Newscoma

When I was a kid, we had three channels on the tube and what we watched really depended on what the networks had on. If we were lucky and the stars were aligned, we could sometimes get channels from Memphis where I would drown myself in old horror movies on Channels 13 and 3.

I used to watch a lot of public television and one of the things that hacks me off today as we have a wonderful PBS station right here in Hoots proper that I cannot get on my satellite these days although the station is less than eight miles away and I have to watch the one out of Kentucky, but that’s another story for another day.  I loved WLJT, because it was that station that gave me Monty Python, Doctor Who and Ebert and Siskel called Sneak Previews, long

Written by Roger Ebert and Russ Meyer

before the show went into that decade where syndicated television really ruled the airwaves.

I always liked Roger Ebert best. (True story about Ebert. My first visit to Chicago, my family stayed at the Drake Hotel. Homer and I were jaywalking as we were a couple of rube kids and he honked at us to get out of the way. My sister looked at me and said, “Was that the man from PBS?” I nodded. We didn’t care that we had stupidly gotten in his way in the middle of the street, we were excited that a television star almost ran us down in his car because we weren’t the brightest of children. We talked about it all that night. “MOM, DAD, WE SAW ROGER EBERT AND HE ALMOST KILLED US!!” I guess this was in the late 70s. You always remember your first almost demise from a celebrity, you know.)

I used to set my clock around watching the show. My family loved movies and so the show always helped us decide what movies we would go see. You see, because there didn’t used to be cineplexes around here, we would do a movie weekend in Memphis about once a month. (And we loved Irelands restaurants which would be our treat. How I miss you, you little steak on a biscuits.)

Roger Ebert always seemed to like movies even moreso than Gene Siskel. I also like freaky movies so you know that Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is still one of my favorites for it’s awesome terribleness which morphed into the greatest thing ever. In college, we would have parties around this movie and my best friend Dean could quote it almost word-for-word.

Fast forward to now where I’m an old codger butt. Siskel died the year after my mother did and the show went through a variety of changes and we as viewers went from three channels to hundreds. I don’t follow many celebrities on Twitter, but I do follow Ebert, because I think he gets new media as well as anyone. His twittering and blogging seems rather organic to me, and so I keep up with him.

This round about story goes back to what Ebert posted on Wednesday, it made me take pause.

Our new Disney executive from Burbank had other new ideas. She looked at the balcony set at ABC/Chicago, one of the most iconic set ideas in the history of television history, which had survived for more than half of the life of the medium, and decided it needed to be replaced. Don had offered to donate the similar set we used when we did the show at CBS/Chicago to the Smithsonian, which accepted it, but Disney said no to the Smithsonian.

Now workers tore at our set with sledge-hammers, and it collected in a dumpster in the alley.

I am sentimental, because I hated reading this. I hated to see history reduced to a dumpster.

And from reading Ebert’s post, I don’t think he liked it one bit either.