Classic Nick Wednesday –
Interview with Joseph Iozzi
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Today I am very honored to
bring you and interview with Joseph Iozzi as conducted by our own Andy
Anderson. Andy was kind enough to share his interview with me and with his permission
I am sharing with all of you.
As the poster of this
interview my only role was to correct a few very minor grammatical errors and “stylize”
it a bit for the blog and email list. I also removed the personal email of both
Mr. Iozzi and Mr. Anderson to protect their privacy.
Thank you for sharing this
interview with us Andy.
---------- Forwarded message
----------
From: Joseph
Iozzi
Date:
Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 6:31 AMSubject: Interview
To: "Iozzi, Joseph A"
From: Andy Anderson
Hi Andy,
Finally! I'm not sure of all
the name spellings, and there may be a couple of typos.
The brain gets a little foggy
at my age.
Please feel free to redact or
change anything you like. I'm not sure the age of your readers.
That's all I can think of
right now.
Joe Iozzi
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JI: I was
a creative consultant to a Madison Avenue advertising agency called Comtomark.
We had successfully launched
The Movie Channel, which was then known as Star Channel. Warner Bros. asked us for other ideas for
programs and channels. They were already kicking around the idea of a
"kiddie" channel as they owned a considerable amount of content on
video tape from their interactive cable system, QUBE, in Columbus, Ohio.
I proposed several channels for consideration. Here are a couple I can remember:
1) A 24 hour shopping channel
called, "Cable Catalog".
2) A 24 hour movie channel,
"Classic Cinema Channel", which would consist of the MGM movie
library, comprised of MGM, United Artists, Warner Bros. & RKO titles.
They seem more familiar today
with names like 'The Shopping Channel’, ‘Home Shopping Network’, ‘AMC’ or ‘Turner
Classic Movies’.
You have to remember at that
time there were only a handful of cable channels delivered by satellite, maybe
12, and not full time at that.
We were also asked to come up
with individual program ideas that could be produced in Columbus. We
recommended a few ideas, one of which was "Screen Test", a movie quiz
show. Besides producing "Screen Test", (without our knowledge) the
only other concept they moved forward with was Nickelodeon.
JI: The
graphic was a line drawing of a turn of the century man in a bowler hat peering
into a Nickelodeon machine with his arm ready to crank the machine. The "machine" was an eye piece
attached to the capital letter "N" in the word Nickelodeon. The
typeface was made of press on letters instead of set on film or paper. The art
was "stock" art and couldn't be trademarked. My intention at the time
was to replace the stock art with a line drawing made from a photograph a small
boy, tip toed on a train stool with an English cap peering into the
Nickelodeon. We were always pressed for time and I never got around to revising
the original logo as I planned.
JI: We
gave the client about 150 names to choose from. Anyone in the agency that could
hold a pencil was tasked with coming up with a name. The name, and finished
logo design/art was completed in 3 days. An upcoming trade show was of prime
importance to the client for Nickelodeon's launch to the cable industry. The
name Nickelodeon seemed natural to me. The Nickelodeon was a turn of the century
device for dispensing entertainment. The sound of the word was nice and rolled
off the tongue easily. A couple of rejected names were The Savoy Channel and
The Rainbow Network. Few people recall a children's channel called Calliope. It
predates Nickelodeon, but Calliope didn't air 24 hours a day as Nickelodeon.
Eventually Calliope collapsed under Warner's marketing weight.
JI: Both.
Pinwheel was a program on QUBE, not a channel. The name Nickelodeon was never
used or mentioned in any context until I named the channel in 1979. Pinwheel,
along with Nickel Flicks and America Goes Bananaz were merely programs on The
Nickelodeon Channel.
JI: Not
really. The entire Warner Satellite Entertainment company consisted of only 3
people in the beginning. James Cavazzini (ran all day to day operations), Madge
Sinclair (purchased movies for Star Channel) and a secretary (whose name I'm
sorry to say I can't remember). When Nickelodeon launched they added 2 more
people, Al Paraniello (marketing) and Sandra Murphy (asst. marketing).
Cavazzini answered to the head of Warner Cable, Gus Hauser, and Hauser answered
to Steve Ross, the CEO of Warner Communications. Ross is responsible for
pushing everything along at breakneck speed. He was a real visionary and crap
shooter.
JI: It
wasn't formed at all. There was no network, there was barely an inkling. Warner
Bros. was very fast when they decided to proceed with something. Money was never an object. They simply said
how much money do we need to spend to accomplish this? Nickelodeon was more a result of Warner
possessing an enormous amount of kiddie programming that was already sitting in
a can in Columbus, Ohio. It was simply producing a revenue stream from an
existing intellectual asset.
From the time Steve Ross
said, "Go!", to the time Nickelodeon was being broadcast 24 hours a
day nationwide was only a matter of months. We produced, at great cost,
marketing materials that were never approved, or even seen by the client until
they were already printed, aired, or published. This is unheard of, not only
today, but even back then. That first cable trade show was of prime importance
to Warner's launch of Nickelodeon. They had tremendous confidence in our
ability. No focus groups. No endless meetings. Just, "Go!" was the
only directive.
JI: The
first 24 hour Children's Programming Channel. 24 hours a day was big back then.
Many channels aired only a portion of the day, and had to share their satellite
transponders with other programmers. Dr. Vivian Horner was a big selling point.
Yes, we had cartoons, old westerns, and mindless kiddie fare, but we had a real
doctor behind ours. She had been with "The Electric Company" and
"The Children's Television Workshop". We hawked non-violent,
non-commercial programming. The programming also covered all the age groups
from preschool to teen. And the good doctor put her stamp of approval on it. It
couldn't loose.
JI: Only
about a year or two. It was redesigned by Lou Dorfsman, the great CBS art
director. He first used a halftone piece of art rather than "forced"
line art of the man in the bowler hat that I originally commandeered from stock
art. Later on Dorfsman removed the man in the bowler hat altogether, and
stylized the font a little more. His 2 versions lasted only a couple of years. I
was not associated with the channel at this point.
After Warner sold half of
Warner Satellite Entertainment for $200 million dollars to American Express
around 1980, and formed Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment, former execs from
CBS starting showing up at meetings. John Lack, a former CBSer, took over
Cavazzini 's roll. Lack was the most
disagreeable person I've ever met. Needless to say, shortly after the merger
the party was over. MTV was coming in, and we were on our way out. We were
fired.
AA: What was the full extent of your role in developing
Nickelodeon?
JI:
Well, I named the channel, designed its first trademark, wrote, and art
directed all the advertising and promotion, contributed programming
suggestions. I really pushed to get Mr. Wizard back on the air, which
eventually happened.
AA: Do you have any other facts/stories about
Nickelodeon that you think are important? Were there any other
individuals/companies that were instrumental in developing the original
identity of the network?
JI: The
network evolved itself. It wasn't the brainchild of an individual. It was
always a matter of utilizing the intellectual property already in the can.
Nickel Flicks was nothing more than old Warner "B" movies. No
production cost, just add in program hinges and interstitial material. Voila! A
kiddie channel segment!
There is one story I'll
relate.
Right before we were fired as
the ad agency, we developed a TV pilot called Rhombus exclusively for
Nickelodeon. Rhombus was the smartest man in the universe. Rhombus was played
by a maître d (Ed Collins) from the NYC high class restaurant, Sign of The Dove. Rhombus asked two teams of kids from
different schools (3 on a team) questions to determine the smartest kids (and
schools) in the universe. The show is still in the can. The pilot was shot in
an empty movie theater in Hancock, NY in 1980. We should have asked Rhombus if
the pilot was going to be successful.
JI: This
is embarrassing. I never watched it. In the beginning it didn't air in New York
City so I have a good excuse.
JI: You're very welcome. It's gratifying to see something you helped create so long ago still has some relevance today.
