Otis - you turned on the time machine for me. I was a college kid working as a video engineer for an NBC affiliate in West Texas. We had just ran the local news and realized we had a 'network feed' on the log for the next 1.5 hours. We enjoyed when that happened as it gave us time to knock a pizza and a soda, do some lightweight production work, clean up and wait for the midnight signoff. There was a problem though, no local advertisers had bought time for NBC Saturday Night. Dead air on TV was a nightmare to be avoided at all costs. The producer assumed that the network had filled the time with spots, but not the case. The first commercial rolled in and our station went quiet. Truly an Oh Shit moment. In addition we were laughing so hard over George Carlin we didn't realize what happened. Luckily we only had 15 seconds of dead air, which seemed like an eternity. I always had a back up feed with some public service announcements qued up. My friend and I watched the first episode and many others following that in total amazement. The humor and format didn't mix well with the locals. But we had to do what the network wanted. Thanks for your article. Lee