Well, considering that CBS, in it's infinite wisdom, is deleting one more of the things that TvTome/Tv.com had going for it, these blogs, I am re-evaluating my participation in this site, as it get's farther and farther away from that wonderful, original idea of so many years ago: a fan site, run by fans of TV shows, mostly of the past.

When I came on board as an editor at TvTome in 2004, it was a simple fan runned site that had one purpose, to build a database of information about television programs up to that point, mostly with the focus of data of old programs from the 50s and 60s but through the current shows of that day. But the emphasis was to dig out the "data" and archive it, so if someone asked, "..who was the guy who played so and so on Green Acres...?" then TvTome wanted to be the place that had the answer.

It was a lot of fun while it lasted. I can't blame John for selling the site. It made him rich. I would have done the same thing. BUT, in my agreement with cNet/CBS, I would have retained the ability to keep and publish the original information after the standard non-compete clause was fulfilled. TvRage was able to grab all of the original information and they are keeping this going, though the ones in charge are pretty difficult to deal with.

There is a Wiki out there for this data and I've experimented with adding information to it, but the UI is very difficult to use and everything must be added manually, so I've not spent much time there.

All of this said, the appeal of TV.com has been lost to most of us original editors. The focus is what I predicted years ago: money. Tv.com is slowly being turned into a site of commerce and sales. And the "community" aspect of it is being lost to that focus. What we need is someone to resurrect TvTome, at least in spirit, and go back to square one, building a very simple website, run by fans, for the express purpose of archiving information about television shows in a database, without all the fancy flash and without all the commerce. By fans for fans with maybe the little Google ads on the side to help pay for it. And since by our agreement we own our work here, we could then add what we've created here there and start over again.

Whatever we do, it looks like CBS is bent on chasing away the last of Tv.com's original editors. They are doing a good job of that! My time is limited here. It was fun while it lasted...well, in the early days at least!

I just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry CHRISTmas and ask that at this time of the year, that we not only consider each other with kindness as we express our love for each other with gifts, but that we also consider again that greatest expression of love, when our Heavenly Father gave the most precious of all gifts, His Son, for our eternal forgiveness. Thanks to all who have been kind to me over the years here, and I pray that I've been able to return that kindness in some small way. Blessings to all in 2012. "And hey, let's be careful out there!" Rob

I guess there has recently been an influx of new Tv.com members. The reason I think this is because of the rash of submissions I've gotten in the last month or two from those who are Level 1 through Level 10 or so. What this is causing is a load of rejected submissions because of violations of the Tv.com TOS and/or the guidelines. Here's a sample of the things the newbies are doing: *) Cut and paste I've gotten more summaries recently that are directly cut and pasted from other sites. That right away tells you that they haven't read the TOS or guidelines. Copyrighted material from another site can not be used without permission at Tv.com. But just today, I got a word for word summary from an old Tv Guide. If you aren't doing a Google search for the summaries folks are submitting, you should. As editor, you are responsible for what goes in your guides. *) Notes and Trivia This is the main issue I'm having. I have one fairly new submitter who is a great writer and is passionate about a show. Only he can't seem to get the definition of what a Note is and what Trivia is. I've sent him the definitions quoted right from the guidelines but he still insists on writing books on theories behind the parallels between this show and some other thing that goes on forever. That's not what a note is. That goes in an episode review. Why people are reluctant to write episode reviews but want to write ten page notes, I don't know. With the "new" focus of Tv.com on opinion and reviews, you would think that would be where most of the activity would be now. *) Spelling I am really concerned for the future of this country just based on the number of spelling errors in EVERY submission I get. As is the practice of most senior editors, I reject the submission if there is more than one or two because it means they aren't checking it themselves. And on top of that, the sentence structure and usage is pretty sad. I tell them nicely what they need to do and then ask them to make corrections and to resubmit. Most rarely do. There are other issues but those are the most consuming my time right now. What is consuming yours?

I've been able to close out 7 more guides as much as I could. Some I couldn't complete as there is not reliable information on every episode so I'm releasing them in case that information one day becomes available through either watching the episodes online like at Hulu or on DVD. Those seven shows are: Biff Baker USA: Starring Alan Hale Jr over ten years before Gilligan's Island as a secret agent in the communist block. Big Hawaii: The series, set on the Paradise Ranch in Ohana, Hawaii, focuses on the lives of Barrett Fears, a wealthy rancher, and his son Mitch, a rebellious, determined youth. Black Saddle: Peter Breck stars as a former gun slinger turned wild west lawyer. Bold Venture: An adventurer and his ward live aboard his boat off the shores of Trinidad. Born Free: With Gary Collins and Diana Muldaur, tv adaptation of the movie and book. Captain Z-RO: Early kids history show with a sci-fi theme. City Of Angels: Wayne Rogers plays a 1930s flat foot PI in Los Angeles. Anyone old enough to remember any of the older shows? I've seen old reruns of some of them. sd

I'm back. Well I've always been here, just haven't had anything to blog about. Also been dealing with some extreme illness too. Finally made Level 52. That after completing two more guides. Kaz, starring Ron Liebman and The Invisible Man (1975) starring David McCallum Personally, I liked Kaz a lot, and thought this version of The Invisible Man was pretty lame. They were both canceled during their first seasons. What did you think? Blessings, sd

Well, I've retired from five more guides, after doing as much as I could from the information available to me. So there was no use in keeping them. Maybe someone else will come along and have them on DVD, or have other information they can fill in the blanks with. Those show guides were: Don't Call Me Charlie Starring Arte Johnson (seen below in Laugh In) as a veterinarian who gets drafted and then assigned to a base in Paris. Lasted one season 1962-1963. * * * * * A Touch Of Grace Shirley Booth's swan song after Hazel. Lot's of critical raves, no ratings. Part of a season in 1973. * * * * * A Man Called Sloane After The Wild Wild West, Robert Conrad had a spotty career with a few tv movies and appearances. He just couldn't get into major motion pictures. In 1979, he tried the secret agent role again, only in modern times as a freelance James Bond of sorts. It only lasted a season. * * * * * Caribe About ten years before Miami Vice, a black and white police partnership was fighting crime in Miami and the Caribbean. Featuring Carl Franklin and Stacy Keach, it was too soon for television, and lasted one season. A decade later, Crockett and Tubbs tore up tv and changed things forever! * * * * * Griff Lorne Greene stars as Griff, a chiseled old ex-police Captain, who retires and sets up his own private investigation agency. This was Greene's series that directly followed Bonanza. Co-starred Ben Murphy. It lasted 13 episodes. * * * * * Anyone hear of or see any of these shows? Yeah, me either. And now I see that at Level 51, I've broken something. I knew I'd get the blame for something else! Peace, sd

Paul McCartney turns 65 today, moving him out of the year of "When I'm 64" and all that went along with that.

Paul is a very important figure in my life. I first heard of the Beatles in 1963 when a disc jockey brought back a copy of Love Me Do from a trip to Britian and played it on air here in the states. I have to admit, I wasn't terribly impressed. I was 11 and a rocker already, loving the music of Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Del Shannon, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and the rest of the first rock era. So Love Me Do sounded...soft to me. I wanted to rock!

All of that changed the evening of February 9th, 1964, when I, along with millions of other young people sat in front of the black and white television broadcast of the Ed Sullivan Show. It was like I'd been hit by a train! The impact on me was massive and instant. That night I washed the grease out of my hair and the next day, combed my Elvis wave down into the now infamous bowl cut that George Harrison had picked up from one of their tours to Germany.

But even more than the look, it was the MUSIC! I sat there after the show, in shell shock, not believing what I had just experienced. All I know is that I had to do THAT! I had to do music. I already was a musician. Having played from 4 years old, I banged on drums, strumbed a Mickey Mouse ukelele and at the moment, was playing saxophone in junior high. But this was DIFFERENT! My mom asked me what I wanted for my 13th birthday and the answer was swift and ready: A GUITAR!!!

So into the car and off to Sears, America's store, where you could get anything you needed. We walked away with a $30.00 Sears Silvertone acoustic guitar and my face was about to crack from the smile. That guitar, primitive by today's standards, would see action it was never designed to handle. But it did. I played that first day until my fingers bled. They would bleed a lot in the coming days and weeks. My routine quickly became this: Get up before leaving for school, get dressed, eat, play guitar until the last moment, go to school. At school, read magazines on the Beatles, the other British Invasion groups, on guitars, talk about guitars and The Beatles, sing their songs, come home, do homework to get it out of the way, have a snack, play guitar until dinner, after dinner, play guitar, go to sleep, sometimes while still playing guitar (I would sometimes wake up to find the guitar on my body, having fallen asleep while playing).

This routine would continue for years. I started my first rock band in highschool. It was called Section C, only because we didn't have a name yet and the band members were all talking under the stadium with a sign which read Section C. This changed quickly to Grape Society. It was the pyschedelic days and President Johnson was pushing his Great Society on the nation. All we wanted to do was drink (in the days before drugs hit us) so we combined the two. And yes, we were good. We ROCKED folks socks off. The band was becoming popular and we were being touted as the next big thing to hit our town, maybe even go national. And then...disaster hit!

Our lead guitarist, Jim Riffel. Well...he moved. Arrrggghhh! He was only 16 and his dad got transferred to Pensacola, Florida so he had to go too. It was 1968, we were hot and he leaves. We were all so bummed. There wasn't another guitarist anywhere as good as Jim and I just knew the band was done. But Jim's influence in my life wasn't overwith yet. If I only knew what was about to happen, I would have never taken him up on his invitation to spend part of the summer with him.

Sgt. Pepper was the rage for the last year, with it's veiled references to drugs and Magical Mystery Tour had just been released with it's strong references to drugs. In the band, we had sniffed all kinds of things, today called huffing. I was now hanging around professional musicians and had just smoked marijuana for the first time. Jim invited me to spend part of the summer with him and I did. The first night there, we were in the back of a friends car and he whispered that he was going to drop acid that night and wanted to know if I wanted to too. Well, of course I couldn't say no in the face of peer pressure. So we did. And I have to tell you, it was the most beautiful experience I had had to that day. I now understood why the drug heads of the day always said, "OH WOW"..lol!

But far more significantly, it was the first step of a terrible journey for me. I was hooked and started taking everything someone gave me. My grades went from the top to the bottom. I started selling drugs to my friends, helping to ruin their lives too. Over the period of a year, I went from an intellectual to a smelly, mindless drug dealer, who was failing in school, about to be drafted to Viet Nam, who just lost the girl of his dreams, and the rest of his world was crashing down around him. A good friend of mine just commited suidcide and though I don't remember the pain, I back then stood at the same threshold.

It was only a quickly voiced prayer in my time of desperation, an old friend who came over that day as an answer to that prayer, and the wonderful, boundless grace of God that got me past that moment and to this day. I started going to church with a friend and accepted Jesus as my savior, for he truely was. They didn't care what I looked like, smelled like, or talked like. The folks at that little church welcomed me into their flock like a long lost relative. As my mind started to heal, I saw that drugs were a deadend, emphasis on DEAD! I cleaned up, my grades went back up and I suddenly had a new hope and outlook on my life. Then, there was music again.

I suddenly discovered that I was part of a wave of revival that had started in southern California and was sweeping the country called the Jesus Movement, and with it, was Jesus MUSIC, made by rock and rollers like myself, only about our new found faith. I jumped right in and over the years, found myself in the middle of it all. I became a pioneering radio announcer at the first full time commercial Christian rock station in the world. And then hit the road with the top performers of the day, as, what else, a BASS PLAYER!

As I toured around the world, time after time, folks would come up to me and say that my playing and stage presence reminded them of Paul McCartney. They had no idea how big a compliment that was, one I had trouble accepting. But it's no secret what an influence the man has had on me musically.

Today, I work in the film and television production business as a sound mixer/sound recordist, but I still step on stage on occasion and each time I do, I step back in time to that night, in front of the TV, when those four men changed the course of history for the world, and for me!

I just got a note from a staff member, who rejected a perfectly good summary for a show episode, and their reason was because of something called a Hard Return, which this person said they had been seeing in my submissions a lot.

They did not inform me what a hard return was so I had to find out by doing a Google search. Apparently it is a carriage return such as hitting the enter key after a sentence is finished. The staff person could have at least told me that. So now I know. But I am not adding a hard return after any sentence in my submissions. So I wrote back and told them that they should be overly specific in their explanations of things. This should go without reason and we ask all staff who are the ones who approve submissions to please do that. Never assume we know what you are talking about. But I also think that the submission should not have been rejected for this. There were no spelling errors. The grammar was perfect. And the summary was well written.

A technical glitch is no reason to reject my submission and put another rejection in my stats! Are these staff members trained at all? And since we can't respond back to them, there's no way to correspond to find out what the heck the reason was or what can be done!

In my note back to the staff member that I included with my resubmission of a carefully written and formatted summary, I suggested that it may be a problem with the way the form was reacting to Firefox, since we've had some real problems submitting lately. Or that it may be the site software here considering all the bugs we've experienced lately. I have not heard back from them yet.

Anyone else experiencing this? Anyone else gotten a PM from staff about Hard Returns? And do you think this is a good reason for a perfectly good submission to be rejected?

*****

UPDATE!!!

In the time is took to write here in the forum, the staff member did return my message. Here is the response:

"No error, we see it from a number of people who confirm the problem. What it means is that the last character in your summary is not a period, but that you've entered a hard return (or Enter, or Return, or whatever the key is labeled on your keyboard when you wish to start a new line) at the end of it, generating white space between the last line and the bottom of the frame, as confirmed on many occasions.

---

You get a gap as above between the last line and ---. best way to fix is to put the cursor to the right of the period and hold down the delete key, removing everything to the right of the cursor. Thank you for your time."

Well, I can guarantee that there is NO other character or white space to the right of my final period. So it must again be a problem between the forms here and the Firefox browser, or just the site software in general, especially if it is showing up from multiple editors, most of who use FireFox! This should be looked into by engineers.

 

* * * UPDATE 2

 

I've been told that it is hard to read my posts! So I have changed the font from Comic Sans, which many folks may not have, to standard Arial and now at 10pt font size! So you should be able to read it. Let me know if you can or can't! 

! ! !

 

It's a continuing problem and I guess it happens to all new editors. They just have to learn. First, they must learn to:

 

READ THE GUIDELINES !!!

 

 

I can't blame them for not reading the guidelines. They are long, and not very clear in places, and should be rewritten, either by staff or one or more of us. But they still need to be read! Second:

 

LEARN TO SPELL CORRECTLY !!!

 

 

I am really concerned for the youth of this country. Their spelling is atrocious (let them look that one up)! And their usage is horrible! And they want to use street talk and text spelling. My most recent had 2 instead of two, u instead of you, etc. Third:

 

NO, I WILL NOT FIX YOUR SUBMISSIONS !!!

 

 

Sorry, but that is not my job. If you are going to submit, then you do the work. I don't have time with all the guides I have, to be fixing your mess! Take the time to do it right the first time! Fourth:

 

DO NOT CUT & PASTE ANOTHER'S WORK !!!

 

 

It violates Tv.com's TOS, it's illegal, it's copyright infringement, and it's easy to spot and find, so DON'T DO IT! Copy the text to your computer, and then TOTALLY rewrite it. Don't just change a word or two. Rewrite the submission or we editors will reject it.

 

In the comment box on the form, leave us a note as to where you got your information. Since we are supposed to verify submissions before approving them, it sure helps us out and will save time in getting your sub approved and public.

Just following these points will get a new (or not new) editor a long way down the road toward not getting rejected.

As an editor, what's your favorite submission problem and what suggestions for editors do you have for getting their submissions to your guides accepted the first time?

 

This is my favorite holiday of the year. Easter is the final step in God's redemption of mankind for our rebellion. Through the death of his son Jesus, and his resurrection, we are welcomed back into God's kingdom.

I hope that this time of the year will have great meaning to you, no matter what your background is or how you were raised. It's a time of hope, promise and love.

God bless everyone!

Happy resurrection day!

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Submission Guidelines