Looking for The Remote: Roaming Mass Media, by Joe Enright

For the first in an ongoing series, let’s start at the beginning…Before color screens, before video cassettes, before DVDs, before cable, before Wi-Fi, before Smart TVs – and the thousands of viewing options very few older Brooklynites know how to locate – television programming was sparse. Especially in 1948, when WNET (today’s Channel 13) made its debut with only one “show” – consisting of a camera trained on a teletypewriter printing wire service news stories. Every now and then the camera would swivel to show mechanical toys moving around while schmaltzy music played so they could load more paper. It was called “Day Watch,” and I think it would make a great new format for Channel 5, Fox. They could market it as “Retro-News.” The camera would be trained on a machine that continuously printed the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, but occasionally swivel to show Rupert Murdoch getting bitch-slapped by one of his ex-wives. Anyway, just an idea…

Channel 9, meanwhile, was originally owned by the General Tire Company, which purchased the catalogue of RKO Pictures, leading to their Million Dollar Movie gambit: the same movie played twice each night for a week. That’s probably why some of us Big Apple Boomers can still recite last lines from RKO classics:

• King Kong: “No, it was beauty killed the beast.”

• Godzilla: “The menace was gone and so was a great man, so the whole world could wake up and live again.” (US milquetoast version dubbed by Raymond Burr). The closing Japanese narration which we never got to hear anticipated the 843 sequels and spinoffs, give or take, that would follow: “If nuclear testing continues, then someday, somewhere in the world, another Godzilla may appear.” 100%.

• Gunga Din: “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.” Duh.

• The Thing: “Keep watching the skies!” Or as Jackson Browne would phrase it in For A Dancer (1974), “Pay attention to the open skies, you never know what will be coming down.”

• Citizen Kane: “Throw that junk!” Of course, the first line is infinitely more famous: “Rosebud.”

Channel 11 was owned by the NY Daily News which called itself “New York’s Picture Newspaper,” so it grabbed the call sign “PIX.” For most of the 1960s, on Saturday night at 7:30pm, Chiller Theatre reigned there (using the British high-brow spelling of re, HaHa!), hosted by “Zacherley, The Cool Ghoul.” John Zacherle (no “Y” in his true name) had a hit novelty record in 1958 called “Dinner With Drac” and built a career around it – as a TV host and later an FM rock radio DJ, doing his Dracula schtick.

John, who passed in 2016, obviously inspired the 1990s Comedy Central Mystery Science Theater 3000 format of mocking Grade Z horror and sci-fi flicks. Zacherle was at his best when he inserted himself into those grainy dark black and white movies – Zac’s preferred palette.

By the late 1990s cable had finally penetrated every corner of the City and the Captains of Media suddenly realized they needed a cheap new business model to fill up their schedules. Alas, teletypewriters had been relegated to museums, so they invented “Reality TV” – sorta like Public Access but with way better production and a lotta stock footage: the on-screen amateur talent costs a pittance, little studio time needed since you’re out in the world all the time, and no (UGH!) writers to pay because it’s all staged ad-libs. Plus no licensing fees, so you can create plenty of spinoffs and repeat everything forever.

I imagine Zac would have had a lot of fun with the cable fare today…“Ghost Hunting Adventurers Meet the Curse of Skinwalker Ranch Island to find Ancient Bigfoot Alien Dog Star Egyptians” or “Surviving Brutal Alaska Where It Stopped Snowing Three Seasons Ago Due to Global Warming” and “Alone and Naked in the Woods with Nothing Except the Production Team and a String of Heated Trailers with Fully-Stocked Bars.”

I find these shows oddly comforting, each in their own niche way, depending on the production company. Take for instance “The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch,” “The Curse of Oak Island,” and their two spinoff series, all produced by Prometheus Entertainment for the History Channel.

On “Secret” they drill holes, fire rockets and stare at the skies in very rural Utah, reading their gadgets and calibrating instruments. The five major cast members assemble in a semi-circle whenever a new drilling outfit arrives to explain how the last drilling outfit broke all their bits trying to penetrate the shell of a spaceship buried inside a mesa (don’t ask). They then all look at each other gravely and say things like, “That last drill just done broke. Must’ve been the UFO.” And the others will nod solemnly and look at each other again. They also assemble in the ranch’s control room and sit around a table looking at film of the day’s mysteries: a misfired rocket, a strange radio signal, mysterious aircraft surveilling their misadventures, and, of course, another broken drill.

In “Beyond Skinwalker Ranch” (could there be a more perfect name for a spinoff?), the Skinwalker cast sends an ex-CIA agent and a TV journalist to another western ranch each week that’s only slightly less para-normie than Skinwalker. They then round-up people on the new ranch so they can stand around (or sit at a big table) and stare at each other nodding gravely and proclaiming: “It just doesn’t make any sense!!” and “In all my years on this planet I have never witnessed a drone [or rocket or bulldozer or drill or screwdriver] malfunction like that!! Must be the UFOs!”

  Both shows are highly recommended if you can record and watch later to avoid the 18 minutes of commercials every hour. And be sure to catch the series that inspired it all, “The Curse of Oak Island.” For eight seasons a group of treasure hunters have been digging holes in a Canadian island that’s smaller than Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Every show ends with them sitting around a long table staring at each other and saying with a solemn voice, “Well I thought for sure we were gonna find that pirate gold this time.” Then, “Yup.” And in the next episode they come up with reasons why they were wrong to drill where they did until someone points at a map and exclaims, “Dag-nab-it, let’s drill over there next season!”

Rinse and repeat forever. Frankly, every episode of all these shows is very entertaining. The end is always almost in sight…but then…Just like the G train lately, it all disappears. Wait till next season when they actually dig out that spacecraft somehow embedded in a sandstone mesa. Then you’ll thank me…Unless, of course the spacecraft turns out to be a meteorite. But hey, the “Beyond Skinwalker” team used ground penetrating radar to trace what appears to be a “Manta Ray” spaceship buried on Mount Wilson Ranch in Nevada this season, so the curse of the secret remains!