Joe Ledbetter and Tim Piersant revive Chattanooga’s whiskey tradition with their new liquor label. Now if they can just make it here.

By Bill Ramsey | April 19, 2012
The Pulse | Chattanooga’s Weekly Alternative

“First thing’s first,” says Joe Ledbetter, a gleam in his eye and a devilish grin on his face as he uncorks a fresh bottle of whiskey. He pours two fingers of the brown liquor into a sparkling high-ball tumbler emblazoned with the logo of the Chattanooga Whiskey Company above the slogan “The First Taste.” He studies the nectar for a moment, sips, and smiles again. “Now, where were we?” he says with a mischievous laugh.

It will be the first of many “first tastes” for Ledbetter and his partner, Tim Piersant, during the launch party last Friday at Lindsay Street Hall for the new whiskey the young entrepreneurs founded just six months ago and based largely on a Facebook post that asked, “Would you drink Chattanooga whiskey?” A flood of responses in the affirmative confirmed Ledbetter’s assumption and the fuse was lit. On Friday evening, hundreds of bottles of bourbon bearing the Chattanooga Whiskey Company brand fill tables inside the ornate hall as a small army of servers prepared to man their stations for the evening event.

“I just hope it doesn’t suck,” Ledbetter says, half serious, half joking, referring to both the event and the reaction to the fruit of his labor and passion. His whiskey—smooth and warm, with just a brief, sharp spike the liquor is known for—does not suck. Nor does the event. Hundreds are invited and hundreds turn out to sample the new whiskey, which Ledbetter proudly proclaims will both return and revive Chattanooga’s storied distilling history, an industry that has been dormant since pre-Prohibition days.

Ledbetter has reason to be excited. Thirty years ago, he might have been laughed out of town, such was the state of downtown Chattanooga (and, for that, matter the bourbon whiskey market). But these days, the Chattanooga “brand” reeks of a renewed spirit of revival, spirit and renaissance, and Ledbetter and Piersant are banking on that special brand of local pride and Tennessee’s history of fine whiskey propelling them to fame and fortune.

The only problem? The Chattanooga Whiskey Company’s 1816 Reserve is not made in Chattanooga—not even in nearby counties, where state law allows distilling and bottling of liquor. No, Chattanooga Whiskey is distilled in Indiana—Lawrenceburg, Ind., to be exact, home of Lawrenceburg Distillers Indiana, which concocts such brands as Templeton Rye. At Lawrenceburg, Ledbetter says he found the right distillers offering the right mix (74 percent corn, 21 percent rye, 4 percent barley) at 90 proof (45 percent alcohol). “I’m the type of person who wants to know all there is about a subject when I become passionate about it,” he says. “I knew a lot about whiskey before, but I’ve learned a lot more. We had a very clear idea about the kind of whiskey we wanted to make—a pre-Prohibition mash build, something you’d find a 100 years ago—and then we found the right distiller.”

Jack Daniels might roll over in his grave, but Ledbetter’s “recipe” has less to do with the iron-free cave spring water and sugar maple charcoal Daniels favored and perfected on his Lynchburg property than reacquainting a city with it whiskey heritage. When distilling laws change in Hamilton County—something Ledbetter says he is campaigning for—he will be quick to reunite the whiskey with its city.

“We really want to make it here,” Ledbetter says. “It’s not about a person [like Jack Daniels] or even a fictional character [like Capt. Morgan]. It’s about a city with a rich history and heritage. Right now, it’s all about getting the word out and support.”

In other words, it’s a message in a bottle. Laws may change, but until they do, it makes no real difference to Ledbetter if his Chattanooga Whiskey is made in Chattanooga or Lawrenceburg. Mystique, after all, is rarely grounded in reality. And nothing sells, or indeed enhances, illusion better than liquor.

This week, Chattanooga Whiskey 1816 Reserve and its pricier companion, Cask, will get it’s first test as it goes on sale in liquor stores around the city. At $27 a bottle for Reserve and $40 for the premium Cask, it’s not cheap. But cheap bourbon is neither the goal nor the target market. Ledbetter and Piersant consider themselves connosieurs with a passion for fine whiskey and Chattanooga, and they’re banking on Chattanoogans returning the love.

So far, that’s happened—at least in enthusiasm for the product online, where Chattanooga Whiskey’s Facebook page boasts almost 5,000 fans seemingly foaming at the mouth awaiting the new brand’s availability in the city. After its debut this week in Chattanooga, the whiskey goes on sale around the state and Ledbetter has ambitious plans, fueled by a new Kickstarter campaign, to take the product nationwide over the next few months.

Ledbetter and Piersant have invested their own money and borrowed to fund their new company, guided by an intimate group of enthusiastic mentors and financial experts who believe in the idea. They’ve created a sleek website, hired local designer Steve Hamaker to create the company’s turn-of-the-20th century logo and both are investing increasingly more time to the new venture. Ledbetter is an insurance broker recently living in Washington, D.C., and now returning to live in his hometown full-time; Piersant works for his family’s business in Dalton, Ga. Both say they are “all in” as the company grows.

Just out of the barrel and onto the shelves of local liquor stores, it will take time to determine the success of Chattanooga Whiskey’s venture, but the company has at least two crucial elements in its favor: a nostalgia for Chattanooga’s rich history amid its blossoming renaissance as a center for culture, the arts and technology, as well as its increasing attraction as a business center located in a beautiful, hospitable mid-size Southern city; and the return of American bourbon whiskey as a popular, premium liquor and cocktail ingredient, fueled by the growth of small-batch bourbons that have attracted a cult following in bars from coast to coast.

First, some nostalgia. As Ledbetter is quick to point out, Chattanooga was once a liquor-distilling mecca. From the late 19th century until the early 20th century, the city was home to dozens of distillers before Prohibition became the law of the land. Businesses such as the Chattanooga Distillery, E.R. Betterton and the Lookout Distilling Co., among many others, were distilling, bottling and selling liquor in Chattanooga and the Tennessee Valley. Many of these brands, such as Betterton’s White Oak Whiskey feature labels, packaging and bottling similar to the famed Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg. It is just that look—the old-style, ornate lettering, the etched engravings of the distilleries and the era-appropriate slogans (Chattanooga Whiskey uses “The Dynamo of Dixie”)—that attracted Ledbetter to research the history of American whiskey in general and Chattanooga in particular. “We want to bring back that spirit,” he says.

Of course, Prohibition sealed the fate of all of these companies, but even after its repeal in 1933, Tennessee made it difficult for whiskey-makers to distill their product in the state. Until a few years ago, only Jack Daniels and George Dickel were the only distilleries in Tennessee. That changed in 2009 with a new law that opened up the state to distillers in any county where both retail package sales of liquor and liquor-by-the-drink sales have been locally approved. Some counties opted out, including Hamilton County, but county commissions in those counties also have a right to opt in by vote of the county commission. Ledbetter says he is gathering support to help make that happen. “It takes time, people, support—and pressure,” he says.

The other element in Chattanooga Whiskey’s favor is the rise in popularity of bourbon whiskey as a premium liquor in the United States. The center of the so-called Bourbon Boom is, of course, the South, ancestral home to Kentucky bourbon and Tennessee whiskey. As Robert Moss writes in the companion feature in this issue, not surprisingly titled “Bourbon Boom,” this was not always the case. “America’s Native Spirit,” as bourbon whiskey was christened by Congress in 1964, fell on hard times through the 1970s and ’80s, suffering an identity and ownership crisis while single-malt scotch became the coveted drink of high-brow, hip tastemakers. The younger crowd widened the divide, opting for white or clear liquor such as rum and vodka. That trend continues, especially in the vodka market, where high-end offerings are flavored with everything from chocolate to bacon and butterscotch.

Fine bourbon whiskey, of course, needs no added flavoring (and would be something akin to sacrilege amongst aficionados), although its bite—which caused many to make what is known in the industry as “the face,” a scrunching facial expression—spurred the large distilleries to trend toward blended whiskies. By the late 1980s, small-batch and special “reserve” brands came on the market, smoother, super-premium bourbon whiskies that retained the liquor’s character while largely reducing the sting.

The technique worked and bourbon whiskey has undergone a two-decade renaissance, replacing single-malts as the connoisseur’s choice, sipped straight or with only a cube of ice or splash of water to cut its sharpness. The high-end whiskey market has exploded and the South is ground zero, with brands such as Pappy Van Winkle occupying the apex in the galaxy small-batch bourbons, selling for as much as $65—a glass.

But in the world of liquor, like those of fashion, art, design and architecture, fancy is fickle and fleeting. Today’s hot small-batch bourbon may be tomorrow’s “brown water,” a swill “reserved” for gutter drunks. But it doesn’t hurt that such popular TV shows as “Mad Men” have revived a hip consciousness for an era when bourbon was the successful man’s drink of choice (Don Draper favors dark liquor, and frequently orders an Old Fashioned). It’s worth recalling that such “men’s men” as Frank Sinatra were champions of Jack Daniels, which Ol’ Blue Eyes called the “nectar of the gods” and rarely drank anything else.

All that swinging “ring-a-ding-ding” is good for boutique business. Retro-mania has sparked revivals in dozens of high-end, up-market business from cigars to motorcycles, guitars and gastronomy. Riding the coattails of a trend is easy, but in the end, however, nothing succeeds without a little savvy marketing and a skill for tapping the vein emerging markets. Ledbetter has those skills in spades.

While living in D.C., Ledbetter approached the proprietors of a favorite watering hole with the idea of launching a “whiskey society,” an exclusive club of young, upper-income men and women such as himself with a taste for fine liquor and cigars. He promised the owners he’d bring in 50 people who met those requirements—with the pre-requisite that if he did, he’d drink for free. It worked. Not long afterwards, Ledbetter typed the fateful Facebook post.

By Bill Ramsey | March 1, 2012
The Pulse | Chattanooga’s Weekly Alternative

During one week at the peak of his career as an illustrator, Sandy Huffaker had assignments from Time, Sports Illustrated and BusinessWeek. He had to turn down a fourth assignment that week from Newsweek. “I just didn’t have time,” says the Chattanooga-born artist during a phone interview from his home in tiny Raphine, Va.


Sandy Huffaker and friend on his Raphine, Va., farm.

The 1970s were the “glory days,” Huffaker says, for himself and a stable of talented illustrators whose work routinely found itself on the covers of the nation’s premier newsmagazines and in the pages of The New York Times. For the better part of that decade, Huffaker was among an elite breed of commercial artists—his hero and fellow Southerner Jack Davis, the legendary Mad Magazine illustrator, among them—working during a remarkable period when art directors routinely turned to illustration to give comic relief to the country’s deeply serious and dark problems. From civil rights and the women’s movement to Vietnam and Watergate, the gas crisis and inflation to the rise of Jimmy Carter, Huffaker mined a deep well of material ripe for his brand of visual wit and caustic satire.



“All that work has gone away,” Huffaker says, somewhat ruefully. But it was a damn good run and, he says, an era for illustrators that may never come again. It didn’t come easy even then, Huffaker admits, but with changes in technology, the turn towards photography and computer graphics, art directors adopted new directions and never looked back. “I doubt any artist could expect that kind of work these days,” Huffaker says.



Huffaker’s work and style were a culmination of his years spent as an illustrator and political cartoonist for newspapers in the Deep South. Born in 1943 into a staunchly conservative family, Huffaker says he didn’t have any political leanings until he escaped Chattanooga after six years of military school at McCallie. His talent and inspiration as a cartoonist until then had been drawn from the sometimes subversive Mad, but it was his experience as an undergraduate at the University of Alabama that awakened the Liberal lurking within. “My father went to Annapolis (the U.S. Naval Academy)” says Huffaker. “He just didn’t understand.”



Arriving in Tuscaloosa at the height of the civil rights movement with then-Gov. George Wallace defying the federal government’s insistence that Alabama’s state-run universities open their doors to Blacks, Huffaker and his future wife witnessed first-hand the raw racism of Wallace and much of the South as the governor’s tactics became a national disgrace.

Huffaker had seen enough and his political identity began to emerge, but he found his first real job not far away at The Birmingham News, where he cut his teeth as an illustrator on the newspaper, penning illustrations for the daily paper and its Sunday magazine. After two years, Huffaker was determined to leave the South and pined for the big leagues, bright lights and the promise of fame in New York. He sent his portfolio to Maurice Sendak, the legendary “Where The Wild Things Are” illustrator to gauge his prospects, and when Sendak replied, “C’mon up, you’ll do all right,” Huffaker wasted no time. “I had a wife and two kids,” Huffaker recalls. “It was the ballsiest move I ever made.”

Timing and talent were on Huffaker’s side. The artist scored two book assignments during his first week in New York that helped him survive the initial shock and boosted his name recognition. Other assignments soon followed and Huffaker took his place among the nation’s most in-demand illustrators.

But New York was not all glamour. His wife was almost raped and the gritty reality of the city forced him to consider a less volatile environment. At the end of the 1960s, Huffaker joined The Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer as that paper’s first editorial cartoonist. Under Claude Sitton, a former New York Times correspondent, the paper became a government watchdog, earning it the nickname of “The Nuisance and Disturber” from the region’s conservative base. But the experience was transformative for Huffaker. During his three years at the paper, Huffaker says he earned the equivalent of a PhD in politics and civil rights.

Returning to New York via his new home in Princeton, N.J., Huffaker renewed his relationships at magazines and newspapers, quickly gathering assignments for The New York Times’ “Week in Review” section and Time’s “Americana” page. For the next 15 years, Huffaker’s illustrations appeared almost everywhere—on magazine covers, record albums and books—racking up industry and professional awards and the praise of art directors. “Sandy is one of the heavies in cartooning in America ... his stuff can be devastating,” says former New York Times art director Eric Seidman. “His understanding of politics is amazing.”

When magazines and newspapers turned away from illustration, and Huffaker’s own creative juices began to ebb, he turned to book illustration and fine art. He wrote two well-received books of his own during the 1980s and illustrated dozens of others before moving to Santa Fe, N.M., to open his own gallery.



“Cartooning was always considered a lowly art, but I knew it could make the leap to fine art if it was done right,” he says. Despite stellar reviews and shows across the country—including a one-man retrospective at the Hunter Museum in Chattanooga—Huffaker closed his gallery and moved to Virginia to pursue his art and freelance illustration career. “It was the first time I felt I had failed, and it hurt a lot,” he says.

Distanced from politics for some 20 years, Huffaker says the events of 9/11 revived his political cartooning career, which continues to this day. His work is syndicated to hundreds of newspapers and magazines around the world, but he maintains a slower pace, reflecting the calm nature of his life in rural Virginia.

Ever the reluctant Southerner, Huffaker says he has largely come to peace with his home, though Virginia, he says, is South enough and he rarely returns to Chattanooga. In 2009, reconnecting with his Southern roots and humor, he wrote and illustrated “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Redneck,” a tongue-in-cheek, slice-of-life tale that is less memoir than a recognition of all he finds palatable about the South.

“I would be one of the people in your series (Local Boy Done Good) who never returns,” Huffaker says, with a laugh. “But a couple of years ago, I was hanging out in a local bar with some rednecks. I’d always wanted to write a novel and I missed a lot of things about the South. The book was the result. I guess you could call it less of a novel than a slice of life,” he says.

At 69, Huffaker says he is at peace with most everything, despite the topsy-turvy nature of politics, which may stoke his ire at the drawing board, but not his personal life.

“I liked Obama and figured we were in good hands,” he says. “He’s been disappointing, but I don’t worry too much anymore. I’m out in cow country in a beautiful spot with no neighbors, painting and waiting for inspiration. It’s not a bad life.”

Sandy Huffaker

• Born in 1943 in Chattanooga, graduate of McCallie, University of Alabama; currently lives in Raphine, Va.

• Nationally syndicated political cartoonist, illustrator, artist and author whose work has appeared in Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, BusinessWeek and The New York Times, among many other publications.

• Latest projects: Political cartoons, illustrations and fine art for numerous clients.

• Latest book: “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Redneck,” available on Amazon.com.

• Website: huffakerart.com

By Bill Ramsey
The Pulse | Oct. 27, 2011
Photos by Lesha Patterson

If you’re looking for Dr. Shock, don’t bother lifting coffin lids or poking around cemeteries after dark. Ditto for the old WTVC studios in the Golden Gate Shopping Center, home of the original Shock Theatre. Shock’s current lair is in a suitably funky former hair salon on an appropriately shadowy block of a less-traveled downtown street. The windows are blacked out and a sign on the door alludes to the mischief within: “Nobody gets in to see the wizard. Not nobody. Not no how.” Just knock, goes the saying, the bell is out of order.

Most likely the Wizard of Odd will answer. That would be Scott Fillers, a local magician, horror movie enthusiast and yet another in a growing consortium of Friends of Shock Theatre who have lent their time, talent or, in this case, storefront to the recently revived horror host. Inside, a wall filled with Filler’s kitschy horror movie collectibles shares space with the set pieces that form Shock’s makeshift studio—cobwebbed stone pillars, a coffin, skulls and furniture that would not be out of place in Norma Desmond’s Sunset Boulevard home.

Before Shock himself appears, I regard his button-eyed puppet sidekick, Dingbat, in repose across the crushed velvet couch. When Shock enters from an anteroom, he is shocking only in his lack of Shock-ness: No cape, no dark eye makeup, no dangling cigarette, the latter a signature prop—along with the skull-topped cane—of the original Dr. Shock. “I had to quit smoking,” this Shock says, apologetically.

Shock is in street clothes, in this case his mortal form’s casual attire. Local musician Jack Gray is still feeling the weight of the cape and finding his footing a year after accidentally ascending to the role. But it’s surprising how much Gray, a heavy-set man with hound-dog eyes, a weary smile and an easygoing manner, resembles his predecessor, the late Tommy Reynolds.


Nurse Goodbody (Contstance Haynes) kisses Dingbat. Jack Gray plays Dr. Shock in a revival of the iconic Chattanooga horror host, whose program “Shock Theatre” aired on WTVC Channel 9 from 1968 to 1975.

Bob Brandy, Miss Marcia and, most notably, Dr. Shock, are figures who still exist in the nostalgic, gauzy memory of those who lived in the region during the 1960s and ’70s. With the exception of Miss Marcia, who still appears on local TV, most have died, as have the shows that propelled them into the hearts of viewers. Reynolds, a longtime program director at WTVC/Channel 9, earned cult celebrity status in 1970s Chattanooga as host of Shock Theatre, the station’s campy late-night horror movie fest that aired on Saturday nights from 1968 to 1975. Abetted by his curiously disturbing puppet sidekick Dingbat (created and voiced by Dan East) and the curvaceous Nurse Goodbody (Patricia Abney), Reynolds single-handedly introduced the genre to the local market.


Tommy Reynolds, the original Dr. Shock, in a 1970s promotional photograph.

At first, Reynolds—who began his on-air career as Shock in the 1960s hosting Science Fiction Theater on WTVC—adopted a camp Dracula persona, introducing and ridiculing a series of mostly low-budget horror and science-fiction movies during commercial breaks. He took the show to a new level when he began lobbing satirical bombs at local politicians, the Lookout Mountain elite and his fellow media personalities along with sometimes risqué comic bits that flew over the heads of youthful viewers but quickly caught older fans’ attention.

The pair would often push the envelope, straying into controversial territory, getting Reynolds and East got into hot water with station management, writes longtime local TV and radio personality David Carroll in his book Chattanooga Radio and Television. But their sometimes-naughty behavior just served to boost ratings—and advertiser response—Carroll recalls.

“Starting out as a radio deejay at that time, I can tell you that getting your name mentioned on Shock Theatre, even as part of a fake news story or other comedy routine, was huge,” Carroll says.

Dr. Shock’s reign of televised mock terror hit its zenith in the mid-’70s. Saturday nights after the late news mostly faded to black. But when a new, female general manager took over at WTVC in 1975, both Reynolds’ and Shock’s days were numbered. According to Carroll, “Evidently there was some disagreement between the two, so he went to WDEF, where he hosted afternoon drive radio show for a few years.”

Shock reappeared at Channel 12, but didn’t last long, nor did Reynolds, who landed at WHNT Channel 19 in Huntsville, Ala., where he briefly revived Shock Theatre. But Huntsville got only a glimpse of what had made Dr. Shock a legend in Chattanooga. Gone were Dingbat and Nurse Goodbody, along with the biting commentary. The show eventually fizzled and Reynolds retired.



But old horror hosts never really die—they just find new souls to inhabit. Enter Jack Gray and Johnny Stockman, a local film producer and editor, who had attempted a Shock revival in the early 1990s but was rebuffed by Channel 9. “I’d always loved the show and thought there was room for it to return,” recalls Stockman. “When I tried it [though], I ran into so many naysayers I gave up on it.”

News of Reynolds’ 2008 death again reminded Stockman of the character and when friends remarked Gray had more than a passing resemblance to Reynolds, the resurrection of Dr. Shock was under way.

What began as a Facebook gag quickly evolved into a serious attempt at reincarnating the character. Gray recounts donning the tux and cape for the first time, smearing greasepaint around his eyes and—most importantly—fashioning his hair in that distinctive Tom-Snyder-meets-Richard-Nixon look.

For better or worse, that simple act of bad grooming sealed Gray’s fate.

He’s tapped into the horror host zeitgeist. Reynolds didn’t invent Shock Theatre, nor was he the only Dr. Shock. A zombie army of horror hosts came to life on local channels nationwide when Screen Gems syndicated its fright films library in 1957 in a package dubbed Shock Theater, encouraging stations add a local host. The scheme worked and Son of Shock! followed in 1958, just as Reynolds began his career at WTVC. “When local TV stations were starting out, there wasn’t as much network or syndicated programming compared to what we’ve had since the 1980s forward,” says Carroll. “Stations had to fill some time, they were usually locally owned, so they were making stuff up as they were going along, trying a little of everything.”

Times, technology and programming changed, but horror hosts continued to grow in popularity with the rise of Elvira, Cassandra Peterson’s perennially popular “Mistress of the Dark,” in the early 1980s. Online, multiple fan sites catalog and document the genre’s history, and YouTube brims over with horror host clips. The 2010 documentary American Scary tracked down 300 horror hosts and profiled 60 of the most popular. “They set the tone for how we view horror movies as camp,” co-director Sandy Clark told USA Today last year. “I couldn’t believe no one had told this story before.”

In short, the timing was right for the rebirth of Shock Theatre in Chattanooga. Listen to Gray for a while and you’re convinced.

Baby Boomer masses that grew up with Shock, he says, are ready for it. As proof, Gray offers his large Facebook following and stories of fan encounters at numerous public appearances this year. He’s recruited an eager and enthusiastic co-host in Constance Haynes, who portrays the new Nurse Goodbody in an updated, goth style. Gray has even fabricated a reconstituted Dingbat after finding no one capable of recreating the iconic fanged puppet.

“Historically, it’s an honor to be part of this,” Gray says. “We’re really fans at heart and we’re having a lot of fun.”

Gray has spent the past year perfecting the character, attempting to faithfully honor Reynolds’ memory while adding his own brand of quirks and riffs. “I’m not an actor, I’m a musician. I get nervous in front of the camera and screw up, but maybe that makes it better,” he says. “It would be great to get into Reynolds’ psyche, but I’m developing my own technique as I go along.”

As Shock, Gray has worked hard to rekindle interest—making personal appearances at such events as ConNooga, the local sci-fi/horror convention; appearing at local haunted houses and pre-Halloween events; and preparing for a blowout Halloween night show at The Honest Pint, where his band, the Shock Theatre Orchestra, will perform its original rock opera, Hauntsville, a nod to Reynolds’ exile in Huntsville. All this has been a lead-in to what he expected, until earlier this month, to be the first full version of Shock Theatre on local TV in more than 30 years.

Gray has been doggedly pursuing a deal to return Shock to the air with WTVC management. So far, that relationship has been up and down. When Stockman and Gray first promoted the new Shock with videos on Facebook and YouTube last year, the response, says Stockman, was incredible. “They (WTVC) were calling us,” he recalls. The Shock team filmed segments promoting a Shock Theatre revival on WTVC’s digital channel, ThisTV, before Halloween last year which the station used in advance of the first program on Valentine’s Day. The results of that show didn’t sit well Stockman or Gray.

“They (Channel 9) rearranged and put it together badly,” he says. “It just sucked, the cutting made no sense. You had to watch the movie three times to see it all.” After the show aired, production went into a hiatus, but Gray was still thrilled with the response.

“We were really excited by the initial response from fans and WTVC,” Gray says. “Expectations were high. If we were going to do it, we wanted to honor the original concept and do it right.”

A few months ago, he forged a new deal with ThisTV to air a Shock special on Oct. 29 around Night of the Living Dead, the classic 1968 George Romero film. With the help of a sponsor, local restaurant Aretha Frankensteins, Gray paid $300 for the timeslot and launched a Kickstarter campaign he hopes will raise the $13,000 necessary to fund a full season of Shock Theatre.

But the ghosts of Reynolds’ ’70s quarrel with management and Stockman’s early-’90s attempts re-surfaced. The deal began to unravel, eventually falling apart completely.

First, the station questioned the legality and cost associated with airing Night of the Living Dead. Gray had done his research and assured station management that the film was in public domain, a detail he found odd considering he was dealing with a television station. (For the record, the film accidentally went into public domain after the distributor failed to use copyright notices on the original prints. The film is free and downloadable online).

But when Gray couldn’t produce legal documents verifying that fact, WTVC issued orders requiring Gray to write and film new bits (at his own expense) to air around commercial breaks for another film, most likely a classic from the 1930s already in their library such as Bride of Frankenstein. While this would have eliminated the cost of the airtime, the switch quashed his vision of running a modern horror classic around a coherent Shock program he’d already filmed—a deal the station had previously approved. The new segments would constitute two-minute commercial breaks, not a show, he says. He also had less than two weeks to write, rehearse and film the new bits to run Oct. 31 from 4 to 11 p.m.—not Saturday night, the night Shock fans expect. He was, in a word, shocked.

“They kept moving the target. We just couldn’t produce a quality show in that time,” Gray says wearily. “I’d had enough.”

WTVC General Manager Mike Costa declined to comment on the details, adding only, “It is unfortunate the Shock Theatre special could not become a reality. I made a decision in the best interest of the television station.”

In response, Gray says, “I’m constantly reminded of how Tommy Reynolds must have felt. This was the same way he was treated. I get the feeling they don’t like the fact that people want this to happen. Some things never change.”

Gray remains optimistic Shock Theatre will air again soon, this time, ironically, on competitor WDEF Channel 12 and its digital counterpart, Tuff TV, where he turned after the WTVC debacle and was warmly welcomed. The show will go on—only not on Halloween weekend. Gray says the all-new Shock Theatre will likely air Thanksgiving weekend on Tuff TV around Night of the Living Dead, a copy of which Tuff TV already has in its library.

“Tuff TV and WDEF are very open to what we’re doing, but we need some time to re-film and promote it properly. All this adds up to slowing down and getting this first show right. I think this is going to be a version of Shock Theatre that people will realize is different and much more developed,” says Gray.

But even a successful revival of the iconic show won’t likely usher in a new era of local programming, according to author and WRCB host Carroll. With the vast variety of shows now cheaply available to local stations for syndication, the cost and effort required to produce local programming doesn’t add up.

He notes, “Now that hundreds of channels, with every conceivable niche, are available, it’s unlikely that local stations would spend the money and energy required to launch that type of show.”

Still, you never know. The good doctor might just Shock everyone.

Tags: Dr. Shock, Tommy Reynolds, Chattanooga icons, Jack Gray, Dingbat, WTVC, Shock Theatre , Horror Hosts