I was recently telling a supposedly interesting story from my past to a friend, and realized I have never committed it to writing. So, here we go. As on any crime drama, "the names have been changed to protect the innocent".
When I moved to Columbus, OH in 1987 to start my career, I wasted no time getting cable TV hooked up. I found a channel with low rent programs--it was "public access" TV. The cable industry, in order to ingratiate themselves and get their monopolistic contracts, offered markets their own channel to show local programs. In most TV markets, this consists of a channel showing the local weather and announcements--they would show your program if you brought them a tape, in the right format. In a few markets, however, there was an actual TV "station" where you could make shows, and Columbus was one of them. Think of it as the YouTube of the 1980s. I always wanted to do this, and quickly signed up for classes.
It was a "work as you go" effort--if you ran a camera for someone's show, you got credits to use when when renting equipment, etc. I was a cameraman for a psychic show called "Paragon Promise" for quite a while. I got to know the group taking the same classes, and wound up in a comedy show produced by a man we'll call "Brian". It was kind of a cheap version of "In Living Color"--the show was called "Jive TIme". We did a show in 1987 (keep in mind we all had actual jobs, so it took a long set of weekends to shoot and produce it), and then got together in 1988 for a show called "Inducing Panic", for reasons that will shortly become clear. In the first show, one of the cast did a fake aerobics show called "Arab-aerobics with Habba Habba"--he wore a sheik outfit and channeled "Johnny La Rue" from SCTV. When we did the second show, we had the idea to bring the character back, inserting him into fake promos for upcoming shows. I even did my best "Guy Caballero" (again, SCTV) to introduce the concept. I've included video from the show--I hope "Brian" is OK with that.
One of the fake promos didn't go as planned, and never made it air. Why? Find out next time...