Uploaded February 2016 | Updated September 2026, 3 hours ago
In the summer of 1997, I accepted a job at Green Bay's UPN affiliate, WACY-TV, and finally moved away from Arkansas. I had a challenge on my plate: that fall, the station would debut a "split" programming schedule: all kids' programming until the afternoon access hours, which would be handled by another promo producer (who was incredibly talented and should put some of her stuff on Youtube). My responsibility was afternoon access (Boy Meets World, Full House, etc.) through daybreak (when the children's programming would take over again).
Within a few weeks, as the station signed contracts to carry new syndicated shows for fall '97, I realized that we had a hell of a lineup scattered throughout the schedule: Voyager, Deep Space Nine, Xena, Hercules, Psi Factor, Babylon 5 (for a limited time only until it moved to cable), and new shows such as Earth Final Conflict, Team Knight Rider, and syndicated packages of cable series like Outer Limits, Poltergeist: The Legacy, and Stargate SG-1. As UPN was only programming Monday through Wednesday nights, I suggested that all of these syndicated action hours needed to be pulled out of their late night slots and consolidated in prime time on the non-UPN nights. The result was, quite frankly, better than the rerun-heavy Sci-Fi Channel was doing at the time: the Prime Time Invasion was born. At the age of 25, I got to call the shots on the station's whole schedule. The station's management shrugged and let me try my experiment; they were already the lowest rated commercial station in the market, so what the hell, why not?
This :60 second spot announced, about a month before the new shows and schedule kicked in, that the lowest rated commercial station in one of the most sports-fixated markets in the country was about to bet the farm on geeking out.
After that November's Nielsen ratings period, UPN notified us that we were now one of the ten fastest growing (ratings-wise) UPN stations in the country.
Thanks to everybody who was watching.
In the summer of 1997, I accepted a job at Green Bay's UPN affiliate, WACY-TV, and finally moved away from Arkansas. I had a challenge on my plate: that fall, the station would debut a "split" programming schedule: all kids' programming until the afternoon access hours, which would be handled by another promo producer (who was incredibly talented and should put some of her stuff on Youtube). My responsibility was afternoon access (Boy Meets World, Full House, etc.) through daybreak (when the children's programming would take over again).
Within a few weeks, as the station signed contracts to carry new syndicated shows for fall '97, I realized that we had a hell of a lineup scattered throughout the schedule: Voyager, Deep Space Nine, Xena, Hercules, Psi Factor, Babylon 5 (for a limited time only until it moved to cable), and new shows such as Earth Final Conflict, Team Knight Rider, and syndicated packages of cable series like Outer Limits, Poltergeist: The Legacy, and Stargate SG-1. As UPN was only programming Monday through Wednesday nights, I suggested that all of these syndicated action hours needed to be pulled out of their late night slots and consolidated in prime time on the non-UPN nights. The result was, quite frankly, better than the rerun-heavy Sci-Fi Channel was doing at the time: the Prime Time Invasion was born. At the age of 25, I got to call the shots on the station's whole schedule. The station's management shrugged and let me try my experiment; they were already the lowest rated commercial station in the market, so what the hell, why not?
This :60 second spot announced, about a month before the new shows and schedule kicked in, that the lowest rated commercial station in one of the most sports-fixated markets in the country was about to bet the farm on geeking out.
After that November's Nielsen ratings period, UPN notified us that we were now one of the ten fastest growing (ratings-wise) UPN stations in the country.
Thanks to everybody who was watching.
