A KCBA news cameraman (right) films as show creator and producer Kim Cohan (center) tests a robot from the Naval Postgraduate School, while MIRA astronomers Craig Chester (left) and Bruce Weaver look on. (photo Laura Cohan)

Earth Invades Mars
MIRA Live TV Show on Mars Pathfinder Mission

"When my mechanic said that he liked the show, I knew we had done a good job," says FOM Kim Cohan, volunteer producer of "Earth Invades Mars," a live call-in TV show that he organized to inform the public with information about the Mars Pathfinder Mission.

On Sunday, July 13th, an estimated audience of 2,000 watched the hour-long MIRA special. The show aired on the Monterey County Office of education Channel, KMST, which is shown on cable channel 26 in Monterey County. In a first for MIRA, the show was also carried live in the Santa Cruz area on TCI’s Community Access Channel 72.

The program was the brainchild of volunteer Kim Cohan, who took two days off of work to organize the panel, sign up sponsors, produce the graphics, and publicize the event. The panel included MIRA astronomers Dr. Bruce Weaver and Dr. Craig Chester, Exo-Meteorologist Calvin Demmon, and  Dr. Jim Eagle, who led a segment on backyard astronomy using animations created by a very nice planetarium program— Starry Night, from Sienna Software (www.siennasoft.com).

The MIRA astronomers did an outstanding job bringing information about the Pathfinder mission to the audience in an entertaining and informative way.

Airtime and production services were made possible by Dave Findlay, chief of MCOE television. Dave personally directed the show, assisted by the able staff of MCOE-TV: Rudy, Chuck, Tom, and Jerry.

"It had been three years since I last hosted a TV show,* so I was rather nervous when we went on the air. But it went fine," says Kim. Twelve people called up during the show with all sorts of questions, ranging from: "What does the presence of quartz in Martian rocks indicate?" to "What proof do you have that this is not a hoax, that we’re not really on Mars?"

MIRA Administrator Laura Cohan directed the computer graphics workstation on air, and created a unique call forwarding system that allowed calls to the new MIRA toll free line to be routed to the studio during the show.

In addition, KCBA sent a news crew out to tape the production of the show. They led off their 10:00 news (right after "X-Files", appropriately) with a wonderful news story on the show.
MCOE is eager to have us back. Kim says he’ll do it. Topics, anyone?

* Kim Cohan produced a very successful series of three live call-in talk shows for MIRA on the MCOE channel in conjunction with "The Great Jupiter Comet Crash Bash" that he also organized, in July, 1994.
 

"Earth Invades Mars" MIRA cast & crew (from left): Calvin Demmon, exo-Meteorolist; Emily Cohan, volunteer; Prof. Jim Eagle, backyard astronomer; Kim Cohan, creator/producer; Laura Cohan, Administrator; Dr. Bruce Weaver and Dr. Craig Chester, MIRA astronomers.