I recently had the pleasure of joining Bone Jangler and Halloween Jack on their “Eerie Late Night Radio Show” to chat about Chiller Drive-In. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/eerielatenight/2018/05/27/the-eerie-late-night-radio-show-episode-89--dr-valentine - Eventually, I’ll make another appearance on the program and pick up where I left off.Â
I’ve kept my trap shut over the years regarding the end of Chiller Drive-In, but I felt that I had to address some of the nonsense that was being spewed by people that knew nothing about the actual inner workings of the show.Â
And this utterly asinine comment takes the cake.Â
First, this individual knew nothing about the day-to-day operations of the show. This person did their job well and has my respect and admiration for their contribution to not only Chiller Drive-In, but to horror TV. Yeah, he’s that important. However, the fact remains that this individual was not involved in the constant aggravation of keeping the production together and moving forward.
Second, RTV had absolutely no idea how well the show was doing. RTV did not track their own ratings (How could they? They just sent a feed to affiliates around the country) and therefore could not even guess at how well the show was doing. This was key in why we were unable to get advertisers... we couldn’t demonstrate how many people were actually watching the show. We were simply a 2-hour filler on Saturday night.Â
Third, RTV never made any overtures of taking over the program. NEVER. The show was based in Detroit and RTV is in Chattanooga, TN. I was in weekly contact with RTV and the idea was never floated to me. It simply wasn’t an option.Â
Fourth, (and with all due respect) get over it. TV shows end. Move on. There are plenty of other horror hosts out there. Most are total garbage and downright painful to watch, but a small number of them are pretty good. Seek them out.Â
Fifth, so many of the people that were involved felt that the show “owed” them something. That meant taking advantage of the people that did the heavy lifting on the show. Others gave till it hurt, but no one put in more time and money than me.Â
No one.
Chiller Drive-In’s live event, the Attack of The Killer B’s, continued for a couple years following the show’s demise. However, I had to end those events because they were attended mostly by freeloaders and very few paying viewers. Once I stopped comping people, they stopped supporting the events. Shit, these people couldn’t even be bothered to share the event on Facebook.Â
Sixth, copyright vs. the public domain became a serious issue among horror hosts near the end of our third season. Some of our horror host brothers and sisters were suddenly under court orders to pay up for showing films that were clearly in the public domain.Â
Suffice to say that there were many movie makers (or their widows - no, seriously) of these old public domain films that suddenly saw dollar signs and fought extensive legal battles to get their works out of the public domain. Even though those works were in the PD for decades already. And amazingly enough, some films were granted their former copyright status, which blows my mind to this day.Â
In the face of potential copyright aggravation, I was looking down the barrel of re-editing EVERY fucking episode... and that simply wasn’t going to happen. Not without serious financial compensation. On top of that, it was also going to force me to pull at least 8 of our episodes off the air completely.Â
The copyright issue was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I contacted Wolfman Mac, gave him the low down and I told him that I had to pull the plug. We were in rerun hell at this point in history anyway.Â
So there it is kiddies, if you need to blame someone for taking Chiller Drive-In off the air, blame me. Just don’t expect me to lose any sleep over it.Â
If putting a TV show together was easy, everyone would do it. And Chiller Drive-In was held together with spit and hope from the beginning of the Nightmare Sinema days and it just never got it’s shit together. When any of the decision makers (there were 5 of us) tried to right the ship, another thing would capsize us.Â
So let’s try to remember the things that were enjoyable about Chiller Drive-In and not the politics.Â
Chiller Drive-In was very important to me and it was a great thing to be part of, but now it’s over.Â
