ROX #85: Global Village Idiots

B: ROX #85 became the first television series on the Internet as of April 15, 1995. But it didn't happen overnight.

So here's the rather lengthy story of how our 85th episode, “Global Village Idiots,” came to be:

Our friend Eric Ost first put the idea into our heads back in 1993 or so.

Then we saw “WAX or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees,” which became the first movie on the MBONE in May of 1993, and J came up with a great title for our first episode on the 'Net: “ROX or the Discovery of Television by B.”

My ego was naturally inflated by the prominent presence of my initial, B, in this title, but later J thought of a better title: “Global Village Idiots.”

Eric Ost sat down with me and we posted a summary of the “J&B Get Baked” debacle to some drug-related newsgroups (MTV had just played a clip on their Straight Dope news special) — I was very confused by the... [More...]

DBD: This is it - the episode that hooked me on ROX.

Home on medical leave for three weeks nursing a bad, bad, bleeding ulcer I was left with little else to do but surf the Internet. While searching for “ROCK” groups on Yahoo, I misspelled the word and typed “ROX” instead. To my surprise there was a listing for ROX, which led me to the original www.rox.com/quarry site.

The site was bold and brash. The stills and colors grabbing and the whole thing reeked of remorseless attitude. This was the place for me. And what a cast of characters - a bartender, an editor, a tour guide and a anarchistic clown. Who would've thought! But what really caught my attention were the video clips that were offered up. Now please remember this is August 1995 and streaming video over the Internet was just in its infancy. Nobody was doing it - not even the big guys.

I waited almost two hours to... [More...]