MEET YOUR HOST

I'm Brian J Karimzad, a junior majoring in Economics at Stanford University. I was raised in San Mateo, 20 minutes north of Stanford. I'm living in Kimball Hall, a the nicest dorm I've ever seen. Take a look at photos and learn about Stanford residential life here (the info. is from last year, though).

My favorite music.....you guessed it, TV Themes. A close second is country. I'm an avid Macintosh user and work for the Stanford University Medical Center's MedIT (Medical Information Technologies) group.

My interests include watching classic TV and local news, betting at Bay Meadows, managing the student TV station , serving as Vice-Chair on the samTrans Advisory Committee, following the 49ers and A's, carrying on the Reagan tradition, and examining the '80s, my favorite decade.

I'm often asked what my favorite TV shows are. For those who care, they are Family Ties, The Price is Right, King of the Hill, and The Golden Girls.

You can reach me at [email protected]. I read every email, but due to the volume received I can't promise a timely response.

PURPOSE

This site is here to educate those interested about the trends in television programming, especially promotion and advertisting during the 1970s and 80s. The music on this site is a historical record of those times, documenting the era by conveying moods and emotion not found in other media.
DOWNLOADING TIPS

All of the files on this site are now in the RealAudio format. That means you MUST have the RealAudio player installed and configured for your web browser. You should notice that the files download much faster now, eliminating many past problems. Unfortunately, you must have a PowerPC or Pentium processor to hear these files, as I have chosen a high-quality compression method which only supports those platforms.

Although RealAudio files are meant to be streamed as live audio, these files are to be downloaded and listened to locally. Thus, it shouldn't matter what speed your connection is. Yes, these files are designed for ISDN connections, but anyone can download them to play locally.

If you have trouble with this, try the old trick of right-clicking on the file name and saving it manually while choosing the "source" instead of "text" file type. Then try and play it off your hard drive. It should work.

CONVERTING TO WAV FORMAT

Windows users with a Pentium or equivalent processor can convert any of the files on this site to the WAV format using the handy shareware utility RA2WAV. Visitors to the site have reported using it successfully, creating custom event sounds and converting to other file formats from the WAVs.
CONTRIBUTIONS/TRADES

I know a lot of you have old videotapes from the '80s gathering dust at home. They're a gold mine of sounds for the site. If you have some you want digitized, or don't want to bother to look but want to contribute, email me at [email protected]. I also have videotapes and audio cassettes of '80s themes, news music, and commercials for trade.