cDR Rodzinski---there were great interviews and segments that my friend and fellow editor Tom might have kept. He was compiling a lot of VMC stuff and said he would give me a copy. I had some bits from my demo reel that I gave him to put on this reel. If I ever am able to get a copy from him, I will make a dub for you. I'm sure it would bring back some memories.
I didn't know Glen. My time with the VMC did not end well. We had a group of investors who were leasing channel 69. They finally realized that it was like throwing money down a black hole and decided they wanted to buy the station. When the owner refused to sell, the VMC investors pulled out, and the VMC was technically finished, although it stayed on the air.
We all had to re-apply for our jobs with the owner, and we were all hired...at first. Then, people started getting fired. The new management was horrible. The owner brought in a buddy of his---you may remember the ancient cowboy dude who had a very sleazy past---to be the new program director, while still keeping me on for continuity. He decided that the VJ's should select their own music. Well, the old music director had worked long and hard to get credibility and be reported in the tip sheets along with MTV and radio stations. We also had deals with all the labels that they would let us have certain music videos if we played others from their catalogue. I would work with the VJ's to make sure that music they liked would be represented, but there was a real science to programming that required a holistic approach, not just letting each VJ play whatever they wanted.
The cowboy dude, who apparently bathed in StetsonŽ, (whew!) brought in some young thing to be his "assistant". So you may have seen her on air, too. She would come and sit on his lap during breaks and the director said it was so dusgusting that he wanted to turn the monitors off! A special moment in the history of the station was when the bimbo's husband showed up and dumped all of her belongings in the parking lot, and placed their wedding photo in the VMC lobby. Sadly, I was gone before I got to witness that drama!
After a few weeks of letting the VJ's program their own shows, the cowboy dude decided that they should pull their own copies of the videos instead of the assistants. B.J. Rucker, whom you may remember, was walking across the control room with a stack of 3/4" tapes in her arms and didn't see the hole in the floor where one of these geezers had pulled off a floor tile. She stepped in it, had a compound fracture of the leg, which essentially ended her modeling career, and was never compensated rightly for it. At this point I had had it with the VMC.
Glen was another buddy of the owner, or maybe the old cowboy dude, who was brought in as I was leaving. The cowboy dude, one morning, decided to call me before I left for work, and fired me over the phone. He didn't even know my name, and asked for the wrong person! I was in shock. I had never been fired before!
The VMC old guard were shocked, too. After all, I was one of the people who started the station and was the only original person left from when we went on the air. How could that be?
Well, I was depressed for months, but as it turned out, it was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I was just the first of a mass exodus from the VMC. I got back into editing, my first love, and never looked back. The VMC staggered to an end a few months later. Those of us who worked together in the original crew have remained very close---it's almost a feeling that we served in the trenches together. It was fun working with a video music pioneer like the VMC while it lasted---until the regime change, anyway.
(cut, copy, post!)
