Invasion of the Cable Snatchers
In Texas the best way to get rich in cable television is to know just a little about TV and everything about politics.
John Bloom wrote for Texas Monthly, as both a staff writer and a contributor, from 1978 to 2006. He is a successful investigative journalist, actor, and author who was born in Dallas and raised in Little Rock, and he attended Vanderbilt University on a sportswriting scholarship. His nine books include the true-crime classic Evidence of Love (1984), Profoundly Disturbing: The Shocking Movies That Changed History (2003), and Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story (2016). He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award three times and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by United Press International for his eyewitness coverage of 9/11. Bloom is best known as his alter ego, Joe Bob Briggs, a nationally syndicated “drive-in movie critic” whose wisecracking take on B movies was featured on two long-running late-night television shows, first on the Movie Channel and then on TNT. That tradition continues with his latest series, The Last Drive-In, currently featured on AMC’s Shudder streaming platform. During the course of his hosting career, Briggs has executive produced 20,000 hours of television and has become the leading authority on exploitation and genre films. In 2022, two true-crime articles he cowrote for Texas Monthly were adapted into the HBO series Love and Death.
In Texas the best way to get rich in cable television is to know just a little about TV and everything about politics.
Urban refugees fleeing high-tech Dallas have created ersatz rural communities in the nearby countryside. This isolated, pastoral life sometimes erupts into adultery and murder.
Candy Montgomery thought her affair with Allan Gore was over, until she found herself fighting for her life against Allan’s wife.
And they most definitely conquered. The inside story of how a ragtag bunch of hippies made the wildest Texas movie ever (and spilled no more fake blood than was absolutely necessary).
From Red River to Rushmore, the 25 best Texas films on DVD.
And they most definitely conquered. The inside story of how a ragtag bunch of hippies made the wildest Texas movie ever (and spilled no more fake blood than was absolutely necessary).
Candy Montgomery thought her affair with Allan Gore was over, until she found herself fighting for her life against Allan’s wife.
Urban refugees fleeing high-tech Dallas have created ersatz rural communities in the nearby countryside. This isolated, pastoral life sometimes erupts into adultery and murder.
Beyond Greed is the tale of the Hunts’ journey from silver spoon to silver lust. In Sing Me Back Home Merle Haggard takes a quick look at his life (too quick). Billy Clayton has Gavels, Grit & Glory--or so says his biographer.
Celebrity is Thomas Thompson’s flawed venture into fiction; The Last Texas Hero deserves a twenty-yard penalty; Peeper is to be read only to find out who the real Tom is.
He’s the man with the Word, and the Word is for you.
In With No Fear of Failure you’ll learn how you, too, can turn rags into riches. Daddy’s Girl knows Southern discomfort. Petroleum Politics and the Texas Railroad Commission is the history of our own little OPEC.
All this twenty-year-old University of Houston student wants to do is jump farther and run faster than anyone else ever has.
Vesta Cawley turned to the city bureaucracy for help with a problem that didn’t matter to any of the other 900,000 residents of Dallas. But it should have mattered more to city hall.
Onstage, all happy lounge acts are alike; offstage, all unhappy lounge acts are unhappy in their own ways.
Ranger was the most romantic field in the early oil boom. Now a major company is risking its future to prove that romance still lives.
Cable TV has Dallas in its coils; acupuncture has its day in court; sex education has parents up in arms.
Those luck Arabs, with all that oil! The only problem, as a Saudi finance minister points out, is that oil is all they have.
Reading Big Oil’s annual reports for the truth about profits is a little like drilling for oil in the Baltimore Canyon: you know it’s there, but how deep will you have to go to find it?
A lot of farmers and gardeners think Congressman Kika de la Garza is a pest.
The intrigue behind the building of Houston’s Texas Commerce Tower was almost as monumental as the 75-story structure itself.
No news is bad news.
In Texas the best way to get rich in cable television is to know just a little about TV and everything about politics.
When the cable TV salesman comes calling, you should fully expect your city council to sell you down the river. Not that they mean to do it. It’s simply that history shows most city councils don’t know the first thing about cable. People who can barely figure out the briefs
The art of romantic osculation barely survived the jaded seventies. Now it’s time to rediscover the private delights and civic benefits of real kissing.
Whose blonde, curly scalp are the farmers after how do the rich and powerful run? Why, pray tell, does Houston need parks?
A down-home journalist; the privileged pew; gas for a price.
Who turned off the melting pot? Vietnamese and Texans fight on the coast.
South Padre defiled—and you were there; the joy of six hundred maniacal flute players; Dallas’ love-hate affair with Fair Park.
B-a-a-d government meddling irks Texas goat and sheep raisers; something’s rotten in Rotterdam, and it’s driving up oil prices; and the world’s best gymnasts are coming to Cowtown.
Were the words of Russian exile Georgi Vins heard over the din of the Southern Baptist Convention?
Valley politicos block minority TV; Dairy Queens reign in small-town Texas; woman diver yearns for Acapulco cliffs; Houston takes its lumps.
Suffering the lines at the gas pump; gambling in the magazine business; a dragnet for the Southwest’s sneakiest thief; what’s Dallas’ secret?
Who is the mayor of Cowtown? Who is that man in the ski mask? Who wants Caddo Lake’s water?
Playing chicken on the Houston Ship Channel; jousting with 700-year-old knights; will John Hill run for governor again?
Sherman’s First United Pentecostal Church believes persecution is good for the soul.
Striking the right chord with the Fort Worth Symphony and the wrong one with Mexico; grounding Wayland Baptist’s Flying Queens.
Taking it off at the last of the real burlesque joints; holy war on Austin’s Baptists; why Texas’ election system is stuck in the Dark Ages.
The dark side of doing business in Saudi Arabia; an endangered mountain in El Paso; and big profits with small airplanes.
The dark side of doing business in Saudi Arabia; an endangered mountain in El Paso; and big profits with small airplanes.
Fighting the foolproof crime, playing games you can’t win, building an ice cream empire, and raising hell in Baylor.
Bucking the U.S. Air Force, breeding horses for royalty, and hightailing it out of town before the Corps of Engineers gets you.
Help! I’m a prisoner on the freeway and can’t get off.
Welcoming danger with open arms, horse trading over tax relief, picking juries by their faces, and searching after the perfect twirl.
Lasers have been heralded as the greatest discovery since the computer, but they may be hazardous to your health.
Plainview puts a lid on deviate sex; billions of animals sleep in a freezer; oil spills are coming and we're not ready.
Psychiatrists send men to death row; Texas’ loop coasters give up-side-down joyride; Diablos play baseball with Kleenex and kazoos.
Taking on the Shah of Iran in Beeville; trying to save an eaglet in Waco; juggling sex in Galveston; flipping the switch on nuclear power; and fighting panjic at monstrous DFW Airport.
Life is a riffle. Cancer is a riddle. Are they all the same riddle?
Braniff is hopping the Atlantic to London; Pan Am is just hopping mad.