PROGRAMMING NOTE: THE "ASOTV" SHOWCASE

Hopefully you've noticed that the "As Seen On TV" feature here at Inner Toob underwent a major shift on the first day of January. Instead of showing how famous people of the Trueniverse - historical figures, newsmakers, and celebrities - are depicted on television, the spotlight will now be on literary figures who have been adapted for the medium.

I've always held that television can be a teaching tool, and who knows? Maybe seeing these daily spotlights on the visitors from the realm of the printed word might at least intrigue a visitor to the blog enough to at least seek out the adaptation, if not read the original source material as well.

As an old PSA put it: "Reading is FUN-damental!"

These characters will be coming from novels, novellas, short stories, plays (as was Cyrano on the Second), and even graphic novels - at least for the week of Halloween. Most of them should be coming from classic works, for which the Project Gutenberg site will come in most handy for a selection from the original source to describe that particular character.

Otherwise, I'll have to depend on Wikipedia and other encyclopedic sources for the required information on characters whose source materials are still under copyright and thus not available online. (I lucked out with tomorrow's entry, thanks to an archived article at the website for the Guardian newspaper.)

Television is a great maw, taking in its inspiration from all sources.  Adaptations have been around since at least 1938, when a version of "Cyrano de Bergerac" was presented on British television. So there should be plenty of characters to last through the year and we'll even be able to re-instate the "Two For Tuesday" segment as well! (Today's focus on Miss Havisham kicks off that aspect.)

I hope you enjoy this revision for the new year and we'll see how it goes as the year progresses. I get the feeling that I may not have enough Western characters to last out the full month of August, or even the first week for that matter. (All that comes to mind right now is Owen Wister's "The Virginian"; and I suppose I could cheat a little with a book that Roy Huggins was forced to use when creating his most famous character - so that he couldn't claim the monetary rights of being the creator.)

At the very least it's like rotating crops - by switching over to this new format, hopefully that will give Toobworld Central time to find enough real people as seen on TV to run the feature on a daily basis next year. And if not?  Bleep! We can probably continue with this format for another 365 days!

Thanks for tuning in!