So, I have lived in the Clermont, Florida area since 1998.
(I know I live in Trilogy or is it Cascades of Groveland, but I still say I live in Clermont. Old habits never die.)
But before that I lived in Melbourne, Florida for two years and I worked in Cocoa, Florida from 1982 – 1984. Then my wife Meg, my son Josh and I moved to the Chicago area for fourteen years awaiting my final call to come back to Florida in 1998.
I know too many dates. On with the story!
Has a number ever saved you money?
Well, this story saved me some money when I needed it.
When I first moved to Florida in 1982, I was freshly married to my bride Meg. She stayed in Lincoln, Nebraska to finish her college work. I drove the used Honda Civic which we called the Blue Bomber from Lincoln, Nebraska to Cocoa Beach, Florida. I was to take a new job at the National Christian Network which was called NCN based in Cocoa, Florida and set up the house.
Now I have to tell you about the National Christian Network. It was a great place to work. Television production was at its finest with all the very latest expensive production equipment. It was located in an old bowling alley on King Street in Cocoa, Florida.
I have to borrow this from Wikipedia, “The NCN was founded by Ray A. Kassis in 1975, and he was a great character. (I had never seen a guy on the phone being hounded by bill collectors and smiling as he was being harassed. It seemed that Mr. Kassis owed a lot of money for this satellite transponder to RCA and they were always threating to pull him off of the transponder and his answer was, pull me off and I have no way of making the payments) He just smiled when he was saying it.
The network was the fourth satellite-fed Christian network to be launched, and was a competitor to the Trinity Broadcasting Network, the PTL Satellite Network, and the Christian Broadcasting Network.
Now here is the unique thing about NCN. NCN shared the same satellite transponder with the Playboy channel.”
It was Christian programing from 6 am – 6 pm and then the Playboy Channel took control of the satellite for the next 12 hours.
As the story was told to me by Ray Kassis, he had fought for another satellite transponder and lost his bid several years earlier to a guy in Georgia named Ted Turner. Allegedly President Jimmy Carter favored Turner, a Georgia native as well, and the transponder was awarded to Turner, and he created CNN.
So Kassis had to settle on this RCA Satcom 1 satellite and be the fourth Christian Network and find other avenues of revenue to support NCN besides sharing a transponder with Playboy.
One of the ways of producing additional revenue was the production side of the operation and that is where I came in.
I was introduced to two very famous individuals while managing and directing the production work.
One was Al Gannaway. He was a film director, producer, and screenwriter. In the 1950s he had filmed a television series call Stars of the Grand Ole Opry. The unique thing was he had filmed it in color way before color television was fully developed. So, Mr. Gannaway had the film transferred to video tape to preserve the quality of the programs. At NCN we edited new shows just by rearranging the artist in a different order. You my have seen one of those news shows. (Someime I do with one of my shows called From Stateside.)
The sec