Hal Douglas: You’ll Know The Voice

hal douglasI got an email from Rick Allison this morning. It was an email forward from his voiceover agent, forwarding an email from Sarah Douglas.

Dear friends and family,

I want to share with you that Hal moved on from this life last night.
He died just as he lived- with grace, courage, and tranquility. My mother and I were by his side.

If you are so moved, join us in thought and prayer as we surround his soul with love and peace for the next stage of his journey.

Onward Hal!

With warmth and gratitude,
Sarah

The name Hal Douglas probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but you know his voice. You’ve heard it a thousand times. He voiced everything!

How was it possible to have a voice so rough and simultaneously so clear? That was Hal’s gift. There’s really nothing more you could do than marvel at it. Certainly no one could compete with it!

The New York Times wrote about Hal five years ago.

Mr. Douglas says he can’t keep track of what trailers he recorded yesterday, much less over the almost 60 years he’s been behind a mike. He did “Philadelphia” and “Forrest Gump,” “Men in Black” and “Coneheads,” “Stranger Than Fiction” and “Marley and Me.” He recorded a voice-over for the Broadway play “Equus,” narrated programs on the History Channel (in the days before “Ice Road Truckers”), and served as the voice of the WB network.

“The fact is, my voice has been out there,” he said. “And it hangs out there. You sit down in the theater and sometimes in three out of four trailers I’d be on them.” – NYTimes.com

Hal’s name came up often in my conversations with Rick. We’re grownups. We discussed Hal like we’d discussed Mantle or Mays as kids. He was larger than life. A certain part of both of us wanted to grow up and be Hal, if only in front of a microphone.

There are other deep throated, beautifully phrased v/o guys. There was only one Hal. He will be missed.

A New Network

Recently the UPN and WB TV networks decided to merge and form CW. News Corp (aka Rupert Murdoch), which owns the Fox Network and also a few UPN stations was left out in the cold. Today, their revenge: “My Network TV.”

I’ve attached the NewsCorp press release after the jump, but basically this little network will premiere with two telenovellas.

Though seldom seen in the English speaking United States, novellas are a mainstay of Spanish television here and lots of networks worldwide.

Maybe the word novella is a bit pretentious. These are soap operas, in prime time, Unlike most nighttime network dramas we see now, these will be shot on videotape (or whatever the next generation of video storage turns out to be), not film.

I would expect these to be sexy, steamy soap operas – as far as the envelope can be pushed.

If, and this is a big if, one character or one story line gets ‘hot’, this will be the best investment in modern television. “My Network TV,” more than any other network, will be driven by the power of word-of-mouth. One of these telenovellas could get hot in an instant.

Here in Connecticut, it’s certainly possible My Network TV will be offered to WCTX, our UPN affiliate. I have no knowledge of any inside dealings and would expect to be kept out of the loop, as you would expect with any employee who had no need to know.

It is seldom you see old line media making creative moves like this which might build over-the-air viewing. This is definitely out of the box thinking, probably by Roger Ailes (also responsible for Fox News Channel).

I am worried I won’t approve of the final product which is presented. Still, I have to say I am pleased that there’s still creative thinking going on at the network television level.

Continue reading “A New Network”

Without UPN

The announcement was made last week. UPN and The WB, the two smaller broadcast networks, are merging to form one. In many markets one TV station will be left out in the cold.

As it turns out, I work at one such operation&#185.

Because of that, it’s important for me to say, I know nothing! No one at my TV station has mentioned our plans post-UPN. I’m guessing even they don’t know yet. Anything I say is based on my being a ‘student of the media.’

UPN’s programming doesn’t make up much of any station’s broadcast day. The network only provides two hours of shows a night, and even then it isn’t every night. But having this network, with programming heavily attuned to young and urban viewers, tended to set the tone across the rest of the broadcast day.

There has been no shortage of conjecture about what stations should do. Will they run more syndicated shows… more judges, more Maury, more bad relationship screamfests? How about more local programing like news or local ‘chat’ shows?

How about a return to the days of shows like, “The Lloyd Thaxton Show?”

The Lloyd Thaxton Show was designed from the beginning as a low budget local show. It had one host (me), an average of 30 teens dancing to records in a small TV studio in front of an inexpensive set. There were several innovative elements that separated it from other dance shows at the time. Everyone (myself and the kids) lip-synced records and performed other wild and crazy production numbers in order to make the music visual and more entertaining to watch. Some have referred to these bits as