ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 20, 1995 TAG: 9512200029
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE WERTS ASSOCIATED PRESS
Had enough ``Baywatch''? Power Rangers passe? Even ``Seinfeld'' doesn't cut it for some fans anymore.
But ``Mystery Science Theater 3000''? That's one show that seemed a constant in the TV universe, a rock at Comedy Central, impervious to fleeting fads and passing cults.
Yeah, right. Death and taxes remain alone at the top of the permanancy chart. ``MST'' is fading away, an old soldier whose services aren't required anymore by the dominion it helped make safe for comedy anarchy.
``Our contract with Comedy Central provided us to make six shows this year, and they have technically till the end of January to tell us about next year,'' says Jim Mallon, president of the Best Brains operation that makes ``MST'' in Minneapolis. ``But before Thanksgiving, they said they wouldn't be renewing us beyond the current season.''
Happy holidays to you, too.
``As we begin to evolve,'' says new Comedy Central President Doug Herzog, who came over last summer from MTV, ``it's time to kind of look for different ideas. `MST' has been on the air for seven years, which is a good run for any show anywhere. Viewership has dwindled somewhat.''
Herzog admits that, ``It was one of those shows that put us on the map, if not the show that put us on the map.'' When Comedy Central was trying to build a schedule in the late '80s out of pasted-together standup joke clips and ``Rhoda'' reruns, ``MST'' blasted off the screen with its mad two-hour mix of bad movies (``The Brain That Wouldn't Die''), smart-mouthed talk-back and segue scenes featuring creator/host Joel Hodgson and the ``robot friends'' he'd constructed out of spare parts.
The shoestring production that started on Minneapolis' tiny KTMA suddenly became a national cable craze as word spread like wildfire among tube fringe freaks that something really clever was on.
``MST's'' sassy, well-referenced humor was a perfect fit with the cyberheads then building a community through new personal computers, making the show the first real on-line sensation. Devotees traded tapes, organized a fan club now 60,000 strong, and produced a Minneapolis convention to wallow together in their MST-ery.
Their enthusiasm even inspired a feature film deal, with ``MST: The Movie'' (satirizing ``This Island Earth'') set to be released by Gramercy Pictures in April, right after Bantam publishes ``The MST 3000 Colossal Episode Guide.''
Which is right around the time Comedy Central premieres those last six originals, probably in February and March.
Mallon has been producing the show from the beginning. (Hodgson left in 1993, replaced as host by head writer Mike Nelson.) He recently figured that Best Brains has produced 157 ``MSTs'' - 22 for KTMA and 135 for cable. That makes him pretty sanguine about the show's (possible) end.
``I have to say we've been very, very blessed. We basically came out of nowhere and knew very little about the television industry. We've done seven seasons, which is like six seasons longer than most TV shows. We've generated a fan club of 60,000, we've won a Peabody, we've been nominated for two Emmys and six CableACEs, we got to make a feature film, we've finished a book with Bantam, and we're working on a CD-ROM with Voyager and a home video deal with Rhino.''
They could even be working on more ``MST'' episodes if the show finds a new home. It is contractually exclusive to Comedy Central through calendar year 1996, during which time, Herzog stresses, the channel will continue to air existing episodes. Mallon says ``the original two-hour license fee was $125,000, and with an original half-hour of a show like [Garry] Shandling costing something like four or five hundred thousand, I think it'll still be cost-effective for someone out there'' in 1997.
LENGTH: Medium: 70 linesby CNB