A Brief History of ROX:
We started making ROX back in the summer of 1992, on the cable access television station in Bloomington, Indiana. Originally we called the show J&B on the ROX, after the two hosts J and B. Sometimes people still call it that. It's OK, we don't mind.
In April of 1994, we got some national media attention when we smoked pot on television. That little stunt got us on the Howard Stern Show and MTV, not to mention all the network affiliates in Indianapolis and radio stations across the country.
We became the first TV series on the Internet in May of 1995. Almost immediately thereafter, we ceased production for seven years.
In 2002 we started back into production, and began grappling with the challenges of creating cross-country TV on a shoestring. J now lives in Missoula, Montana; B lives in New Orleans.
What ROX is:
ROX is an independently produced TV series. It can be seen on a number of different TV stations around the country and via rox.com. If you've got the bandwidth, we've got the video.
When we say independently produced, we mean that we make the show ourselves — just a coupla guys and our friends. We're not a professional video production corporation. We're amateurs, in the sense that we are doing this for love, not money.
So we don't have a big budget. Frankly, we don't have any budget. But we don't think it's necessary to spend big bucks to make interesting television. In fact, we think ROX is the best damn TV show in the history of the universe. Of course, when you consider how badly most TV sucks, that's not saying much.
Lest you think that we've simply got inflated egos, you should know that Wired magazine called ROX "the best TV show in America." We also got written up in Time magazine, as the "first TV show broadcast in cyberspace." A fan wrote to say that ROX is the "true self-actualization of the video medium."
OK, OK, so we've got inflated egos. But at least now you know why.
What's the show about? Funny, people always seem to ask that. Even after all these years, we still haven't settled on an answer. The truth is that, as a totally independent and essentially noncommercial production, we have an unprecedented degree of freedom to explore different topics and formats. Think of it as a serial art-life/life-art documentary project. With mixed drinks.
You'll just have to watch some shows and make up your own mind.
But there are a few things you can expect in just about any episode of ROX. You'll probably see J and/or B in there somewhere. All the programs are edited by B. And J, the resident bartender, will probably mix a drink at some point. But even these are not guarantees. Unpredictability is our hallmark.
If our content is confusing, brace yourself, because so is our very form. We started off on cable, spread to a limited broadcast, eventually got on the internet, and now we even license episodes on satellite. You can read more in our history. People usually try to peg us as either a "cable access show" or a "web show" but in fact we're both of those things and much more.