Jerry! Jerry!

Early in Secret Missions 2, Shotglass informs Blair that he has seen a suspicious story about the Kilrathi withdrawing from the Deneb Sector on "Jerry Rivers on the Galaxy Network News". Who, exactly, is Jerry Rivers?

From Blair's reaction ("that show will rot your brain") and the name alone, players at the time would infer that Jerry Rivers is Wing Commander's pastiche of a '90s tabloid television presenter inspired by Jerry Springer and Geraldo Rivera.

But there's more to the story! Like many elements of Secret Missions 2, the mention of Jerry Rivers is intended to preface an appearance in Wing Commander II. Jerry Rivers was ultimately cut from the game but his intended story was pretty interesting! The idea was that Jerry Rivers would replace the 'Meanwhile…' clips from Wing Commander I which informed the player what was going on in the war beyond the Tiger's Claw. In Wing Commander II, players would click on a TV screen in the barracks which would play a different interview conducted by Jerry roughly once each series. The surviving Wing Commander II Script Outline gives us a bit of an 'episode guide' showing what these news segments would be. Blair would talk about his conviction, Maniac would promote his TCSO show, Ralgha would provide his backstory about joining the Confederation and so on.

[JERRY RIVERS #1 - "Bluehair interview"]
[JERRY RIVERS #2 - "Starbase episode"]
[JERRY RIVERS #3 - "Maniac interview"]
[JERRY RIVERS #4 - "Angel Interview"]
[JERRY RIVERS #5 - "Prince Thrakhath interview"]
[JERRY RIVERS #6 - "Sickbay episode"]
[JERRY RIVERS #7 - "Hobbes interview"]
[JERRY RIVERS #8 - "Admiral Tolwyn interview"]
[JERRY RIVERS #9 - "The Invisibility Suit" episode]
[JERRY RIVERS #10 - "Admiral Tolwyn breaks Jerry's nose"]

The series would culminate with a series of shows in which Jerry Rivers would come into conflict with Admiral Tolwyn and then 'prove' that stealth fighters exist with a stunt described as involving an invisibility suit. In the finale, Tolwyn would punch him in the face! We get a little more detail on this from the Wing Commander II Art List:

JERRY RIVERS
In addition to his talking loops:

Jerry Rivers in the "cloaking suit"---a dark shape outlined in a faint glowing blue light, set in a completely black background.

Admiral Tolwyn breaking Jerry's nose with a single good punch

We also need a small animation of Jerry talking on the television set, so the player will know when a Jerry Rivers episode is airing, as opposed to the Ultima 6 program filler.

Concordia Rec Room: sitting room for three and Bluehair. This room will have the television set (as in the Peel Rec Room) and the computer console for saving games, as well as a very modern upright piano off to one side (which Jazz will play in various scenes.) If possible, please draw the television set so we can reuse the TV animation from Ultima 6. (Please refer to the CHARACTER POSITIONS chart.)

The idea was to design the game's two "options" screens with a screen you could click on to view the Jerry Rivers episodes. If there was no new episode, the TV would instead display channel animations reused from Ultima VI! Ultima VI's introduction would flip through a collection of six different TV channels that included a news report, a car driving down a road, a music video and more.

The news in the Ultima VI intro was already pretty modular; as part of its commitment to spectacular detail, it could already change between seven different news stories!