Guest Neal Sabin of MeTV!
WBCA Podcasts
City Talk with Ken Meyer (Neal Sabin)
(upbeat music) - WBCA radio is proud to present CityTalk, where fascinating conversation is alive and well, with your host, Boston radio veteran, Ken Meyer. - Hello again, everybody. Welcome to another edition of CityTalk. And tonight I am very honored and privileged to have with us a gentleman whose television channel I watch every day. It is Me TV, Memorable Entertainment Television. And the man who put it all together and makes it grow and it makes it all possible is Neil Saban. And he is with us today. And Neil, I can't tell you how excited I am to be able to talk to you. - Well, thank you Ken. I'm glad to be here and hello to your audience. And thank you for the kind words about Me TV. - Now, tell me how this all got started. You are from, you're living in Chicago. Are you from Chicago? - Yes, I am from Chicago, born and raised in the city and the suburbs. And I have been working in the Chicago television business for about 40 years. Wasn't great radio prior to that for a little while. And Me TV got started as a local station in Chicago only where we have, my company I work for WIGEL Broadcasting has an independent station called WCIU, the U. We monitor it as the U. And we had a low power sister station to it which we decided to call me. Because what goes with you? - Me, Me goes with you. And so I had to figure out, okay, if it's gonna be classic TV and we're gonna call it Me, what does Me stand for? And can I swear? It was just like a two second thing. Oh yeah, memorable entertainment. And that's how we got the name 'cause we wanted to have a Me to go with you and memorable entertainment and E works. And so we put it on the air in Chicago and after, and it was successful. And after a couple of years, the whole industry changed when we went to digital television HD broadcasting which allowed broadcasters to add multiple channels to their transmission where it used to be that a channel nine or a channel six or four or whatever could only have one, what we call stream on their transmission. You could now have multiple streams. And so the owner of our company said to me, you know, Neil, you could have, you know, four or five, maybe six different channels all on one channel now that we've gone digital. And because of that technology change, we were able to get into what's called the multicast business. And we always wanted to do Me TV and classic TV. But when this industry was just starting Ken, people were skeptical and one of the only people I was able to do business was MGM, which had a big movie library. And they were willing to try this Diginette business with their movies. And it worked and it worked well with a network I named called this TV. We no longer control it, but we did that. And this TV was successful and gave us and other people the confidence to invest money and to sell programming to this new kind of TV channel. And once some of the major distributors were willing to sell their product to us, we were able to do what we really wanted to do from day one, which was make Me TV a national network. So that's a very long answer to your first question. - I think it's a great answer. As time goes on, is it easier to work with syndicators? I mean, do the television programs become more valuable? As time goes on like a leave it to Beaver or a Perry Mason that started in 1957 than say maybe 10 years ago? - Well, yes, there's more demand for the programming now. And the distributors, the studios would say, yes, and you have to pay more because there's more demand. And I would argue back, well, we shouldn't pay more because it's exposed in more places and it's harder to get a rating and to monetize those ratings with ads because those shows are available so many places. So that's what I deal with every day Ken is negotiating shows. But yeah, there's more demand because Me TV was so successful. We have a lot of competitors now that are kind of copycats both on cable and in the DigiNet space, some of which we own. I mean, the Me TV people are the people behind H and I, heroes and icons, which you may see on your cable or over the air. And we have one called Decades, which is a pop culture network. And we have a movies network called Movies, which I don't think is in Boston right now. And we have one called Start TV, which I know is there, which is all female driven dramas. And then we have a new one that's in Boston called Story, which is all history programming. Did I leave any of them out? I think I think that's about all of them. Yeah. I don't think we have the Decades channel anymore. We used to, but I don't think we have it anymore, unfortunately. So I'd like you to try and get it back. Well, we're trying to get it back too, but what we have to do is enter into affiliation agreements with a station to carry these networks. They're not cable networks. They're broadcast networks that are sometimes carried on cable. And that's a distinction. And it gives us an opportunity to reach homes that don't have cable anymore when people cut their cords. We encourage people to go out and get an antenna. You will be amazed at all the stations you can get. And part of it is my company, WIGO Broadcasting, is a family owned business that is kind of a, what we call a main street company in the Wall Street world. So some of the opportunities for us in a market like Boston are limited because the companies that own the TV stations also own their own diginets. And they're gonna take care of their in-house diginets before they're gonna take care of ours. So, you know, even if our product is better or is in demand by audiences, it doesn't always get on the air because of business practices. But we prevail and we push and we have a wonderful partner there in Hearst, who runs both Story and Me TV. And we have, start I know is on the CBS owned station there as well. And I think H and I may be on a low power station there. So we continue to push for more distribution and we encourage people to get antennas to pick all these things up. - Now, I know there's trial and error involved before you finally get settled to a format because I can remember and it was all the programs that I liked. I remember there was a double header with Raymond Burr, one with Perry Mason and one with Ironside. Quincy was on for a while. - Yeah. - I kinda miss those programs. - Well, part of it is we can't own everything. Me TV does more than 50 shows every week, which is more than any other classic TV network runs. If you counted the number of shows on Me TV versus anybody else, you'll see how many more shows Me TV has than anybody. And there's, each of these shows is not inexpensive. And so we have to kind of go for the shows that have the biggest audiences that we can buy economically. And it also has to do with a studio like NBC Universal owns a network called Cozy. And a lot of times they get a proprietary and priority and things. That's one of the reasons we don't have Colombo anymore is that the in-house network of NBCU demanded that Colombo be theirs. And so after almost, I think 10 years, we lost Colombo and we couldn't do anything about it. So I hope that answers your question. Ironside is an okay show. It does okay, but the things like Twilight Zone and other shows that we have in the time period where Ironside was do much better. So if I programmed it for my own, Ken, the things that I like, it would look very different than it does now. (laughs) - Tell us about the summer of me this year. - Well, we added a couple of things. We always like to brand ourselves for summer fun. And we're doing a couple of things. One with the A-Team on in the early afternoon, early evening depending on your time zone. And it's done very well for us. We're kind of surprised how well the A-Team crew is done. And then importantly, we've done this on Sunday afternoon, we're running a different show every week. Some of them are me TV standards like Andy Griffith or MASH, but other weeks we're pulling some things out of the vault or testing some shows like the monkeys, we're gonna have the flying done coming up if we haven't done it yet. We've done Gidget. We've got a Bugs Bunny cartoon marathon coming up. And we're watching the numbers on how all these different shows do it. We just did a tribute to Tony Dow, which in its final half hour got to almost 800,000 viewers, which is a huge number for us for a Sunday afternoon in the summer when the weather's good. - No, I know, oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. - No, no, no, just a sec. And so that'll come to the, at the end of the summer, we're probably gonna continue doing some of this 'cause it's done so well and people like it. - I'm curious, I mean, I remember at one point you took, leave it to Beaver off and said, you know, he's going on vacation. And after you brought him back, you have not taken him off again. So I guess he's doing very well in the ratings. - Right, numbers have been very good for that show. Sometimes when we take him off for a vacation, it could be that we lost the rights for a couple of years. In fact, you've got a good memory. I think at one point we were sharing that show with another network and we would get it for two years and they'd get it for two years and then we'd get it back for two years. But now it's in our library kind of long term and it's done very well for us in the morning. And you know, it's done so well on Sunday, you might even see it in some other time periods coming up soon. - Now, just an opinion type question. - Yes. - I've watched Beaver as long as it's well for a long time. I just finished reading and I know it's a little late. But I just finished reading the book that Ken Osman wrote in 2014. I think the show ran too long. I think after the fourth season, when Beaver as Barbara Billingsley put it to me once, lost his cuteness that it should have ended. What do you think? - I know that people like when the two of them are much younger, much better. And you know, while that series was being produced, the world was changing a lot as that show went into the early 60s. I don't know, I do like the younger episodes. And you know, I don't really have an opinion. It's done. It's the way it is. We run all of the episodes. I haven't really done a research piece to figure out if our ratings go down when they're older. But I know people in general, when they comment, talk about the fact that they like when Beaver is much younger. But if you were in charge of universal that, then you would have killed the show I understand, Ken. - Yep. Now, I like your promos. I think whoever, if it's you that has designed some of those, like Klinger talking to Perry Mason and telling him when Mashes on, I think that's terrific. Did you come up with those ideas? - No, I, you know, part of the success of, my success of MeTV is that I have an incredible, incredible group of people who work day and night on that network on the creative side, making promos like you've noticed, doing the operational things to make it look good. There, you know, I'm kind of like the person that's known for being the network head, but I gotta tell you, there are some people who do some amazing things and some very heavy lifting to make MeTV what it is. And it wouldn't be that without them. And you've hit on our promo producers who are brilliant and our promos, we put more energy in our promos than most networks do because we see those promos as a big part of what I call our stationality or our personality because that, you know, anybody can run a bunch of old shows, but it's running the right old shows in the right time period, in the right order, packaged the proper way that is the MeTV difference. - Now, just out of curiosity, you run Mason and Matlock back to back every day. - Yes, yes. - How would you compare the two lawyers' styles? - Oh, good. - Interesting. You know, I'm a big, big Perry Mason fan. - So am I, I interviewed him once. - Yeah, he supposedly was a good guy. - He was. - Interesting, he was, yep. - And Matlock doesn't do it for me personally. And I think that Matlock, he's much more laid back and there's a lot more quirks that they, you know, they tried to make him quirky and more of a personality. Perry Mason is kind of, his personalities, he's the no-nonsense, you know, hard-boiled guy. And I think maybe the Matlock reflects the fact that it was many years later and they needed to do something different to make him stand out and they gave him that, you know, the food and the Southern laid backness. So I think they're very different. They both had their legions of fans. They work well together. They're not the same show, which is important, you know? They're not clones and that's one of the reasons why we do it. We don't wanna have a Perry Mason clone. We want something that is different in the same genre and you've picked up on that. Is that, what's your assessment, Ken? - Well, I like Mason better. I think he's more hard here. Hard hitting than Matlock. I really don't watch, the only time I watch Matlock is maybe the last 10 or 15 minutes to see who did it. And I don't do it all the time. But I do watch it once in a while for their reason. I'm a big Andy Griffith fan. I love the show. I just read the book that Ron Howard wrote with his brother involving their work in television as well. So I'm a big Griffith fan, love it. And now that's another thing I would, somebody said, and I forgot who, that they thought that the Griffith show was the best comedy of all time. Now, when you compare that to "I Love Lucy," I don't know about that. I'd have to think about that. - I put "Mash" in that group too, because "Mash" worked on so many levels. It wasn't a slapstick, but it was a show with a heart and a soul and messages and unbelievable acting, writing, directing, you know. But I, you know, that's what's so great about me TV. We have most, in our library, we have most of the best shows ever produced in that genre of Lucy, "Mash," Mary Tyler Moore, "Andy Griffith." I mean, you know, and yes, we have "Gommerpile II." But, you know, we're-- - Oh, damn! - It's just that, that's right. But, you know, it's really pretty amazing. And, you know, maybe someday we'll have Seinfeld on there too when it gets to be old enough. But that was a pretty terrific show as well. - I will tell you a show that I have become more and more fond of watching on YouTube. And I wish somebody would pick up and maybe they have and I've missed it. And that's the defenders. - You know, I'm surprised it's on YouTube, the original defenders, right? - Yes. - Because I tried to buy that from CBS and they said that the clearance for the music was prohibitively expensive to clear the music. Now, if you're telling me that they, you know, is it on a CBS branded site or is it boot lens or what is it on YouTube? - I can just, I can just go to YouTube and say, you know-- - The defenders. - The defenders in Bingo. - There are a lot of episodes there. - Yeah. - Well, I'll call CBS and see if they cleared the music because that was the big problem with getting that show. We tried to buy that and fuck, marrying that with Perry Mason might've been a good late night show. - Now, that's interesting because when, I mean, I can remember when both Mason and the defenders were on CBS, they were on back-to-back. - Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I would do that too. - On Saturday nights and then they moved both of them and they still had them back-to-back when they moved them to a different night. - Yeah. Well, you never know if there was something the producer insisted on. I don't know who produced the defenders, if it was the Perry Mason people or the network people, but I'm gonna, thank you for telling me that I'm gonna talk to my people in CBS and see if they finally cleared the music on that show. - Now, I know a show like a gun smoke lasted 25 years. - Yes. - Bonanza lasted 14. - Yes. - But what makes one pick a gun smoke over a Cheyenne or a sugarfoot, even though they may have lasted six or seven years on television? - Well. - We have Cheyenne and sugarfoot. We just don't run them on me TV. They're on our other networks. - Oh. (laughs) - But those are much smaller numbers of episodes and they were never big hits in syndication. Gun smoke and bonanza are really the two most successful in off-network rerun Westerns ever. And because there's so many episodes like with Bonanza, I think there are 260 of them. So it only gets one run a year on a five day or five day week basis. And gun smoke, I think there's 600 and something between the half hours, the black and white hours, the color hours. So the reruns don't come up as often. And the characters of the Cartwright family and the Miss Kitty and Matt Dillon and the people on gun smoke are just more iconic, more well known, more beloved and some of the other minor Westerns that there hasn't been as much room on the air for. But with these new networks starting, there's lots of room for the secondary shows and they're good. And that's one of the reasons we bought sugarfoot and Cheyenne and there's one other one. We bought Lawman, some of us are on Me TV Plus which is not available in a markets where Weigel doesn't own a TV station yet. - Now do all Me TV stations have to be affiliated with a network station? - No, we have stations like in Philadelphia where the dot one or the main channel is Me TV. And we have the same thing in New York City. It's channel three in New York City and it's Me TV is the primary channel. In Boston, we're on WCVB's dot two. And if people are interested in finding out more about where to watch these networks, if they wanted to, they can, I can suggest you might visit Me TV dot com and click on where to watch and put your zip code in and it'll tell you where to find it. - Now you said earlier that if you could, Me TV would be different if you had your choice. - Oh, my own stuff. Oh, really, yes. - Would you care to elaborate a little bit on what you would like to watch? I wanna see if it agrees with mine. - Oh, okay. Well, Gary Mason would have to stay, of course. - Yep, yep. - I probably have I love Lucy on there more 'cause that's on our network decades, most of the time now. - Mm-hmm. - What do we, what don't we have that, you know, I don't want to see. You know, that's the thing we have, most of the great classic shows on one of our networks, but let me- - All right, I have been reading a book by Ed Robertson called "The Fugitive Recaptured." And in this book, they talk about how arts and entertainment in the '90s re-ran it for a whole new audience. - Yeah. - And Stephen King says he thinks that was one of the best shows on television. What about "The Fugitive"? Would you ever consider doing that? - Well, we have "The Fugitive" on Me TV right now, late on Sunday night once a week. - Oh, really? I don't stay up that late. That's why I use it. - This fugitive has a small but loyal audience. That's how I would put it. I could not put "The Fugitive" on Me TV in prime time or even at 11.30 at night. It's just not a big enough show. But we have it and we run it because we know it's important to people and it's part of our whole image of being, you know, the destination for classic TV. Saying all of that, we will probably on Me TV plus probably run that show a lot more. Just once a week like we do on Me TV coming up. Me TV plus, which is not in Boston right now, is really our place for some of the cultier or less well-known shows. And it's a place for us to test things before they move to Me TV, too. - I'm curious now that there are a lot of good shows that I can remember that I don't think, at least to my knowledge, aren't on anywhere. And I'm wondering whether you would consider rerunning them on the summer of Me, like for a while. I know you ran the Danny Thomas show. I'd love that show. - Yeah. Well, and we've talked to the people, you can give me the list of the shows, I'll tell you why we don't have them or why they're not available. There's like 500 episodes of the Danny Thomas show. And it's a matter of, even if they were only $1,000 a piece that's half a million dollars. And a lot of distributors, I'm not saying this about the Danny Thomas people, but a lot of distributors are not gonna let me just buy a few episodes for a one week thing on Me TV. They're gonna want me to commit to the whole series. And a lot of times I can't do that 'cause I just can't go dropping a million dollars here and there just to try something out. And Danny Thomas is a nice show. It skews older because frankly, it's black and white and very few people under the age of 50 or even 60 remember it from their childhoods, you know? It's not Brady Bunch, it's not Gilligan's Island, it's not Andy Griffith, it never had that kind of broad play. Does that answer that one? - I think so. - Now, give me another one. - Morgan asked me to ask you a question, believe it or not, on the cartoon show. - Yes. - That you're running the morning. - Yeah. - The game appears in different places in the credits. Sometimes it's at the top, sometimes it's third, sometimes it's fifth. How come it's not right at the top when you're the head honcho? - I don't know and I don't really care but it's nice they put it on there. I conceived of the show and I stick my head in every once in a while as an executive producer of the show and I'm working on ways to expand it and do more with it. But, you know, I'm not a big ego but it has to say Neil Satan presents. It's nice they put me in the credits, at all I'll say. - Tell me one of the other promos that I enjoy and a lady whom I would give anything to meet or talk to is Carol Burnett. - She was terrific. And as you can see from all those great promos we did, she has a great sense of humor and we had a lot of fun with her and we have tons of promos with her. And, you know, she is still traveling and doing her thing. And all I can tell you is she was delightful. - I've seen her twice. I saw her in Boston at Boston Symphony Hall and we were way in the back and I had my hand up through the whole show and she didn't see it and I couldn't ask her question. - Well, her eyesight's probably not that great at that distance. But she came to Worcester and my wife, God bless her, bought seats right in the front row. And this time when I held my hand up, it worked. - Oh, good, what'd you ask her? - I asked her to talk about her appearances with Jack Benny. - On their on their on their show? - On Jack's show. - On Jack's show. - Okay. - And she said, you know, thank you for asking that question because she talked about what a great performer and trooper Jack Benny was. And when I told her I watched that show, she was very funny. She said, oh, you're the one. - That's what I always say, yeah. - Yeah, and I should have called Worcester to try and interview her. But I got cold feet for some reason and didn't do it. I don't know whether she would have done it or not. And to this day, I regret the fact that I didn't do it. But I love her work. - It's too bad you can only run the half hour shows. I'm sure that's got something to do with licensing. - Yeah, well, here's the story. The music fees to clear the musical numbers is what it makes that be a problem, Ken. However, a company called The Shot Factory has cleared the music, most of the music numbers from about 101 hour Carol Burnett episodes. And we have those now and we're running them on our network decades, which unfortunately you said you can't see, but they're on decades every afternoon. And maybe next year, once a week, maybe on a Sunday night or something, we'll run Carol Burnett as an hour long show. - I hope so. I hope so because she was a brilliant comedian. She's written at least three books that I know of and I read all three of them. - Yeah, what do you envision for the future as far as, like shows like Bonanza are on at least three televisions, cable television stations that I know of. So exclusivity doesn't exist anymore. - Well, we have exclusive broadcast. We're not a cable network, Ken. So, and there's a few episodes of Bonanza that's public domain. So as far as I know, the only real people running Bonanza are TV land and maybe either inspiration or some other network like that. But for broadcast, we have exclusivity on all that stuff unless we've worked out something with another Diginette. But the challenges of the future as the population ages is to bring newer and younger people into the fray and have them experience these shows and enjoy them and make watching linear broadcast television part of their world. And that's why it's important and why we're encouraging people to also go out and buy antennas because there's so many things they can see for free with an antenna. Like when they cut their cord, a lot of people are just getting streaming services. We say, you know, don't limit yourself. Go get an antenna, put it on and you'll be amazed at how many over the year free TV channels full of all kinds of programming you will find. - What do you like to watch besides me TV as far as cable is concerned? - Oh, I watch forensic files. I watch some true crime stuff just 'cause it, you know, and I watch, yeah, I watch a lot of what we're doing. So that takes a lot of my TV time. But then, you know, a series here or there on, you know, one of the streaming services or HBO Max or whatever. But I gotta tell you, last night I was watching Andy Griffith and smiling because that's one of the things we found, kind of, you know, our numbers are terrific. Our ratings are great for me TV. Part of that is in today's crazy world, we are a refuge for people. We are a place they can come and be comfortable, nostalgic, safe, family-friendly programming, you know, and it reminds you of a simpler time in your life or in the country's life. It's been terrific for us. And for example, can during daytime, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., if you compare me TV to all cable networks that are rated, what number, ranking number, do you think me TV is from, in daytime, from nine to six? - I would say maybe third or fourth. - That's pretty good, 'cause that's true. In this past month, the month of July, me TV was the number one entertainment choice and the number four network in daytime with total viewership. It went Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, me TV, and then ION. So it's resonating with people, but the challenges are, as that population gets older and is older, is to bring some new people in. So we rely on, you can, to tell all these youngsters, these are great shows you should be watching. You should know your television and you'll be amazed at the creativity and how great television shows can be without swearing and without sex and just using creativity and good script writing. - Yeah, I'm a big fan of all those shows. I mean, I can remember watching "The Rifleman" on ABC every Tuesday night at nine o'clock. Right after watching "Dobie Gillis," the man he loves at "Dobie Gillis" on CBS at 8.30. I watched "The Fugitive," of course. I used to watch, here's one for you, "December Bride." - Oh yeah, and you know, for example, we have Armus Brooks in our library, but "December Bride," they don't have, they only have 16 millimeter film or something on that at CBS and there's some music issues. And to get that show out of the vaults and ready to air would cost more than we would pay to license it. So CBS won't do it. Unless some big streaming service comes along and says, "We gotta have this show, but I gotta tell you, Ken, "you, me and about 22 other people "are the only ones who know that show." (laughs) And it used to be on and one of the things CBS used to do was take them and run them in the daytime. - Right, yeah. - And then shows like, here's another one for you, Pete and Gladys. - I was just gonna mention, I bet I was saying, Ken and the same six people know Pete and Gladys. (laughs) Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought that was a great show. Gail Gordon was even in. - Yeah, well here's my question for you 'cause I remember it when I was very, very young. - Haven't seen it, haven't seen it in probably almost 60 years. I'm wondering if it holds up because that's, sometimes can we remember these things from another era and they were great then, but now they just don't hold up. That's the magic of I love Lucy. That's the magic of mash. That's the magic of happy days. Those shows, whether they're period pieces or not, the writing and the situations make them times. And my question is, is December bride timeless? Is Pete and Gladys timeless? Does it seem really, really dated today? - I don't know about December. I don't know about December bride. I've watched Pete and Gladys. It's been a while. I'd have to sit down and watch it again. And 'cause, I mean, part of my problem is that it's sentimental. I mean, I love those shows. I've watched Sky King. I've watched interviews. I saw an interview on YouTube the other day that David Hartman did with Sky, Penny, and Clifford from Good Morning America. And it was great. It was great stuff to be able to sit back and watch some of that stuff. And, you know, wish you could do it all over. I mean, sometimes I wonder if we're better off with three television channels than all the channels we have now because we don't watch half the stuff that's on them. - Yeah, well, I got to tell you, if a few of these channels went away, it wouldn't bother me as long as they weren't mine that went away. (laughing) - Yeah, that's an interesting. And Westerns, I mean, you guys do a lot with Westerns. - Oh yeah, Westerns have had a huge renaissance with this digital sub-channel. Coming of age. They do really well, they skew older. And for the kind of advertising that we have in daytime, which is called direct response, which are the ads that have the phone numbers at the bottom for insurance, for cookware, for drugs, things like that where they have, they want you to directly respond to their commercials for whatever reason, Westerns pull really well for them. So that's why you see a lot of Westerns on our air during daytime, and you see them on some of our competitors too. - Yeah, and like Saturdays from 10 o'clock on. - Yeah. - If you're a Western fan, I heard a statistic once where somebody said that at one time, on all three networks, there was a combination of 39 Westerns. That seems unbelievable. - Isn't it? - Yeah, it was like, that's when TV just got into this whole mode of if it works, clone it, clone it, clone it, beat it to death. And that Westerns in the late 50s, early 60s, personifies that. The nice thing about it is so many of them did so well or lasted long enough that we have plenty of episodes of those shows. And there are, you know, most of the Westerns are on one of the digits now, owned by somebody. I mean, we start digging deep to a show like "Law Man," which I really like, but never even saw because there weren't the places for reruns for a lot of these shows, Ken, 'cause there weren't enough TV stations like you said back in the day that had enough time periods to buy all these different shows. And remember, buying a show for only once a week is really expensive when it's an old network show because they're not gonna sell you, you know, maybe just 10 episodes. They're gonna wanna sell you the whole life. - I can remember when there were shows on, there was a big outcry about violence on television. - Yeah. - Do you ever get complaints like that anymore? - You know, we once in a while, once in a while we will, but not much, not much. And our stuff, the violence in our things, the tame compared to what happened, you know, 80s, 90s beyond. - I'm surprised they're still an audience in the middle of the night to watch shows that I love, but can't stay up for. - Yeah, Mannix. - Yeah, well, there's DVRs. Yeah, those shows, those have about 450,000 people watching every night. - God, that's unbelievable. - Those are big numbers. You know, we have a huge audience overnight who can't sleep or they work different shifts. - Yep. - Or whatever, or they DVR them. - Yeah, that's true too. - Yep. Did you ever think about running, even though it lasted a year, did you ever think about rerunning tightrope? - I don't know that show, where it was. - Really? - No. - It's a show with Mike Connors. And he played an undercover officer based on true cases. And he was a different character every week to infiltrate different organizations. - Was that a CBS show? - Yes. - Yeah, I think it's in the library of stuff that they don't have materials on, meaning they have 16 millimeter prints and to go back and a show like that will cost them so much money to get ready for air that they won't do it because we won't pay what it costs to do that. - Yeah. - But I say to them, it's an investment. We'll be just your first licensee. You know, you know, a lot of companies that, well, it's not in our budget. And, you know, we just can't do that. But I'm fighting with them all the time about upgrading shows to HD to make them look better. Show like Perry Mason looks terrific. Fugitive looks terrific. But there are other shows like Matlock doesn't look so good because they don't have HD prints of it and it costs them a fortune to go back on that show and reconfigure everything to make it HD. If it was shot on film, it can be HD. The question is, what do the materials look like and how much work is it to make it HD? - Were you a fan like I was a father knows best? - Yeah, it was a nice show. I mean, not my favorite, but yeah, it was cute. And that's a Sony show that a competitor has 'cause they did most of their business with Sony and we did most of ours with CBS. - Not anymore. They stopped, they stopped showing it. There's a matter of fact. - I don't know if a father knows best anymore at antenna or whatever. - I don't know about antenna. I watched it on the FETV. - Yeah, that FETV is the blatant rip-off of Me TV. - Yeah, I know, I know. - They're only on cable. - Is there anything else you'd like to add before we go back to watch Me TV? - No, I think you've asked me some terrific questions and you obviously know your stuff and I'm thrilled to have been on your show and I appreciate you and your listeners watching Me TV and our other networks and just know that it's a labor of love for us and thank you. - Well, I feel the same way. I commend you tremendously for all the work that you have done and are doing. I'd give anything to have a job like yours and be involved in this kind of a dream job, but you're hearing only about the fun part of it. - Yeah, yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of behind-the-scene stuff, but I know you're a very busy man in a very busy schedule and I can't thank you enough for doing this and also to Morgan White Jr, who was able to get me in touch with you. - Yeah, well, happy to have done it, Ken, and good luck with your radio station and your podcasts. - I appreciate that, sir, and I hope we can make this a yearly event. And that will do it for this edition of "City Talk." - Thanks for listening to another great conversation with Ken Meyer and friends. You can contact Ken by email. He addresses KJMyer7@gmail.com. That's KJ-M-E-Y-E-R7@gmail.com. Tune in next time for more conversation with Ken Meyer on "City Talk." (upbeat music)