Bill and I had been life long friends. We grew up together in Kewanee, Il. Both of us attended and graduated from what is now Brown College in Minneapolis. Obviously, we stayed in touch. Anyway, King wanted to expand the news department at WQAD and I placed a call to Bill to find out if he was interested in moving to the Quad Cities. He said YES and joined us in 1965.

While at QAD, Bill and I were involved in a lot of the creative efforts aimed at improving the station. As the newest TV outlet in town, very few gave us much of a chance to make an early impact. We quite literally fooled them all.

Chuck Acri was a fairly substantial advertiser with the station, and one day came to us to ask for help in creating something NEW and Different for the market...something that would make him famous. He had been playing around with the late night thing for a while but was really not a good "on air" type, at least not at first. The Acri Creature feature was created to run as just another late night movie program. We also featured the Sexton Ford Theatre and the Bob Neal Ford Theater etc: you get the drift here.

What could we do to separate the Creature Feature from the rest? Something besides building a new spooky set, with great cob webs, lots of strange music and on and on. We sat down with the station art director, Tom Caldwell was his name, and I ultimately worked with him for many years in Las Vegas in the ad agency business. Tom was very clever and talented. He is the one who came up with the Frog Puppet (Froggy D Gremlin). His humor always added tremendously to the skits. Then we met with Ken Gibson, who was a floor camera man at the station. He had always impressed us with his mastery of the mime. He then became the vampire (Vincent T. Hedges). Ken played that role way past his days at the TV station and was still doing some charity appearances as late as early this year before he passed away. We would write the scripts and on location film bits early in the week, go out late at night (in costume) and film the bits, bring them back and process the 16 mm film, edit and be ready to roll in time for the show. Don Molander was another cameraman at the station and we used him as Hedges Humpback assistant (Emmit). Those 2 guys were really funny in costume and our bits were filmed all over the Quad Cities.

By adding all of the characters, we were able to relieve Chuck Acri of the pressure of being a host in every segment. His opening ....as simple as it was - "Hi, I'm Chuck Acri" as he waved his hand was also scripted. Needless to say the ratings on the show went through the roof and helped QAD gather a bit of a reputation for not being one of the STODGY HBF/WOC types.

Here is a sketch of Dave Sorenson (photographer at WQAD TV ....who did some work on ACF), Don Raymond is in the middle and Bill Flannery on the right of the sketch. It escapes me who did this, but, it was a well known (at the time) artist from Davenport. He also put the caption down below on the sketch.

Dave Sorenson and I did a filmed documentary called "What ever happened to the Hennepin Canal?".I think it was in the early 70's. We won the Illinois Associated Press top documentary award for that one too. Again, we utilized locations and came up with some original music. I really enjoyed those type of projects...they took a long time to develop, shoot and edit, but the end result was very satisfying.

In 1970, Flannery and I worked on a documentary film for the National Wildlife Federation called "Do you Miss America". We won the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco Film Festival. We had a chance to preview MISS AMERICA with Mark Lindsay who had recorded the song. He was of course, the lead singer for Paul Revere and the Raiders. They were playing a gig in Davenport just after we finished the film and we played it for him in a private showing the afternoon of his concert. We then presented a copy of the film to him. He was very appreciative and was a terrific fellow. Thanks for the comments about MISS AMERICA...she was and is a beauty.

Shortly after that , we left WQAD to form American Rain Productions. Off and on for the next 10 years we wrote, we directed and produced documentary films all over the country. Our base remained the Quad Cities until 1980. Tom Caldwell also joined us in 1970 and left to begin his own graphic arts company in Las Vegas. Flannery continues to live in the Nashville area. He was doing video work for some nationally known performers the last I heard.

By the way, the CHILLER Theater was revised after the Acri thing...and once we left, Chuck tried to do it on his own.

I am currently the Vice President of Red Rock Radio Group. My division has 12 radio stations in Wisconsin and Minnesota and the job is very fulfilling.

As a foot note, I still visit on the phone with Wally Boller who was the WOC sports guru when I started at WQAD. After I first started there, I ran into Wally and introduced myself to him...then I told him that in less than a year I was going to kick his *ss on the air. (I was the sports director) he laughed, I did, and we have been friends every since.

We started development and did about 3 SPECIALS in 1969. From 70 to 71 we were hot and heavy every week. Bill and I were there from the very beginning and actually cast all of the characters. After Flannery and I started American Rain Productions, Chuck became a client and we continued to work on and co-produce the show through 72. We were extremely busy with the new company and just plain didn't have the time to continue working on the project on a regular basis.

SKITS...When we prepared the show, it was done in two stages. First was the actual LOCATION work that was going to be done. As you know, about 90% of the stuff with Vinny and Emmit took place in some business or location in the Quad Cities. Our thought was to get tons of regular people involved in the skits and that would relate to more eyeballs in front of the TV when the show was on. Pretty simple math actually. We would come up with a premise and then identify a location. Since the skits continued to run throughout the show, we needed more than just a thumbnail on what was going to happen. How was it going to happen? Where was it going to happen? How would the people and business selected to participate work with us? For the most part, the latter was a slam dunk. Everyone wanted to be on the show.

One of my favorite skits was actually done in the big studio at Channel 8. Ernie Terrell had been a World Heavyweight Boxing Champion in the 60's and after his retirement, he started a show band called Ernie Terrell and the Heavyweights. They were quite good and were booked to play the show room at the Wells Fargo Lounge in Moline. We called Sam Gnatovich (owner) to see if we could get Ernie and his group involved in a skit for the CF. Sam indicated yes, but only if he could be in the skit. We were thrilled. So, we built a boxing ring in the studio, had it lighted to perfection as a smoke filled arena and off we went. Vinny against Ernie...the match of the ages. Ernie came in his full attire, boxing shorts, robe with his name on the back etc: he also had 2 corner men and the girls who were his back-up singers were his cheerleaders...one included his sister (she was fabulous in the bit). Sam Gnatovich was the referee. Sam was a very large man, but paled in comparison to Ernie who was 6'7" and weighed about 260lbs. We had white long john pants on Vinny (to cover his vampire type legs) and some really short/tight shorts. Emmit was his corner man (complete with a bucket and sponge). On Ernie's side of the ring, there was about 20 people. On Vinny's there was a single little old lady.

The set up was hilarious. I was the ring announcer and wore a tux. Once the bout started, Vinny avoided any and all contact (imagine that) and danced around the ring with some very funny 3 Stooges type moves. Ernie was frustrated and everytime he went back to his corner, he got madder and madder. The crowd noise was enhanced by special effects and we did use some "drop in" music to inspire both fighters. In Ernie's case, to help Vinny, we would drop in a piece similar to Lou Reed's line from Take a Walk on the wildside. Everytime that happened the back up singers for Ernie's band would jump into the ring and do a routine. When Vinny needed inspiration, the little old lady on his side of the ring would stand up and play the Kazoo. It was fall down funny. Anyway, the bit ended like they all did with Vinny making a move to bite the neck of whomever he was after. Fade to black and go back to the movie type thing. I remember that one for sure.

Our thought process on the bits we did in the studio for the CF were the second part of the creative. We obviously needed to sell product for Acri...but we also wanted to do short quick vignettes to liven the actual studio time.

I don't know if either one of you remembers the picture frame? The set was designed and built by our people at the TV station and it was easily assembled and taken down before and after the taping. Just above the fireplace was a large picture frame. Every time Bill and I would walk onto the set, we would walk in front of it, then stop and take a quick glance back at the frame. You see, we always had someone of some prominence in the QC's in that frame. They would be perfectly still (just like a painting) and then ever so slightly move their eyes to follow us. We used that picture bit to get out of the studio sequences and back to the movie several times during the show. Some notables who appeared in the picture frame were Don Nelson (NBA guru), Gene Oliver (Major league basball player) Steve Kuberski (Boston Celts) Bill Boyle (Rock Island County Sheriff), Vi Murphy (Moline Dispatch) etc: We never drew attention to the picture...NOT ONCE, but it was always there and always manned by someone.

Ken Gibson used the bits from the shows for a couple of years as he re-created the show on the Nebraska Television Network. Since his passing, it may well be his family has control of those tapes. He was living in Williamsburg, Ia when he died. Ken was the administrator for a nursing home out there. By the way, his name (Vincent Hedges) came from the fact that he used to smoke a cigarette called Benson Hedges. See how easy that one was?

The photo of me standing next to the riding tractor was taken at the Indy 500...I am interviewing Mario Andretti.

Others are of me in the news room and then of course the black and white standard TV station photo is included.

While at WQAD-TV, Bill engineered and co-wrote (along with me) a song that was called THE BIG QUAD CITIES. We had pretty good distribution on it and since I was the singer on the record, I always got a kick out of seeing it on various juke boxes in the area. It was a 45 record and I believe the flip side was called SOMEPLACE NEW. I had one for many years, but lost it when a bunch of my stuff got flooded out. IF anyone who still have a copy would be amazing..but, you never know. It is neither the best record you ever heard nor the worst. It was my singing debut and I felt pretty good about the finished product. The record was pressed somewhere in the Quad Cities.