dude, i've just gotten into your show... and i always loved your stuff from the past, mtv and before, and i am so psyched that i caught what i could last nite. fun stuff. steve-o and you make quite an awkward and perfect match! haha. maybe when i get out to cali, i can stop by, show on or not, if your down... i'll even play some geetar and host my maniacal and addicting laugh, since that's all i can do within the chaos of your groundbreaking show and it's return. i actually found out about your new web show from when you popped on the KIDD CHRIS show in philly... another groundbreaking show... only on the radio. you should keep in contact with him and come on the show more... huge audience, great hilarious comedy, and it'll gain you tons of new viewers guaranteed!! well, can't wait to tune in tonite, and hey, when i do get out to cali (which will be within the year or so), if you ever need someone to help with the show, i'd LOVE to be employed by you!! haha, even though that'll never happen. well, i love the show, and it can only get better and better each night. keep it up man, and never stop the awesomeness. i'll always love ya, tom green. hope to hear back from ya... if not it's cool... i'll prolly call in sometime. take it easy man, and have fun! - Mike Chaleff

So you want to learn something about television? I bet we have a lot of you young broadcasters out there? If so, you may want to forward this blog around. You know, to anyone you know who wants to work in television. Because they should know how the business works. It will help you, and or them, proceed. I have decided I am going to begin blogging a series of lessons on here, about how to make television. These of course, are lessons taken from my personal insight, not necessarily facts, but more, opinions. On how it is navigating through this business, called television. And don't think it is anything more than that. Because it isn't. When I started working in television I was about 17 years old. I was a volunteer at the local cable station in Ottawa Canada. Skyline cable it was called at the time. I would go down there, freezing at the bustop, freezing, but loving it. Because I was gonna go get to play with some cameras. Wow. That stuff was so cool to me. I loved it. I wanted to be able to use one. I wanted to try to make television. But of course even at Skyline cable, I couldn't make television. They taught me about lighting, (yawn) and audio (yawn) and editing (kinda fun) but it wasn't like they threw ya the keys to the studio, and said "Flip The Switch Kid, Be Funny!" Far from it. I volunteered there for about a year. Finally they let me go out on this little news show they did, and do a "report" about a recent earthquake. I went to a fault line, in my dads suit, and did my first tv stand-up ever. Wow. That was a rush. And I knew pretty much around seventeen, that I absolutely wanted to make television. I loved television. A few years later, now a broadcasting student, we went back to that place. That studio was where me and two pals, Darcy Detoni and Trevor Cavanagh from Algonquin colleges TV broadcasting program, and a guy named Ray Hagel. We made this show called The Tom Green Show. That was back in 1993. I went in to the station with Trevor, and Darcy. We were broadcasting students, so we knew how to operate all the equiptment at the station. That was a bonus. Also, I had had a mildly successful college radio show, and rap group called organized rhyme, also, very mildly successful, but still known of, in ottawa, or at least some parts of ottawa, specifically orleans. Or the chapel hill section of orleans for sure. Organized Rhyme was big in Chapel Hill. So we knew we had that going for us, when we walked into the now called Rogers Cable TV, and pitched them The Tom Green Show. Plus, I think they could tell that I really really really really wanted to do it. So they were nice enough, to say go. And they gave us four shows. We would go LIVE on Thursday nights at 11, for one hour, for 4 weeks. They gave me my own show. And it was amazing. We worked real hard leading up to those first 4 shows. We wanted them to be great, because we were itchin to do more. We wanted to do a weekly local talk show, on public access TV, and make it work. And we did. I went out on the street and shot a bunch of goofy stuff. I basically idolized David Letterman, and would go around town trying to replicate some of his early on the street hilarity. I would go up on the tops of downtown parking garages, and heckle passers by with a megaphone and film the reactions. Letterman used to lean out of his window at NBC's rockefeller center, and do the same thing. And they would actually film the people! You would see outside the studio! And it was hilarious. Steve Allen used to do that. To walk right out of the studio, out onto the street, and start talking to real people. And at the time, doing something like that, was really really crazy. You simply just didn't get up and walk out of the studio. Why? It just didn't make any sense. Television was about having music, and dancing, and variety and news broadcast from a studio. Not walkin out on the street and buggin people! That's crazy. But funny as hell. So anyway, we would do stuff like that. And we shot a bunch of these on the street clips. We worked on them for two months over the summer. We were going to do our 4 weeks of shows in september. And we were getting ready to launch. What were those first bits we shot? Before we were ever on the air? The first bit I shot for the The Tom Green Show in 1993 was called Meathead. Basically I duct taped about 10 different pork chops, steaks, and cuts of meat to my head. Yea my head. Making almost a meat hat I guess. And I would go out on the street and interview people. In the farmers market in downtown ottawa, called the Byward market. It kinda freaked people out, but I would pretend nothing was wrong. then we cut all the footage, put some home made hip hop beats in, and that was it. Meathead talking to unsuspecting passers by. We did a bit called Hockey Guy. I think this was the second day of shooting for that first show. Hockey Guy ran around downtown Ottawa in full hockey gear, metal bladed skates scratching on the pavement. I think I jumped in some canal to freak out people. Somebody would be running along on a bikepath, and I was jumping from a bridge in full hockey gear into a body of water. Or jumping in a water fountain in scuba gear, and getting chased off by security. Stupid stuff. Fun stuff. We were having a blast. Then we launched the first show. And within a couple of days, some local media picked up on what we were doing. The local tv station came and did a story about our stupid show we were doing, with meat head guy and stuff like that. So that was exciting at the time. And the station picked up the show on the spot. They "re-newed us" until christmas. Which is kinda funny, because we weren't getting paid or anything. We were just volunteers. And they were simply letting us back into the studio. Allowing us to use the equiptment. I remember the first time we realized that security guards were hilarious. We barged into this museum one day, with a fake oil painting to hang on the wall. Tiger Zebra. But that's a whole other story. I'll tell ya about that one on Monday. Maybe even pop up some video. Have a great weekend gang. More television stories on Monday. Goodnight. Tom Green

Big thank you to Andy Greene (not related believe it or not!) from Rolling Stone magazine! Now everybody here at The Channel, all of you! Go buy an annual subscription to Rolling Stone magazine. Thanks Rolling Stone for supporting our little independent channel. It is very much appreciated. Cheers.