Put on your thinking caps

[LLeff]

OK, we've talked about this before, but I tended to take it into a discussion of copyrights. I won't do that this time.

If YOU were given the job of "reinventing the Jack Benny brand" and getting Jack out into the public eye again the same way that Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Lucille Ball, etc. are, how would you do it? I want to hear every idea you've got, reasonable and sane or totally out in left field. Bring 'em on!

[Maxwell]

Tough question, and I don't know the method. However, I do know you have to get his TV shows on a highly viewed network, say on TV Land or Nick at Night.

Lucille Ball's shows are still shown on local TV and cable AFAIK, especially I Love Lucy. Marilyn Monroe's films are shown on TV and have been released on DVD. Elvis's records are still played on the radio daily and his movies get special weeks on some of the cable networks. When TCM had their April Fools month only two Benny movies were shown, and I believe they were shown sometime during the day rather than in prime time.

What we need is for a cable network to get Jack's TV shows and kick them off with a Benny marathon. Ditto TCM. Have Jack Benny as their star of the month. Show his shorts and his features. I think AOL-Time-Warner has the rights to all of those....or at least they should have a Benny marathon on his birthday.

As for popularizing his radio shows, that's another matter. OTR seems to be a cult-type thing in the sense that it certainly isn't a mainstream hobby. Even for somebody like me, I enjoy it, but I don't put the time into it that most people here seem to. I don't really collect shows, but I love listening to them.

So to sum it up, we have to get some cable network that specializes in classic TV shows to pick up Benny's, and then promote it. That's going to be a neat trick to pull off since MCA sure doesn't seem to care.

[bboswell]

Like ZEJackBennyKid has said on another thread, we need to get the "Jack Benny Life Story" filmed. Like the films "Ed Wood" or "Aviator" (Howard Hughes' life story,) we need to get a good film director interested in doing it. Once word has gotten out about a movie, Jack's TV shows and older films will have more appeal. Then get Rhino video involved. They have the "cult" status cornered. They could gather a following for Jack's Television shows. Then the radio shows might follow for people wanting to explore Jack more.

Another avenue might be finding a show like Simpsons, Saturday Night Live or South Park... (or something else kids are watching these days!!)
and have a character based on Jack, or an impersonation of his voice show up and start making cheap jokes, or "39" jokes, or something. (The only issue is we need people who can really write instead of the usual television writers... people who think fart jokes are high comedy.)

Then have a Mountain Dew or Coke commercial with Jack spliced in asking for a cola and trying to get it for free... something like that...

Get him back into pop-culture and see where it goes from there. I know Jack's timeless humor will let him coast after that!

[shimp scrampi]

I'm still in the super-nice DVD release camp, with a big celebrity marketing/publicity push. The Jack Benny show can undoubtedly be pushed as a bona fide classic, imagine if all of those famous comedians who claim Jack as an influence would sit down for a really high quality documentary and then go push the set on the late-night talk shows? Fantastic.

The cable channels are so numerous now that I don't know if they command the same audience Nick at Nite did back in the '80s.

Plus, you could have selected radio shows on the DVD discs as a second audio channel feature.

[Maxwell]

One problem that hasn't been mentioned is the difficulty in getting younger people interested in looking at anything not in color. Based on what my 25-year-old son says about people he knows, very few of them will even look at anything that isn't in color. (How "I Love Lucy" fits into that equation, I'm not sure.) I think the main reason my son likes Benny is because he saw a lot of B&W movies around the house when he was growing up, and I would turn on CBN for the Benny shows (about the only thing I've ever watched on that network or its successors).

So maybe the best way to introduce Benny to a new audience would be to first get his color specials into general release. Then when you release the DVDs include some of the best B&W shows as a bonus.

[shimp scrampi]

True enough there is a certain segment of the population that just isn't going to get it, if that segment won't watch anything in B&W, I'd consider them a write-off. And, in some ways, I think that's fine. I'd prefer to have Jack recognized for his actual talent rather than as an iconic figure that is randomly slapped on cheap merchandise. I wonder how many people with Elvis or Marilyn junk actually have even seen/heard their work outside the handful of well-known bits.

Another idea (though it has been done) is a prime-time retrospective/clip show.

Question for LL, what Benny events since the inception of the IJBFC have sparked upticks in membership? Sunday Nights at Seven? The Kelsey Grammer special from the mid-90s?

[Maxwell]

You know, I just thought of something. How many tapes and DVDs have they sold of Johnnie Carson and Dean Martin clips as a result of those infomercials? Ditto all of those '50s and '60s CDs hawked by the likes of Bobby Vinton.

So what you need to do is make a set of "Best of Benny" DVDs and then get a comedian who admires Jack (too bad Johnny Carson is no longer with us) to make a half hour informercial of clips from them. Sell the first one for $9.95 plus S&H and send the rest out one per month or so at "regular prices."

[Maxwell]

ACK! I hit submit too soon. The audio CD of the Best of Benny on Radio could be sent as an "Extra Bonus!" with the first DVD!

[shimp scrampi]

As a publicity thing, I think those Dean Martin Roast style infomercials would be great to get more people keyed in to Jack Benny. On the other hand, as a consumer wanting to have a professional DVD set with all the bells and whistles, I loathe the idea of joining some mailorder-only Time-Life club for an indeterminate length to get whatever Benny THEY see fit to release.

Columbia House used to do that with VHS - selling a bunch of TV shows that were unavailable any other way, it was incredibly expensive, irregular and incomplete - and now you can pick up beautiful, complete season sets of those same shows on DVD for thirty bucks. I think it's an unsatisfactory and outdated way to sell video.

Oh, yeah - and Franklin Mint. Lots of Franklin Mint. "collectors" plates and ceramic doodads of Jack and surrounded by gnomes and celtic mythology. 14 Karat gold accents.

[Brad from Georgia]

Create an animated Jack Benny Program and let Eddie Carroll voice Jack...

For that matter, when creating the Best of Benny deluxe DVD set, let Eddie be the master of ceremonies of the ads for them...and get a very good writer to write his scripts.

If people really, really wouldn't look at them any other way...digitally remaster the TV shows and...and...colorize them. I own a couple of colorized classic films--when I view them, I just turn the color control way down, and the result is a near-pristine B&W copy.

I'd like for TV Land or Nick at Nite or someone to do occasional special weekends--from Friday to Sunday, it's 1954! or 1961! The entire period would be taken up by shows from that particular year, including Jack's. It would be grand if someone could host the various types of show--Billy Bob Thornton in Western guise presents a block of Westerns, say, or Bruce Willis in a detective interrogation room presents cop shows, or Eddie Carroll at a microphone presents the comedy evening.

Hmm....looks like I'm drumming up gigs for Eddie....

[Maxwell]

Hmm....looks like I'm drumming up gigs for Eddie....

Now cut that out!

I'd love to see something like that. For a few summers WYCC, a TV station owned by Chicago City Colleges (2-year schools, i.e. junior colleges) showed a block of '50s TV shows on Sunday nights including kinescopes of Red Skelton's NBC show in the early '50s before he moved over to CBS (imagine Freddy the Freeloader in a tux), the Burns and Allen live show (with Bill Goodwin before he was replaced by Harry Von Zell, and Hal March as Harry Morton), and the Dinah Shore Chevy Show. I think they also played some of Jack's shows, at least one of those years.

The problem of course is that very few people watch Channel 20 when there are two other PBS stations with much larger programming budgets in Chicago and about 25 miles away from the city in Merrillville, IN.

Now THERE'S another idea! During pledge weeks we've seen tributes to Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, men and women in British comedies, etc. WHY NOT a tribute to Jack? You could then give away CDs of radio shows or highlights, have a DVD of the program, and maybe as a bonus feature some complete half-hour shows with "footage not seen in the program." (I know, it's not as sexy as "Celtic Woman" singing Orinoco Flow, but Jack plays violin better than I think they sing.)

I thought of colorizing, too, but is anybody doing that anymore? What they need to do at any rate is digitally restore the filmed shows and really emphasize that. That really seems to be a big selling point for any old films.

[ZEjackbennykid]

Like ZEJackBennyKid has said on another thread, we need to get the "Jack Benny Life Story" filmed. Like the films "Ed Wood" or "Aviator" (Howard Hughes' life story,) we need to get a good film director interested in doing it. Once word has gotten out about a movie, Jack's TV shows and older films will have more appeal. Then get Rhino video involved. They have the "cult" status cornered. They could gather a following for Jack's Television shows. Then the radio shows might follow for people wanting to explore Jack more.

Another avenue might be finding a show like Simpsons, Saturday Night Live or South Park... (or something else kids are watching these days!!)
and have a character based on Jack, or an impersonation of his voice show up and start making cheap jokes, or "39" jokes, or something. (The only issue is we need people who can really write instead of the usual television writers... people who think fart jokes are high comedy.)

Then have a Mountain Dew or Coke commercial with Jack spliced in asking for a cola and trying to get it for free... something like that...

Get him back into pop-culture and see where it goes from there. I know Jack's timeless humor will let him coast after that!

Thanx bboswell, everyone i have a solution. in time the revival wil come. until then the best thing to do is to educate people. we need like tours of some sort to spread the word. perhaps get our club put on the news to show were not just any fan club. as Jack's career started it was not overnight. he had to work to get to do shows and commercials. of course the popularity in otr is slowly spreading, mainly thanx to abbot and costellos who's on first routine. For a quick rise we would need celebrities behind us. one such would be Tom Kenny the voice of spongebob. He is a MEL BLANC fanatic who did several reports on him as a kid. he even connects jacks character to squidward on the movie dvd bonus feature. He's going to be at San Diego Comic Con( july 14-17). I will be there and see what he thinks we should do. LLeff try to come to comic con in sandiego and meet with me and we'll talk to him

[LLeff]

Question for LL, what Benny events since the inception of the IJBFC have sparked upticks in membership? Sunday Nights at Seven? The Kelsey Grammer special from the mid-90s?

Actually, it was going on the Web. People went from having to find out about us through word-of-mouth and the occasional other OTR group mention to being able to punch us up from the comfort of their own living rooms. Went from 1-2 new members a month to 1-2 new members a day.

Other than that, you'd be surprised that there doesn't seem to be much ebb and flow in the memberships. Even when Jack gets exposure through things like Kelsey Grammer or A&E Biography (now, remember that was before the Web site), we didn't get much of a bump. That may be different since the Web site started (September 2000), but the only major events since that time were our 39 Forever convention and the Waukegan statue unveiling.

[LLeff]

LLeff try to come to comic con in sandiego and meet with me and we'll talk to him

Hi ZE...

I'd love to come, but I'm still fighting my way out of pneumonia. I just decided not to go to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (which I've attended for multiple years) the week prior to the Comic Con because I need the time. However, don't let that stop you from talking to Spongebob! I wonder if he knows Harry Shearer from the Simpsons, who worked with Jack when he was a kid (Harry a kid, not Jack). Let me know what he says!

[Brad from Georgia]

[quote="ZEjackbennykid..... For a quick rise we would need celebrities behind us. one such would be Tom Kenny the voice of spongebob. He is a MEL BLANC fanatic who did several reports on him as a kid. he even connects jacks character to squidward on the movie dvd bonus feature. He's going to be at San Diego Comic Con( july 14-17). I will be there and see what he thinks we should do. LLeff try to come to comic con in sandiego and meet with me and we'll talk to him [/quote]


I'll be at the Comic Con, ZEjackbennykid--look for me at the Dark Horse table on Friday afternoon, where I'll be signing one of my books with Joe DeVito and Ray Harryhausen, and let's talk Benny stuff.