How Channels got its name

The Beacon Journal's wise decision to reverse the elimination of midnight-to-6-a.m. listings and alphabetized movie listings recalls how Channels, the weekly TV guide, got its name. Jim Nolan, who never used a vowel in his memos and who married nearly every woman he met, was the Features Editor and I had been switched from Electronics Coordinator (the link between the Newsroom and Composing in technology) to Television Editor. My first project was to work with Nolan to come up with a smaller, handier TV guide. Both Jim and I came up with all kind of esoteric names for the new baby. They were so bad, including my ideas, that I can't remember them today. The cover design for the new BJ TV guide was entrusted to Clyde "Bud" Morris. After we ran a gazillion names past Bud, he said, "Why don't we just call it Channels, which is what the readers want to check to see what's on?"

Sometimes the simplest solution is remarkably clever. Channels it became, on Super Bowl Sunday, 1980. We chose Super Bowl Sunday because we had high hopes that the first Channels cover would be of the Siper Bowl, with Browns QB Brian Sipe a great sendoff for a new product. Alas, Red Right 88 and the Oakland Raiders killed that possibility along with the Browns' Super Bowl hopes.

And now Channels no longer looks like the product that the late Bud Morris, Jim Nolan and I gave birth to. But at least the midnight-6 a.m. listings and the alphabetized movie listings have been born again.

And Jim and I could have told today's BJ honchos that it's not nice to fool with the movie listings. For the first Channels, we had the bright idea that we didn't need to include time, day and channels with the alphabetized movies because the readers would just see a movie on the grid, then look in the back for the movie's plot, actors and other information. Wrong! Readers checked the movie listings FIRST, and had no idea when they could see the film. As hundreds of readers told us by phone and letters (emails hadn't been invented yet), do NOT mess with our movies. I had to manually add time, date and channels to the movie listings, as the overtime mounted, till the folks who published Channels could have it done through technology (which took two weeks for the transformation, so I got a LOT of overtime and calloused fingertips). And why the summer frolics in my yard by my grandchildren are in The Pool That Channels Built. Well, that, and Jim's penchant for requiring new mockups every time that a period or coma had to be added to the impending debut of Channels. LOTS of overtime.

John Olesky
Channels' only editor from 1980-1996
And, as I like to call myself, the last true TV Editor of the Beacon Journal