The job: Producer – Color TV Cable Show

My age: 18?

Hourly Wage: N/A – free labor

From when I was in 7^th grade, our town, Western Springs, IL, had a local cable access station and a program called, “Video Kids.” I was a video kid, and learned how to shoot video, edit videos, produce local news shows and more. Everything we did was on ¾ inch video tape and our video cameras were huge with giant battery packs. But, over the years there I got to learn a lot about what it took to bring videos and live TV shows to life from the ground up.

My group of friends and fellow ‘video kids’ mainly were interested in shooting skateboarding videos around town – but we got roped into broadcasting local sports, shows, community meetings and other community events – like the annual Lagrange Pet Parade. It was fun, and we learned so much from our station manager, Tom Sullivan. Tom was a mentor to all of us kids and had a huge influence on many of us. I learned a few years ago that Tom passed away, and that is a big loss for anyone who knew Tom.

One of my favorite projects I ever worked on was a show we did called “Color TV.” Color TV was the brainchild of Jim Toth and Jeff Johnson who were a few years older than me and some of the funniest people I have ever worked with.

The premise of the show was that it had a talk show format, Jim was the host, and Jim’s sidekick was Mr. Twinky, a stuffed twinky who was sarcastic, rude and funny. We would have lots of local guests and bands on the show and it had a cult following in the western suburbs of Chicago in the early 1990s.

I had various roles on the show, from being a technical director (this is the person who listens to the director and then switches between cameras, runs the credits and more). I also ended up being a producer on the show where my job was to help get guests to come onto the show to be interviewed, play if they were a band, and more.

Back then, there was no workable internet, so to find guests we either had to know someone, or we had to pull out the yellow pages and start cold calling people and asking them to come on the show.

Our most famous guest, which I can take no credit for, was Slash from GunsNRoses – this was a major coup for the show that Slash would even be on. Jim did a good job interviewing Slash – but what I remember most was that Slash did not have his signature hat on, which he always wore!

When we didn’t have Slash, we would get guests like the mascot of the Chicago Bulls, Benny the Bull, who couldn’t talk and made interviewing him kind of a trip. We also had people who were borderline carnival attractions, and lots of local bands.

Back to the Yellow Pages. To find guests I would think of someone we wanted to have on, and find their organization and start calling. I aimed high, for local sports celebrities and others and would spend hours trying to get people on the phone. Most of the time I wasn’t successful, but occasionally someone, like Benny the Bull, would feel sorry for the teenager who was calling them and agree to come on.

This process certainly taught me some things about connecting with people, cold calling, and it takes a lot of work to find, connect with, and book guests for shows. Whenever I see coordinating producers in the credits of shows, I give them a tip of the cap.

Working on the show was also a team effort, Jim and Jeff really set the tone, but it took a group of about 10 people or so to pull off any episode, we had to work as a team and it took everyone to be on point for the show to go well.

Eventually the show came to an end, but it helped launch both Jeff and Jim’s careers. Jim spent time at the world-renowned improv comedy show, “Second City,” and helped produce one of the most successful radio shows in Chicago. These guys were incredibly bright and funny.

While it wasn’t a job where I made any money, it was one of my favorite things to work on in my entire working career. Color TV needs to make a comeback – we need more irreverent comedy especially now.

Carpe Diem my friends!

JVD

PS: Check out some old episodes of Color TV here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG0TOJtRIao