Morning Announcements Turns 10
A decade after its debut, the creators look back on a little show that had a big impact at one San Francisco ad agency
Ten years ago this month, a bunch of people at San Francisco ad agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners had the idea to do weekly “show” reminiscent of the morning announcements that students hear at the start of the school day.
Like most ideas born at GS&P, it metastasized into something more complicated. Over two consecutive summers, they ended up producing 16 episodes that skewered and celebrated the agency’s personalities and culture.
On this, the 10-year anniversary of the first episode, the creators reminisce about the show, tell some never-told stories (because, really, who’s been clamoring for stories about an internal company comedy show?) and reflect on the legacy of the best side-project they ever worked on.
“We literally went underground. In a caged area. It was pathetic. But it was ours.”
The Beginning
Like most creative endeavors, Morning Announcements had many fathers and mothers. Predictably, ten years later, memories of the show’s genesis vary.
PJ KOLL, executive producer
I think I’ve been able to stay in the advertising business as long as I have because I have early onset Alzheimer’s and/or credible signs of minor head trauma. Please take everything I say from here on out with a grain of salt. It was a really fucking long time ago.
As I recall it, it all started with Tim Pries saying he wished GSP had morning announcements (a la Rydell High) over a PA system. Unfortunately, we didn’t have access to PA system at GS&P.
TIM PRIES, producer and occasional on-air talent
I remember starting at Goodby and after a time I told PJ, “It feels like high school. We should do a morning announcements thing like in high school but instead of covering what the score was for the JV soccer team last night we could talk about the goings on here.”
JON WOLANSKE, writer and on-air anchor
The earliest memory I have is of PJ coming into the mailroom when I was in there one day and saying, “Remember the morning announcements you used to hear in high school over the intercom? We should do that.” Sure, he was saying this to Mike Johnson, but for some reason I was nearby and thought, “That’s a cool idea.”
TIM PRIES
PJ said you have to meet Wolanske and those guys and chat with them about it. And, so, he introduced me to Jon Wolanske and subsequently Jean and Johnny K (John “the Hammer” Kovacevich, Mr. Kovac … I forget which name he was running with in those days). And that is how I remember it starting.
PJ KOLL
I can hazily picture Tim and I meeting in Edit One with Jon Wolanske and laying out what we were thinking. We had produced hundreds of holiday videos but never a weekly show. We had all the resources for making a show but just needed to put all the bits together in addition to our already insane workload.
JON WOLANSKE
At that time, the agency had ballooned to this massive size thanks to some incredible new business wins, and I think the guys were hoping to broadcast some of the humor and mischief the agency had been known for to the new folks in a way that said, “This place is weird and you can be funny and make fun of the people above you and you can leave your mark on it.”
JAMES HORNER, executive producer
For PJ and me, the original idea, we always had so many different kinds of filmmakers downstairs. We wanted to just basically give them an outlet. So that seemed a good place for them to play and we wanted it to be something that was just for us.
JON WOLANSKE
I think I talked to PJ and Horner a few times, just to get a feel more for what was possible, and when I got the sense that they would be really pretty hands-off things started falling into place.
They knew Jean would be great, because she’s hilarious and sarcastic and had opinions on the place and knew a lot of the personalities pretty well. I asked Kovacevich to get involved because we had a rapport and I knew how prolific he was as a writer. I also realized this would be a filmed thing and we needed someone who was photogenic with great hair and even greater repressed rage.
JOHN KOVACEVICH, writer and on-air correspondent
Jon asked me to get involved. I was still relatively new at the agency and it takes a while to “get on the radar” at GS&P. Wolanske and I had done sketch comedy together with Killing My Lobster and I was still doing improv shows at BATS. It sounded like fun. Plus, my entire work history is me talking shit about the people in charge, so this felt like a way to do that, but funny.
Also, when I took the job, I thought that I’d get to make funny ads and I hadn’t gotten to make anything funny yet. So I was up for anything that allowed me to write comedy that didn’t have five ACDs, ten CDs, and 27 clients making it “funnier.”
JEAN (WEISMAN) SHARKEY, writer and on-air correspondent
I feel like we got a very vague email from Horner about how we could help E-level show off their capabilities by creating a funny show and letting them shoot/edit it. Somehow a group of “funny writers” was assembled. I was obviously included in this group by accident but soldiered on as if I belonged. I think maybe initially Craig Mangan was also part of the group but quickly backed away, knowing full well it would be a giant undertaking. He was smart.
JON WOLANSKE
We wanted to keep the crew pretty small. I was afraid to get a ton of people involved — writers and art directors we looked up to and really kind of secretly admired in some cases. I worried if it was a failure, we’d have dragged them into something and I’d feel terrible.
If the failure was on our hands, I was okay with that. But we sort of figured things out as we wrote and recorded it. We were “building the bike as we rode it” in a way.
PJ KOLL
In addition to all the folks you’ve been hearing from so far, we had Brandon Loper, Hasan Said, Luke Dillon, Ty Bardi, all the interns, plus the full production services of E-level and the Claude Shade’s photo studio behind 650 California, but really it was the basement. We literally went underground. In a caged area. It was pathetic. But it was ours.
“I saw it and it was so great and dumb. Tim ran in and showed it to me and I was like…Wow, that’s stupid. It was awesome.”
Let’s Make a Show
The writers started to work on scripts for the early episodes, a title sequence was created, a green screen was located, and the first episode was shot.
JON WOLANSKE
In terms of getting the show off the ground, what surprised me the most was the instant runway we were given. Like… I didn’t know Horner and PJ terribly well then, but it took a day from them floating the idea, to us kinda gathering and saying we’ll try it, to suddenly it being a thing with resources. Like… multiple camera people and editors and motion folks. It was crazy. It happened in a snap. You’d walk down to E-level and there’d be paying jobs going, but the editors would look up and say, “You know what? Come back at 5, I want to show you something.”
TIM PRIES
John, Jon and Jean cranked out the scripts.
JON WOLANKSE
I think the first joke I wrote was the National Anthem thing. Just because when PJ said, “like the announcements you heard in high school,” my head went to the Pledge of Allegiance, for some reason, and “all rise.” And the camera stayed in the same place and saw, well, my crotch. When we filmed that and HR allowed us to keep it in (or we ignored their comment and it stayed anyways, I can’t remember), I think that was a sign that we could get away with pushing things on the show.
JAMES HORNER
I always remember the national anthem when the camera stays at Jon’s waist and he’d…adjust himself. I was both nervous and amazed that this is happening. Again, that was a thing where Morning Announcements had so much more edge than the Christmas videos. It made you uncomfortable in a way that was really good.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
We would email around a Word doc and we’d throw in jokes and bits that we thought were funny. And if we thought we had a funnier way to structure the joke or something, we’d re-work something that somebody else had suggested.
JEAN SHARKEY
I remember us talking through a few thoughts and then each of us working on segments and combining them. We worked together really well, actually. I remember deciding we would always do a pledge joke, things like that.
JON WOLANKSE
At one point, one of us said, Google should come up with a way to share one document amongst many writers in real time online. And then we laughed and laughed.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
Like I said, Wolanske and I had worked together writing sketch shows, so we had a pretty easy way of working together. The desk stuff was all pretty scripted, but the “special report” stuff that I did was really just a one-line idea and then I would sort of improvise it on the fly. Jean’s reports were the same way.
JON WOLANSKE
John generally kept his stuff to himself and whomever was was filming it. What a collaborator! And Jean got so busy with production at one point that she’d have to send her pieces from the edit house she was holed up in. A lot of her pieces were about life on production, not coincidentally.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
Later, we’d write stuff like “Andrew (Bancroft) does a rap” and then he would just come up with that stuff on his own.
JON WOLANKSE
I don’t think anyone beyond John, Jean and I ever looked at the scripts. Even our producers Tim and Cathleen (Kisich); they wouldn’t even read it unless we asked them to right before filming it. But they did contribute ideas for bits and jokes over the course of the season.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
To be fair, a lot of the funniest bits weren’t scripted — they were things that we found when we were editing the thing. Like that deer footage and song (which became one of my favorite recurring jokes) was something we found one night when we were editing — it was never in any script.
PJ KOLL
Season one’s production was pretty low-fi and scrappy. I think we were just figuring things out. We had real hopes of trying to do it every week but with workloads, real clients and travel. That proved to be amazingly difficult.
Ty Bardi created the opening sequence. We wanted to give it a retro VHS/Betamax feel. Maybe it was based on an old porno opening title sequence but I can neither confirm or deny that.
JAMES HORNER
Ty’s opening credits animation may have been one of the first things I saw and it was so great and dumb. Tim ran in and showed it to me and I was like…Wow, that’s stupid. It was awesome.
TY BARDI, animator
The Morning Announcements intro was based on 80’s adult video company logos that always ran at the beginning of porn or splatter horror tapes. Any American male old enough to have rented VHS cassettes should be familiar with them. The companies had names like VidCo, VCX Entertainment, Vestron Video, etc., and the logo sequences always featured some combination of space, lasers, chrome, and a lot of cheesy video switcher effects from the era. I tried to make it look as authentic as possible and just lifted the synth music directly from the original Vestron Video logo (which I pulled off of YouTube).
The funny thing is that I didn’t come up with it specifically for Morning Announcements. Tim Pries, PJ Koll and I used to work at this company called Radium, and at some point, the owners asked me to pitch a rebrand. So I spent about an hour on it and sent them that animation the same day (only it said “Radium Videotronics” instead of “Morning Announcements”). They were like “What the fuck, Bardi?” Nobody really found it as funny as I did.
Then about a year later Tim asked if I still had that animation and I said “No, but it’s not hard to recreate.” So it took a year, but the joke finally landed.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
This is the dumbest clarification of all time, but the actual name of the show was supposed to be “This is This is GS&P This Week” or “T.I.T.I.G.S.P.T.W.” We thought it was stupid funny when Jon read the acronym really fast. The second season was supposed to be “This is This is GS&P This Week, The Final Season” or “T.I.T.I.G.S.P.T.W.T.F.S.” But because of Bardi’s great animation at the beginning, everybody called it “Morning Announcements.”
JON WOLANSKE
We asked Claude for a greenscreen backdrop because we felt we needed some sort of broadcast set feeling and we knew he was shooting products for Sprint and had these things in his studio.
JEAN SHARKEY
I remember spit-balling with John and Jon and we realized maybe (the green screen) should never have anything on it. We just thought that was dumb and funny. I’m sure, from a production standpoint, that was a relief to our editors and producers who didn’t really have the time or energy for a more complex show than we were already assembling.
TIM PRIES
Once it became a thing and we knew we’d be making a bunch of episodes, I remember us trying to find a place to leave the green screen up so that part was at least ready for whenever we could find the time to shoot that part of the show. And ultimately we ended up in the basement storage room in 650. Wasn’t weird at all.
JON WOLANSKE
We shot the desk stuff early in the morning. Set-your-alarm early.
TIM PRIES
We’d go in to the office at 7 a.m. to shoot it before “work started” and then we’d load the footage and cut after the work day and be there till 11 p.m. or later and/or also come back in early to cut and review.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
Brandon Loper, man. No way there’s a Morning Announcements without Brandon Loper.
BRANDON LOPER, cinematographer, sound, editor
I remember hearing rumblings about something from Tim, James and PJ. I don’t remember if they asked me to be involved or if I chimed up and said I’d like to do it. Around that time Horner started a “Young Directors Program,” so he was always throwing things my way to build some chops. I think he thought I could do funny things because I like to laugh.
TIM PRIES
Brandon Loper did almost everything in those early episodes — shooting everything and editing the whole thing. Later, we started tapping into Jason Roberts, Hassan Said, Eric Herron, to shoot and edit, as well as Nat Fuller, who now cuts for Stranger Things. Lots good people worked on this little show.
JEAN SHARKEY
I remember thinking, “Damn, Brandon is really good at shooting this in a comedic way.” I remember showing up early and meeting you guys in the basement of Claude’s studio in the morning and feeling like it was a fun secret project. I also blew a lot of takes because I could never not laugh at our jokes as Wolanske was delivering them.
BRANDON LOPER
The editing was tricky because, at that point we weren’t really busy enough on the production side of things on E-Level, so I was also working as an assistant editor on several different rippos at once. It was a bit of a juggling act. There were lots of late nights and 25-cent beers in the mix. I feel like that’s where some of the magic came through. We literally didn’t have time to overthink it or develop a fancy style. It was raw and those star wipes were easy to copy and paste
TIM PRIES
From that first episode, we were always racing to get the cuts done in time for the airing and get the files loaded/prepped in Town Hall, which Luke Dillon always helped us to sort out.
“They set our donut budget at 60 bucks a week.”
Debut & Donuts
With the first episode ready to go, Horner decides to that it should air in the main lobby (then called “Town Hall” or “Town Square.”) He also purchases pastries to secure an audience; a decision that would have…repercussions.
PJ KOLL
As with most things, we didn’t ask for permission to create, air, or post morning announcements to the GS&P intranet. We produced our first show which aired it in the lobby of 720 early one morning in May of 2009.
JAMES HORNER
We wanted to show it in the lobby ’cause it was 9 a.m. and, hey, this is our lobby as much as it is anyone else’s and people don’t get here ’til 9:30 or 10. Let’s show it up there. That’s how it got to the lobby. And then from there it got out to the whole agency.
PJ KOLL
I can’t remember who sent the all-agency (email) but we invited the entire agency down to join us. James Horner had purchased donuts for everyone.
JAMES HORNER
The first one we did I just got donuts on the way to work and I think this is a story people know. I got 4 dozen donuts. And we invited the whole agency to come down.
PJ KOLL
Most likely the only reason folks came down to watch that first episode.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
I didn’t get a donut that first episode. The donuts went very fast.
PJ KOLL
Harold Sogard (a partner and vice chairman at the agency) was allegedly unsettled by the free donuts situation and was deeply concerned that the donuts had been purchased through the GS&P capital budget
JOHN KOVACEVICH
These days, Facebook and Google literally hand you a lobster on your way to your desk. Ten years ago, free pastries were, apparently, an unspeakable luxury.
JAMES HORNER
I got this snarky-ass email from Harold about the donuts. Like, who’s paying for the donuts? It was like $50 dollars of donuts. I was like, “I got this.” But I got called to his office about the donuts. In the end, he went full circle and we got a donut budget and we could expense it every two weeks…not every week.
HAROLD SOGARD, vice chairman
Huh. Doesn’t sound like me, but I’ll have to trust Horner’s memory on this.
TIM PRIES
I think they were up in arms a bit wondering if this was done on company time and is the company paying for the donuts and out of what budget. At the same time, I think they were like, “Hey, when’s the next episode?”
JAMES HORNER
They set our donut budget at 60 bucks a week. But when they asked how much the show budget was, I said nothing. Everyone was working hard but we really did feel if folks were blowing off steam, they were happier. It was an offset to the other work and all the hours for the paying projects. For me it was a win-win.
JON WOLANSKE
The show got a big reaction from the first episode. I think we were all surprised by how it was embraced so fully from the jump. I got a few very nice emails from folks I knew and didn’t know after the screening, really praising the initiative and also the courage of it, if you can call it that.
The anticipation for the screenings kind of grew and grew. The other thing I couldn’t believe is that I’d meet spouses of some senior people here and they’d say “I really like the show.” And I’d always wonder… how the hell did they end up seeing it? Cause it’s not like the screenings were open house affairs.
JAMES HORNER
Oh, it definitely got leaked. Jeff (Goodby) was usually the culprit for stuff like that. Christmas videos and stuff like this, people would be all over me for non-disclosure agreements to make sure stuff never got out and then Jeff would just email a copy to a friend and that was it.
JEAN SHARKEY
I was surprised that people liked it so much. It made me more and more nervous with every showing because more and more people would show up each time. Also surprising: new people would say hi and talk to me about the show and they always knew my name because I was on the show.
CATHLEEN KISICH, producer and occasional on-air talent
After the first episode aired, I marched right up to Horner and insisted I be included. OK, not really — I more asked meekly and gushed about how much I loved it.
PJ KOLL
Remarkably, Morning Announcements had momentum from the beginning. It was kind of a force and you really wanted to avoid having the show put you in its crosshairs.
JAMES HORNER
The way it blew up and how the whole agency loved it really caught me off guard. I thought there were more inside jokes than there were. But it all translated. The agency would show up at 9 a.m. on a Friday and there would be hundreds of people howling. Starting their day like that. No other agency does that. And it was ridiculous. So satisfying and fun to watch.
I’ve shown a million things in the lobby and 20 percent are lobby bombs and you are just flop sweating. Like your standard Discover Card commercial. And everyone is awkward about it. This was not that. At one point I think we filmed the crowd’s reaction for a future episode. And it was all just these laughing and smiling faces. It was like a Dead show on ecstasy.
“Thankfully, I’m extraordinarily comfortable with being in trouble.”
The First Season Rolls On
After the successful first episode, while donut budget negotiations ranged on, the crew got to work on additional episodes. And there was also a new mandate for the powers-that-be: we need to see episodes before you air them.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
I was a little naïve about what we could and couldn’t say, to be honest. I’d done all these comedy shows where the goal was to tell the funniest joke you can come up. And GS&P had this super fun, loose culture. So, I thought we could just poke fun at anything and anybody and that would be fine. Turns out, you can’t just make fun of people.
PJ KOLL
We were in a bit of hot water after the first episode. Thankfully, I’m extraordinarily comfortable with being in trouble.
TIM PRIES
After the first or second episode, they definitely made us start getting it cleared by HR and THE BRASS. Which I remember was a bit of a battle because it was the one thing we got to do without clients but then suddenly we had clients.
I think a very fair point was made in that we may mention something that may be HR sensitive to someone we are referencing or not referencing and with that we backed down. Although I do remember PJ and James going to bat for us for a few of those jokes to stay in.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
Horner and PJ sort of sheltered us from that stuff. But I do remember that a few episodes in, they demanded to see a cut before we showed it. The powers-that-be wanted to give us notes.
PJ KOLL
All subsequent shows we produced had to be sent a rough cut to a review board prior to airing. Some of the partners were on it, definitely Harold. And Harold always had notes.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
The most classic note that we got came from Harold. “Lose the Native American joke and the shit sandwich joke.” I remember feeling really angry about the note. I was very, very passionate about that shit sandwich joke.
PJ KOLL
Kovac agreed to lose the Native American joke but said we’re keeping shit sando. That’s some true creative integrity.
HAROLD SOGARD
For the record, I really did not enjoy playing the role of villain, one bit! But, and I could never explain this at the time, much of my nervousness around Morning Announcements was driven by the fact that we were in negotiations about some litigation and, let’s just say that the risqué jokes…didn’t help. I was and still am a big fan of the show. Happy anniversary!
CATHLEEN KISICH
I remember feeling like we were doing something a little sneaky — that we were being watched by the overlords and that we were trying to sneak the best jokes by them.
I remember hearing this quote when Team America came out that every time they sent it to the censors they made them change it and they wound up being more creative and it made it even funnier. So instead of saying penis they’d have to think of an alternate term and wound up coming up with something much more funny. I feel like we were in the same boat, trying to get things by the censors by being even more clever.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
Was it weekly? Or bi-weekly? Does “bi-weekly” mean every two weeks or twice a week? The former, right? Former, meaning every two weeks? Did we put one out every two weeks? I should be able to remember this stuff, right?
TIM PRIES
I had originally thought it would literally be an everyday thing, much like the days at high school, and we just write a brief little something about what happened that day before/night before etc. and jump in front of a green screen and read a one to two-minute thing. But what those three came up with was much more robust/funny/grand and we started out with it being a weekly thing.
After the first or maybe the second one went out, we realized that would be a bit crazy to sort out. I also think we came under a bit of scrutiny from the brass of when we were finding time to do this. So we decided on the every-other-week format.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
I remember being sort of an asshole about the schedule that first season.
JON WOLANSKE
John was definitely an asshole.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
About the schedule.
JON WOLANSKE
Sure.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
I kept corralling people about the script and making sure we put an “air date” on the calendar to keep ourselves working to a deadline. It was sort of stupid, self-imposed pressure, but it’s absolutely why we were able to produce so many episodes.
JON WOLANSKE
Kevin Leung helped us out a ton that first season.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
Jon and Jean and I were all writers; we couldn’t comp anything. I mean, I was pretty good at MS Paint, but that wasn’t really going to cut it. So whenever we had a visual gag that needed any sort of photo comp, we’d always go, “Let’s ask Kevin.”
KEVIN LEUNG, art director
You know how when people know you can do something you get asked to do that think again and again until you come to hate and resent it? That was photoshopping and assembling graphics for Morning Announcements. Except the hate part. No, working on Morning Announcements was the best — one ridiculous inside joke that lasted for two seasons.
JON WOLANSKE
The more people got the tone of the thing, the more they’d ask about where it was heading and if they could contribute to it. A few creatives sent me jokes to use on the air, which we didn’t really do. Not out of snobbery or anything, but because, in a few cases, I’d read the jokes, which were often about clients or specific assignments, and the writing would be so caustic I’d want to write back and say, “Dude, maybe you should just not work on Chevy?”
CATHLEEN KISICH
I remember getting a call at my desk, grabbing my things and running to produce. We never had a set schedule because we were all actually working as well, so the moment everyone had a free minute we’d dash and do our skits, usually ambushing whoever was going to be the subject. I remember the early mornings in the basement (god, where was that weird basement? It had a caged door we had to go through) where we’d knock out the desk stuff before the office even opened.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
For the Special Reports, I really just had vaguest idea of what they were going to be and then Brandon and I would just run around and film a bunch of stuff, interviewing people and improvising as we went. I would sort of edit the thing in my head as we went and would kind of get the bits we needed to tell a story.
BRANDON LOPER
There were a few moments where it actually felt like real journalism. We were actually pushing the boundary on something and it got real reactions. It was different than making ads. It was fun.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
The first one, “Who the hell are you?” sort of set the tone for the whole series of them. Christina (Peirona) was a great first “get” and was such a good sport for it that it really helped make it funny. And Brandon handed me that long boom mic for the first episode, which became a signature gag.
BRANDON LOPER
On E-Level we had a lot of old carry-over equipment that was just laying around collecting dust, so we had to use what we had. Like homesteading for production. So, I grabbed the long boom mic because we didn’t really have any good alternatives and the mic could run on its own AA battery since the camcorder didn’t have a pre-amp.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
The Grant Street one is still probably the best. We tried to film in one of the stores and I really thought Loper and I were going to get murdered by those mafia guys.
BRANDON LOPER
The moment with the statues was the best. It was something that literally everybody in the agency had experienced, so it got a big chuckle from the crowd and still makes me chuckle today.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
A lot of people remember that second one that I did, “Nobody Gives a Fuck About Your Dog.” You know how slobbery people are about dogs at work? Well, I’m a monster and I hate animals, especially at the office, and I thought that there were probably others who felt the same way. And that segment was funny with the shock value of me saying it to people…but I felt a little bad about that one. It was MEAN in a way I didn’t want those segments to be. Those special reports were funniest when we were calling out people in power — Rich’s wall garden sculpture or Derek’s daily timesheet idea. It was less funny when I was doing a piss take on some coworker just because they loved their cockapoo.
JON WOLANSKE
We took some swings at specific accounts and even some of the people here, I think. The culture here. And I never heard anything but support. People appreciated the humor in ways we didn’t expect. Especially the management.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
Some subjects didn’t always appreciate the joke. I remember the IT guy was pissed about a report we did about the fucked up email system and went to HR and demanded that we tack on a disclaimer at the end of that report that said, “Hey guys, we’re just goofin’ — email isn’t fucked up here, AT ALL!” Which just made the whole thing even stupider.
KEVIN LEUNG
It helped our rapidly expanding agency create a culture and a familiarity because it was inclusive of multiple departments — it turned ordinary coworkers into agency-wide characters. It created stars of a lot of people in the agency. Who knew Derek Robson was hilarious? No one before Morning Announcements. Who knew Jean Sharkey was a jerk? Before Morning Announcements, only Devin.
JON WOLANSKE
I honestly didn’t expect it to run one full season. The idea that we’d have even one complete “season” wasn’t on our minds when we started writing this thing. I figured it would either peter out, or HR would shut it down or that most of us would get too busy on official work projects to keep the thing moving at any sort of regular clip.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
We didn’t want it to just fade out. So, we decided that it would be a “summer series” and wrap up season one at the end of the summer. Having an end date in sight made the whole thing more doable.
CATHLEEN KISICH
I think we all didn’t really have any expectations. We just wanted to do something funny and poke fun at the agency. I think we were all shocked at the reaction — not only from the agency loving it but the admin not loving it. I think it honestly brought the agency together a bit and took the piss out of ourselves, which is important to do in advertising.
KEVIN LEUNG
It wasn’t just fun and games, it was topical. From Shutters fatigue to introducing brand new employees to ridiculing people for their heinous misuse of “Reply All,” the show really tackled a lot. My inbox nowadays would be a much cleaner place if people just watched “Reply/Reply All.”
BRANDON LOPER
Lots of people chipped in that first season. My bro-in-law Eric (Herron) was absolutely my partner in crime on almost every episode. It was a tag-team effort for sure.
JON WOLANSKE
How did we find time to do it? Let’s put it this way, during the first season, I had a lot of USA Today Money Window lines to write for Sprint. The humor potential of those was, uh, somewhat limited? So, to have this show as an outlet was a godsend.
JEAN SHARKEY
I have no recollection of how we made this happen or where I found the energy. Now, the whole thing seems exhausting but at the time it was energizing and terrifying.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
At that time, my daughter was a newborn and I was a pretty shitty dad back then, so I’d just stay late to work on the scripts or the edits.
JON WOLANSKE
For me personally, I think it partially changed the perception of what I could do here. It opened some doors to new assignments. It showed people I was comfortable speaking on camera and to pretty much anyone. So, it was actually pretty significant to my growth at the agency.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
We thought it would be funny to end season one with a cliffhanger where Jon, Jean, and I get shot. We really didn’t know if there would be a season two at that point, so it just seemed dumb-funny to pretend like the show was big enough to warrant a big suspenseful whodunnit-ending.
JON WOLANSKE
The dumbest joke we ever did may have been the fake death/cliffhanger at the end of the first season. When we were all gunned down by a mysterious shooter a la the “Who Shot JR” episode of Dallas.
We each did a take that was a solid minute in close-up of being gunned down by a machine gun. I remember Brandon rolling on us, us pantomiming the same rat-tat-tat-tat herky-jerky thing with our tongues sticking out and Brandon…not yelling cut at any point. This footage exists somewhere and I’m glad no one has ever made a GIF of it.
JEAN SHARKEY
I really enjoyed filming the scene where we all got shot. I remember laughing really hard about it. In retrospect, that was probably in poor taste. But it was funny back then.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
I mean, to 2019 eyes, this is all GROSSLY insensitive and gun violence is no laughing matter. Lots of the things in the show, I look at now and think, “Ugh, we’d never be able to do that today.”
And then, in the months before we jumped back in for season two, there were lots of conversations about how we’d reveal who shot everybody. I mean, we had actual meetings about this. There was talk of making a microsite where GSPers could vote on the shooter was. And then we were going let the “winner” be in the first episode and tell the back story…like most things with the show in the second season, it quickly got way more complicated than it needed to be.
“The weight of the thing got really heavy.”
A Second Season
In the summer of 2010, as the agency won more business and grew even larger, Morning Announcements launched its big second season. Emphasis on BIG: longer episodes, bigger production numbers, fully produced music videos, and more scrutiny from the administration.
JON WOLANSKE
I think that a lot of people saw this show as a way to process what was happening with the agency at a time when it had really grown to be a size it had never been before. The show was a response to what had the place become and a bit of uncertainty. What’s the culture here now? How do we work in a place that’s this big? Who are all these new people, or, as Kovacevich so memorably said, “Who the fuck are you?” It became a way for us to kind of collectively make sense of a slightly chaotic time and to process something that was forming kind of in front of our eyes.
JEAN SHARKEY
I remember people asking me all the time, “When are you making more episodes??!” People loved it so the demand was huge. I think it got so big that second season because, the more people liked it, the more they were willing to get involved.
JON WOLANSKE
We didn’t intend for the season two premiere to be 20 minutes long. It wasn’t our goal. It had been a while since we’d made a show and I think we just missed it. It was like revisiting a favorite vacation spot; we wanted to soak things in even more. And the water was warm.
I think for that first episode back, we also wanted to make a big first impression. I think it was natural that we felt we had to one-up things. So, we asked Goodby to do a bit of a where-have-we-been/state-of-the-state thing at the top, as only he could. And the whole Avatar thing as a surprise visual. It kind of set the tone for making everything a bit bigger and more absurd. But still within budget. Which had also grown a bit from the first season, if I remember correctly.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
Season 2 got ridiculous, really. Some of the stuff just got so big and bloated. There were some fun things, to be sure. Wolanske in full Avatar makeup — and Avatar was NOT at thing at that point — is still a favorite. We’d won Chevy and there were a lot of jokes to be made about the agency’s crazy growth. But the weight of the thing got really heavy.
BRANDON LOPER
Claude was a little miffed that Rich let James and PJ take half of his studio for E-Level, so that first year, he made us shoot in the basement, surrounded by old laser disc players and ripped up old backdrops and, yes, that cage that was down there. But by season two, we had warmed up Claude up enough to let us move upstairs and shoot the desk stuff out of the basement.
TIM PRIES
We started producing music videos to tuck into the episodes. That was pretty great. Cathleen was instrumental in some of those bigger productions, for sure. The finale as well, she went up there and talked the folks at the Big 4 into letting them shoot there. Was amazing.
ANDREW BANCROFT, special musical correspondent
I honestly don’t remember anything from that long ago. But any opportunity to dance around like an idiot instead of working on Crash the Super Bowl was a win. And it was dope that everyone at GS&P played along. From interns to partners, people jumped in and made each vid a mini party. And special shout out to Nic DeMatteo for helping with beats. Also, if you see any of those videos, I’m appalled by previous hairstyle choices.
KEVIN LEUNG
In my career at GSP, I have been a backup dancer in three music videos, but my first time was on Morning Announcements.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
In season one, Bancroft had done his “Spam Jam” rap and we just filmed the video in 30 minutes on the green screen set. By season two, the videos had grown to multi-day shoots, dancers, choreography, smoke machines. Don’t get me wrong, they were great. But the show went from this scrappy little thing that a handful of us were pulling together to a full-blown production that had a lot more moving pieces.
TIM PRIES
I just remember getting super stressed when the shows were longer about playback at Town Hall. Some of those files got huge and that long ago it was a bit of a crap shoot whether or not it would playback well.
JEAN SHARKEY
The “On the Road” segment was born because I had to contribute something while Devin and I were shooting actual commercials for clients, so I made him shoot videos of me while we were in hotel parking lots or outside editorial places.
PJ KOLL
That second year, we had a set system for letting the partners and HR to review the episodes before they aired, and it meant that we got even more notes than season one.
JON WOLANKSE
Things definitely got cut. Cathleen appeared in a bit about whom she was looking forward to hitting on at the agency holiday party that was, as you’d expect, axed by HR.
CATHLEEN KISICH
By the last episode we were really being crushed by all the notes and I think ultimately that was why we all gave up on it — became an exhausting political thing.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
By the end of the second year, I was completely burned out, to be honest. I’m barely in those last two episodes — I was really done. It went from something we were doing for laughs to more of an obligation. And there were so many more layers of approval we had to go through and so many more people involved in the whole process, it was just less fun. I got pissy about it. I’m not even in that final episode recording studio bit with Jon and Jean and I still feel a little guilty about that.
“Looking back, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be able to say 90% of the shit we said.”
Favorite Jokes
There are a handful of jokes that are still memorable to the creators, all these years later.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
“Wow. Somebody’s got a real lady boner for the new guy!” was the probably my favorite thing that I wrote for the show. The reaction on Main when we played it — and there were like 500 people showing up for episodes by then — was explosive.
JEAN SHARKEY
Lady boner. I have no idea why we were allowed to get away with that, but it still makes me laugh. God, poor Linda!
CATHLEEN KISCH
I remember leaving the Lady Boner joke in (the edit) and sweating in the lobby to see what the reaction would be.
JAMES HORNER
I was on vacation and there was an episode and the word “Lady boner” was in there. That lead to all kinds of interesting parental conversations on my end. HR would ask us to take out one or two things and usually…we wouldn’t and I would get my hands slapped a little bit.
JEAN SHARKEY
The scene where Tim almost grabs Cathleen’s boobs was just the stupidest and funniest thing. I honestly can’t believe we convinced people to shoot most of the things we came up with.
CATHLEEN KISICH
It was a skit about the new defibrillators that were installed around the building. You’d open them and they’d verbally instruct you as to what to do. I rarely was in front of the camera (only when I had to play a dead body or some kind of gogo girl in one of the Jelly Donut videos) and I played the dead body.
The machine instructed Tim to take off my clothing and I was wearing a button-down shirt. Every time he’d reach for the buttons, no matter how hard he tried not to, he’d graze my boobs and I’d start laughing. I think it took about five takes for us to get it straight. But let’s be honest, I think it was a real bonding moment between us.
TIM PRIES
The defibrillator scene, I think, was a favorite. Even though Cathleen will claim I may have ACCIDENTALLY grazed her breast…while trying to save her life mind you. So, just wanna make sure that’s cleared up that the scene/joke was what made it a favorite not the alleged infamous incident.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
I have a special fondness for that earthquake special report where I asked people if they were trapped under rubble whether or not they would eat their coworkers. Most said no…but their eyes said yes.
JON WOLANSKE
I feel like most of the jokes I wrote were incredibly dumb. The “Let’s look back at where we’ve been” retrospective of the show joke that we did in the second episode was one.
I also remember that the “things we need for a shoot” was a recurring joke the first season, based on those SPAM emails we’d get about in-house shoots going on and “does anyone have a (fill in the blank) we can borrow?” There were a lot of jokes about weird administrative stuff that we leaned on and exaggerated.
BRANDON LOPER
The recurring deer scroll is one of my favorites.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
Antonio Marcato had sent out an all-agency email that his wife was looking for a new gynecologist “for various reasons.” So, we wrote all the reasons she was dissatisfied with her current gynecologist and then scrolled them over this footage of a deer walking through a forest with this very sensitive pharma-esque guitar music. It was so, so stupid, but I showed it to Jon in the edit and he laughed so hard; I was always just trying to find ways to crack him up. That deer scroll became a go-to recurring bit.
TIM PRIES
I still quote and say, “So what did we learn here…?” despite the fact that no one knows I’m referencing Kovacevich from his man-on-the-street reports. Jean and Kevin Leung’s rivalry was legendary. The Bancroft music videos were magical. Reply/Reply All (which were memorialized in Kevin Leung-designed t-shirts.) The season finales were always top notch. Well…there were just two, but you know…pretty good.
ANDREW BANCROFT
Always had a soft spot for the Jon W-John K rivalry.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
There was this recurring joke about how I was scheming to get Jon’s anchor job. Which was a goof because there was nobody on the planet better at delivering that news anchor stuff than Jon. He’s GS&P’s Cronkite. Minus the hair.
PJ KOLL
I loved “No one gives a fuck about your dog.” Avatar edition. On the Road with Jean Sharkey Formerly Jean Weisman. John Kovac’s mustache. Wow! Tim’s mullet. What the fuck, Pries? Looking back, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be able to say 90% of the shit we said.
JON WOLANSKE
My favorite memories have to do with what people contributed. You had Kovacevich turn in these pieces the night before the edit was due that were fully formed little gems of observational “why do we do this as an agency” comedy. Andrew Bancroft would turn in these musical pieces that people would ask for copies of after the screenings. Folks like David Kolbusz would turn in a piece around his frustration that there was never any coffee in the coffee pots.
Some of these jokes could still resonate if the episodes aired today. And they were offered by folks who really had no time to work on them but did because the show almost demanded it of them, pulled it out of them. It was awesome to be part of a process that left room for folks to contribute as they could.
BRANDON LOPER
I know it was all fun and really silly, but I remember standing on the first floor watching with everyone and being proud that we made something. I still wear my Reply/Reply All t-shirt.
CATHLEEN KISICH
The conference call song is my favorite. Just so relatable for everyone in all departments. I also loved the Zach Canfield interview because I believe it pissed him off.
JAMES HORNER
I think the Christmas videos got to a place that was less fun. Lots of approvals. This was just blowing off steam. And we’d make stuff and sometimes things would get to an edge where we were told cut that… but it was great. Different. There was a lawlessness that was so fantastic.
JON WOLANSKE
Of course, I also loved our morning judo sessions and the bunk beds and the communal washing and all those other things you’d expect of an agency television show.
“None of this would have been made if PJ and James hadn’t said, ‘Sounds really dumb, we love it.’”
Legacy
For the creators, this goofy show, produced over two summers for their fellow employees, remains a highlight of their time at Goodby Silverstein & Partners.
CATHLEEN KISICH
I just remember it being the funnest thing I had done at Goodby. Everyone I met on that production is still a friend. And it’s like we have a bond for life. Like we’ve all had a child together. Like a Rosemary’s Baby-type child.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
Jon and Jean and I have a text thread that we started ten years ago for the show and we still text each other funny shit every few weeks, a decade later.
PJ KOLL
This show somehow defined the culture at the agency. It produced more employees of the year than any single department. (That’s probably not true but sounds really good.) Honestly, I was amazed when this became part of the recruiting process. Something Zach or Linda would share with potential creatives.
JAMES HORNER
It’s one of the best things we’ve ever done here.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
I made a lot of ads that I’m proud of at GS&P, but Morning Announcements is the thing I’m most proud of during that first run there. When I came back for my second stint, I tried to work some of that fun into the monthly agency meetings — but nothing on the scale of T.I.T.I.G.S.P.T.W.
JEAN SHARKEY
To this day, people will say hi to me and tell me they loved the show and I won’t remember ever meeting them while I was at Goodby. I imagine it’s like being an extremely minor e-list reality show celebrity.
TIM PRIES
None of this would have been made if PJ and James hadn’t said, “Sounds really dumb. We love it.” And gave us the support to make it and fight for us every other week.
JAMES HORNER
It’s one of those things that’s just right place, right time. I couldn’t imagine the people who did it could have been busier. But they made time for it. I don’t know what the unique circumstance was that made that time special. It’s a tough, unique of qualities (the creators) all had — and the ability to be ON CAMERA — that’s tough.
BRANDON LOPER
I feel very grateful to have the opportunity to tell stories for a living. I recently went back and watched several episodes and the rawness strikes me. The fact that no one else was going to see them allowed us to say and do things that weren’t filtered (although they were, quite often!)
I tried to shoot a few comedy spots several years after that and it’s freaking hard to make something funny! I realized that I’m comfortable loving comedy but knowing that it’s not necessarily my forte to create it, unless I have a crack team of John, Jon and Jean, and Tim and James and Cathleen and Andrew and PJ and Eric and Pete and Ken and the statues on Grant Street.
JON WOLANSKE
It represents the best of what an agency like GSP can offer its people. Who realize the resources they have at their disposal and try to make something like it.
JOHN KOVACEVICH
Loper’s a legit professional director now. Bancroft was just on Broadway. Lil’ Dicky (who was in an episode when he was just a junior account guy) is an international recording star. And I’m writing 10,000-word Medium pieces about a show that less than 1,000 people ever saw. So, I guess you could say that we’re all doing pretty great.
JEAN SHARKEY
Years later, so much of it is cringe-y but that’s what I love about it now. Also, the private jokes are so good. But they will never translate to people who never worked there at the time. It’s the ultimate private joke show. And I got to be in on it.
TIM PRIES
I think it’s funny, that we all look back and wonder how the flip we had time to do that…to make two seasons of an every other week, 10–15 minute show in between…work and life. But dang was it fun. As much as a lot of life has happened since then, we are all connected back to a really special time and place making something completely ridiculous that no one asked for.
JON WOLANSKE
It is a great portrait of the agency at that time and I wouldn’t change anything about it. Except I maybe would have applied a little more pancake make-up. Those set lights were unforgiving.
Thanks to all the fine people who shared their hazy memories of this time. Check out what they’ve been up to in the years since by clicking on their links.
Jon Wolanske | John Kovacevich | Jean Sharkey | Tim Pries | Cathleen Kisich | PJ Koll | James Horner | Brandon Loper | Andrew Bancroft | Kevin Leung
Oh, and if you’re one of the 9% of readers who made it to the end, would you hit that handclap thingy below? Thanks.
