In the 1980s, one view of the future was that of a desolate land where people were mostly valued for their parts as collected by snatchers and sold to body banks. The population was fed a steady diet of an opiate known as television, where networks waged war over having the most people watching, determined by real-time ratings. Advertising was still the fuel that powered the engine of commerce for the time, though highly compressed into three-second “blipverts”, which had the added benefit of being lethal to the most sedentary viewers, because they stimulated the brain so much the coach potatoes would just spontaneously explode.
This was the landscape on which the 80’s show “Max Headroom” was set. Max had a curious route to dramatic television, having first been a computer generated host (though actually just an actor with makeup chroma keyed over special effects backgrounds) for a UK video music channel and then an advertising “spokesperson” for the ill fated “New Coke”.
The world of Max Headroom was heavily computerized, and computers tapping into various databases were routine tools of the day. There was no mention of eBay, where I was able to score some homemade DVDs of the entire television series that aired on ABC from 1987 to 1988. Despite what you might think, the show holds up pretty well some 20 years later–though its hard not to see the amazing Jeffrey Tambor and not think of his turn a few years later as “Hank Kingsley”, the ego-filled sidekick to Gary Shandling on “The Larry Sanders Show” As Hank would say, “Hey Now…”
But it was Matt Frewer’s dual turns as guerilla journalist Edison Carter and his cyber-powered, wise cracking alterego “Max Headroom” who made the show more than just the cartoon that it might have been. When it was made, there was no way that one camera-toting journalist could broadcast live from just about anywhere with no transmitter or satellite truck in sight.
Watching the show got me to thinking about the fact that you can now use a cell phone that does video and a service from a start up called Qik to stream live video from just about anywhere. TV news operations are starting to experiment with the idea of the cell phone “live shot”, so it will probably be about 20 minutes before reporters really will be saying something like “This is Edison Carter, live and direct on Network 23” while showing us a news scene with their cell phone.
Can the three second “blipvert” commercial be far behind? Probably not, since advertisers are beginning to freak out about all those expensive spots that are being skipped by TiVo and other DVR (digital video recorder) users.
Let’s just hope that they don’t prove to be as lethal as they were for “Zik Zak”, the omnipresent advertiser on Network 23.