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So there we were on a plane going from San Francisco all the way across the country to New York City where the finals for the Year 2000 TV Land Ultimate Fan Search were being held. (See our previous adventure to know how this came about.) Teresa was to be a contestant in the game show airing July 31st to August 19th 2000. And I was her guest and trivia coach for the trip. (Jimmy Kimmel to her Ben Stein, but that turned out not to be such a good thing.)

TV Land had sent a town car to pick us up at the airport. Our driver was waiting at baggage claim with a little sign "Ultimate Fan: Teresa Murray". Wow! Celebrity treatment. It took a while for the driver to weave his way through the city to our hotel, but I take it the traffic wasn't as bad as it usually is. At any rate our car driver seemed quite proud of himself for getting us there as soon as he did.Actually New York cabbies are immensely pleased with themselves if they get you there at all.

We were staying at the W on Lexington. We were supposed to have a person meeting us and greeting us when we got in. Event coordinator Marilyn was nowhere to be seen, so we just checked ourselves in and went upstairs. We had a kind of corner room so we had two windows and a nice view of New York. We went out and walked around. We made a circuit around the block and then walked over to Park Avenue. Eventually this accidentally landed us at Grand Central Station, which was well... like Grand Central Station. We stopped and ate at a Houlihans, not exactly quintessential New York, but it was open, not too crowded and we were hungry. We're used to living in a city where things are still pretty active at night, but New York was even more so, with streets crowded like it was the middle of the day, and more than half the cars on the street are taxicabs. We went back to the Hotel and did some more TV trivia studying and drank all the Sam Adams in the Honor bar, and called Mom.

Next Day, we ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Our call was for 1:30pm at which time we had to be out in front of the hotel to board our van for the Television Studio. We finally met our guide, Marilyn of RPMC in the lobby, and some of our fellow contestants: Neal, (on-line winner from Maryland) and his wife. Sharon from Great Falls VA (Baltimore competition), with her mother Bernadette, and her husband. David from Davenport IA (Rockford IL competition) and his wife, We all piled into a van and went to the studio. They put us in a green room (not really green, but it looks that way in my photos) to wait for the other rounds to end.

The show's producers were being careful not to allow the contestants to watch each others rounds, so they had Amy guard us. Security was so tight that restroom visits were timed and supervised. We were joined by the two local contestants, Vinnie and Howard. Amy had the contestants fill out little questionnaire type things. Questions like, "do you have any amusing anecdotes about TV celebrities?" and "can you do any imitations?" Just things that they might be able to use in the introductions. There were also a couple other legal thingees to look at, one of which listed the prizes that the grand prize winner would be taking home. Now, we had known about the programming of 52 hours of television. Heck, we had been making lists of what Teresa should program if she won. But all the other goodies came as a complete surprise: a new Volkswagen Beetle, a new computer, a years supply of turtle wax (not really, but something like that). Gee, and all we thought was in it was an uncompensated programming job.

After the papers had been turned in the writer, Gene Ashe, came in and went over some of the things with the contestants, asking to hear their imitations and telling them how host Chuck Woolery, would probably phrase the personal questions to elicit their TV-related imitations or stories.

The contestants drew straws to determine who would sing the next line of a theme song in the "toss-up" question asked at the beginning of the round. Apparently they had trouble with none of the three contestants being able to correctly finish the lyric, so they weren't taking any chances. There had to be a ringer. Well, they wouldn't have had any trouble with this crowd, all of them knew the lyrics to the Love Boat and All in the Family themes.

A Costume coordinator also dropped by and decided if the clothes people had brought would do. Some people had to change including Teresa because they were worried that the pattern on her dress wouldn't be kind to the camera.

Then the first three contestants, David, Sharon and Neal went out to play their round. (aired on August 10th 2000) Teresa was in the second round with Vinnie and Howard and had to stay back in the green room. This was a Satre-esque form of torture as New York entertainment lawyer Howard regaled us with tales of favorite childhood programs and everyone felt compelled to share celebrity encounters. The hours crawled by, three of them, I think. Seemed longer.

As a guest Tracy could go and watch that first round. Small crowd, only about seventy-five people, but that's all the seats there were. The other contestants' guests were nice enough to save me a front row aisle seat. To my delight I was right behind judge Malcolm Bondon, last year's winner of the Ultimate Fan Search (see interview below).

Chuck Woolery was the host. He would come and talk to the crowd whenever they would pause taping. He chatted about his one hit wonder, Naturally Stoned, meeting John Wayne and bass fishing. During the actual round there were a few technical problems and mangled pronunciations that caused things to be reshot. The questions seemed pretty easy to me and I thought Teresa would ace it when she got on stage. For Heaven's sake, Kirk's middle name... Who played Picard? I could do those in my sleep and I lost in San Rafael. David won that round. About half the audience left, at that point.

Unfortunately when it came time for Teresa's round (aired on August 11th 2000) she drew some bad categories. Mostly 90s television and things we just hadn't studied up on. No Star Trek (or any Sci-Fi), Monkees, A-Team or all that old stuff we know so much about. And the new stuff we studied up on... well let's just say that no one asked what Jack's snack mix on Will and Grace is called. In fact the standout video question was "When Rerun joined a cult on What's Happenin' and worshipped Ralph, what was Ralph?" So she lost, with Howard ahead of her by a couple questions, and Vinnie proving his superior knowledge, especially on current shows. But she got a television set as a consolation prize, another unexpected bonus. We finally received it a few days before the competition aired. It's a big Zenith Television that wouldn't even fit in our Entertainment Center.

Teresa was sent away to sign more papers and Howard and Vinnie played on. Unlike the quarterfinals, when a celebrity guest appeared it wasn't in person. It was an on-screen video question. In this case it was William Christopher asking a M*A*S*H* question. Vinnie was still smokin' during the second phase of the round, and was ahead when they broke to put up the lightning round podium. The lightning round gimmick was that the answer had to be court, sport or report. It was close there, but eventually Howard pulled ahead, which you can do quite quickly in the lightning round.

We hung around for a little bit after the taping was over. I asked Malcolm if he would do an interview for us and gave him our card. Despite having lost, Vinnie, surrounded by well-wishing friends, looked pretty happy. Howard however was less than thrilled. Apparently there was some question of whether he could continue, because, as an entertainment lawyer, he had once worked for a friend of a friend of somebody who worked at TV Land, or something like that. (They did, of course let him continue. He and David from Iowa both made it to the final.)

We were one of the last to wander out of the studio. When we got out there they were having some difficulty with the hired limos. Chuck Woolery's driver apparently had a problem finding the correct entrance. He was waiting on the wrong side of the building. So when Chuck came out, rather than make him wait, they gave him Malcolm's limo. Which means when Malcolm came out he had to wait until they found Chuck's limo and made the concept of "correct entrance" clear to its driver.

Meanwhile the van our fellow contestants had taken back to the hotel was long gone, since after their round they had headed, guests and all, straight back to the hotel. So we waited around some more for our town car that was stuck somewhere in traffic. But we made it back to the hotel, dressed and went out to dinner in an effort to blow the remainder of the five hundred in spending money. That's no problem in New York. Okay, for us that's not a problem anywhere.

Here's an article on this year's winner, Paul Goebel (a.k.a King of TV).

Interview with Malcolm Bondon

The First TVLand Ultimate Fan

T 'n' T: Was the process last year different from this year's competition?
Malcolm: Yes, it was much different. Last year, 16 finalists were flown to LA (15 regional winners and 1 online winner). We all were given a 35 question written test of TV trivia. Sample question: On "The Courtship of Eddie's Father", Tom Corbett was the editor for what magazine? Answer: Tomorrow Magazine. We then were individually interviewed by the producers of the show. They asked us a series of questions. One of them was: if I was stranded on a deserted isle and I had a TV that received only one channel, what channel would I want and what TV character would I want on the island with me. I told them that I would want Macguyver to be on the isle with me. I figured that with his ingenuity, he could get me countless channels on the TV and get me off of the island when I was ready to return to civilization. Later that evening, we were notified which 9 of us out of the 16 would advance to the next round. The next day they took the 9 of us and split us up into 3 groups of 3 to compete in the semifinals. The winner in each semifinal round advanced to the televised final match.

T 'n' T: Did you think you'd win from the start?
Malcolm: I thought that I had a good shot at winning, but I was also a realist about the whole situation. I know that there are many people around the country who also share my love for TV trivia. It could have just as easily been one of them who was crowned "The Ultimate Fan"

T 'n' T: Did you have to do a lot studying or did you already know most television trivia?
Malcolm: I have been a "student of television" for over 20 years, so for the most part I went with what I already knew. Many of last year's contestants (me included) used "The Comp. Directory..." by Brooks and Marsh as a reference tool while in LA. I then realized that it was basically pointless to try and study for something like this. I figured that I should just go with what I had instead of cluttering up my brain with shows that I didn't know that well.

T 'n' T: What kind of job did you have before you became the Ultimate Fan and do you still have that job now?
Malcolm: I was a bookstore manager. I left that job last Nov. due to job burnout. I am currently doing data entry. I am going to try to enter the field of commercial/voiceover acting. Over the next few months, I will shop around for a talent agent. If I am lucky, maybe I'll end up on TV or the radio after my fan hour ends.

T 'n' T: How has being the Ultimate Fan changed your life?
Malcolm: TV Land has invited me to NYC several times for various promotional opportunities. I appeared on the morning show "Fox and Friends" with Melissa Gilbert. The producer of the upcoming revival of To Tell the Truth saw that segment and thought that I would make an interesting contestant. I went to Burbank last month to tape my appearance on "T4"... it was a marvelous experience! The show will debut this fall in first-run syndication. I don't know the airdate of my appearance yet. At this year's annual N@N/TVL Upfront Luncheon I met and posed for photos with John Moschitta Jr (the Fed Ex guy), Tina Yothers, Lisa Whelchel, Cheryl Ladd, and Mr. T!! One of the big plusses of being crowned "The Ultimate Fan" has been the opportunity to meet fellow TV trivia buffs. I made friends with some of the contestants from last year and this year. I have also become "online buddies" with people who have seen me on TV Land.

T 'n' T What did you want to program for your once a week hour that TVLand wasn't able to acquire?
Malcolm: Some of the series that I wanted to air, but couldn't were: The Mothers-In-Law, Burns and Allen, Roll-Out, and The Hero.

T 'n' T: What programs are you planning to show for the rest of your year?
Malcolm: Here is the lineup for the remainder of my "reign":
7/14 My Favorite Martian/Fast Times
7/21 Lucas Tanner
7/28 Maverick
8/4 Coming of Age/Knight and Daye
8/11 The Andy Griffith Show (special requests/dedications to 2 of last year's contestants)
8/18 The White Shadow
8/25 The Betty White Show
9/1 Nichols
9/8 Blacke's Magic
9/15 Bachelor Father/Jack Benny
9/22 The New DVD Show
9/29 The Outsider
10/6 The Human Factor
10/13 Head of the Class/Domestic Life
10/20 Flo/It's A Living
10/27 Midnight Caller
11/3 The Days & Nights of Molly Dodd
11/10 M Squad

The impolite questions:
T 'n' T: After your reign is over is TVLand going to hire you for a real paying job?
Malcolm: That's a possibility, but nothing has been promised. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

T 'n' T: Did becoming the Ultimate Fan make you a babe-magnet?
Malcolm: No, I haven't had any "Hard Day's NIght" like encounters...LOL. However, I have been recognized in public by people who have seen me on television. They have all been very warm and gracious towards me. A few have even asked for my autograph...now that's a strange feeling!

T 'n' T: Do you know who did the voice-over for the opening of The A-Team?
Malcolm: That is an excellent question. This is just a wild guess...Robert Conrad?

Interview with Teresa Murray

Not The TVLand Ultimate Fan

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