by Deb Wong
(Creator & WebMaster of the Barney Miller T.V. Show Home Page
Then I surfed the web for everything that interested me. It opened up the world! One of the first things I did was search for websites on my favorite t.v. shows, and at the top of that list was Barney Miller. Never missing an episode, I "knew" the characters like they were friends (or family), and felt that it was the best series on television. The Barney Miller show had well-written, intelligent scripts, well-defined characters, incredibly talented actors, and was funny as hell!
To my surprise, there was not even one website at the time which even mentioned the Barney Miller Show. It was puzzling, since there were already 3 sites about Gilligan's Island, and many other sites featuring television shows that I considered inferior to the Barney Miller show.
I decided to make my own website, and hoped that I could add to it, as time went on. I wanted this website to look like the opening of the t.v. show, so I took a picture of the screen when the Barney Miller Show came on, with one of those throw-away film cameras (this was before I had a digital camera).
When I got the photo, I scanned it, and made the image large enough to cover the website page, then I recorded the theme with a small cassette tape recorder. I then recorded from my computer's microphone off of the tape recorder, made a file of the music, which I uploaded to my Geocities site. It all seems primitive now, but that is how it was done back then.
Now, all I needed was content! There wasn't any on the internet at the time, so I went scouring the library, and added some facts from some old TV Guides that I had, with information about the show. I also took pictures off of my tv set to add to the site, watched interview shows on videotape, and newspaper articles on the show (I was a fan - so I had this stuff). Viola! I had a website dedicated to a great television show.
Two years after creating the Barney Miller TV Show Home Page, I was asked by another webmaster for the theme music & some images to add to a page on his own website about nighttime television series. I was o.k. with this, as long as he linked back to my website, which he did.
Since I was watching the Barney Miller Show in reruns at this time, I would quote the show regularly, so got the idea to add a "Favorite Quotes" page. This got a lot of others involved, as the Quotes Page is interactive, and then other Barney Miller fans emailed me with ideas for the website. One asked me what the actors were doing now, so I created the "Where Are They Now?" page.
I also corresponded with a couple of the actors, including Steve Landesburg and Maxwell Gail, who was involved in philanthropic activities. One thing that I have tried to do with this website is to keep it looking as it did since I started the site. Though I created & update many websites, the Barney Miller Show for me is, among other things, nostalgic. Nostalgia is best when it stays the same, don't you think? :) - Deb Wong