I used to be a wrestling fan during the 80s and into the late 90s. But by 2001 I started to tune out once I found out that Vince McMahon was buying WCW and later ECW.

These days I tune in once in a while just to see what they're up to at WWE (formerly WWF), but I tuned in last week to learn that Vince McMahon had died in a car explosion. I see wrestlers giving their personal regards to Vince and they all had sad looks on their faces. Of course his "death" (in such as tramedic way) wasn't in the news media, no one was commenting on it. I said to myself, heh, another tasteless storyline by the WWE. So I tuned in today/yesterday to see an empty arena with just Jim Ross and Jerry "The King" Lawler with (yet again) looking as depressed as ever. I actually thought the empty arena was apart of the storyline of Vince McMahon's so-called "death", but I'm watching and I see Chris Benoit in a match with "The Big Show" and then I see"Royal Rumble" as the event and I thought that was odd because Royal Rumble was usually held in January.

During the match I see a little pop-up on the bottom of the screen of Chris Benoit, his wife, and son. And it said how he and his family died but it didn't say anything else. 

So this even "sadder" tribute wasn't for Vince after all, but for Chris Benoit. I know people who watch WWE at least once every 2 weeks must have been confused as I was last night. I did a search online to discover that Benoit really did die. But then I went over to a wrestling newsgroup to find out more information on Benoit to discover that the 'Sensational Sherri Martel" had also died 10 days prior of Chris Benoit's death yesterday. Again I was shocked.

In case you didn't know, Sensational Sherri is best known for being Randy "Macho Man" Savage's manager or ring-side helper in the late 80s and early 90s. Ironically, Miss Elisabeth was also Macho Man's manager prior to Sherri... and guess what? Both women have died prematurely. I can't help but assume that the wrestling business (especially WWE) is under some kind of hex. It must be, too many strange deaths over the years, and for the most part, they all were under 50 years old... 

And here's something else I've find out from the news... the deaths of the Benoits is being reported as a double-murder suicide. 

"Investigators believe the 40-year-old Benoit killed his wife, Nancy, and 7-year-old son, Daniel, over the weekend, then himself on Monday."

The folks at WWE had just made a tribute to a man who might have murdered his family and himself. Unbelievable! Obviously they didn't know this because it was just revealed near midnight, but they should have waited a few days before doing tributes.

But I guess they couldn't wait because Vince McMahon probably felt bad at his fake death storyline and how it backfired on him with the deaths of two wrestling personalities within the same month of his phony storyline and having his workers pay tribute to him, not knowing there will be 2 real deaths in his wrestling business weeks later.

I went over to Alexa.com to learn that "Vince McMahon" was the most searched for keyword in search engines. Great job Vince, now you've got millions of people actually believing that you've actually past away and feeling sorry for your family...

I wonder how they will treat Vince's death when it actually happens?
I remember how the comedian "Red Foxx" would pretend to have a heart attack throughout his career as a joke, and when he grabbed his chest and fell to the floor on the set of his new TV sitcom (in the early 90s) the cast of the show actually thought he was joking until he didn't get back up... how embarrassing for Red Foxx. And it's even more embarrassing for Vince McMahon. 

The whole thing is bizarre, and the way TV has become so distasteful it will only get worse. It was not like this 15 years ago (1992), they at least had some class back then.

I've said it once and I'll say it again... the TV sitcom "Married With Children" signaled the moral decline of television... it all started in 1987 and declined from there. 

Posted by Lionel at 12:57 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 26 June 2007 8:55 AM EDT

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I think it's about time that I start introducing 50's and 60's commercials to my library; I want to cover every TV decade so this site can appeal to other groups besides the seventies, eighties, and nineties crowd.

In the very near future (I'm not saying when) my entire collection will have a "Videomercials.TV" watermark on the bottom corner of the footage. I didn't want to resort to do this but I have no choice, or else I will be out of business. I'm discovering an increasing amount of individuals either reselling copies of some of my volumes and claiming to have compiled them or they're being uploaded on websites. And they certainly haven't told their visitors where the footage came from else I would have gotten extra traffic from these sites.

Some of them are even putting their site's logo in the commercials, but no one stops to think where it came from and who compiled it. I obviously had plenty of time on my hands to be able to make so many of these volumes and to maintain this website. And the way I see it is if they can brand the footage, then why can't I? It's only fair. But certainly, my branding will discourage the copycats and the exploiters who upload footage from my collection. 

And I'm sure none of them are dedicated enough to sit there and edit in a little over 200 commercials for 3 to 4 hours. It isn't fair to me. I know there are jeering and jealous people who wish only the worse for this website and even though they hate it, they'll come back to observe it, and to see if I've been "SHUT DOWN".

The watermark logo in the footage will brand my entire collection to prevent individuals from "stepping on my toes" and purposely exploiting this service. This is also necessary to prevent people from trading me copies of commercials from my own collection (which has happened before.)

I wanted the commercials to be plain and original as the day it was broadcasted, but this concept is now proving to be a failure for my business... it's like what mom use to say: "It takes one bad apple to spoil up the whole bunch."

I don't think people realize that I'm in this for the long haul, and that this is not some "fly by night" or some "here today, gone tomorrow" type of service. They'll know when they see "Volume 100" listed on "Page 10" which is a very realistic goal considering the backlog of commercials that I haven't got around to making into a volume yet.

I'll keep you posted on any other developments.

Posted by Lionel at 1:12 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 20 June 2007 9:48 PM EDT

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I wonder how many people that were born after 1982 realize that small indie stations were once common and in most large cities. Everything from original shows to a crop of movies and reruns, etc. like you see on TV Land  or Nick at Nite. There was something cool about that, now everything is owned by a greater or lesser network, it seems.

Heck, in the beginning, even network affiliates had to fill time on their own. Leading to the monster theater and captain video stuff local stations during the golden TV age.

The interesting thing is that once people in TV were desperate to fill time in the new medium. Now, there is so much content flying around that even rapidly multiplying cable niche channels can't hold it all.

Oh well, at least with cable and TV stations going to the way there are, syndication is forever - yet those little stations - and some network stations that had to fill time (remember the first FOX affiliated stations, before there was a network? FOX 5 in NYC? WTXF 29 in Philadelphia?) that kept Star Trek on everyone's TVs in syndication. They made kids of several generations grow up laughing at The Little Rascals, or Tim Conway in "McHale's Navy," or Colonel Klink on "Hogan's Heroes".

A true cultural impact. They scared kids of the seventies and eighties out of their wits when they stayed up to watch the old horror films, Public Service Ads, and not to mention all the syndicated cartoon shows that they aired.

In the early nineties when I was still in Brooklyn, NY before moving to Florida (and didn't have cable TV btw) usually at nights or when it was raining, my "Cable Ready TV" would pick up various UHF TV stations from Connecticut, Long Island, and New Jersey.

By 1993, Independent TV in the New York City market was pretty much crap... so when my little indoor antenna picked up those unknown "out of area" stations I was more than happy.

The very first station it pulled was a connecticut station "WTXX TV-20", it aired the "Home Shopping Club" from morning to 3:00pm, then cartoons would air from 3 to 6pm, and then sitcoms and dramas would continue through 10pm.

It was a breath of fresh air seeing an indie station that was indeed "independent". I actually stayed up real late to see what this station aired, but by 6am the signal gotten weak as daylight became brighter... and by 7:30am the signal was completely gone, as if it was never there.

Disappointed, I went out and bought a new indoor antenna to see if the signal would come back, it didn't, but I left it hooked to the TV. As the night approaches I was receiving faint signals from WTTX-20, Connecticut's Channel 26, NBC 30, Connecticut's FOX 29, WMBC-63, WNJN-50, and WLNY-55. The strongest of the signals was WLNY-55, probably because it was a Long Island station.

Yet again, I stayed up late flipping the channels to see what was showing and I saw TV movies (such as "Playing With Fire" with Gary Coleman), old sitcoms, and misc TV programs. But as usual the signals would vanish by sunrise. Within a year I bought 6 different indoor antennas to get these stations to stay but with no luck. I also found that if it was raining real hard during the day the signals would come back even stronger... then I realized it had to do with the atmospheric changes.

The fun ended in 1995, however. One day I tuned in to WTXX TV-20, and noticed a "UPN" logo at the bottom and they were calling themselves "UPN 20". Everything that was original about that station was replaced with UPN slogans and promos. Other stations I tried to get that was once "independent" were either UPN or WB affiliates.

There was no reason for me to tune into these stations anymore, it was over.

When I was in Ft. Lauderdale, FL in 1995-97... stations like WSVN-7 would still air late night movies on the weekends at 2am, I can't remember what WSVN called this time slot... but it was similar to what indies would call their late hour movie blocks.

In 1998 they attempted to bring back indies and I remember WAMI-69 debuting. The station was nick-named "Miami", and it aired local and old programs... one local program was called "Neil At Night", it was the radio shock jock "Neil Rogers", they were showing us two half-hour sets of his 4-hour daytime radio show at night on WAMI, once at 8:30pm and another at 10:30pm.

They even had WAMI Kids, a cartoon block which was really "Fox Kids" but with young teenagers as the hosts, and it was similar to how The Bozo Show and DJ Kat Show was formatted... little skits in between cartoons.

Well, WAMI-69 is no longer an independent as of 2002... it turned into Telefutura, a spanish network. 

There is another independent station in South Florida called "WPPB-63" it is nicknamed "BEACON-TV", but this station is not what I would call a real independent. It's programs are all educational and it's from the school board. It airs "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids", but the episodes are from Barr? videos.. and parts in the episodes that wasn't educational was edited along with the laugh tracks. So it's basically a learning aid for kids rather than entertainment.

Today, I'm in Tampa, FL... and guess what? There is a real indie station here called "WMOR Channel 32" (More TV-32). And it doesn't "credit crunch" or squeeze the credits to the bottom or sides of the screen, but you do hear a voice-over during the credits just like the independents of old use to do. This station airs movies every night at 8pm, weekend movies begin at 12pm. Late weekend nights they show old "b-movies", this station really fills in that gap for people who miss independents. I am glad WMOR-32 and WLNY-55 in Long Island never sold out to becoming a network affiliate... I hope they will stay independent.  

Posted by Lionel at 3:26 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 25 July 2007 11:05 PM EDT

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