BREAK OUT YOUR BONG; KILL YOUR TV
the stoned age of television
From the creators of "J&B Get Baked" and
"The Overt Promotion of Anarchy," the
world's first Internet TV series
Experts have long agreed that the TV of the future will more
closely resemble the Internet than TV "as we know it." Specifically,
beyond 500 channels will be NO channels, just databases, from
which viewers may download and watch whatever they want,
whenever they want.
This week, the future arrives...on your desktop.
A public-access TV program based in Bloomington, Indiana,
will become the world's first on-demand Internet TV series,
beginning Tuesday. ROX, "a nutty, bohemian blast of
irreverence and imagination" (Indianapolis Star), will be available
to computer users around the world--twenty-four hours a day,
seven days a week, via the World Wide Web.
"We've been working toward this event for about a year and a
half," says ROX co-producer Joe Nickell. "When I found out we were
gonna premiere this month, I was so happy I nearly spilled
my beer."
Over the course of three years on public access, ROX has
earned regional and national recognition for its wacky humor and
cutting-edge style. The program has been featured on MTV Music
Television, the Howard Stern Show, VideoMaker, the Gary Myers
Show (Chicago), and in virtually every print and broadcast
medium in Indiana.
"ROX focuses on the trials and tribulations of a roving band
of mid-twenties hedonists," explains Nickell. "It's improvisational,
reality based...kind of like *Friends* in *MTV's Real World*,
trying to avoid the *Cops*."
On Tuesday, April 18, ROX episode 85, titled "Global Village
Idiots," will premiere on the ROX Quarry
(http://www.rox.com/quarry/). Featuring mixed-drink recipes,
full-frontal nudity, neural digitizers and frog-gigging, the thirty-
minute episode of ROX will pioneer a new form of entertainment:
hyper-television.
ROX Editor Bart Everson explains: "most TV shows present
you with a linear stream of information. If you don't want to see
the opening credits...too bad. 'Global Village Idiots' will be
different, because it will allow people to download and view the
different sections of the show in whatever order they wish. It is
non-linear, or hyper-textual."
After the premiere of "Global Village Idiots" on the Net,
a new ROX episode will become available on a weekly basis.
"The ROX Quarry will be a multi-media cabaret of fun and
information," says Nickell. "People will find everything from still
images and video, to interactive drinking games. Every week,
there's something new."
For more information, or to join the RoxList e-mail list,
contact ROX at <r...@rox.com>.
****FACTS on the ROX****
J, Joe Nickell, a native of Kentucky, came to Indiana in 1987 with high
hopes of becoming a classical timpanist. He lost the hopes very quickly,
but has remained high ever since. Joe graduated Phi Beta Kappa from
Indiana University in 1991, in Anthropology and English; upon graduation
his parents gave him his first video camera. Freshly inspired and
typically tipsy, Joe promptly dropped out of society and became the
blabbering Bartender and co-producer of Rox.
B, Bart Everson, 28, was raised in a shopping mall in Greenwood,
Indiana. While squandering his parents' money at Indiana University,
Everson was arrested twice, for Public Indecency and Conversion. After
completing his public restitution at the local cable access station,
Everson decided to pursue a career in television. Editing Rox is now his
full-time job.
ROX is a weekly cable access TV show which airs every Tuesday night
at 11 pm on Bloomington (IN) Community Access Television, and every
Wednesday at 4 pm and Thursday at 5 pm on the Indianapolis
Community Access Network.
ROX reaches computer users around the world via the ROX Quarry,
on the world-wide web (http://www.rox.com/quarry/). Rox is a
reality-based program which endeavors to hold up a mirror to
the community of Bloomington.
Number of Episodes produced to date: 85
First episode aired: July, 1992
*Awards & Honors*
In addition to the following awards, Rox has been honored by profiles and
features on MTV Music Television, The Howard Stern Show, NUVO
Newsweekly, Bloomington Confidential and virtually every central-
Indiana print publication, TV station and radio station.
*Citation Award, Indiana Film Society 1994 Film & Video Barbeque
*Finalist, 1994 Hometown Video Competition, sponsored by the Alliance for
Community Media
*Best Local Television Show, 1994, 1993 and 1992 Best of Bloomington
Reader Survey, Bloomington Voice
*Favorite Local Celebrities, 1993 Best of Bloomington Reader Survey,
Bloomington Voice
*Best of Show & Best Independent/Experimental production, Indiana Film
Society 1993 Film & Video Barbeque
*Hot off the presses*
"What Hunter S. Thompson did for--or to--journalism, these guys are doing
to television."
--The Ryder
"At once a revealing slacker diary and satiric tour-de-farce of the
Bohemian lifestyle...Their language is satire, subterfuge, subject-
ivity, and a refreshing dose of self-deprecation."
-- NUVO Newsweekly
"These Funky Young Cyclops of the Small Screen steep into our
consciousness like a big jar of sun tea. Slowly, we have grown to
know these guys...Generally, television has usurped the fire we once
gathered around, supplanting tribal consciousness with fragments of
individuality...J&B are handing the fire back to us--or at least the
firewater."
-- Bloomington Voice