I guess it was just a little over three years ago when SCTV’s Rick Moranis created the character of Gerry Todd, genial “hepcat” host of the all-night show on Melonville’s video music channel. In typical Second City fashion, the Gerry Todd Show was based on a juxtaposition of hopelessly incongruous elements—a late ’50s easy listening radio show catapulted into the futuristic universe of 175 channels per household cable television. Planted in front of a bevy of video monitors and behind a selfoperated control board, Gerry Todd—he of the slicked-backhair-with-square-horn-rimmedglasses-and-goatee persuasionchecked in with the guys in the circling satellite for fast-breaking weather reports, tried a videophone dialing for dollars, and even opened up the request line (Caller: “Hey, Ger, how about a Mission Impossible?” Todd: “Sure. Any particular episode?”).

In between station ID’s (six disembodied heads smiling at you, singing “GerrrrryyTodddddl”) and plugs for sponsor Crazy Hy (“This week only!” shouted Eugene Levy in full beard and thick Jewish accent from the seat of a fork lift inside a humongous warehouse. “17 inch TV, 17 dollars! 19 inch TV, 19 dollars!”), Todd aired the latest in adult contemporary video fare—namely, selections from lounge crooner Tom Monroe’s ground-breaking album, Tom Monroe On A New Wavelength, which, against the backdrop of a golf course fairway, found the singer “getting down” with such biggies as “Turning Japanese” (sung so as to rhyme with “grease”) and the Police’s “Da Do Do Do.”