“Inside Production”,
January 8, 2005
By Walter Schoenknecht
TV TECHNOLOGY Magazine
Tale Of The Tape
Some folks like to mark the start of a new year by reviewing past triumphs,
and I’ve got mine picked out: Last year, I successfully tracked down
John Vrba, a man I’ve never met but whom I’d known vicariously
for over 25 years.
Last Spring I found a current snapshot of him on the Web: an older man,
thinning hair now gone to white, but entirely recognizable from his likeness
on film
more than forty years earlier. The broad smile and bright eyes in the
picture transmitted an elfin twinkle identical to the one in the movie.
I knew Vrba only from an old 16mm film, a copy of a sales pitch he’d
recorded in 1961 while he was Sales Manager at Los Angeles’ KTTV. The
show’s name was that of its subject, a new medium for program production
and distribution: Television Tape. I’m not sure whether it qualifies
as broadcasting history or as merely a quaint bit of ephemera, but I’ll
let you decide: You can watch a Real Player version of Television Tape at
http://www.televisiontape.tv.
Unearthing Ancient Relics
Seeing the old studios and equipment is a lot of fun; I’m told that the
camera shown is an RCA TK-30, and the 2-inch quadruplex VTR is an Ampex VR-1000B.
The show’s title relates to those two competing manufacturers – Ampex,
which first brought video recording technology to market, had registered the
term “video tape”, and RCA was left without a way to describe its
own tape products; thus, “television tape” became the RCA moniker
for pictures etched on iron oxide.
As for the program itself, I’d found a box of cast-off 16mm films while
I was a Communication Arts student decades ago. The rejects were undoubtedly
given to the school by one of the same broadcasters who’d donated those
noisy, nasty, turret-lens cameras; they’d provide good practice, I’m
sure it was felt, for threading up the ancient film chain during student
television production classes.
Boxed along with such riveting titles as “Hurricane Watch” from
the National Weather Service, Television Tape seemed campy and self-conscious,
but nonetheless demonstrated the hottest production techniques of its day.
An off-camera announcer interrogates Vrba regarding the many wondrous advantages
of the new production tool; chief engineer Ed Benham offers practical lessons
in technical topics like A/B Roll Editing; and one lavish segment, replete
with a variety of tabletop product shots and a big-haired model, runs through
every wipe the switcher could muster.
Selling the Look
As sharp and quick-witted today as he appeared then, Vrba recently
explained the fundamental problem of marketing tape-based production
back then:
selling in the abstract. Calling on clients and talking-up the new
medium, even with
a sales tool like Television Tape, couldn’t overcome this visual/tactile
need. “I don’t know if we ever really overcame that,” Vrba
told me, “because what we’d still wind up with was a show-and-tell,
a demonstration.”
“
One of the first objections of the film guys was, of course, lighting,” he
said. “‘What do you TV guys know about lighting?’” Still,
a videotaped spot running in a live black-and-white TV show had a visual snap
that was missing from the 16mm commercials then considered the norm. Vrba speculates
that tape’s competitive visual edge may have been a factor in pushing
agency spot work toward 35mm production years later.
Tape On Tape
Then there was the problem of showing a promotional videotape to
prospects who didn’t own the hardware. “I remember taking that (program)
to Proctor & Gamble,” Vrba recalled. The household products giant
was, in those days, not just another potential commercial client; it was the
Holy Grail of advertising itself. “I dragged them over to (Cincinnati’s)
WLW-TV,” he said, calling the hunt for an available VTR and monitor, “…not
exactly ideal screening circumstances.”
Acutely aware of the problem, Vrba and station management tackled
the presentation method. “Everybody had a 16mm projector,” Vrba recalled, and that
was the answer: A kinescope transfer was produced from the 2” master, and
Vrba showed it to anyone who would watch, large and small advertisers alike. “The
goal, of course, was to get the big spenders, but you’re not going to get
them right away.” Vrba persisted, hoping that they’d fall in line
once they’d seen tape at work for smaller clients.
“
We finally passed the test when we got a Clairol commercial,” he said,
noting that the Chicago-based advertiser relied on good-looking shots to sell
its hair-styling products. He credits the spots’ success to aggressive
oversight on the part of his client. “We had to hand it to the agency producer,
who was fussy,” he said, adding that, “… she was complimentary
when it was finally done.”
Dawn Of Syndication
Vrba’s early responsibilities at KTTV also included program syndication,
not a commonplace practice in those days, and strikingly unique for an “indy” like
his station. “Why would anybody pay attention to an independent station?” Vrba
worried. But ingenuity apparently triumphed, since Vrba’s pitches in Television
Tape are delivered from behind the judge’s bench on the set of “Divorce
Court”, a weekly show which originated from KTTV. As with the their other
syndicated offerings, quad dubs were sent to stations around the country and
successfully aired, quashing the fears of countless engineers who doubted the
quad tapes’ interchangeability.
A Starter Job
Vrba said he began his career in 1948 as a “young spear-carrier” in
an agency, writing ad copy. He was approached for his first TV job by an old
World War II buddy who’d become program director at KTTV, then owned by
the parent of the Los Angeles Times newspaper. He calls his friend’s employment
pitch “a con job” – why would he leave a perfectly good advertising
job to get involved in this odd new business? “There were only 78,000 sets
in the greater L.A. area in February of 1949,” he recalled. “I thought, ‘Man,
this could be fun.’” Vrba ultimately became Vice President and
Sales Manager of KTTV during his 16-year tenure there.
The young KTTV occupied the former Nassour Studios on Sunset Boulevard,
later called “Metromedia Square” after the station changed hands. Vrba
noted that the film unions asserted control that went beyond the sale of the
property, and required that two of the four stages remain film stages, not
TV. The historic studios were razed in 2003 to make way for a city high school.
Armed with a fundamental understanding of the essence of broadcast
television, Vrba’s career took off after KTTV. Following broadcast sales management
jobs in Denver and Cincinnati, he worked for Time-Life Films, bringing BBC programming
to American outlets. Since 1974, he’s held a variety of key roles in broadcast
time sales, while continuing to consult in just about anything media-related – anything,
that is, which catches his fancy. At age 80, his fancy is still regularly caught
by an astonishing number of projects, and I’m guessing that’s where
that sparkle in his eye comes from.
I’m glad I was able to find John Vrba last year; I learned a lot in speaking
with him, and I was happy to share with him a DVD copy of his 1961 video tour
de force, a show he’d presumed lost to the ages. His pithy summary of his
KTTV years says it all: “It was a fun time; and it was challenging, which
is what I liked.”