Sci-fi channel & Kecksburg's flying acorn
• UFOs & Bogus Science
The popular media know a growth industry when they see one. In its rich variety the species boobus americanus remains highly profitable.
The typical Bigfoot believer, judging from the convention crowd, is a middle-aged, working-class white male in camouflage pants and a T-shirt bearing a Bigfoot portrait.
Bigfoot is not pretty, but framed "fine art" prints, paintings and drawings of him were hot items at a fund-raiser auction. Buyers snapped up dozens of DVDs, CDs, videos and books with titles like "Mothman: The Fact Behind the Legend," or "My Quest for the Yeti," or "Bigfoot Songs for the Road."
Other media have warmed to the trend, and the crowd buzzed with news of "The New Roswell: Kecksburg Exposed," a new SciFi TV cable documentary scheduled for October broadcast. It was filmed this summer in Westmoreland County.
See, the county isn't noted only for elusive apelike creatures. Everyone at the gathering knew about the acorn-shaped UFO that plummeted from the sky above tiny Kecksburg in 1965, and the spate of UFOs seen hovering around Greengate Mall 10 years later.
Rebekah Scott, Post-Gazette: Bigfoot believers gather in Jeannette
Ratings mean money to television networks. Once you find a profitable theme you mine it.
Last year SCI FI joined forces with an investigative journalist, a Washington, DC law firm, and former President Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, to gain release of documents relating to an incident it calls "the new Roswell," a UFO sighting in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania in 1965.
"Now, one year later, despite serious effort to uncover the facts, NASA and the Department of Defense are still maintaining their wall of silence," said SCI FI Channel president Bonnie Hammer. "Whether or not this has anything to do with UFOs the public has the right to know."
Now the SCI Fi Channel is supporting what could turn into a series of lawsuits, first against NASA and then against the Department of Defense, the Army and Air Force, to get classified documents released to the public. ...
NASA was chosen as the first agency to be sued because SCI FI and the groups' attorney, Lee Helfrich of the Washington, DC-based firm, Lobel, Novins and Lamont, believe that they've fully exhausted their administrative options with the agency, a prerequisite for a judge to agree to hear the case.
While news organizations routinely pursue Freedom of Information Act requests with the government, it's relatively rare for a cable channel, especially one focused on fantasy, not the gathering of news, to pursue such a course of action.
But Hammer sees a great deal of programming potential in pursuing government documents related to UFO sightings, part of the channel's effort to "find the line between science fiction and science fact."
"As we grow the channel, this will become more and more important," Hammer said.
Reuters: SCI FI Channel May Sue U.S. Gov't for UFO Documents
The Sci Fi channel has good reasons for being fond of the UFO theme. Last November's documentary on the celebrated, suspected 1947 UFO crash in Roswell, N.M., was the highest-rated special in their 11-year history. It was seen by nearly 2.4 million people, or about 2½ times their usual prime-time audience.
Young gave details on each of these five witnesses and their reports: (1)The first reported his story in 1979 on KDKA radio; claimed to have been fire chief of Kecksburg at the time. In fact he was the fire chief in 1964, but not in 1965. (2 and 3) These witnesses were a father and son; the father is deceased. The son claims the military used their home as a base of operations, but does not claim to have seen any recovered object. Other witnesses dispute the claim about the use of their home. (4) A UFO group's display at a local mall in 1987 resulted in this witness coming forward. He says he saw the recovered object, but can't remember anyone else who was present. (5) This witness showed up during the filming of Unsolved Mysteries and claimed to have seen a hieroglyphic-covered object that was recovered.
Comments
Posted by: ofotoe | November 11, 2003 2:33 AM