It REALLY Changed

Sometimes It is Good...Sometimes It is Not

I was in the cable ad sales world for over a dozen years...

My primary job over those years was in ad sales...

I worked for three cable companies and started two cable ad sales operations from scratch...and saved one that was barely afloat...

It was a great fun time to be in that media business...

I went to the 2nd Cable Advertising Bureau convention in the Big Apple...
We were all babes in the woods in this new advertising platform...

I excelled at it thanks to my background in radio and broadcast TV...

Cable Ad Sales was really just like peddling radio with pictures...
The cost to the advertiser was low and the payoff could be very high...

Started with Fresno Cable TV in (where else) Fresno, California...
Built it from the ground up...

Then off for a five year gig at MPTV Cable in Monterey/Salinas...
This was another wonderful start up cable job thanks
to over 80% cable penetration...

That means eight out of ten homes passed by the cable system
WERE a cable subscriber and saw your ads...

The rest of the non subs were illegals...
And we always said that if you lived in that market WITHOUT cable
all you will see is the ocean...

Terrible place for regular broadcast TV signals,
hence the huge cable home subscriber base...

Finally ended up in West LA on the then Century Cable system...
That was the big league...

Heck, even a retired Ronald Reagan watched our ads on
CNN,ESPN, USA and MTV...
Those were the four major networks we aired commercials on back then...

Today with computers cable systems run spots on dozens of networks...
It is more targeted than ever before...A huge benefit for the advertiser...

Anyway, in my blog yesterday I said I would tell the story of how I was in a Nick at Nite promo... 

I got a call from our rep from the net and they said that many management folks were coming up to San Francisco to shoot promos for the network and would I like to join them...

Those days (80's into the early 90's) Nick At Nite was a vibrant and highly successful cable network at aired old sitcoms with outrageous bumpers and promos...


Here's a quick reel of some of their past video workmanship...

Shy me, I couldn't say no...
So off I went from Monterey up to China Basin in SF...It was a seedy area of old warehouse buildings down by the wharf...
Finally found the right spot and went into a huge cavernous building
that was dank and frigid...

They told me to bring a bathing suit (I had no idea why)...

Once I got there and they filled in the details about the promo...
 I KNEW why...

I was to be a "FLASHER"...

They had the standard open and then the cutaway to the couple that they always used in the living room setting and I would appear and walk up to them with my back to the camera and BAM!

After showing my goods I was to swing around and show America my Nick At Nite T shirt...

I went for years not knowing what happened to the video and then someone who knew me on the web sent me the link...I was floored...I had done such an admirable job flashing my junk on Cable TV...

Here I am:

Today the cable ad world has been taken over by just a handful of corporate media giants...

It is not a fun biz anymore...

Much of media the playing field has been drastically changed thanks to the internet and the huge debt service that many of the media conglomerates have over their head each and every day...

But I was there in the cable "Glory Days"...

"When Cable WASN'T Cool!"

"See ya later gator!"