The Tonight Show
The night of Thursday 9th of March saw one of the most exciting developments for the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) in South Africa, with the opening of our Auditorium at Rand Airport. The “Auditorium” is in an old squash court building, adjacent to TAC and the holding point of runway 29, which we have refurbished and kitted out like a cinema with old Boeing aircraft seats courtesy of Nationwide Airlines but with new state of the art sound system and our old, old data projection system. The sound mixer, speakers and DVD player were donated by Andrew Pennington but he was in a quandary about where we would get the microphones that we needed for the show, when Terry Hertz turned up (at the last minute) with a donation of brand new microphones from Sennheiser Communications worth R20000.00 or more.
Our opening shot, which was totally sold out a week before the evening, was the first in a series of “Talk Shows” featuring Karl Jensen as compare or talk show host. The first talk show guests in the series were Scully Levin and Laurie Kay, who together with Karl are all legends of aviation in South Africa and well known to most of us. The shows have been modeled on the Oprah Winfrey or Jay Leno show, but as one of the audience later said, “This beats Oprah any day!”
Most of the talk revolved around the flying experiences of these enormously experienced pilots in the airlines as well as the difficulties encountered putting on flying displays with the large aircraft like Jumbos and Airbuses (a three-ship 747 formation plus a 3-ship 747 and A340 formation). Not only was the evening extremely interesting but was interspersed with side splitting humor which had the audience in stitches. A lot of us were disappointed when Karl closed the show, feeling like it had hardly scratched the surface. You’ll definitely want to buy the video if you weren’t there. In fact many of the people who were there have enquired about buying one when it becomes available.
We wanted to create a series of TV – type Talk Shows but had a battle to find someone who would video the show for us professionally. Also, right at the last minute, Haley Horan managed to find a video team who turned up in time to get the show down on tape. The main problem was (and still is) we did not have the money to pay for this service up front but we are now in the process of working out a plan to get these shows financed by some kind of sponsorship. Haley Horan is probably the best person to be doing this production because they already have so much of the “action aviation footage” that is necessary to splice into the video between the interview sections. SA Flyer magazine has agreed to help us market the videos but we still need to get a sponsor for the Production costs which will be in the region of R10000 to R15000 per episode. The idea is that the sponsor will get Branding on the DVD, jacket and in the advertising as well as brand coverage in the video itself. We (EAA) will then sell the DVD’s via our Chapters and through mail order promoted by SA Flyer to the general public etc. Depending on the quality of the end product, it would probably also be suitable for TV broadcast. The idea with this production is not necessarily to make huge profits but to promote the EAA in SA as the “home of recreational aviation” and to expand the membership to the general public. At this moment we are still looking for a serious sponsor. Who do you know? Someone whose company could benefit from national coverage?
