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TV SHOWS
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WNY & NY STATE
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BUFFALO'S
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Episodes coming soon!
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As much as I love small towns, no one can deny the exciting allure of any great city's neighborhoods and Buffalo is blessed with plenty of them. This series is meant to counterbalance the work I did on my previous Small Town WNY series and give the city it's due.
From the neighborhoods and villages that we all know and love, to upcoming ones that are just starting to breathe again, to a few off the radar areas that are fresh for discovery. Buffalo is a city that's on the cusp of a second era of true greatness. ~AA |
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(2022-2023)
SMALL TOWN WNY
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Fresh off of the hot-heels of the pandemic and my initial PBS travel show, "Discovering WNY", "Small Town WNY" is my second PBS series (my 9th TV series overall) that finds me exploring small towns throughout WNY.
And while you'll still find the more popular destinations on the show, I'll mostly be digg'n deep and "discovering" the lesser known and off the beaten path small towns that I believe, truly deserve a visit or two or even a weekend stay. It's a show whose time has been a long time coming for the WNY region. ~AA |
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(2018-2020)
DISCOVERING WNY
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"Discovering WNY" was my 7th TV series and was actually two styles of shows.
The first version of the show was an interstitial (between the shows) series that primarily featured small WNY towns and was broadcast on WNED/PBS, while the older show was a half-hour, small business profile series featuring WNY Mom & Pop Shops and was broadcast on four regional commercial stations over its three years run. Although the show is now out of production, I'm proud to share it with you here in its entirety. ~AA |
WESTERN NEW YORK
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(2007-2017 Remix)
KIDS SUPER SHOW |
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These are three of my previous kids' series that are currently being combined into one awesome show called "The Kids Super Show". I halted production of these shows in 2017 when I began producing the regional WNY travel shows that you see to the right here.
All three of these series were retro-style, 1950s-1970s influenced shows which were broadcast on over 95 stations throughout the entire US at their peak of popularity. Each of these shows was really just an ode to the nutty kids shows that I grew up with and still love. ~AA |
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(2017)
ROC N' B & FRIENDS
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I lived up in Rochester and the Finger Lakes region a few times through last years back in WNY and this show was a direct result of those moves.
The show was a collaboration with a few arts integration teachers who were based up in the Rochester region. It's was a fun, semi-educational show that could get pretty zany sometimes, but all in all, looking back, I think the episodes came out great and it was a good exercise in diplomacy in a creative group setting that seemed to flow well most times. ~AA |
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(2015-2016)
B, BLUE & ROC TOO
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Out of all the kids shows I created and produced over the years, "The Tall Tales of B, Blue & Roc Too", is the kids show series that I am most proud of.
It took much more work to pull together than any of my other show series and was honestly, as much as I could "bear". No pun intended... (You'll get it when you see the shows). These shows were 100% me and created within the first few years after I moved back to WNY in April of 2014 and feature true facts and history about the region turned on their heads. ~AA |
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
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Videos unavailable
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If it wasn't for "Exploring Sonoma", I most likely would have never ventured into creating regional travel TV shows at all.
The show was conceived during my Sunday drives through Sonoma County. If you've never taken a deep-dive-drive there, you owe to it yourself to get off your duff and just do it. A day's drive through the town of Sonoma and its town square, then up route 12 and over and up through the town of Sebastopol into the Redwoods over to the mouth of the Russian River where the tiny cliff-side town of Jenner is perched magically above the water and then up the coast to Seaside and Gualala will be enough to rearrange your DNA for good. It dawned on me during these Sunday drives that someone needs to capture the magic here and share it with the world. And hence my first travel show was born. The show was pitched and immediately green-lit by the program manager for Northern California PBS and was developed over the course of an entire year with a test pilot throw in the mix. But, as life would have it, right as we were preparing to begin actual production on the show, I had a harsh, personal emergency that ended up bringing me back home to WNY and I've been here ever since. I've included the show here as we're going to pull the trigger on it again sometime within the next few years as all the initial, difficult ground work is finished for the show and all that needs to get done, is to get out there for a few months a year and make it happen. ~AA |
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
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(2013)
MOON VALLEY MANOR
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"Moon Valley Manor" was broadcast on the largest independently owned and operated station in the county that boomed out to millions of folks in the SF bay area and beyond.
The show was also carried on over 96 stations across the county making it my most widely distributed show up to that point. The show was a remix of my first few kids TV shows ("Redwood Hollow" and "Yolotales") and featured additional segments that pushed it toward a darker tone as it was intended to be a 6 show Halloween special series. I've heard that the episodes are still being broadcast throughout Northern California on a few stations and honestly, that makes me pretty happy as I think the show really stands on its own. Now, it's not the type of show you're going to be able to watch and immediately feel comfortable and familiar with. It's not that kind of show, nor was that the idea behind it. The influences on the show ranged from Pee Wee's playhouse, to Sifl & Ollie, Brak, Home Movies, all of the early 50's and 60's kids TV shows and sitcoms like Dennis the Menace and Father Knows Best as well as early PBS shows like the original and best versions of Vegetable Soup, Sesame Street and The Electric Company, which, in my opinion are still some of the most freshly creative children's programs ever to be produced in the industry. In spite of so many so-called advanced in technology. I think we haven't reached that level of awesomeness again in the last 50 years. ~AA |
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(2012)
REDWOOD HOLLOW
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Incorporated into Moon Valley Manor
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"Redwood Hollow" was the expansion show for the puppet troupe I had developed during this time period.
The show was the immediate predecessor to Moon Valley Manor which incorporated the Yolotales shows and the Redwood Hollow shows with a few extras and animated segments throw in. Redwood Hollow was definitely a transformational show that found me exploring what could be done with the new technologies that were stating to pop up at the time. For me personally, it was the first time I had ever had any experience distributing physical products in our Northern California region as we were hand-making "Sequoia, the littlest Bigfoot" dolls in two different sizes as well as starting to produce our own retail book series. The Sequoia dolls sold out as fast as we could make them. I would literally drop them off at a shop and receive phone calls the next day or later that week requesting more. A few times, even on my way home from just dropping them off. They were so popular that word spread to the soft-lines buyer from Hot Topic and Spencer's Gifts and he began courting us for a few months to try to get us to sign up with them to exclusively distribute them. This led us to start a quest to find a local manufacturer in the Bay area to fulfill the order request of 75,000 units as I was dead-set against using Chinese manufacturing. The story behind that time period is worth writing a book about it all by itself and led us to a great connection and sponsorship with Folkmanis puppets. ~AA |
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(2007-2011)
YOLO COUNTY
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Incorporated into Moon Valley Manor
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"Yolotales" is the show that started it all for me in the television industry way back in the outskirts of Sacramento California in 2007.
And no, the show title had nothing to do with the popular song by Drake (Yolo), but rather the actual county I lived in at the time in Northern California named... yep... Yolo County. It was just a rather fortunate act of universal synchronicity that helped propel my little show all across the country in no time at all as many program managers took the show on its name and rather nutty content thinking it was somehow similarly themed to the hot and trendy song at the time. "Yolotales" was a complete throwback to the early, raw, 70's PBS kids shows that I grew up on like the initial seasons of Sesame Street and Morgan Freeman/Rita Moreno era Electric Company and incorporated people and puppets in quick, hand-drawn-background-style sketch comedy/edu-tainment for kids that seemed to resonate with parents and adults as much as it did with their kids. Within a year or so, the show found its way onto over 60 independently owned and public TV stations across the country and I was off to the races and this little independent media company was born! As time progressed, the show took hold in other areas of the country and I gained a lot more experience editing and producing special effects. Towards the end of 2011, I felt it necessary to grow the cast and characters into an even more demanding production-oriented show which would soon become "Moon Valley Manor". ~AA |
