The Lone Shark

The Lone Shark was a weekly, 30-minute local-cable television program which was broadcast for 10 years "(1991-2001)" on the Cablevision of Southern Connecticut cable television system. The Lone Shark was hosted by the program's Executive Producer Jim Sharky and co-hosted by the program's Producer Sean Haffner. The program was originally recorded and edited in-studio or "on location", but after 1993, The Lone Shark was broadcast "live" without a broadcast delay, editing or censor.

History

VoxPop Television

In early-1990, Cablevision's local-cable television studio was located at the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Connecticut in an on-campus broadcast facility. Jim Sharky was appearing on VoxPop Television "(another weekly program broadcast on Cablevision of So. CT's local-cable TV station, produced and hosted by Bill Arciprete and Peter Vouras)". Sharky's appearances were basically as a "correspondent", in that he would pre-tape "on-location" segments that would then be shown during episodes of VoxPop Television.

Outta Controll!

After working on VoxPop Television for a few months, Sharky decided that he had learned enough to produce and host his own television program. In the summer of 1990, Sharky began production of "Outta Controll!". Outta Controll! was basically what the program's name implied... an eclectic mix of in-studio interviews with faux guests, as well as real (but only semi-famous) guests such as Sy Becker (a movie reviewer for WTNH News in New Haven Connecticut). The program also included strange features such as studio crew members holding large banners behind Sharky and the guests with the title of the program's current segment printed on the banner (in place of on-screen computer graphics).

After only six episodes, Outta Controll! was suspended from production by Cablevision's station management for violations of the station's broadcast regulations. One segment of the program had featured the contact information for the business owned by a guest of the program, and the station management deemed this to be an unpaid advertisement for the guest's business. Sharky was warned to remove the contact information before the episode was re-broadcast as a rerun, but time restrictions and a lack of access to the station's video editing facilities caused Sharky to allow the episode to be re-broadcast with the guest's contact information later that same week. Cablevision's station management notified Sharky that, because of this second violation in such a short period of time, production of Outta Controll! was permanently suspended.

The Lone Shark

In 1991, Cablevision moved its local-cable television studio to the campus of Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut. Along with this change in the location of the production facilities came a change in station management. Because Jim Sharky's Outta Controll! suspension was imposed by the former University of Bridgeport station management (which had no bearing on the new facilities), the suspension was no longer valid and Sharky was allowed to produce a television program at the new studio facilities.

Sharky decided to call his new program "The Lone Shark". The name was a play on words, referring to Sharky's nickname of "Shark" along with the fact that he was no longer working as a correspondent for VoxPop Television, but instead was hosting his own program. The Lone Shark was to be a 30-minute-long program. Sharky had noticed that, because of his tendency to rush through segments at a breathless pace, the 60-minute-long Outta Controll! usually got to a point in the second half of the program where he had used all of the pre-planned material for the program. Therefore the last 10-15 minutes of Outta Controll! would become an unscripted free-form rehash of previous segments of the program, which Sharky didn't like. By shortening the program's length to 30 minutes, the hope was to always have enough pre-planned content to fill the entire length of the program (and possibly have some unused content left-over to use for the next week's program).

The Lone Shark - Production

Fairfield University Studio

Production of The Lone Shark began at the Fairfield University production facilities in the summer of 1991. Jim Sharky was both The Lone Shark's Executive Producer and Host, with Gordon Oppenheimer working as the program's Director and Lou Segal operating the audio board and VTRs in the studio's control room. Although The Lone Shark used three video cameras in-studio, all three cameras were usually unmanned and locked in pre-set positions for the duration of each program.

The Lone Shark had no production budget whatsoever, so the opening and closing credits of the program were actually made by Jim Sharky himself at home. Sharky would use a combination of a Microsoft Windows 3.11 screen saver and simple images that he created with Windows Paintbrush on his personal computer at home to create an animated graphic for the credits. Sharky would then use an S-VHS camcorder to videotape this animated graphic on his computer's monitor. This method was also used to create The Lone Shark's "backdrop" which appeared behind Sharky as he hosted the program, using the chromakey (or "bluescreen") technique. Using this technique allowed for a complete change to the look of each segment of The Lone Shark, as the background could be changed to a graphic suitable to the specific subject being covered in each segment. This eliminated the need for "practical" sets in-studio, instead replacing them with "digital" sets which cost nothing more than the price of a VHS video cassette, which could then be recorded-over for the next week's program.