Love, Hate, Tolerate...and "Teddy Says..."

I’ll admit it. Most news directors have a love/hate relationship with their station’s engineering departments.

Wait a minute. Strike that. I promised complete honesty here, so let me amend that comment. Most news directors have a hate/hate/hate/tolerate relationship with their engineering department. That’s probably because most news directors are trying to preach “can-do,” and most engineers come from the land of “can’t-do.” Admit it: don’t you get the feeling that most engineers are waiting for the days of black-and-white to come back? Everything seems to be an imposition, everything seems to be impossible. I know, I know—it’s a thankless job, with everyone demanding miracles. But why—in most engineering departments—is everything impossible?

In my last (and I do mean last) ND job, one night, one newscast, every single story played with the audio screwed up. Turned out a new engineer had tweaked the playback machines up to specs as part of routine maintenance. As the Chief Engineer later explained it (as best I could tell, translated from "Engineer-Speak"), when the playback area was originally installed it was “installed backwards:” right was left, and left was right, or something like that. Everyone knew that, he said. So when the new guy made it right, he was making it wrong. The attitude seemed to be, “Well, everyone knows it’s backwards, what was he thinking?”

Oy vey!

But there was (and I hope still is) an exception. WNEP in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton had (I hope still has) the best engineering staff I ever saw. And remember, I’ve seen ‘em in big markets and small. Nothing compared to WNEP’s.

The engineers willingly solved problems you didn’t even know you had, and tackled challenges with something approaching glee. Nothing was too hard. It was all an adventure. "Zen and the Art of Television Maintenance."

This goes back almost 25 years. We had set up a “flashcam” in the newsroom for bulletins and headlines. Trouble was, it was right next to the wire machines. These weren’t the old big, black, chunka-chunka-chunka clunky teletypes with the alarm bells. These were the ribbon printers with audible sirens mounted on them. Every once in awhile the anchors would be recording a tease and a siren would go off. Annoying and distracting.

I asked one of the engineers if he could come up with a way for us to be aware of bulletins without the screeching. Two hours later—after a trip to RadioShack and an expense of about $6—we had our solution. The engineer pulled the alarms, rewired the notification system, and hung miniature strobe lights from the newsroom ceiling in two places where they wouldn’t appear on camera but could be seen by everyone. We "saw" the bulletins without having to hear them. Newspapers used to trumpet "FLASH," but we actually saw the "flash" all over the newsroom.

Talk about proactive! The WNEP coverage area is more than 20 counties; and the commitment was to cover news in all of them. One day an engineer came to me and said, “I know you have trouble hearing police calls in every county. How would you like one scanner that picks up signals from every single county?” He’ll, I’d love it. How are you going to do it?

His answer: string an antenna up near the top of our transmitter tower, run the lead down to a 500-channel scanner in the transmitter shack, and pipe the sound back to a speaker on the assignment desk.

One problem, I told him: if we can’t see the scanner, see what channel it has "hit," we won’t know who’s talking. But he had that figured out.

Two days later a black-and-white monitor showed up on the desk. The guy ran the antenna to the scanner—then hooked up a closed-circuit camera to take a picture of the scanner, and piped it down an STL to the desk. Hear interesting chatter—look at the monitor—see that it’s channel 272—realize that that’s Schuylkill County fire—and go from there!

The WNEP engineers wanted to make it was easy as possible to get equipment fixed fast. In some stations you literally have to type out a form, in triplicate, to get a piece of gear looked at. Don’t know if it’s still true, but in the old days the ‘NEP techies had a tape recorder set up so you could bring in your camera or tape deck or whatever even when a maintenance man wasn’t around. Leave the gear on the bench and a detailed description of what’s wrong on the tape. No muss, no fuss.

One last thing. The engineers were such good guys they’d even perform routine maintenance on your personal gear—a VCR or what-have-you.

Remember “Teddy Ruxpin,” the animatronic talking teddy bear? He had an audio tape deck built into his back, and he’d move his mouth, eyes and arms in rhythm to the tape. Someone at the station bought a “Teddy Ruxpin” for one of his kids, but it broke. No problem for the WNEP engineers. They fixed him up, good as new.

How do I know? I walked by Engineering one morning and saw and heard Teddy talking; although apparently they didn’t have the pre-recorded Ruxpin tape. So what I heard was the “trouble report” tape playing through “Teddy,” in Photographer Nick Horsky’s voice:

“Jesus Christ, you know I’ve just about f**kin’ had it with this piece-of-s**t camera! The g**damned back focus is out again! If it doesn’t get fixed soon I’m gonna break the f**kin’ lens off and shove it up someone’s a**!”

And Teddy rolled his eyes and waved his arms.

I’m sure the camera got fixed, and no a**es got harmed. But I hope I don't come across as too off-color if I say that I'm just as sure the WNEP engineers could have found a way to pull a lens out of someones a** and fix that, too, if that's what was needed. An amazing, talented, solution-oriented group. Never saw a better bunch. They put pride into their work and took joy from their jobs. A lot of us could stand to learn from their example.

A Love Story?

In my previous post I wrote about Tom Conner—real name Emil Sepich—the wonderful anchor/news director I worked with at WEEK-TV in Peoria in the mid-70s. I talked, briefly, about his death. There’s more to the story. It’s a haunting memory, so I don’t talk about it much. But Tom/Emil has been on my mind lately, so now’s the time.

First, a little more background. I wrote that I had been brought in to run the Channel 25 newsroom after WEEK slipped—for the first time in history—into second place in the news ratings. Tom, I wrote, just couldn’t be running the newsroom at 9:00 a.m. and anchoring at 10:00 p.m. The station’s fiercest competitor, WRAU (now WHOI) brought in an outsider (Steve Cohen, later news director in Philadelphia, later a bigwig with Court TV¸ later a successful general manager) to give them their push forward. I was hired (just after Cohen left town) to take WEEK back to #1, to give it a shot in the arm.

As I wrote, we (I emphasize “WE”, it was a collective effort) did. From a 26 share to a 43 share in a year and a half.

For me, then a young(ish) guy, it was great success. For Tom, it was vindication. The “Dean of Local Anchors” was on top again. When the ratings started slipping there had been some talk that maybe what WEEK needed even more than someone to run the newsroom was a new lead anchor. No one could say that now about the #1 anchor at the #1 station in the market. The future looked bright.

It came at a great time. That fall (’77), for the first time in a long time WEEK-TV held a “client party” to show off the fall lineup. The station had gotten out of the habit during the economic hard times of the early 70s. But in ’77, NBC's fall programming looked strong and local programming was going gangbusters. It was decided we’d show off a bit for station clients, and the local country club was rented out for diner, drinks and dancing.

It really turned out to be a party to honor Tom. There was a receiving line, and there he was front-and-center, the “center,” if you will, of attention. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to pat him on the back, wanted to shake his hand, wanted to acknowledge his presence as the “Main Man” in local news. I stood in the background feeling very satisfied with myself, and extremely pleased that this wonderful guy was again getting the respect he had rightly earned over so many years.

I don’t know if Tom was ever much of a drinker—I had been (and would be, for a time, later)—but back then both of us were pretty much teetotalers. EXCEPT ON THAT NIGHT. As the evening wore on, he and I adjourned to a quiet table with a bottle of champagne and toasted our pasts, our present, and our futures. We “indulged in the bubbly” and got a little tipsy.

I don’t know how it came up, but at one point in the wee hours he said something like, “I’ve been very lucky, and I have few regrets.”

But he proceeded to tell me a story of a woman he had loved and lost more than a quarter-century before. He was in radio at the time, in Chicago I think. The bottom line, he said, was “I had a lovely woman who really cared for me, and I treated her badly. I always regretted it and wished I could make it up to her.”

I told him it was never too late, that he was divorced, and that maybe he should try to find her. He told me he knew where she was, and that a mutual friend had told him that she was now divorced as well. I told him he should really find her. “No,” he said, “I caused too much pain and too much time has passed for me to ever make it right.” I wasn’t in a position to argue.

A few weeks later, Tom Conner was dead.

And a few weeks after that I got a call in my office from a woman who said she was looking for Emil Sepich. I didn’t know what to say, so I asked if I could help her in some way. She said no, that she was an old friend, and she gave me her name.

I’m sorry. I’m crying now as I write this.

I recognized the name. And I said to her, “I’m terribly sorry to be the one to tell you this. Emil passed away a few weeks ago. But I have a message . . . for you . . . from him.” And I told her what he had said.

We cried.

Her heart was broken, and I felt bad for her, for Tom and for their missed opportunities. I never found out—I never asked—what made her call that day. I put it down as fate. But I somehow felt blessed thinking that Tom had given me the opportunity to make amends for him, had entrusted me with his message. Today we call it “closure.” If that’s what it was, fine. I’d like to think I provided it for her and for him and for myself that day.

There were several little mysteries surrounding Tom’s passing, several signals that no one picked up on until after the fact. Added up, they make it seem he had a premonition of his own death.

The Friday night he died, after the 10:00 p.m. news he went out of his way to go back to Engineering to talk to one of the old-timers who’d been at the station since day one.

“I just want to tell you how much I’ve enjoyed working with you all these years.” Out of the blue.

“Well, thanks, Tom. That’s nice of you. Me too. Have a good weekend. Goodnight.”

And, heading for the door, Emil Sepich said “Goodbye.”

Isn’t there a book about the five people you meet in heaven? I’m not sure I’m going to heaven—I’m not sure they let news directors in—but if I con my way in, one of the people I’d dearly like to see again would be Emil Sepich. In life he was a sweet, gentle man and extremely kind to me. I hope he knows how sincerely I cared for him. I hope he can put in a good word for me: I think he’d have more “pull” up there than just about anyone I ever worked with.

The Bonus Round

Can you hear it? The piano music in the background? Can you make out the lyrics?

Mem'ries

Light the corners of my mind

Misty water-colored memories

Of the way we were

I saw this ad, and the memories came flooding back.
______________________________________
WEEK-TV, one of the best medium sized television stations in America has a very rare leadership opportunity!

We are seeking a News Director/Multimedia Content Manager who will be responsible for producing and managing great journalistic and visual content for WEEK-TV, Peoria, Illinois’ most honored broadcast, internet and related information outlets.
The candidate chosen will have an obvious enthusiasm for the future of local news in a rapidly advancing environment. She/he will carry on a 30 year tradition of news dominance guiding an outstanding award-winning veteran staff while recruiting and shaping future talent, using all tools available to new media.
______________________________________

Number One for thirty years. Damn right! When I took over the WEEK-TV newsroom in 1976 the station was #2. When I left two years later, we were #1. It's been that way ever since.

I haven't written much here about those days. The story is long, complicated, and it doesn't have a happy ending. But if you're willing to stick with me, I'll tell you a couple of secrets that only four people ever knew—and three of them are now dead!

I'll also bury the lead—several leads. Tough!

WEEK signed on in 1953 as the first station in the Peoria market. Even after competitors signed on, WEEK—having staked out the territory first—was the dominant #1 station for almost a quarter-century. But when ABC programming took off in the 70s the ABC station, WRAU (now WHOI) rode the wave and became #1 in local news. NBC lead-in programming was no help to local affiliates in those days.

One of the primary reasons for WEEK's news success was also one of the reasons that led to its slip: News Director/Anchor Tom Connor. Now, it's impossible for me to say anything bad about Tom. He was one of the most decent, principled, caring men I have ever known. More than that, he was an excellent journalist—the "Dean of Local Anchors"—the man who invented broadcast news in the Peoria market. But as the station and the demand for TV news grew it became obvious that Tom (whose real name was Emil Sepich) couldn’t be wearing a manager’s hat at 9:00 in the morning and the anchor hat at 10:00 at night. He was stretched too thin. To badly mix metaphors, things started falling through the cracks. It was obvious Tom could only do one job or the other well; but it was also obvious the station couldn’t afford to lose the market’s #1 anchor. So it was decided to bring in someone to run the newsroom, someone who had experience in other markets, someone who could bring something new to the table. I was 29, executive producer for WISH-TV in Indianapolis, and I was approached.

Here’s where things had the potential to get ugly. Station management started their search for a news director without telling Tom! They weren’t sure how long the search would take, and they didn’t want to risk upsetting Tom if the process dragged on without producing results. Not a good plan. I didn't know that I was being secretly courted, so I told a friend who (you guessed it) had a friend at WEEK. And so on, and so on, and so on until Tom was told.

Once the "secret" was no longer secret I asked for (and was granted) permission to talk to Tom. I drove over and he spent the better part of a Sunday showing me the area and comparing notes. He was what I had been told to expect: honest, forthright, committed to the station, to the staff and to the community.

At the end of the day I told him, “Tom, I think they’ve handled this poorly. You should have been consulted. I’m sorry they didn’t give you a vote in this. But I give you a vote. I give you complete veto power. If you think I’m not the right fit, let me know—no hard feelings.”

Tom, a gracious gentleman, said everything would work out just fine, then—as far as I could tell—did everything in his power to make it happen. Back in the mid-seventies I was still a bit wet behind the ears. Instead or resenting me, Tom mentored me. He kept the title “News Director,” and I became “News Manager” (which I still think has a vaguely sinister ring to it, don’t you?).

I was overjoyed. For one thing, the money was fabulous. I had been making $15,000 a year at WISH. The WEEK offer was $23,000 plus a bonus based on ratings: $500 for every rating point we increased year-to year at 6:00 and at 10:00 in the three big Nielsen “books,” February, May and November. Go up two rating points at 6:00, this May compared to last May, and get a $1,000 bonus. Go up three rating points at 10:00, this November compared to last November, and get a $1,500 bonus! When you think about it, there was a chance for six bonuses a year (two newscasts, three books). Sweet!

So I took the job. And they day I got there—the day I got there—General Manager Phil Mergener called me into his office and said, “I’ve been thinking about this bonus thing.”

Uh-oh!

“I’ve been thinking that rating points are harder to come by than share points. How about if we make the deal for share points instead?”

Yes, sir!

What neither of us knew was that over the next two years, our six o’clock alone would go from a 26 share to a 43 share!

For those of you raised in a cable universe, I freely admit to you that those were the days when most markets were four-station markets (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS)—and there was no cable programming, no internet, no TBS, no CNN. Talk about a captive audience! But hey—we kicked some serious butt, and I was raking in what was (for me) some serious change. How did we do it? It wasn’t my doing alone. The staff was full of good people. I just tightened up the story-telling process (better writing!) and helped better focus our news gathering (better story selection). I made some cosmetic changes (set and graphics), and we successfully migrated from film to videotape. As we tightened our news broadcasts, we showcased the product with aggressive promotion. And it all worked!

OK. I promised you some never-before-heard inside information. Here’s the first. I was making so much in unplanned bonus money that I got to feeling guilty. So I started divvying up part of my bonus after every rating period and giving a share to my deputies, Jeff Hawkinson and Jerry Giesler—telling Mergener and the head of accounting that I didn’t want either to know it came from me, that it was to be a company bonus given to them by the company for excellent work. That’s something I’ve kept to myself for 30+ years.

I was happy to share in my good fortune. Things were going along pretty well.

My biggest problem was the Sales Manager, Bill Adams. Bill was always upset about news stories he said were “unfavorable for the business climate.” He was always asking us to shoot and air puff pieces that would paint his clients in a favorable light, and to kill stories that made them look bad. To Bill Adams, journalism was an UNnecessary evil.

Our biggest showdown was over Plymouth Volares. Anyone remember that piece-of-crap car? This dates back to the days before Lee Iacocca rescued Chrysler by making decent automobiles. The Volare had a bad habit: frequently when you’d turn ninety degrees to the right (like—uh—to go around a corner?) the engine would stall. Something about gas sloshing out of the carburetor. Plymouth had, it seemed, a recall notice out for that hunk of tin every few weeks. When we reported those recalls—as legitimate news stories—it drove Adams crazy. He and I often had it out in front of Mergener, but Phil always protected the news department (and me) from Bill’s meddling. He knew that I wasn’t going to bow to Adams’ pressure, and I’m sure he figured we could afford a P-O’d Plymouth dealer or two as long as our reputation and ratings were intact.

I guess this is the point where I should throw in another buried lead, one of the saddest events of my life. Tom Connor died.

I’ll have to write at greater length at another time about Tom’s life—and death—and legacy. Here’s the shorthand version: he was divorced and living alone. He went home one Friday night after the 10:00 p.m., and suffered a massive heart attack while brushing his teeth. The doctors later said he was dead before he hit the bathroom floor.

When I heard the news I felt as if I were having a heart attack. I had to sit down to catch my breath, I was so stunned. I’ve written here before about my first news director, Dick Cheverton, and about his losing battle with cancer. As horrible as Chev’s death was, those of us who loved him had time to prepare for his passing. Not so with Tom. Apparently Tom had a heart condition that he kept from all of us.

Someday I’ll write more about Emil Sepich. He was my colleague, my mentor and (I honestly hope) my dear friend. I still can hear his voice and feel his presence.

WEEK soldiered on, though. We had another “Tom” in the wings: Tom McIntyre was a young reporter and co-anchor. My thought was, “Let’s throw ‘Mac’ our there while we try to figure out what to do next.” Thirty years later “Mac” is still out there every weeknight, and the station is still #1.

Here’s another buried lead. I got fired. From a 26 share to a 43 share to out the door in two years. Not long after Tom’s passing, in May of ’78, Phil Mergener was fired. I never knew why. He’s dead now, too, so there’s no one to ask.

Bill Adams replaced Mergener. At the end of his first week on the job he called me in to his office, and said, “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. You’re fired.” And he handed me two envelopes, explaining that one contained two weeks’ severance pay—and the other was a check for $7,000 in bonus money I was owed for share-point gains in the May book.

Out the door with a huge bonus. Go figure. On the plus side, I guess Bill Adams was an honest man: he didn’t try to cheat me out of my bonus. On the negative side, I still consider him evil—but hey, I’m prejudiced, right? Either way, in my forty years in broadcasting, Bill Adams is the only person who actively tried to kill news coverage for sales motives. Oh, several have frowned and moaned when news stories have cost them clients and money, but all but Bill realized the benefits of fair, factual news coverage.

And don’t for a second think I’m painting myself as something of a martyr, someone who took a bullet for the cause. I’m sure Bill Adams would paint a picture of me as an arrogant, argumentative, inflexible ass who ate at the company trough then criticized the way the food was provided.

He would if he could but he can’t: he passed away, too. I comfort myself with the thought that he’s in Hell.

I haven’t been back to Peoria in 30 years. I ought to go sometime; it’s a wonderful, livable, friendly town and I have fond memories of many people and places. I also promised myself that before I die I’ll look up Bill Adams’ grave and pee on it.

Let’s get back on track. From Peoria it was on to Detroit as a producer in 1978—then two years later to WABC in New York as assignment manager. 1978, Peoria; 1980, New York.

A thought to ponder: in Peoria, with a staff of 13 full-timers, we were always saying, “If only we had a staff of 15 or 16, everything would be OK.” At WABC, we had 245—and spent each day moaning, “If only we had 260.” Go figure.

Now WEEK is looking for a news director. Maybe I should apply.

Can it be that it was all so simple then?

Or has time re-written every line?

If we had the chance to do it all again

Tell me, would we? Could we?

Nope. I’ve already tried “going home again” at WNEP. Doesn’t work. At least not for me.

By the way, sitting here humming The Way We Were got me to thinking about Robert Redford. Did you know that his character in the film Up Close and Personal (the Miami news director)—was based on me?

Not buying it, are you.

Hey, I took a shot.

The Quote of the Week

I thought it was the quote of the week—maybe the month—maybe the year!

It was back in 1990s and it came from Paul Sagan.

Paul started out as a news writer at WCBS in 1981. When I first met him we were both news directors at CBS O-and-Os. I was at WCIX (now WFOR) in Miami, he had worked his way up to the top job at WCBS, the flagship station.

Not long after that he left to work for Time Warner, first on their "News on Demand" project, then to spearhead development of NY 1 News, the Manhattan-based cable news network. He was the driving force behind the first uses of digital technology for local news, and pioneered "one-man-band" news gathering on video, the first time something that had been done in teeny-tiny markets in the film days had been brought to big city, big-time news gathering. So when it was announced that he would be in Miami to talk about new technologies and the news, a big crowd turned out for the event.

When it came time for the Q-and-A, the first questioner started by saying something like, We've all been dying to speak to you, because you're pioneering new technologies in this business...

And Sagan cut him off, saying, basically, Please don't ever call me a pioneer. I don't want to be on the cutting edge. I don't want to be the first to try anything.

And then this exact quote:

"Remember, pioneers get the arrows; settlers get the land."

Today we talk about "first adopters:" the first person with a new iPod, the first one with an iPhone, the first with a BlackBerry, or Bluetooth, or WiFi, or BlueRay, the first with . . . whatever. Back in 1976, I was the first kid on my block with a home VCR: what else, a Sony BETA machine. We all remember how that worked out!

Sagan's point was, let someone else work out the kinks. Stick around for the second generation product, the one that someone else has tested. Wait until the bugs are worked out.

I don't know if Paul feels the same way today. Since 1998 he's been with an outfit called Akamai, whose slogan is "Powering a Better Internet." He's been President and CEO of Akamai since 2005. I looked at the company web site: looks pretty cutting-edge to me.

I still love the quote, though.

Good Night, and Good Luck

Egbert Roscoe Murrow was born on April 25th, 1908.

Friday, on what would have been Edward R. Murrow’s 100th birthday, I found little mention of the man and his legacy. The CBS News website has some old clips, and a quote from plaque that hangs in the lobby of the CBS Broadcast Center in New York: "His imprint on broadcasting will be felt for all time to come." The article makes it clear that if Murrow didn’t invent broadcast journalism—on both radio and TV—he shepherded both through their troubled adolescence, setting standards and hiring the men and women who made broadcast journalism an essential part of American life and brought CBS honor and accolades. He challenged future generations of journalists to strive for excellence, and he showed them what excellence was.

But the article fails to mention that when he got too controversial CBS effectively shoved him out the door. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, “So it goes.”

There’s a great line in the play “A Man for All Seasons.” I think I’ve got it down: “It’s easy to stay alive, friends. Just . . . don’t . . . make . . . trouble. Or if you must make trouble, make the kind of trouble that’s expected.”

When Murrow’s documentaries kept making the kind of trouble that cost CBS money, he found himself with less and less to do at the network. He made waves, not money, and occupied valuable prime-time territory. Before long the documentary unit created specifically by and for him was getting less air time and he was forced to share the (greatly lightened) load with others. He was, in effect, benched.

Finally, bitter and discouraged, he left in 1961 to take a position in the new Kennedy administration, working for the new President he had called "That boy." He choked back tears as he taped a farewell that was played in CBS stations and bureaus around the world; played for many who idolized him and owed their careers to him.

Cancer killed him in 1965, two days after his 57th birthday. So it goes.

Now, less than fifty years later, we’re shocked and saddened that CBS is shoving so many dedicated, successful broadcast journalists out the door at its owned-and-operated stations, and that the CBS Evening News is in such disarray. Why so surprised? CBS is just doing what it has done in the past. If they could do it to Murrow, what makes you think they can’t do it to you?

We should always remember what Murrow did for broadcasting.

We should never forget what CBS did to Murrow.

So it goes.

An "Obama" Moment

There you have it. Or, rather, there I have it: a quintessential "Tying My Shoes" moment. Last night I met "Obama Girl."

You know--the young lady who made a sudden splash on the Internet when YouTube posted a music video called "I got a Crush on Obama."

One of my consulting clients is News 13, a small cable operation in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Seen only on Service Electric Cable, and only in and around Hazleton, it reaches something like 60,000 homes, but is "Must See TV" in those homes. An unscientific survey says they may be doing a 90+ share of audience. Outrageous--and fun!

Anyway, Amber Lee Ettinger is from Hazleton, and she was home visiting her parents on primary election day, and stopped by the News 13 studios.

I'm sure you know her story. She's a model/actress now living in New York who was hired for the "Obama Girl" gig. She doesn't even sing in the video, it's a lip-synch.

She seemed like a smart, articulate young woman--and (of course) beautiful. Shes working hard to parlay her video fame (which has included an appearance on Saturday Night Live and an interview with Geraldo Rivera) into fortune as well. She's a graduate of NYC's Fashion Institute of Technology, and has plans for her own clothing line, and yada-yada-yada. She seems to have stretched her fifteen minutes in the limelight out longer. It'll be interesting to see where it takes her.

Anyway--I said "Hi," and had my "Tying My Shoes Moment." Nice kid. Seems to have her head screwed on pretty well. You can take the girl out of a small town, but--you know the rest.

Oh--and just in case you're one of maybe three people in the world with Internet access who hasn't seen it--here's Amber Lee Ettinger's music video.

By the way, she voted yesterday. For Barack Obama.



One last thought, about my friends at News 13. How great do you think it is to have a coverage area that measures (roughly) 12 X 12 miles????? Any must-cover story is ten minutes away! For someone who seems to have spent his career in a whole series of "hyphenated" markets with huge coverage areas, what a treat!

What Are You Prepared to Do?

For the last two weeks the talk in the TV news "biz" has been the CBS O-and-O layoffs (160 and counting). Now it's word that Katie Couric may be jettisoned off the network news.

We've known about shrinking ratings and shrinking news revenues for quite some time. Apparently no one thinks broadcast news profits will grow again, so the solution is to shrink news budgets by lopping off high-priced talking heads.

OK. It's a new fact of life for a new kind of broadcast journalism. Maybe we drowned in our own belief that the gravy train could never be derailed.

I feel like John McCain talking about Iraq. There are going to be tough times ahead. The question: What are you prepared to do? The late Ron Tindigilia asked the question with the aid of this clip from "The Untouchables."

"What are you prepared to do?" You want to be the #1 television news operation in your market? It's easy to say you do--everyone will say it, because everyone wants to be #1. But really, what are you prepared to do? Will you put your money where your mouth is?

One of Ron's successors as news director at WABC in New York was Cliff Abromats. Cliff was (is) a driven man, who saw (sees) TV news as a contact sport. When we'd adjourn to "Chip's Pub" across Columbus Avenue after a newscast, he'd take a fistful of quarters and play "Eye of the Tiger" non-stop on the jukebox.

"It's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight
Risin' up to the challenge of our rivals.
And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night,
And he's watching us all with the eye of the Tiger."

Cliff, like Elliot Ness, would do "everything within the law" to achieve his goals. He had a "take no prisoners" mentality. But I'm not sure even Cliff could work his considerable magic in times like these.

There's good news, though, for a few of you. If you're #1 in news in your market, congratulations! You're likely to be #1 for some time to come. #2s will stay second, #3s will stay third. The pecking order will stay the same unless the top station somehow screws the pooch.

Why? It's simple. If you're #2 or #3 it's going to take time, talent and (almost undoubtedly) money to become #1. You're going to have to do more and do it better if you want to overtake the market leader. The #1 station has the incentive to spend enough to stay on top. Other stations won't want to ramp up the effort to do more and better on the outside chance it might turn into ratings and profit gains.

Wishin' and hopin' and thinkin' and prayin' and dreamin' won't make it so. OK, maybe Dusty Springfield had part of it right: maybe plannin’ will work, but the planning has to be coupled with action. And the action it will take to pull away from the pack, to take on the leader and to meet the challenges of the future will probably take money, unless you can reinvent the wheel. Is the next Al Primo out there anywhere? When he dreamed up “Eyewitness News” it was a total break with broadcast journalism’s past. He held what everyone had been doing in TV in the palm of his hand—held it out at arm’s length—turned it over and examined it from all sides—and then came up with a complete departure from what had been the norm.

Is there a visionary out there who can see a new future for TV news?

I’m waiting.

One-man bands? The Internet? I'm just not sure.

Many years ago I took over the news department at a station that was #3 and trailing downward. We commissioned a major research project to help us decide which way the viewers wanted us to go. I told the project director, “I’ve always looked at the competition in news as a game of chess. I want to find out what’s important to the viewer—and what spaces our competition has occupied so we can figure out how to move around them.”

When the research came back, the consultants said, basically: “Bad news. They’ve got all the key spaces occupied, You can’t go around them. If you want to beat them, you’re going to have to go toe-to-toe with them and attack them at their strongest.”

Meaning—if the viewer sees investigative reporting as critically important, and the leader has two investigative reporters—set up an “I-Team” with five. If the audience thinks having a helicopter is important—lease two. If Mr. A is the #1 anchor in town—hire him, and Ms. B and Mr. C to boot. They send one of yours to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue!

The consultants were asking us, “What are you prepared to do?”

That station was still #3 when I left. Now, many years later, it just went through a round of major cutbacks. They had the wishin' and hopin' parts down pat, but that was about all.

At WABC in the old days the answer to the "Untouchables" question was always, “We’re prepared to do more than you other guys. If it comes to a showdown, we'll meet you in the streets. We’ll out-man you and out-think you and out-hustle you and out-shoot you and out-report you. You bastards want to be #1, come and try to take it from us, but get ready to get bloody!”

Of course, we were playing for high stakes as the #1 station in the #1 market. There aren’t that many chips on the table anymore, and I don’t see the Primos, the Tindiglias, the Abromats waiting in the wings for a seat at the table. I see accountants.

I should have known it was coming, I got a taste of it when I worked for the old Storer Broadcasting. I've written here before about Storer. For a long time it owned some fine stations in some fine markets and turned a FINE profit. My first News Director's job, at the old WSPD-TV in Toledo, was for Storer back in 1975. I learned quickly how Storer viewed news:

“You want to be number one? Isn’t that going to cost us a lot of money?”
“You want to be number two? Fine. Spend some money, make some money.”
“You want to be number three? OK, just don’t spend anything, and we can still make a nice profit.”

So, in order of priority, Storer wanted to finish second. . . then third. . . then first. That's why, in most markets, Storer stations were second. . . or sometimes third. . . but rarely first. Even though there were big bucks to be made in those days, Storer didn't want to sit at the $500 blackjack tables. It was content to sit at the $2 tables. I guess you could say Storer was ahead of its time. Today no one is going to play “all in.”

Come to think of it, the Storer folks took the money and ran years ago--they got out of broadcasting altogether. I guess maybe they were farsighted men of genius. Isn't that the kind of pioneer spirit we could use today? Take the money and run? Get out while the getting is good?

I have this nightmare vision that at the next AP awards banquet they'll announce all-new categories: “Most Creative Reduction of Overtime,” “Most High-Priced Anchors Traded for Rookies” and “Least Amount Spent Per News Rating Point Achieved.” We're seeing a shift in the tectonic plates that underlie all of TV news. Ron Tindiglia wanted to know what price we'd pay for victory. I’m afraid that today's new breed of owners (all these "LLC" people) thinks any price is too great a price.

Forty years ago I got into this business because I wanted to be a broadcast journalist and save the world. As I became a news director I learned accounting, and labor relations, and even a little child psychology, but I still had the chance to do some news on the side.

OK, I'm coming to the end 0f this post. It's time for the snappy finish. Here's the part where I wrap the whole thing up in a bow, make a pithy point, and leave you (maybe) inspired and invigorated.

Nope, can't do it.

What do you think? Please comment.

By the way, this is a test. What are you prepared to do?

Cheese? What Cheese?

The future of television news is in doubt. There, I said it.

The CBS O-and-Os (Owned and Operated stations) have gone through a blood bath in the last week. Everywhere you turn, layoffs: huge cutbacks. Some long-time, big-name reporters, anchors and behind-the-scenes staff—men and women who have dedicated years to their craft and their stations—have been sent packing.

We all know that the television news audience is shrinking: cable and the Internet have taken their toll. It used to be you had to catch a dinner-hour newscast to be informed. Now the news comes to you when you want it, and in new ways. Fewer people are watching TV news than in times past; and the biggest source of revenue for any TV station, automotive ad sales, has dried up in this recession-or-whatever-you-want-to-call-it.

Maybe I’m naïve, but I thought that the industry would at least survive (if not thrive) during a political year. My crystal ball didn’t include 2009, but I thought we’d make it through 2008 untouched. I was wrong.

It’s not just broadcasting. Editor & Publisher last week quoted stats that show newspapers just had their worst year for ad revenues in the last fifty!

There’s a lot of hand-wringing going on out there: mine included.

Wait. Just a second. Maybe there are lessons to be learned in that 10-year-old motivational management book, Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life. This slim volume made it onto the Publisher’s Weekly hardcover nonfiction bestseller list for 200 weeks. There are over five million copies in print.

Let’s see if I can condense it. Two mice and two miniature humans live in a maze. They roam around looking for—well, for whatever it is that satisfies mice and men. Down corridor “C” they find a large stockpile of cheese. Every day they return to that big pile. The pile shrinks, until one day there’s no cheese down corridor “C.” The mice, who had noticed the pile shrinking, had made plans to hunt for cheese in new places.

The humans made no such plans. They expected (contrary to evidence) that the cheese would last forever. “Where’s my cheese?” one of them asks. It’s got to be here. This is the right tunnel. (Humans have a lot invested in being right.)

The mice, meanwhile, started looking for a new source for the cheese. Mice don’t care about right, they care about cheese! They scurried around, and after some lean times finally found a new pile of cheese (new rewards, new satisfactions, new pleasures) down a corridor marked “N.”

The little humans kept going down “C” however. It’s the right tunnel! Before too long they started arguing about what to do. They were afraid.

One of the humans, on the verge of starvation, wrote "If You Do Not Change, You Can Become Extinct" on the wall of “Cheese Station C”, and "What Would You Do If You Weren't Afraid?" His friend wouldn’t listen.

The first little human set out on his own. It was tough going at first, but he eventually found new sources of cheese, and new kinds of cheese as well! And along the way his journey taught him valuable lessons.

With a nod to author Spencer Johnson, here are the lessons the little human learned and wrote on the wall for all to see.

Change Happens
They Keep Moving The Cheese
Anticipate Change
Get Ready For The Cheese To Move
Monitor Change
Smell The Cheese Often So You Know When It Is Getting Old
Adapt To Change Quickly
The Quicker You Let Go Of Old Cheese, The Sooner You Can Enjoy New Cheese
Change
Move With The Cheese
Enjoy Change!
Savor The Adventure And Enjoy The Taste Of New Cheese!
Be Ready To Change Quickly And Enjoy It Again & Again
They Keep Moving The Cheese.

I hear him loud and clear. But here’s my dilemma. What if they stop making cheese altogether? I’ve been in the “cheese” business (broadcast journalism) for forty years. I was blessed enough to be in it when cheese was all people wanted or needed—when every night (it seemed) every home in America was tuned to a local newscast. In those times when television news was coming of age, I was coming of age. I was proud (OK, cocky), because I was convinced that what I did every day mattered to my co-workers and my community.

When I was a younger man, I promised myself I’d never be one of those old “Remember When” kinda whiners. Now I am one. I find I’ve been blogging more and more about WABC and my time there. I’ve said all along that I was there for the tail end of the Eyewitness News glory days: I had nothing to do with the creation of EWN as an art form (and you’re going to have to trust me, it was/is an art form). I was just a grunt doing his job: “another brick in the wall.” But damn, it was an important wall, and it was built by intelligent, dedicated people, and the work meant something.

I’ve had successes and failures since then. In my last news director’s job I was very successful at failing! I guess I was a broadcasting pioneer: I helped gut a once-proud newsroom long before CBS even thought about layoffs and cutbacks at its O-and-Os.

In my last job we grew the news “hole” by 25%, cut the staff by 20% (mostly by attrition), cut the budget by 25% and overtime by 70%. My bosses did everything in their power to get us out of the cheese business. And to (seriously) mix metaphors, I became a Nazi collaborator, a quisling: "Ach, velcome. You muzt be ekks-hausted avter your long train chourney. Vy don't you take a nize hot zhower???" I smiled on the outside while I was dying on the inside.

Why did I do it? Ego. Pure ego! I thought, “If I don’t do it, someone else will take my place, someone who doesn’t care about the journalism, or the staff, or the community. I’ll take the sleepless nights. After a lifetime spent trying to build newsrooms, I’ll help demolish this one—but I’ll try to do it in a way that as few people as possible get hurt.” The turnover rate at that station was so constant that I flatter myself not many actually realized how depleted the place was becoming. Or maybe they did and I didn’t know it. I was light-headed from going without cheese for so long.

One CBS executive was quoted this week saying something like, “Hey, we’ll still be doing the same amount of news—just with fewer people.”

Quisling!

I know what Spencer Johnson would say: “Why didn’t you read the signs—they were clear enough—that the TV news glory days were past? Why didn’t you move on?”

From news to what? From cheese to yogurt? I don’t like yogurt. I guess I can learn to make it, if the demand is there. Newspapers and TV are moving to “new media,” to the web. I guess that’s where we’ve got to go, but God Damn! I’ve seen some really wretched websites out there. The New York Times sold all its TV stations to make a big move into (and onto) the web. It looks OK. Are they going to avoid starvation, long-term? I don’t know. Newspaper people trying to tell stories with moving pictures still doesn’t work very well. Our print brothers and sisters don’t have the video sensibility yet.

I guess I don’t have any of the answers. Maybe the late Ron Tindiglia did. I’ll have to write a long post on Ron, his insights, his knack for news, his sense of humor and his humanity one of these days.

Just time for one story here. In his consulting days he would play clips from movies to illustrate his points, to rev up the troops. I think it was in Cleveland that he showed our staff a clip from “The In-Laws,” that hysterical Peter Falk/Alan Arkin comedy from the 70s. Not this scene, but the one where the two are being shot at. Falk starts dodging the bullets, running madly back-and-forth, side-to-side, all the while yelling at Arkin, “SERPENTINE.” That was Ron’s advice for when times got tough.

Spencer Johnson may know about foodstuffs. I think instead of “Where’s my cheese?” I should be shouting, ”SERPENTINE.”

No Thanks

We knew we were headed for disaster. It was one of those "OK, we've only got ten fingers, how many holes are there in the dike?" kind of days.

Yet somehow we pulled it off. We walked the tightrope without falling off. Insurmountable problems were...well, for lack of a better word...surmounted! Obstacles were cleared. The Marines would have been proud: we improvised, we adapted, we overcame!

And when it was all over I went to the General Manager with a suggestion: How about a memo to the staff recognizing the achievement and thanking them for the effort.

The guy had a reputation as being both disinterested and uninterested in the news. The talk around the station was that he didn't even know the names of most of the staff, and I believe it. I never gave him a quiz, but I saw him many times when the situation called for a "Hi, Tom" (Or "Dick" or "Harry" or "Harriet") and he gave it a "Hiya" instead.

Anyway, I thought a pat-on-the-back note would be not just appropriate, but also an important display of leadership.

And he said: "We don't thank people for doing their jobs."

Want to guess where that poor, dumb sumbitch is today?

(Hint: he's not in broadcasting, and we're all better for it.)

Over the years, I've been accused of being insincere. My cheerleading is over the top at times. I'll admit it. My highs are very high, my lows are very low. Maybe I'm manic-depressive, don't know. But that bastard idled along in neutral for all the time I knew him, and he stripped a lot of the fun away from what we were doing.

He made working for him a job. My best bosses have made working for them a shared adventure.

Pretty Woman

Patricia Jeanne Burns
(1952-2001)



If you live in Pittsburgh, there's probably not much I can tell you about Patti Burns that you don't already know. I can contribute one anecdote--but it's a good one!

For the rest of you, here's some background. Patti Burns was the daughter of legendary KDKA-TV anchor Bill Burns. These days local TV news seems to be of middling importance to most people: with so many sources for news your local TV newscast is just a small part of the mix. But there was a time when local news was a daily essential. And there were markets like Pittsburgh where everybody watched. And in some of those markets there were anchors who stood out, who became a vital part of teir viewers' live. And a tiny number of those anchors--if they were good, if they were lucky--almost approached the power Bill Burns had on Channel 2 in Pittsburgh.

He was the state's most-trusted and best-liked anchor, and KDKA's Eyewitness News was a part of everyone's daily routine. His sign-off, "Goodbye, good luck and good news tomorrow" was a Pittsburgh trademark.

Daughter Patti got into the business, earning her stripes at WFAA in Dallas. But when Pittsburgh's WTAE tried to lure her home, KDKA stepped in and made her an offer she couldn't refuse. In 1974 she went to work as a member of her father's TV news family.

Some months later, in late 1974, I went to work there, too, as a producer.

Some of you might know about my all-too-short KDKA tenure. It wasn't measured in years--or even months. Unfortunately it was measured in weeks.

Here's how it happened. I had been searching for work, KDKA made me an offer, and I gladly became a part of the Eyewitness News team. But just weeks later, and out of the blue, a former boss of mine at WJBK in Detroit put my name in as a candidate for news director at a sister station, WSPD in Toledo.

That boss, the late Dick Graf, called me up to tell me that I had a good shot at the job if I wanted it. "But Dick," I said, "I haven't even been here two months. How can I leave?"

And Dick said, basically, Listen kid, you wanna be a news director or dontcha?

Me, a top-fifty market news director at age 27? I took the job, and the folks at KDKA (especially my boss, Larry Manne) took it well. I felt guilt, but my overpowering ambition overpowered my sense of obligation.

So I worked with Patti and her father for just a few weeks. She was obviously "royalty," a sort of "news princess," but she never carried herself that way. She was just a hard-working junior member of the staff; smart, a go-getter and funny.

I wasn't in Pittsburgh when Bill and Patti were teamed as co-anchors in 1976. I wasn't there for what was quickly nicknamed "The Patti and Daddy Show." Nepotism? Sure. But what if it worked? It did. Together they were pheonmally popular. They anchored together until his retirement in 1989. He died in 1997 (at age 84); ironically, Patti left KDKA that same year after a contract dispute.

In 2001, Patti Burns fought cancer and lost. She was 49. That's not fair.

But on to my anecdote.

If you've guessed my identity, you'll know that I'm a big fat guy. "Orca fat" (to quote a movie line). For the last 40 years I've started every day on a diet, and ended most days off it. From time to time, though, I've had phenomonal success.

During my short time at KDKA I went on the so-called "Stillman Water Diet," a precurser to today's high-protein/no carb diets. And the pounds were dropping off, ten or more pounds a week! I was only mildly heavy at the time, but I was on my way to seriously skinny!

One day Patti and I were walking down a hallway with a young male anchor. I'm really embarassed that I can't remember his name. He was a good guy, GQ handsome, and a great dresser. Patti complimented me on my remarkable weight loss and asked me what my goal was. Being flippant, I turned to "Mr. X," and said, "X looks like he's gaining weight. My goal is to fit into those designer suits he's outgrowing."

And Patti said, "If you keep losing weight at this rate, you'll be in my pants soon."

That's my Patti Burns memory: three people standing in the hallway laughing so hard tears were streaming down their cheeks, laughing so hard they had to lean against the wall, laughing so hard they were doubled over.

Who's Holding Whom?

Time for another “So You Want to be a News Director” quiz.

Y'know what I hate? I hate being "the Media." You know, as in, “The meed-ya liberal chorus,” or “meed-ya bias.”

Worse, the implication that “the meed-ya” are somehow in league with the government.

In my first job (WOOD AM-FM-TV in Grand Rapids) I worked with a guy I’ll describe as a “strict constructionist.” Our job, he said, was to report the news, not to get involved with the news. When police asked us to put up a phone number for the public to call with leads in a particular case, he’d grumble, “Maybe they should do their job better. It’s not our job to be cops.” News Director Dick Cheverton had the last word, though. That word went something like this: “The station, as an entity, is a citizen of this community. If it’s in the best interests of our citizenry, of course we’ll help.”

Want a hypothetical? Forget that! Let’s fast-forward to a real-world example.

On a Thursday morning in October of 1982 a convicted robber was taken to Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn to have a cast taken off his broken arm. 34-year-old Larry Gardner overpowered his two guards, took a gun off one and wounded him, then rushed down a basement corridor to a staff locker room where he took five hospital employees hostage. A standoff ensued.

Every New York television station raced to the scene; and in the confusion that morning, before the police were well organized, we all took up live camera positions in a window overlooking a small hospital courtyard. WABC was there first: our crew staked out the best position. From our vantage point we could see the narrow casement windows high in one wall of the locker room. Apparently hospital officials and police each thought it was the other's job to control us, so neither did. We wound up with a small army of staff stringing hundreds of feet of cable through hallways and out to our live truck. By the time anyone realized we had unprecedented access, it was too late to do much about it.

Gardner requested, and got, a telephone, blankets, pillows, coffee, cigarettes--and a TV--from the NYPD hostage negotiation team. He released one hostage that afternoon, another at about 9:00 that night, and—apparently pleased with the live television coverage at 11:00—let a third go at 11:30. We were live for all our newscasts that Thursday, and again throughout the Friday standoff.

Friday afternoon he released another hostage. Four down—one to go.

Gardner demanded to speak to reporters, saying he wanted to bring attention to brutality, corruption and drug smuggling behind bars at the Brooklyn House of Detention for Men. He was also said to be worried for his safety because he was rumored to be a behind-bars informant, a snitch.

At first light Saturday morning Gardner told negotiators that he’d release his last hostage and surrender if he were allowed to make a live—unedited—statement to the media. WCBS radio had technical problems. WINS radio had technical problems. Every TV station in town was represented at the scene. But when police shouted up from the courtyard to ask who could go live, only the Eyewitness News crew could say yes.

I was at the station that Saturday morning, babysitting the situation, rotating crews in and out of the scene. WABC’s mission, its mandate, was to own every big story, no matter what it took. My job was to make sure we were ready for anything. Tipped off by our crew, I took the request from police and called News Director Cliff Abromats. I don’t remember whether he cleared it with General Manager Bill Fyffe or not, but he gave me the green light for the live broadcast.

At 8:30, all was ready. The last hostage came up a ladder from the basement after 46 hours in captivity. There was cheering in the courtyard. When Larry Gardner reached the top of the ladder he was frisked by a deputy chief to make sure he was no longer armed. Then he faced the newspaper, radio and TV reporters--including the live WABC-TV audience.

''I am not a madman,'' he said, ''I'm a man that was trying to get freedom. I got caught. I'm here.''

''I wanted freedom,” he went on, “but I couldn't get freedom. We're not the criminals,'' he said. ''The rich people are the criminals.''

And that was that—except for the second (and third, and fourth) guessing.

Here’s something I haven’t discussed in 25 years. Cliff had hired the former NYPD chief hostage negotiator as a consultant and on-air expert: for “color commentary,” I guess you'd say. He was fairly critical of the department’s response and tactics on the air. Off the air he was beside himself. He said his successor was “an idiot” for letting any cameras (let alone live cameras) into the middle of an ongoing negotiation. He said he never would have provided a TV to an armed hostage-taker.

Strangely, it wasn’t the NYPD that got the most heat afterwards: it was WABC for going live. The basic tone was, “What are you guys, Pravda, an arm of the police state?” “Kind of crossed the line between observing and influencing, didn’t you?”

An editorial in The Daily News took us to task: ''There's something wrong when a guy who was just a number in Attica a few days ago can commandeer the spotlight like that. We in the news business must draw the line against being twisted so easily.''

In the New York Times, WCBS-TV reporter Chris Borgen (who didn’t have to make the tough call because his station wasn’t as aggressive or as prepared as Eyewitness News) took a shot across our bow. ''When you have one hostage situation, suddenly you'll have four; when the media has [been] used once, suddenly it will be used four times.'' He said he was worried about setting a dangerous precedent. Me? I thought maybe Borgen should have worried more about getting beaten by WABC on all the big stories.

Cliff handled himself well. Here’s his quote in the Times: “We felt that lives were at stake—the lives of the hostages, and those of the police officers and correction officers at the scene. I wouldn't want to speak for the press in general, but in this context, I feel we did the right thing.''

Better yet was GM Bill Fyffe. The Times asked for an interview with Bill on Sunday afternoon for a planned think-piece on the role of “the meed-ya” in the situation. I helped set it up, and ushered the reporter (I forget his name) into Bill’s office at 7 Lincoln Square.

You could tell the guy wanted to get into a lengthy philosophical debate about “the meed-ya” in society. Maybe work in Sacco and Vanzetti, the Lindbergh kidnapping, the execution of the Rosenbergs, the Scopes Monkey Trial and the sinking of the "Titanic" somehow. With a little luck maybe he could push the general manager of ABC’s flagship station into some sort of hand-wringing, teeth-gnashing mea culpa. Maybe tears and a public apology for not carrying the lofty torch of journalism as high as this guy wanted.

He didn’t know Bill Fyffe.

Bill wasn’t impolite, and he wasn’t curt, but his first reply was his only necessary reply and it ended the interview: “If you were stopped at a traffic light and a police officer rushed up and said, ‘I need your car to save a life’ what would you do?”

Next question?

Well, hey, thanks for stopping by.

Great quote. Somehow it never made it into the NYT.

So, kiddies, the answer to today's quiz is this: the federal government licenses TV stations to operate in the "public interest, convenience and necessity." Go thou and do likewise.

Here endeth the lesson.

The Best Job...EVER!

I've written here that I worked for WWJ-TV in Detroit. I've written that I worked for WDIV-TV in Detroit. Did I write that they were one-and-sort-of-the-same?

These days it seems just about anyone can own just about any number of TV stations in any markets they darn well please. That's a change. For the longest time the feds put strict restrictions on the number of "voices" you could control in any market. They were, they said, worried about one owner settting itself up as the gatekeeper in each market, becoming so powerful that all other voices were drowned out.

The FCC was particularly tough on newspapers owning TV stations. That's why the Detroit Evening News, which owned WWJ-TV in the motor city, and The Washington Post (as Post-Newsweek), which owned WTOP in the nation's capital, got worried enough to arrange a swap.

So in 1978 the top brass from WTOP moved to Detroit to take over at the newly-renamed WDIV ("We're Four Detroit," with the IV being the Roman Numeral "Four," get it?).


I jumped at the chance to return to Channel 4, even though it was to essentially the same job I had held four years earlier (or is that IV years earlier?); producer. The ownership change made it very attractive.


WWJ had always been the newspaper's red-headed bastard stepchild. Boy, were they cheap! The prevailing wisdom was that a little infusion of Post-Newsweek money and leadership added to an excellent (if under-manned and under-equipped and under-financed) news staff would lead to a rebirth of Channel 4.

The first signs were positive. The News had charged employees to park in its parking lot. Not much--50 cents--but they charged you to come to work. Some poor schlub was on duty 24/7 to collect your four bits. On "Day One" Post-Newsweek instituted free parking and tore down the parking lot attendant's shack. Talk about a positive first impression!

And the new management--straight from Washington, and proven winners--brought in Mort Crim from Chicago as main anchor. Another hugely positive sign. If you want to think first class and act first class and be first class you need a first-class anchor: and Mort Crim fit the bill. It wasn't just his deep, resonant voice and his commanding presence: he was the best pure writer I ever worked with.

These days, with computers, you can write and re-write and revise and review and re-re-re your scripts a hundred times. In the old typewriter days a re-write meant a new carbon set. Some nights the writing came easy, and you'd look to the heavens and say, "Lord, I don't know why you bestowed this gift on me today, but please don't ever take it away." The next night at 10:50 p.m. you'd look down to find fiftycopy sets scattered around your wastebasket!

Mort did a ton of his own writing, but I'll bet if I asked Mort to write 40 stories a week he did it on 41 copy sets. He had an ability to sit at the keyboard--look down for thirty seconds--and immediately bang out perfect copy. Every time. Must have been from his days as an ABC Radio correspondent. A master. A pro.

Some time after I left WWJ they had moved the newsroom from its cramped quarters on the third floor into one of the TV studios downstairs, and built a news set in the new newsroom. That's what Post-Newsweek inherited. It had the advantage of having a lighting grid already in place. The disadvantage was it was a noisy old two-story barn of a room. Offices were created by throwing up some walls--but walls without ceilings. The whole place--with AP and UPI wire machines and typewriters and police scanners and telephones and voices raised--sounded like a Ford assembly line going full blast.

One of the first things the new owners did was arrange for big-time news promotion. The promos were to be shot in the newsroom. And in keeping with their big-ticket approach, they hired an outside production house to shoot them. That meant 35mm, a director, a crew, a dolly (with tracks), grips to pull the dolly, lighting people, and--and--and--EXTRAS!

So one day this small army of film-makers came into our newsroom and displaced our small army of TV types. Desks were moved, tracks were laid, our front-line anchor team was positioned in chairs around the room, and Mort was given elaborate lines and choreography. The idea was that Mort would carry a script from place to place, conferring with the rest of the "team," obviously dotting "Is" and crossing "Ts" along the way. It was an impressive bit of "business," but not really out of character for Mort. He really did most of those things most days--sort of. What was disconcerting (and funny!) was that 95% of the actual news staff was shunted off to the side and replaced by the extras. It wasn't enough to be a reporter or a producer or an editor--you had to look like a reporter or a producer or an editor, and I guess most of us didn't.

And at one key point, off in the background, a beautiful young woman in a red blazer, holding a clipboard, was talking into a microphone on a headset.

If you were in the room you could tell the "headset" was a Radio Shack AM radio headset--the kind people sometimes wore in these pre-Walkman days, with big antenae on each side. The "microphone" was glued on. In those days wireless headsets were all but unheard of, but it didn't matter: this woman's "headset" and "microphone" weren't connected to anything.

Still, at one point, with the drumbeat music playing and the announcer talking about Mort Crim, journalist, he walked past this beautiful-woman-in-the-red-blazer-holding-the-clipboard just as she talked into the mic and made notes on the paper in front of her.

The real news staff--standing behind the lights and the tracks and the production staff--giggled uncontrollably. And we each said, "I don't know what the $%$^$ she's doing, but THAT'S THE BEST JOB EVER!"

Just for fun, here's a Mort Crim "sampler" from August, 2007--seven years after I left the station. Here are Mort and Carmen Harlan on an ordinary night, with ordinary news: but ou can see he was an extraordinary anchor.

Mort retired in the mid-90s to run his own production house. He turns 71 soon, and I'm told he's had health problems. Can't help but wish him well. I don't pass around the word "professional" easily or often. Mort has always been a pro.

Sky-High Hype

Look what I found on eBay! I haven’t seen one of these in years! Of course I bought it. Paid $16.99 plus tax & shipping. Don’t tell anyone, but I’d have paid more. There aren’t many out there in 2008, and I’m not proud.

Wait a minute. Come to think of it—I am proud of this. It’s shameless hype at its best (worst?), but it’s my hype, thank you very much!

This is a “Monogram” kit circa 1985, still in its original cellophane shrink-wrap. Build your own “Skycam,” your own model of WNEP-TV’s news helicopter. “All Parts Snap Together.” “No Gluing Necessary” (in case you’re worried about Little Timmy sniffing his hobby kits).

This is “Skycam II,” if you please, because it replaced an older and smaller Hughes helicopter. This was the real deal: A Bell “Jet Ranger.” And that’s pilot Jack Ruland at the controls. I should know, I took this picture. When we took delivery of the ship in August of '84 we rented a “chase chopper” for a couple of hours of promotional shooting, video and stills, over the hills of northeastern Pennsylvania. I took the stills.

One of the things GM Elden Hale preached is that we were not to identify ourselves with either Scranton or Wilkes-Barre, the two major cities in the market. So what’s that landscape behind the Skycam? Why, that’s your town, isn’t it? Of course it is.

I think I’ve said here before that I’ve had maybe two or three great ideas in my life. Everything else was adapted (a kinder, gentler way of saying “stolen”) from the work of others. I don’t know who first had the idea of selling models of a TV chopper, but I saw one—and contacted the “Monogram” people outside Chicago.

Here’s the deal: they already had molds for a Jet Ranger. They stamped them out of white plastic to make model police helicopters. They could mold almost any solid color (like black) and add in the necessary decals all for $1.82 apiece. I remember that figure, but I honestly don’t remember how many models we ordered: I’m going to guess 10,000, but it could have been fewer, or as many as 20,000. Of course, WNEP was still in its growing years and didn’t have $36,000 to ante up for hunks of plastic. Here’s where I got creative.

In those days WNEP was doing the “Children’s Miracle Network Telethon” for the Geisinger Medical Center in Danville. We asked them to put up the money, with the promise that we’d charge $2.50 for each model, all profits going to the hospital. Hey, a 37% return on investment isn’t that bad, right? The only problem is that I wasn’t sure how long it would take to sell out the run. What if it took three or four years?

It didn’t. The whole lot was gone in a year-and-a-half. We peddled them in supermarkets, by mail, and sold them at the yearly air show at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport. That was a goldmine for us. Mom and Dad and the kids out looking at aircraft. “Hey, it’s only two-fifty and all proceeds go to charity!” There was a time when it seemed every 12-year-old in 20 counties had a “Skycam” model.

My only mistake was the “Skycam II” business. When it came to naming the new ship I said it was important to prove that we’d been in the chopper business forever. I said the “II” designation showed longevity and continuity. I was right--and I was wrong. Truth is, “Skycam 16” is better branding. The "II" was clutter, and it was removed some years later. The ship is now "Skycam 16" again.

I will take some credit for making sure the helicopter was treated like a station personality. I made sure it was in the new opens: “Newswatch 16 with Nolan Johannes, Karen Harch, Chief Meteorologist Tom Clark, Joe Zone on sports, and Pilot Jack Ruland in Skycam 16.”

I wasn’t alone. Sheryl Bourisk was/is a genius. Last I heard she was in Boston; but at 'NEP in those days her title was marketing director, or some such. She came up with this little gem:

These are “Skycam” pilot’s wings. Anyone here old enough to remember Eastern Airlines? If you are—if you do—then you’ll remember that in the days before hijackings and terrorists and locked cockpits, Eastern Airlines stewardesses (they weren’t "flight attendants" yet) would escort youngsters up front to talk to the pilots and get their own pilot’s wings—plastic versions of the gold wings the pilots actually wore. Hey, Mom and Dad, look!

Ours weren’t that fancy—but at something like 2 cents apiece they were terrific promotional giveaways. Whenever the Newswatch 16 folks made personal appearances, we handed them out. And we were always making personal appearances. We were always riding in parades.

In those days it wasn’t just three or four WNEP staffers riding in a convertible: 10 or 15 or 20 people would show up, and that meant a float. Sheryl and her loyal band of station volunteers and interns spent hours decorating floats until she came up with a brainstorm for the best float ever!

She rented a flatbed truck and Jack landed the helicopter on it. Tie it down, put up a few railings, decorate the railings with $15 worth of crepe paper, and you've got an instant float with an instantly identifiable symbol of WNEP. And along the parade route, the goal was to make sure every kid who hadn't yet hit puberty got a pair of wings.

The idea behind so much of what we did back then was to get kids to watch our newscasts. My thought was, If I can get you to watch when you’re 9, and 13, and 16, I’ve got a pretty good idea who you’re going to turn to and trust for news when you’re 30. Seems to be working still.

My old WABC boss Cliff Abromats now runs his own news consultancy, specializing in research and marketing. He’ll tell you that the key is to have the viewer make an emotional commitment to your station, to your “brand.” He doesn’t go around saying “ABC” (A—Always! B—Be! C—Closing!) but he wants his clients to be relentless about being—who they are.

I wish I could show you my pictures of the”Skycam” float, but I lost them all in Hurricane Andrew in 1992. I used to have a case of “Skycam” models; but the ones I didn’t give away I lost to Andrew as well. Too bad.

But I salvaged a plastic bag of wings from a desk drawer, and now I have a "Skycam" model kit—and I have my memories of back when news was fun and we were a scrappy band of kids doing our best every day and connecting with our viewers in ways that don’t seem possible today. We were part of people’s lives, and the helicopter was our most visible symbol.

Oh, a P.S.

Bet you didn’t know that when WNEP took delivery of the Jet Ranger in August, 1984, it was a used ship! It had been owned and flown by WMAQ in Chicago and was fully outfitted (microwave, radios, etc.) for TV coverage. So today's “Skycam” is probably 27 or 28 years old. Not to worry. Helicopters are like old wooden yachts: keep overhauling them and they’ll last forever. I wonder if there’s a single original part on the ship now. I take it the station is continuing on in the Jack Ruland tradition of following the maintenance guidelines to the letter and having the work performed by the very best.

I said I lost a lot of "Skycam" memorabilia and pictures in the hurricane. This picture is from later. This is the "Skycam" and the WNEP satellite truck (in the background) drawing a crowd at the last local air show in August of '97.

Anyway: the models are a thing of the past. So are the wings. And the local air show. But we're still having fun, aren't we? Aren't we?

Nun-pareil

Who hires nuns? The Pope, of course. And Bishops. And me.

I hired a nun back in 1995 to serve as a reporter for WEWS-TV in Cleveland. What was I thinking? I was looking for a way to “own” coverage of the Cleveland Indians’ playoff run to the World Series. I knew our sports department could handle the runs, hits and errors—the sports coverage. I knew the news staff could come up with compelling sidebar stories. What I was looking for was something unique—something one-of-a-kind—something you’d get from Newschannel 5 that you couldn’t get anywhere else, that would make you sit up and take notice. In those days I don't think we were yet using the term "water cooler talk" to describe must-see features (come to think of it, I'm not sure the term "must-see TV" was in use, either): but I wanted something that would get both die-hard baseball fans and casual viewers talking. I wanted a reporter they could identify with.

So we had a brainstorming session with the staff. I said, “I want a super-fan. Get me the guy who beats the drum out in center field.” I didn’t know his name, but I knew that stretching back to the old days in mammoth Municipal Stadium a guy out in the cheap seats beat a huge drum in tom-tom rhythms at every home game to cheer “the Tribe” on.

“Let’s hire him and send him to every game, home and away, to file reports froim a super-fan's perspective. I’ll even buy a first-class plane ticket for his drum so he can take it on on the plane.”

“Oh, you mean John Adams,” someone said. “You don’t want him. He’s not very cooperative.”

“OK,” I said, “Get me the nun.”

I didn’t know her name, either—but everyone knew who I was talking about: The Indians’ #1 fan. She was allowed more-or-less free access to the team clubhouse—and she baked the players and coaches cookies! The staff told me I was talking about Sister Mary Assumpta of the “Sisters of the Holy Spirit.”

You might recognize her, too. She had a bit part in Major League, the Charlie Sheen/Tom Berenger flick about the hapless Indians trying to get back to the World Series for the first time since 1954.

The on-the-field baseball scenes were staged (for some reason) in Milwaukee, in the Brewers old ballpark: but the city scenes were shot, of course, in Cleveland—and the cast and crew took a liking to Sister Assumpta, just as the real-life Indians had.

I met with her and found her to be bright, articulate, funny and out-going—with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Cleveland Indians. So I made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. If she could get time off from her job as an administrator at Jennings Hall, one of the finest elderly-care facilities in the area, I’d send her to all the Indians playoff and series games—and pay her, to boot. She could do what she wanted with the money (which, admittedly, wasn’t much).

And that’s how Sister Mary Assumpta became a big-time TV reporter, even featured on the CBS Morning Show and in People magazine.

I was right. Her coverage was unique. No one--not even surly superstar Albert Belle--had the heart to turn down an interview request from Sister Mary Assumpta. And she was so sweet and so unassuming that the players really opened up to her. Journalists and broadcasters get quotes and sound bites. She had conversations and got information and emotion. And she was nominated for a local Emmy.

And now an explanation. I’ve just told you almost everything I know. But in doing my due diligence I came across a wonderful article on Sister Mary Assumpta written by Debbie Hansen for clevelandseniors.com. Wonderful!

I guess I could just publish a link to the article (it’s at http://www.clevelandseniors.com/people/assumpta.htm) and be done. But it’s long and involved. I’m sure Ms. Hansen won’t consider it plagiarism if I borrow some of her research and copy some of her pictures and try to condense the highlights, still giving her credit for a job well done.

The work is hers. The conclusions: that the Sister brings light and joy to all around her—are Ms. Hansen’s as well as mine.

Remember, I grew up in Cleveland. My first knowledge of the Indians came just after my 7th birthday—when they played the New York Giants in the 1954 World Series. I remember my Grandpa took the train from Racine, Wisconsin, and my Dad took him to one of the games. It might have been the first game: the one in which Willie Mays made what some call the greatest play of all time, his over-the-shoulder catch of a Vic Wertz smash to deep center.

In the end, the Giants won it all in four straight. For the next forty years every year was “next year” in Cleveland.

Little Helen Rachel Zabaskiewicz was a fan by then, too.

Later, as Sister Assumpta, she taught in Catholic schools from 1968 until 1992, when she got her license in Nursing Home Administration. In 1986 she became the Mother Superior, an elected position, of the Sisters of the Holy Spirit at Jennings Hall.

To quote the Hansen article:

“While she was teaching, Sr. Assumpta helped out at Jennings. One of the resident's daughters was the manager of Service America, the company who serviced the stadium. The company often gave their tickets to ‘the good sister taking care of her mother.’That is how Sr. Assumpta so often sat behind home plate, along with the player's wives.

“She started a fan club of sorts at Jennings, called ‘Adopt A Player.’ The residents adopted the player of their choice and then sent them a certificate letting them know. They then followed up with cards and letters, special notes after games, for birthdays, etc.

“Sister took approximately 50 of the residents, all in wheelchairs, to an Indians game. The tribe was still playing at Municipal Stadium at the time, which was not handicapped accessible. Benedictine High School loaned them 2 busses and they went to the "behind the fence" picnic area where the wheelchairs could get in. In order to convince one resident who was bordering on depression that she should come along, Sister promised her that she could meet Mel Harder.

“Not knowing how she was going to keep this promise, but determined to do so, she knocked on a door marked "Authorized Personnel Only" thinking it may be the clubhouse. It was. Mel Harder came out and talked to them and then made arrangements for meetings with Joe Carter, Brook Jacoby, Andre Thornton and others.

"To thank the players for being so considerate, the sisters made them chocolate baseball players and put their individual numbers on the caps. The start of the next season they made them chocolate chip cookies to welcome them back, and the cookies became a trademark.

“Sister Assumpta even arranged to have the residents sing the national anthem before the game in the 87-88 season. 1988 was Sr. Assumpta's 25th Anniversary in the community. Her friends from Pennsylvania [where she was born] sent the sisters money to buy her something really special that she wanted badly but would never buy for herself.

“Her choice? An Indians starter jacket. She has been seen nationwide in that jacket, which along with the cookies became a trademark.”

Debbie Hansen’s article told me something else I didn’t know: that the folks at Upper Deck Trading Cards made a card of her—apparently she’s the only non-sports figure on an Upper Deck Trading Card.

Now the bad news: despite “our” best efforts and prayers (so much for my claims of objectivity), the Indians lost the 1995 World Series to the Atlanta Braves in six games. But Sister Assumpta got to see all six—as my employee.

My Dad saw one game, too—with me. Sort of our family story turning full circle. We sat with my friend, Sister Mary Assumpta.

I’m glad I was her boss. Not her “Big boss,” mind you: we know who that is. He’s lucky to have such a faithful servant. Her talent isn't "on loan from God"--it's a gift she shares with us all!