Kathy Mellinger

Kathy Mellinger (1985-2010's) is a young girl. Born in Arkansas, she is a well-known figure in the theatrical arena.

Three dimensions define Kathy Mellinger's hot, sexy and youthful persona echoing the title of Marilyn Monroe's own early-1950's film being released after her breakthrough in 1950:

• As young as she feels: Young, hot, sexy, sultry, dynamic, energetic, classy, emotive, passionate, beautiful, vibrant, soulful, fierce/fiery, smouldering, gut-wrenching and poignant

• As young as she looks: Young, hot, sexy, sultry, steamy, seductive, beautiful, charismatic, kind, charming, fierce/fiery, gorgeous, smouldering and emotive

• As young as she sounds: Soft, breathy, whispery, hot, sexy, sultry, beautiful, steamy, seductive, soulful, fierce/fiery, husky, smouldering, gut-wrenching and emotive

DNA of the Chicago School of Television for the news business

Dave Garroway, an individual involved in the Chicago School of Television, used (and exploited) the Chicago Style for his eponymous program Garroway at Large, plus Today (NBC).

Inside the RCA Exhibition Hall floor, portions of which were converted into the first studio location for Today (NBC), was a room with the layout of a large open newspaper office.

Blending print journalism's industrial past (via the 50 Rock hub of the Associated Press) with electronic media's transparent future (via the RCA Exhibition Hall), the Today (NBC) bullpen is innovative.

Specifically, the blueprint being created by the borderless room being based inside the RCA Exhibition Hall for Today (NBC) under Dave Garroway birthed modern broadcast design elements.

Noted elements of the boundless room being based in the RCA Exhibition Hall for Today (NBC) under Dave Garroway include newsroom sets, street-side studios, news tickers and clock displays.

Just before Dave Garroway, television news featured anchors who delivered the day's stories in a studio resembling a cardboard box (in theatres or radio), with journalists backstage in a bullpen.

However, Dave Garroway's innovations, including Garroway at Large and Today (NBC), tore down the walls, juxtaposing the main stage in the news studio with the backstage workspace bullpen.

By the mid-1950's period, the Chicago School of Television had started to fade, as television network production became a centralized duopoly between New York and Los Angeles.

Even so, the DNA of the Chicago School of Television remains across the US and around the world.

Hugh Raisky, a designer involved with CBS, designed the gritty bullpen of the East Coast, introduced in March 1973.

Just before the innovative news desks, made in the 1960's by both WJW-TV and WCCO-TV, television newscasts featured one anchor in one desk and three separate segments (news-sports-weather).

However, in this 1960's era, both WJW-TV and WCCO-TV built wider and unified news desks to bring anchors/segments (news-sports-weather) together in one desk and one program.

Fred Harpman, a science fiction designer in Hollywood, is involved with his work on NBC's sci-fi spy television series Search and its 1972 pilot television film Probe.

Both Search and Probe use the Probe Control Centre, a high-tech, NASA-like nerve centre.

The Probe Control Centre, which Fred Harpman had created for both Search and Probe on NBC, is the direct inspiration for his studio set design for this network called the NewsCentre.

Plus, Fred Harpman's NewsCentre design is based upon his nerve centre design being used in the 1966 science fiction adventure film Fantastic Voyage, for which he is assistant art director.

CMDF's nerve centre uses its high-tech and futuristic feel for Fantastic Voyage (1966).

Using architectural geometry, angled desks and glass partitions, Fred Harpman's NewsCentre set design contrasts with traditional ones whose framing was flat, shallow and two-dimensional.

Besides, the NewsCentre design by Fred Harpman features NASA-like banks of active video feeds/data monitors.

In addition, mezzanine/stairs also add to Fred Harpman's NewsCentre design.

So successful was the NewsCentre philosophy (in branding, visuals and design), which WNBC-TV had originated, that NBC's other owned-and-operated television stations began using this one.

NBC commissioned modular and scaled-down structural clones of the original NewsCentre incarnation that WNBC-TV originated in New York.

In Chicago, in a poetic twist of television history, this NewsCentre traces back to Dave Garroway's old stomping grounds: the Merchandise Mart, from which Garroway at Large was presented.

WMAQ-TV used the NewsCentre as a multi-tiered and active newsroom atmosphere that proved news reporting in the Midwest in an industrial and fast-paced nature.

This NewsCentre design by Fred Harpman served as a futurist, high-tech and cinematic upgrade to the gritty and unpolished newsroom set that WMAQ-TV's rival WBBM-TV used.

Fred Harpman's NewsCentre design is being created to have a working newsroom feel (doubling as an industrial factory for television news and information).

Plus, Fred Harpman's NewsCentre design paralleled the borderless room being located inside the RCA Exhibition Hall for Today (NBC) under Dave Garroway.

Ever since its 1974 inception, NBC's NewsCentre philosophy (as being emphasized by Fred Harpman's cinematic design) has led to copycats, similar to WBBM-TV's studio with a bullpen backdrop.

In addition, since its 1974 inception, the NewsCentre (for NBC) has also divided North America's local television news scene into two camps.

For one camp, local television outlets in the United States that retrofitted studio spaces with faux-wood panels, extra monitors and a chroma key backdrop represented the old guard.

Local CBS television stations, many featuring the newsroom/bullpen as a regular studio backdrop, also represented the old guard (w/wo chroma key), evoking the gritty newspaper feel of the East Coast.

Conversely, advanced and forward-thinking television stations used the NewsCentre model under Fred Harpman, Lee Hanna, Earl Ubell and Jim Kitchell (for NBC), representing the new guard.

This NewsCentre concept (for NBC) evoked the NASA-like nerve centres of Hollywood.

Just like the bullpen news studio via local CBS stations, Fred Harpman's NewsCentre design via local NBC stations was a radical departure from the austere news studio set designs.

Using its innovative hybrid newsroom-control room set, BCTV fuses the old and the new guards of the local/regional television news industry across North America, influencing CNN.

For Ray Peters, BCTV's innovative hybrid newsroom-control room studio, which he co-conceived with Cameron Bell and Ernie Rose, paralelled the open area for Today (NBC) under Dave Garroway.

Incidentally, Today (NBC) is the television program of which BCTV's Ray Peters was an avid viewer.

Upon its June 1, 1980 launch, CNN used its BCTV-inspired hybrid newsroom-control room studio set design, which serves as the DNA for 24-hour television news.

BCTV, incidentally, juxtaposed CBS (bullpen, Robert Wussler, Daniel Schorr, Bernard Shaw and Sam Zelman) with NBC (NewsCentre, Mary Alice Williams and Jim Kitchell), all used by CNN.

WMAQ-TV's NewsCentre, in a poetic twist of television history, traces back to Dave Garroway's old stomping grounds: the Merchandise Mart.

Rival WBBM-TV pioneered the news studio with a regular bullpen backdrop.

The battle between WBBM-TV's gritty newsroom and WMAQ-TV's futurist, high-tech, space-age and cinematic NewsCentre paved the way for the Chicago news proxy war via set design.

Putting aside the differences in the Chicago news proxy war via set design was BCTV/CNN.

Echoing the name of a crossover film, for this hybrid newsroom-control room set that BCTV/CNN had created, the East Coast bullpen meets Hollywood's high-tech NASA-like nerve centres.

Specifically, this hybrid layout used by BCTV/CNN is a bustling, print-style bullpen operating inside a massive, high-tech monitor matrix.

Back to the Midwest, non-NBC stations used undertones of this NewsCentre design that Fred Harpman created, notably WJKW-TV and WTHR.

WJKW-TV's NewsCentre design, which its art director Hilton Murray created, used undertones of the NewsCentre design, which had NBC commissioned and which Fred Harpman had created.

Meanwhile, during its initial years under the ownership of the Columbus Dispatch newspaper, WTHR utilized Fred Harpman's NewsCentre design, mixed with Al Primo's Eyewitness News format.

Eyewitness NewsCentre 13 is a unique, hybrid and innovative television news formula that WTHR had created, in which anchors walked around the studio and talked to anchors and reporters.

Plus, this Eyewitness NewsCentre 13 format, during the last ABC years for WTHR, paralelled the open working area based in the RCA Exhibition Hall for Today (NBC) under Dave Garroway.

Upon its relocation from 99 Queen Street East to 299 Queen Street West, CityTV began to use a unique formula for its CityPulse newscasts similar to Eyewitness NewsCentre 13 (via WTHR).

Moses Znaimer, who masterminded CityTV since its debut in September 1972, is the genius behind the creation of its CityPulse newsroom-as-set trend upon its move to 299.

During its first decade starting in 1977, CityTV's CityPulse newscast used anchors sitting at a desk in a studio with 2 orange-red-black striped beams and a television monitor between the anchors.

Incidentally, during its 99 Queen Street East era, this CityPulse studio (for CityTV) had an isolated and claustrophobic box-like look and feel.

News reporting on the field, conversely, was a more innovative approach in CityTV's CityPulse, whilst sticking around at 99 Queen Street East during its first decade starting in 1977.

Using videographers - lone wolf reporters shooting, editing and reporting their own stories (rather than multi-person technial crews - is CityPulse's innovation for CityTV.

With its move to CityTV's new headquarters at 299 Queen Street West, the CityPulse walls were being torn down, as was the desk.

For CityTV, its CityPulse format paralelled the open working area based in the RCA Exhibition Hall for Today (NBC) under Dave Garroway, but also Eyewitness NewsCentre 13.

299 Queen Street West (which famously both housed CityTV and MuchMusic) also paralelled the RCA Exhibition Hall for Today (NBC) under Dave Garroway

Both CityTV and MuchMusic perfected (and expanded) the non-traditional Eyewitness NewsCentre 13 formula made by WTHR in its last ABC years.

The Newsroom Computer System (NRCS), satellite distribution, video display terminals (VDTs) and digital character generators silence the teletype sound in newsroom-as-set trends.

Newscoop is by ITN, Baysis by CNN.

Canada's two national television giants - the public CBC and the private CTV - were opponents of the newsroom-as-set trend that BCTV, CNN and CityTV during the 1980's.

In the 1990's, both the CBC and CTV networks embraced the newsroom-as-set trend.

ABC had become the top-rated television network in the United States by 1978, and wanted a stronger Charlotte station.

On July 1, 1978, WSOC-TV broke with the stodgy NBC and instead joined the higher-rated ABC.

WSOC-TV is one of the two television stations held by Cox Enterprises in the Southern United States making the switch from NBC to ABC, along with its flagship station in Atlanta.

Still in Charlotte, NBC went to former indie WRET-TV, which Ted Turner ran, in July 1978.

For WRET-TV, it was unique and rare in Ted Turner's portfolio to be affiliated with a major Big Three television network (NBC).

Turner Broadcasting System sold WRET-TV, which used NBC, to Group W/Westinghouse to raise the capital needed for its new venture CNN.

Under Group W, WRET-TV became WPCQ-TV on September 29, 1980.

Starting in 1984, WPCQ-TV, which Ted Turner ran as WRET-TV, was sold to different owners.

Group W sold WPCQ-TV to New York-based Odyssey Partners in 1984; 4 years later, the Providence Journal Company acquired WPCQ-TV, which became WCNC-TV on September 3, 1989.

In television's early years, the studio and the newsroom were separate.

News anchors delivered the day's stories from an isolated and enclosed studio, while journalists in the bullpen physically sprinted across a high catwalk to deliver scripts to them.

This frantic setup was impossible to maintain for a longer, fast-paced newscast.

For television newscasts extending beyond the quarter-hour time limit, however, news anchors sat in a bullpen, surrounded by busy journalists, plus the teletype and its clattering sound.

Silent computers replaced the teletype and its clattering sound in the newsroom.

Lin Bolen's DNA for game shows

Lin Bolen is an individual woman, who, as NBC's Vice President of Daytime Programming, broke with tradition inside the television scene.

Having started her television career in New York in 1961 by producing commercials, Lin Bolen moved from New York to Hollywood in the mid-1960's

While in Hollywood, Lin Bolen worked on cultural documentaries, which included a special on British fashion icon Twiggy, who, at the time, was a youthful figure.

Plus, Lin Bolen worked at Metromedia.

In 1972, Lin Bolen made her relocation to NBC, where she was appointed Vice President of Daytime Programming, the first woman to do so.

Using youth-oriented cultural documentaries as her primary inspiration, Lin Bolen turned television's successful, yet staid game show genre upside down.

Baffle, Jackpot! and Wheel of Fortune are some of the innovative television game shows on NBC, for which Lin Bolen commissioned.

The Wizard of Odds and High Rollers are game shows also commissioned for NBC by Lin Bolen.

Jeopardy!, Sale of the Century and Concentration are some of the established NBC game shows being ordered by Lin Bolen to cancel.

Some innovative elements in this game show genre via Lin Bolen include Vegas-style neon lights, less claustrophobic studio sets, young and sexy hosts and a young female demographic.

Conceived as a game show on television being created à la Hangman, featuring a colourful wheel being equally-made à la roulette, Wheel of Fortune is a successful franchise.

For Wheel of Fortune, its formula is that the host asks the contestants to choose letters at random, either vowels or consontants, and the co-host turns them on a puzzleboard.

The original Wheel of Fortune iteration started on January 6, 1975 as a replacement for Jeopardy!, both created by Merv Griffin.

Chuck Woolery and Susan Stafford are the first hosts for the original Wheel of Fortune version.

December 1981 was a period when Chuck Woolery left the original Wheel of Fortune version and was succeeded by former AFN/AFRTS radio DJ and KNBC weather forecaster Pat Sajak.

Just a year after Pat Sajak began hosting Wheel of Fortune in December 1981, Vanna White succeeded Susan Stafford as its co-host/puzzleboard letter-turner.

KingWorld distributed the syndicated nighttime Wheel of Fortune version (featuring the chemistry that involved both Pat Sajak and Vanna White).

Success came for this syndicated nighttime Wheel of Fortune iteration, prompting KingWorld to revive Jeopardy! in 1984.

The Wizard of Odds was the first American television game show to be hosted by Alex Trebek (coming from Canada), who also hosted its replacement High Rollers.

With its name being a parody of a classic film called The Wizard of Oz, Alan Thicke (also coming from Canada) created The Wizard of Odds, which fellow Canadian individual Alex Trebek hosted.

Lucille Ball, who was an avid viewer of the daytime game show genre, also appeared as a guest on the original Alex Trebek-hosted High Rollers version.

Just prior to the beginning of the 1984 Jeopardy! revival, its original host Art Fleming declined, due to creative differences regarded its new direction.

Merv Griffin gave his friend Lucille Ball a phone call for advice on what viewers wanted for this 1984 Jeopardy! revival.

Backed by Lucille Ball, Alex Trebek was given the host for this 1984 Jeopardy! revival.

Whereas the original Jeopardy! iteration was rooted in New York (which conveyed an intellectual and high-brow atmosphere), the 1984 Jeopardy! revival was in Hollywood, conveying a futurist feel.

The 1978 Jeopardy! revival had radical and controversial changes that led to its cancellation; it was not revived until 1984.

Like its earlier versions, Jeopardy! has its formula, in which the host provides the answers used in the 6 categories and the contestants can ask questions.

For the 1984 Jeopardy! revival, the board had digital screens to reveal trivia clues, but it also integrated electronic contestant podiums.

Earlier, the original Jeopardy! iteration featured a board with manually pulled pull-cards to reveal trivia clues.

The pairing that comprises the syndicated nighttime Wheel of Fortune iteration and the 1984 Jeopardy! revival is one of the best in the television scene.

On February 24, 1997, the iconic and famous Wheel of Fortune puzzleboard had its upgrade by ending mechanical spinning trilon tiles and using the electronically-digital touchscreen system.

With apologies to Cinderella, before Lin Bolen, the game show genre on television was a banished and isolated servant (in pace, studio sets, male hosts and demographics).

Lin Bolen, with apologies to Cinderella, served as a Fairy Godmother elevating television's game show genre fron a servant into a princess, inspired by glamorous youth-oriented documentaries.

Plus, with apologies to Cinderella, the stroke of midnight marked the magical demise of the early staid game show genre on television with Lin Bolen's influence.

Likewise, with apologies to Beauty and the Beast, before the Lin Bolen period, television's game show genre was a beast (in pace, studio sets, male hosts and demographics).

However, with apologies to Beauty and the Beast, during the Lin Bolen period, television's game show genre was a handsome prince (in pace, studio sets, hosts and demographics).

Rival networks responded to Lin Bolen's successful modernization of television's game show genre by abandoning their older programming formulas.

Besides game shows, Lin Bolen also expanded the time limit for television's soap opera genre from 30 minutes to an entire hour.

In spite of the era's pushback against her methods, the glitzy production vales and demographic-driven programming pioneered by Lin Bolen will be steadfast for television.

For Lin Bolen, she is one of television's innovators, competing against the traditionalists/purists.

Some other innovators include Fred Silverman, Robert Wood and Norman Lear

Traditional television in the United States have key elements:

• Broad and old viewing audience

• Safe and rural fantasy places

• Avoided social issues

• Slow and traditional pace

Innovator television in the United States have key elements:

• Young and urban viewing audience

• Realistic, city places

• Tackled social issues

• Fast and high-energy pace

Decisively, television's innovators being active in a decade between the 1960's and the 1980's won the cultural war over the traditionalists/purists.