “trope-y”. It has all the hallmarks of found footage and cheesy horror movies. However, many of the found footage tropes hadn’t really been established at this time. This special aired over a year before The Blair Witch Project was released in theaters. In actuality, the special was a remake of an independent movie called UFO Abduction from 1989. So in a sense, it was creating a lot of these tropes we now find so prevalent. And the special created a sort of sensation and controversy when it aired because many people didn’t get that it was fiction. There really was no context for something like this before. So, just keep that in mind as we go through it.
So, I was recently able to watch this thing again and I simply have to talk about it. The beginning of the special had several talking head “experts” discuss what you are about to see.
Experts like the uber cool, black shirted video EFX editor who, while sitting next to a powered down computer monitor, explains that the things you’ll see in the upcoming video couldn’t be done with the consumer video technology available (well of course not, UPN created the effects). And the “former government agent” who can’t be shown on camera because of the stuff he’s “seen”. I love how they actually give him a fake name, “Al James”. Why?
UPN also brought in a nuclear physicist awesomely named Stanton Friedman to help explain “electromagnetic interference” for whenever the footage gets all static-y or to explain to us how this footage is the most important scientific discovery of the millennium (which hadn’t actually happened yet). Or the “certified” hypnotherapist to explain what everyone is “feeling” during the video. Lots of heavy hitters in this segment. To balance out these experts who are clearly actors we have actual alien abductees discuss their experiences as well in sequences which are even more staged and less believable than the “experts”.
So, the footage is setup by these experts. A young man named Tommy McPherson is filming Thanksgiving dinner with his new video camera.
It starts off with normal family stuff. Lots of goofing off and bickering. Really boring as balls. I don’t want you to seek this out and waste your time watching it so I’m going to show you the good parts. The alien parts. And then the ending which for some reason had a big impact on me. So, to begin, the power goes out in the McPherson house. Some of “the men” go out to check the fuse box and see a giant explosion in the distance. Of course, they go check it out and find, in the distance, an alien ship. And a few aliens come out of the ship. The guys keep far back from the action so Tommy has to zoom in on the aliens with his camera.
The aliens spot the guys in the distance and shoot a “laser” towards them. I created an animated GIF for you to see that this incident looks just as ridiculous in the footage as it sounds when I describe it. Below is what it looked like in the “footage”. The alien is blasting the cow on the ground with a laser, stops, looks up at the camera and shoots it WAY to the left of the camera. And, of course, the footage is replete with static from “electromagnetism” (Thanks, Stanton).
Welcome to the second installment of my TV Guide Fall Preview reviews. This is a feature that I sort of “borrowed” from my good friend Shawn Robare over at Branded in the 80s. He covered mostly the issues from the 1980s, I’ll start taking a look at issues from the 70s as well as the 90s.
I previously reviewed the 1974 Fall Preview issue for my birthday last year. I love looking back at these old Fall Preview issues to see the debut of popular shows when they were brand new as well as see well known actors in TV shows that have long since been swallowed up by time. These issues also provide great full page ads for some of the new shows as well as some great vintage ads for products that haven’t been seen in years.
So, let’s dive right into this installment with the Fall Preview issue from 1 year before the previous installment. This article is going to run long. There’s just so much information and ads to show you, so prepare for a ton of information to come your way. Starting now:
Here is the cover to the 1973 TV Guide Fall Preview issue.
There are several very popular shows that debuted this year.
Like last time, I’ll divide this article into three parts. In the first part I’ll look at all the new shows that are debuting in 1973. Following that I’ll look at full page ads for TV shows and movies and at the end I’ll show you some awesome vintage advertising from this issue. It should be lots of fun.
So, let’s begin by taking a look at all the brand new shows for the 1973 TV season (which, technically, began in Sep 1972).
The Bob Newhart Show
Another very popular show, The Waltons
The TV show M*A*S*H
Yul Brenner was probably most closely associated with the role of the King of Siam from the stage and movie musical versions of The King and I
The Men (left) was an umbrella title for three separate TV shows made by three different studios. It was a spinoff of the weekly NBC Mystery Movie. Each installment of the anthology series would rotate and air every third week. The first series in the rotation was called Assignment Vienna and starred Robert Conrad as Jake Webster, an American agent in Austria posing as a bar owner. He’s real job, though, was tracking down spies and criminals for the US government. The second series was called Jigsaw and featured a Police Detective that disliked proper police procedure and protocol but was effective in “piecing together” crimes like a puzzle. The final series was called The Delphi Bureau and starred Laurence Luckinbill (Sybok from Star Trek V). Luckinbill starred as an American agent with a photographic memory who works for an obscure anti-espionage department in the US government. That last one actually sounds like a show that would air today (See The Mentalist, White Collar, Suits, etc).
The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie (right) began its life the previous season as just The NBC Mystery Movie. It’s where the TV show Columbo got its start. After its success, the group was moved to Sunday and The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie was born with three more shows. Those shows were Banacek, starring Hannibal Smith himself (George Peppard) as a Polish-American insurance investigator (?) in Boston. Cool Million featured a security/retrieval expert whose fee was $1 million per job. Madigan, the third show, featured Richard Widmark reprising his role from a 1968 movie he had made about an NYPD detective. This particular incarnation of the NBC Mystery Movie would only last a season. Both Madigan and Cool Million would be canceled by the end of the season to be replaced by three more detective shows.
Episode 12 of the Nerd Lunch podcast has come on the air. This week it is only us, the three musketeers; CT, Jeeg and me without the safety net of a more interesting guest. Yes, you get to listen to just the three of us discuss owning our own television station. Imagine 24 hours of non-stop cartoons, game shows and Buffy/Angel reruns. My personal TV station is called CavalcadeTV. Jeeg suggested the mascot below. I came up with the slogan.
Not surprisingly all of us at some point decide to broadcast at least one Star Trek episode during our broadcast day. Most of the time, on multiple days. And yes, the Teen Wolf cartoon makes it into my lineup.
Plus, this episode, we introduce a new closer for the show. Say goodbye to the closing mono-blog, this week we start the “Nerd To-Do List”.
Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner. And yes, we are still on the Zune Marketplace.
I loved milk commercials when I was growing up. There were tons of them and they were shown all the time. And there were so many versions of the ads that it was endlessly interesting.
So on this Friday, I’m going to show you a bunch of my favorites.
Let’s start with one of the most iconic. The one directed by Michael Bay. The “Aaron Burr” commercial.
Next up are the “Milk it Does a Body Good” commercials. These are the ones I generally think of when I think of milk commercials. There were two versions of these. The first was a series of musical numbers featuring kids and random images of things flying all over the place. Things like animals (cows, penguins and kangaroos).
Check out the awesome 80s randomness of this ad featuring a lot of kangaroos. Seriously, kangaroos on pogo sticks and tap dancing kangaroos.
Here’s the “cow on the moon” musical PSA.
…and here’s the penguin version.
The other version of the “Milk it Does a Body Good” PSA involved kids talking to someone about the benefits of drinking milk. As they talk, they transform into an older, taller, better looking version of themselves. There were even two versions of this ad, one in which the kids were talking to someone else and one where the kids were looking in the mirror talking to their future selves. All of these commercials are filmed in front of a gray backdrop that looks like a crinkled up curtain.
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Cavalcade of Awesome 