EARLE MARSH considers himself one of the Midwest's first television babies. In 1947, when he was barely speaking, his parents bought their first television set, a Sentinel with a 10-inch screen. He can still remember his folks setting up folding chairs on Tuesday nights for friends who came to watch Uncle Miltie. In his formative years he acquired such treasures as a Captain Video Space Helmet, a set of genuine Hopa-long Cassidy cap pistols, a Davy Crockett coonskin cap (complete with snap-on tail that could be fixed when his friends pulled it off), and his own Mickey Mouse ears. While earning a degree in marketing at Northwestern University in the 1960s, he worked on the local campus radio station, WNUR-FM, and it was only natural that he would migrate to broadcasting. Following a stint with the A.C. Nielsen Company, during which he learned more about ratings than most people would care to know, he made two round trips between NBC and CBS, advancing through the ranks in network radio, network television, and local television research. His most recent corporate media position was as Vice President of Research for Showtime/The Movie Channel. Although Mr. Marsh is currently working in the computer services industry, he also serves as a media consultant, servicing, among others, some of the companies for which he previously worked. He also gives college lectures and makes numerous media appearances.

TIM BROOKS is a television fan who is also an executive in the industry, currently serving as Executive Vice President, Research, for Lifetime Television. He was raised in Hampton, New Hampshire, graduated from Dartmouth College and Syracuse University, and started in TV as a lowly promotion writer for an Albany, New York, station. This was followed by positions with CBS, Westinghouse Broadcasting Co. and NBC, for whom he analyzed Nielsen ratings and conducted viewer surveys in the 1970s and ‘80s. In 1989 he joined the NW Ayer advertising agency as Senior Vice President/Media Research Director, and in 1991 moved to USA Networks where he helped launch the Sci-Fi Channel as well as the company's international channels, and had the opportunity to interview TV viewers around the world (they all like American TV!). He joined Lifetime in 2000. Tim is active in industry organizations and has served as Chairman of the Advertising Research Foundation and the Media Rating Council (which monitors Nielsen and other survey companies), and is a board member of the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM). He has also taught television subjects at Long Island University. Tim is the author of the biographical dictionary The Complete Directory to Prime Time TV Stars (Ballantine, 1987), as well as three books about his other love, the history of the recording industry. The most recent, Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919 (University of Illinois Press, 2004), won several national awards and was followed by a Lost Sounds reissue CD for which he received a Grammy Award in 2007.