It’s no secret that Daddy doesn’t play small-ball. No matter what, he swings for the fences. Case in point: he owns this dysfunctional TV station in a wayward, backwater region carved out of the industrial wasteland of our American past, hidden from the rigors and realities of modern-day commerce. But you’d never know the pissant nature of this station by looking at its sales brochure. Daddy managed to score the 4,500-seat Graphite County Opera House as part of the deal. This means that Morris and his enterprising assistant, Verona Kendermants, office in a sprawling Art-Deco landmark with a lobby that never ends. They close off the auditorium to save on heating and maintain rodent control, but there are times that Morris sneaks up to the balcony and leans back in a sumptuous padded seat and imagines the greats that have graced the oiled planks below. Even for Daddy, this is extravagant brilliance.   

The World-class Wonders of the Graphite County Opera House

Officing in the Splendor of a Major Attraction

Before moving on to the important business at hand, here’s a word about where we office. For such a small, insignificant station, WVBB has a substantial presence in the community. The TV station owns the former civic opera house that seats more than 4,500 spectators, plus all the trappings of a former world-class Deco-themed theatrical venue.

Most of the building is closed down to save on heating costs and to facilitate pest control. On special occasions, for instance when we have traveling dignitaries coming through town, we open it up for a tour. I find some of the loge seats rather comfortable in stretching out for a mid-afternoon nap. I try not to freak out when packs of mice attach themselves to the cuffs of my pinstripe suit pants.

Owning this Hulking Place is So Typical of Daddy

The building itself has quite a history. All the greats have passed through, from vaudeville to jazz, offering a treasure trove of memorable performances. We office just above street level. The reason our corporate bathrooms are so imposing is because they were built for large crowds getting in and out during intermissions. Daddy couldn’t pass up the opportunity to own the building when it hit the market. The city could no longer hold onto it and Daddy got it for a steal. He has used it to his advantage, dressing the joint up and taking all kinds of photographs. Of all Daddy’s TV stations, this is the most unique physical plant. It’s just like Daddy…doing things big–and differently.

Sometimes when I’m all alone I imagine hearing voices and loud noises from the stage, hearkening back to previous blockbuster performances. I sometimes drop what I’m doing and patrol the environs like I’m a stage manager checking up on a production. Thankfully, no one has yet to talk back to me–though I will be ready for that one night should it become an eventuality.

A Lobby that Doesn’t Stop

Daddy is such a tough nut to crack: on the one hand, he’s always out to cut costs, but on the other hand he goes gaga over properties like the civic opera house.  So long as it doesn’t take additional funds to run, he’s fine with that. There is even talk in the future of fixing the place up and leasing it out for a slate of current events including plays and concerts. There is a fully functioning commercial kitchen, where Verona Kendermants does all of her cooking for her fancy scented soaps and candles.

This is clearly the biggest asset the station owns, bigger even than its broadcast facility atop Skagit Peak in the Appalachian range. People at Daddy’s huge stations in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles are all impressed whenever they see a photo of the opera house and think that somehow the station is reflective of its physical plant.

They don’t know how wrong they are, but I’m not about to dispel the myth. For a station as small, insignificant and dysfunctional as WVBB, it may have the most extravagant lobby and historic theatrical majesty in all of America.

For better or worse, Silt Ridge is the new home of Morris Crimpanfortis V. His chief goal is to get back to Burbank in order to start producing TV shows again, which is what he does best. But having spent months in this backwater market, he’s beginning to wonder if he’ll ever bust loose again. Things could be a lot worse though. Silt Ridge is built on hills and ridges, a lot like San Francisco. Only it lacks the water, the bridges, North Beach, Pacific Heights, cypress trees and the Marina District . . . well, you get the picture.  Morris has a lot of friends who are very supportive, so that’s a plus. He’s also got a group of people who want to kill him.

Getting that Old-timey Silt Ridge Feeling

Home Sweet Home … Really?

It’s snowing intermittently in the abandoned coal fields of eastern Pennsylvania. It is growing dark, though it is still quite early in the afternoon.

My feet are propped atop my desk in the old will-call ticket office of the Graphite County Opera House. I stare at town square down a sweeping marble stairway through a multi-paned window. Smack dab in the middle of downtown is a fifteen-foot bronze beaver, now collecting a mantel of snow. The beaver wears a miner’s hat, complete with lamp. Lore has it that the beaver dug up the brittle rocks that were later determined to be the elusive Oyster coal, prized for its superior propulsion properties and ultra-clean burn rate, perfect for starships and interplanetary factories. The discovery fueled America’s Pre-Sunspot “Propulsion Revolution,” and the intergalactic land rush was on . . . until the sunspot storms turned everything into rack and ruin.

Disastrous Live Game Show Still Raising Eyebrows

It’s been over a year since I arrived on the scene with little or no fanfare. This came on the heels of my disastrous live game show at the Burbank studios where contestants competed for cash and prizes and exotic vacations based on an untested herbal cleanse protocol–do I have to go into it again? The concept was doomed from the get-go, and I’ll just leave it at that. Okay?

While everyone in the family was having a cow about how I disgraced the Crimpanfortis name,, they got me a one-way ticket from LAX to JFK, and my new life began. I rented a car for the last leg of my sojourn to Graphite County and dropped it off at a little local office that wasn’t open more than four hours a week. Our TV station mirrors that small-town mentality.

Silt Ridge Resembles San Francisco . . . Minus Just about Everything

Silt Ridge has a number of districts and neighborhoods. It is laid out on steep hills, much like San Francisco but without the water–or the bridges; or the Haight; or North Beach; or the Marina District; or Pacific Heights; or . . . well, you get the picture.

There are remnants of Victorian homes and a few stately albeit rundown stone mansions. I reside in the fourth-floor garden apartment of one such estate. The name of the property is Buttoned-down Acres. It is the home of the family who made its fortune weaving quality coats and jackets–first for the miners and then for discerning men and women around the world. Sixty-three-year-old Francesca LoZelle is the sole heiress of the estate after everyone else bailed for South Carolina and points offshore. The only time there’s friction is when I’m late with rent because Daddy withheld my paycheck for one reason or another–just because he can and just to see me sweat. Francesca has a pet dog named Buttons that is part-Pekinese, part-poodle. We get along fine, even when I’m late on rent.

A Passel of Desolate Zip Codes

There’s not much to do in Silt Ridge. They’re still trying to restore satellite service following the last sunspot attack. The mountains keep out signals from TV stations in New York City, Scranton-Wilkes Barre, Philly and Baltimore. Our station, WBVV, tries its best to stand out in the quality of merchandise offered on its shopping platform. But with the disposable income at an all-time low in the struggling burg, there aren’t many orders made from our surrounding zip codes.

Revving Up the Old Desire to Pitch Again

A thought suddenly hits me: I’m just wasting away here, feeling sorry for myself. I sit up at my desk; the world stops spinning and I attain a clarity of focus rarely felt. It has been too long since I pitched Noreen on my show concepts. What was I thinking the last two years? I’ve been suspended in a malaise that has completely throttled my creativity. This is a new dawn, a new awakening. It’s time to rise and shine and start pitching again!

I glance at the phone. This is my chance to call Noreen and start the process that will get me back to Burbank. Concepts whiz around in my head. I can’t believe this; I’m actually excited about pitching again.

Before I call, I do something of preeminent importance: I go outside and shovel the wide marble stairway

WXX-TV, the lone television broadcast property in Silt Ridge, Pennsylvania, is not what you would consider a powerhouse outlet. We hook up to a satellite system out of New Orleans (when the satellite is working), and they sell things like jewelry and closet organizers. I can’t say as though the network sells much merchandise on our station, because people looking for their next meal aren’t much into buying closet organizers. We do have the “Silt Ridge Midnight News” in which we report on all the things that go along with living in a really depressed region with all the stuffing kicked out of it. Yes, it’s really debilitating to watch.

WXX-TV: One Heckuva Lackluster Broadcaster

Bringing Bad TV to an Ungrateful Market

It’s been months and months since I was heartily dispatched from the world-class studio facilities in Burbank and summarily sent packing to WXX-TV, a forlorn broadcast property on the outer reaches of America’s forgotten coal fields. And it’s winter to boot.

Let’s be clear on this: Daddy never wanted this TV station to begin with. The two-bit, flea-gnawed property was a pawn in some higher up horse trading that involved stations in the Orlando and Detroit markets. Don’t ask me about the particulars, do I look like a financial guy? Anyway, the faltering fringe-dweller was thrown into the negotiations and before anyone knew it, it had become a part of Daddy’s group portfolio. It didn’t have much of a coverage area, so to speak, because its signal could never escape the mountainous bowl surrounding the ultra-depressed town of Silt Ridge.

But always the opportunist, Daddy never saw a property he couldn’t squeeze for sofa change. This proved the perfect landing spot following the fallout from my disastrous body cleanse game show in Burbank.

Do I Look Like a Financial Guy to You?

Restoration of my career started with turning around the financial fortunes of this loser. A task easier said than done. Nobody said it was going to be easy. And they were right. I ask you again; do I look like someone who can handled finances to you?

Looking to save a buck, Daddy gutted the facility to skeletal status: utilizing the bare minimum of personnel required by the Federal Communications Commission, I serve as General Manager. My full-time assistant, Verona Kendermants, answers the phones and is in charge of all office affairs including traffic, accounting, correspondence and quarterly filing with the FCC. She also handles camera chores when I tape local public affairs shows and keeps track of our commercial breaks on an Excel spreadsheet (or pencil and paper, if the electricity is down again). She dutifully orders office supplies and other necessities, like toilet paper and coffee filters. Verona makes homemade scented soap in the company kitchen. She is married to a guy who stocks produce at the Carbon County Price-Chucker. She is probably the most successful of us all.

All of our switching is handled out of Daddy’s mid-south hub in Charlotte, NC. Our contract chief engineer serves other stations in the northeast and we don’t see a lot of him. Our ad sales are handled by the Goosche Brothers, a pair of former professional baseball players. They own the media in this pintsize market and conduct business in an intimidating way. They control buys with an iron fist, and are very ruthless in determining who’s a player and who’s not. In all fairness, they’re just too much of a load to try to deal with at this juncture.

The “Silt Ridge Midnight News”–Your Nightly Dose of Despair

Weeknights we air the hour-long Silt Ridge Midnight News utilizing a crew of eager, underappreciated and marginally talented freelancers and volunteers.

We are always staving off creditors because Daddy wants to put me in a position to make me sweat. Daddy negotiated a deal with a shopping channel out of New Orleans that sells stuff like jewelry and closet organizers. We don’t do real well in the marketplace because there are not a lot of people in Silt Ridge looking for jewelry and closet organizers. They may be looking for their next bowl of soup, but not closet organizers.

The One Thing this Joint Has Going for It

The one thing setting this station apart from all of Daddy’s other properties across America is the physical plant. WXX-TV, the pissant TV station, broadcasts from the Graphite County Opera House, which can seat up to 4,500 patrons.

Daddy got the Art-Deco facility on the cheap. Though Silt Ridge no longer boasts a symphony orchestra, the facility truly looks spectacular in the brochure showcasing all of Daddy’s other 28 TV stations. It even puts the property in Manhattan to shame.

This is another installment in the continuing saga of failure that seemed to follow Morris Crimpanfortis V wherever he went. We learn that he had the good fortune of caddying for one of his father’s TV execs in a celebrity golf tournament and was subsequently awarded a position at the Burbank studio. There, he learned the ropes and generally comported himself in a professional manner. But that, of course, did not last forever. Overstepping his boundaries, he produced an infomercial that went live coast-to-coast on the family-owned network that delivered results that were a crashing embarrassment to the staid Crimpanfortis standard of broadcast excellence.  

Leaving Burbank in the Red-eye Dust

How I went from Hollywood Hotshot to Coal Country Wash-up

You may be wondering how I went from our flagship television station in the Los Angeles DMA to an end-of-the-road outlet in the economically distressed coal region of eastern Pennsylvania. This is the price one sometimes pays for innovation and creativity. Unfortunately, I chose the wrong product to get innovative with. The result was one of the most embarrassing debacles in live TV history. Worse, it totally disgraced Daddy. And you know who took the blame: it sure wasn’t my sister Noreen.

All but disowning me the only recourse of the family was to shuffle me off to oblivion and hope I didn’t debauch myself again. Of course, when you regularly entertain creative urges like I do, you’re never going to remain silent. There’s always a gears grinding in the old wheelhouse–even if people say I’m a couple bricks shy of a full load. But what do they know? Do they know what actually constitutes a “full load?” Don’t worry I’ll give you a full load. A full load upended my career.

The Nastiest Cleanse of All

It all began–and ended–with a half-hour infomercial. You know the genre I’m talking about, the one where the announcer is constantly saying, “But wait, there’s more.” There was more, all right. I created what I thought was a groundbreaking vehicle for an ambitions, albeit overly aggressive client. What started with such high hopes became a nightmare of epic proportion.

The disaster at the Burbank studio taught me a couple of valuable lessons: number one, never deal with a herbal body cleanse that bills itself as “explosive.” Number two: don’t roll over for any of your clients; and number three: never trust the hyperbolic claims of a detox product that hasn’t been thoroughly vetted by the proper regulatory agencies. There’s no such thing as “fudging the clinical data” to make the benefits/risks assessment more palatable to the uninformed consumer.

But above all else–never…NEVER, EVER go live with such a product (especially not without the luxury of a seven-second delay) and NEVER, EVER…EVER make a game show out of contestants demonstrating the product’s primary use with escalating prize packages tied to performance.

So what if the Disaster was seen around the World?

Corporate can banish me to the far and forgotten reaches of this great country all it wants. I will not stop pitching my shows. New content is the lifeblood of a television network. This is my opportunity to rise and shine and I’ve got to stake my claim. You never know if you’ll ever get another shot like this again.

Oh, by the way…sales of the product that I showcased went through the roof following the one-time-only telecast. To this day, the all-natural cleanse ranks in the top ten of like-minded products according to the “lists” you see on the Internet (when, of course, in these post-sunspot days the flickering Internet is actually working).

How much did the televised meltdown contribute to brand awareness? All I know for certain, I’ll never get the credit. But that’s okay; when you’re creating shows, you do it for the love of the game.

And when you finally do have a success, it just makes all the snide comments people make behind your back just that much sweeter.

Chicago was the hometown of Morris Crimpanfortis IV, and you couldn’t find a more centralized location to base your operations. The number of broadcast TV properties he owned coast-to-coast numbered in the dozens. These were TV stations in markets large and small, from New York City to Victoria, Texas. They were all powerhouses, not a weakling in the bunch. With a bustling broadcast hub in the heart of the Loop, Mr. Crimpanfortis was an icon in the industry. Now the question was: what would become of his wayward son, Morris Crimpanfortis V?

Making the Move to Chi-town

The Genesis of Daddy’s Broadcast Media Empire

Daddy started making his play for full-power TV stations about twenty years ago. It didn’t take a genius, and Daddy is way more than a genius, to realize the newspapers were a dying breed. Plus, the Federal Communications Commission frowned upon owning newspapers and TV in the same market. So Daddy divested our holdings of the very commodity responsible for our success in the first place. It just comes with knowing market conditions and having the stomach to trigger the necessary transactions.

Local TV is the Place You Want to be

Daddy jumped full force into the local TV scene, and achieved stellar results. But was there ever any question? When Daddy sets his mind to something, he is destined to pull it off in breathtaking fashion.

The TV biz provides Daddy with a world-class stage where he can really shine. Over the years he bought, sold, swapped, traded for and flipped network affiliates and independents in markets large and small across the country, always with an eye of landing in metros that are supportive of the advertising side of the family enterprise.

But then, just as everything was hitting its stride, Mama vanished in the Alaskan wilds, never to be heard from again.

In Memory of Mama

Shortly thereafter, we moved all operations back to Chicago. It was Daddy’s hometown (Mama’s had been Seattle), and when you consider all the broadcast properties and billboards that we own that are scattered across the countryside, well . . . Chicago is about as central a location as you can find.

Daddy threw himself deeper into his work than ever before. Even though he was consumed with the herculean task of assembling the TV network, he honored Mama’s groundbreaking work with the outdoor extravaganzas known as “Live-Action Billboards.” As a legacy to Mama, he vowed to make the service a staple of the agency. Daddy did the best he could to nurse the project along, but clearly the Outdoor Division required more time and attention than even he was able to muster.

Another Dream Goes Up in Flames

Of course, I considered myself in line to run the Outdoor Division. It was rather hurtful when Daddy chose my younger sister Noreen over me. Noreen already was employed with the company and had a lot of existing responsibilities. Daddy’s view was she’d earned it; she was more than capable of dealing with additional duties that were being heaped atop her already full plate. But I knew better; I knew there was no way she’d be able to handle her new workload before one day blowing some serious chunks

I was having an increasingly difficult time wondering if I was ever going to fit in with the organization. Every time Daddy bought a new TV station I figured he’d find me a place somewhere in the ranks.

And then I finally hit paydirt . . .

Shanking for Gold

I was a few years out of college and caddying for one of Daddy’s TV execs. He was really impressed with the club I chose for his approach shot to the eighteenth green. A pure guess on my part, it won him a lot of money–I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $20.00. He wanted to repay me in-kind and so he had a word with Daddy.

I Was Successful (Trust Me) . . .

Daddy finally came around. It wasn’t like he took pity on me, not that way at all. He didn’t make a big thing of my being a failure, didn’t rub it in my face. He was real understanding, and made a place for me in the Los Angeles flagship station of his TV network group.

While there, I did okay, learning the ropes and stretching my wings. I was feeling more confident by the day and had a good amount of support from the staff.

But then came the “Burbank Blowout” that all but rear-ended my career.

Literally.

Jetpacks and Chimney Sweeps – Mama’s Lasting Legacy

Getting More Sophisticated – and Dangerous – by the Day

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since Mama departed the scene after rolling out “Live-Action Billboards” on the south side of Seattle.

Today, it doesn’t matter if it’s 842 Indie cars racing nonstop coast-to-coast on Interstate 70, or a cast of jet-propelled “Queen of Diamonds” card-riders over Atlantic City; Mama’s fingerprints are evident in all aspects of these breathtaking, mind-boggling, one-of-a-kind, high-flying displays.

She was always one to push the envelope.

Mama Really Knew What She Was Doing – And Still Does

When you’re dealing with the genius of the Crimpanfortis crowd, and especially Mama, you knew that things weren’t going to stand still. The pot was always going to be stirred. The same definitely held true for the evolution of “Live-Action Billboards.”

Under Mama’s resourceful watch, they went from being a novelty to cutting edge to edgy to heart-pounding to “you-can’t-be-serious” in record time.

From Diapers to Jetpacks – It’s all about the Show

Case in point was our diaper-clad friend, Murph the “Muffler Prince,” and his bulldog sidekick. What started as a staid, run-of-the-mill, two-dimensional billboard ultimately transformed into an extravagant Interstate display featuring a gigantic hydraulic lift, identical to the ones you see in automotive service bays, that was 10 times larger and raised to an elevation of 185 feet!

Mama just loved the bungee cord and had a thousand-and-one uses for it. Performance artists for Murph the “Muffler Prince” were soon hurtling toward the I-5 pavement, ending up perilously close to palpating motorists. It got really intense when performers began jousting with mufflers on their way down, then using them as crude pogo sticks to bounce along the Interstate. This went on 24 hours per day, seven days a week, rain or shine. The crew now consisted solely of stunt people. They also had to learn how to sing and dance–or at least pretend.

The Whole Freeway was her Stage

Mama didn’t stop with mufflers. She scoured the marketplace for products and services that lent themselves to the dynamics of a quality live-action presentation.

She rendered the freeway stage setting for North Roxborough Chimney Sweeps featuring the massive cutaway of a chimney with a spiral staircase leading to a brick-lined fantasy village. The sprawling panorama rose to a height of 205 feet. Fifty-six chimney sweeps interacted with the villagers 24/7 with lots of singing and dancing in clogs and pointy-toed boots–and of course bungee jumping. It evoked a Mary Poppins kind of feel, catering to the awestruck eyes of motorists who slowed to take a wondrous gander.

New Form of Advertising Takes Country by Storm

The Crimpanfortis organization aggressively expanded into other markets. Various products were presented in outrageous places, igniting the collective conscious of an enraptured public. Advertisers lined up for a piece of the action, a place in the sun.

It was just the beginning.

As we will see, one display after another, each more outrageous then the last, began rolling out resulting in the rollicking displays we are all familiar with today.

Just as long as Paymor Kalabrashion and his crew are kept at bay . . .