"Weathering the Storm" (I Stole This Title)

Remember this? It's a National Lampoon magazine cover from 1973--voted one of the Top Ten covers in the last forty years by the American Society of Magazine Editors.

OK, now check out this promo from KWTV in Oklahoma City, shown on the "NewsBlues" media commentary site. Compare and contrast. Discuss amongst yourselves.



Do you get the same message I'm getting: "Watch Gary England during severe weather or your kids will die!"

I'm disappointed. I know Gary England. I worked with Gary England. Quite simply, Gary England invented severe weather reporting on television. He doesn't need to hype his coverage or his credentials. He's the founding father of tornado coverage as we know it. His warnings have saved countless lives over the years. No brag, just fact. Why, then, the over-the-top frantic mom clutching her frightened child to her bosom and hinting that maybe God can't save us, but "Gary England" can.

I know, I know: it markets the product.

Let me counter by saying that a simple recitation of the facts can "sell" viewers on KWTV's weather coverage better than any actors-dodging-the-special-effect-debris spot can.

Gary was the driving force behind KWTV's decision to become the source for severe weather information in the Midwest. He and his company, Enterprise Electronics, developed the world's first commercial Doppler radar. In the early 80s Gary became the first person to use Doppler radar for direct TV warnings to the public. He had the first color Doppler on TV. Those little "First Warning" weather maps you see in the corner of just about every TV screen in America? Gary England's idea.

And I don't care where you live, there's a 99.9% chance you've seen Gary England. He appears (in KWTV archive tape) in the first few minutes of the movie "Twister," airing a tornado warning. That's not acting, that's the real deal, actual tape of an actual broadcast. Gary is the real deal, too. He served as a technical adviser on that blockbuster film. Some years ago I met a terrific meteorologist from WHNT-TV in Huntsville, Alabama, Dan Satterfield, an Oklahoma native. He told me he saw Gary that night. Not the Gary depicted in the movie—the actual warning, that actual night. He said it changed his life and determined his future.

You’ve heard of “Da Man?” Gary England is “Da Weatherman!”

When I arrived in OKC as news director I thought I knew about tornadoes and severe weather coverage. Guess again! I inherited a weather department that operated with military precision, staffed 24/7, ready to go at all times. And I found that Gary England ran the station—or could, anytime he chose to. He had a switch at his desk that would fire up a camera and lights and microphone and override Master Control. He could literally get himself on the air in under five seconds! The decision had long since been made that in times of severe weather the on-duty meteorologist should take to the air instantly and stay on the air non-stop until the danger had passed. The entire news staff—the entire station—stood poised to take marching orders from Gary.

Let me make it clear: I had nothing to do with it. When it comes to weather coverage I can’t claim I did a single thing in my six months at KWTV except cheer from the sidelines and run for an occasional cup of coffee for the troops. My biggest achievement? Staying the hell out of the way so Gary and his team could save lives.

Gary has written an excellent book. “Weathering the Storm: Tornadoes, Television and Turmoil.” Fortunately it’s long on the drama behind the science of predicting storms and the excitement of live TV coverage—and short on the drama behind-the-scenes at KWTV. I’ve referred to that soap opera in another post. As Gary says of the 70s and 80s, “It was beginning to become a bit confusing—another boss and another set of rules, thirteen news directors in fifteen years.”

He doesn’t mention names, but I think there's a chance he’s referring to me when he writes, “The year 1988 arrived, and with it came another news director. My fourteenth boss was older, quiet, knowledgeable, and best of all had a healthy respect for meteorologists and our array of sophisticated equipment.”

Hard to say because of the revolving door in those days, but I'd like to think he’s talking about me as knowledgeable. I know I have a healthy respect for Gary and his pioneering work.

Maybe that’s why I was disappointed with the promo and its theme music and its sound effects. The reality of Gary England’s work has been on display to Oklahomans for more than 35 years. No brag, just fact.

------------------------------

(A late note: in re-reading Gary's book, I'm now convinced I'm NOT the "older, quiet, knowledgeable" chap referred to. Whoever he is--and I never met the man and have no recollection of his name--he was, I'm convinced, my predecessor.)

The Truth of the Matter

Now that I’m 60, I’m probably a little too old to go back to college for an advanced degree, so let me share with you what would have been the topic of my doctoral thesis:

TELEVISION IS A “TRUTH DETECTOR.”

Thank you, you’ve been great, I’ll be here all week, please tip your waitress.

What’s that? You want a more detailed explanation? OK, here it is, and a visual aid to boot:

Notice I didn’t say television is a “lie detector.” It’s not. Of all the people who have ever appeared on television, what percentage has been lying? Politicians—my guess is upwards of 90%. Lawyers—I’ll go with 75%. Sports figures—65%. Clergy—“survey says…” 50%.

But every once in awhile someone forgets about the camera, the microphone and the lights and just speaks the truth. Someone speaks from the heart, and it goes through the air at the speed of light and hits us in our hearts and suddenly we understand. Suddenly we know. And we care about people who obviously care so much that they'd bare their souls.

That’s why those of us who have been in TV for a long time aren’t quite so bothered by the mic-in-the-face-at-the-scene-of-the-fire story. We know that sometimes people really want to share their feelings. An ambush “How do you feel?” is, of course, the stupid, rote way to ask the question we all want to answered: “At this second, what do you want people to know about your life?”

If I keep referring in these posts to WABC, it’s because that’s where I learned my “Eyewitness News” lessons.

Strangely, I’ve never actually met Al Primo, the inventor/architect/creator/teacher of the “Eyewitness” format. Never met the man, but I’m his disciple (or is that “apostle,” I always get the two confused). Anyway, I learned from the people who learned from Al Primo. I think I’ll go into more detail about “Eyewitness” in future posts. My purpose here is to say that among the truths I learned in New York City 20+ years ago is that everyone wants to live in a small town. New York City is a small town! We all want to believe that if we had a problem we could knock on any door and tell our story to a kindly neighbor who would help. We all want to be cared for and about—and we all want to care for and about others. Guy jumps off a subway platform to save a man who fell under a moving train? I got tears in my eyes hearing him say that he just couldn’t do anything else, that he knew he had to help. He was telling us about his life, and he proved my point: TV is a “truth detector.”

I guess I knew that before WABC. I guess I first realized it watching Richard Nixon. That’s right—bear with me—Richard Milhous Nixon.

In August, 1974, Nixon resigned as President: we called it "Watergate," but it was a patchwork of lies and cover-ups and petty crimes that did him in, and he faced the music and the nation on the night of August 8th. Contrary to his repeated assurances, Richard Nixon was a crook: he used his office as a money-making scheme. And he was a liar. Time and again he looked the American people in the Cyclops eye of the TV camera and told blatant untruths. And yet—and yet—a majority of Americans believed him right up until the “smoking gun” recording of one of his Oval Office conversations made it clear what he knew, when he knew it, and that he’d been lying all along. He fell on his sword, insisting he was a man of honor, just as he was facing impeachment and removal from office.

Since the Watergate break-in a majority of the American people had bought the ticket and had taken the ride. Hey, what did we know? We watched him on TV. How were we supposed to know he was lying? Television is a lousy lie detector.

Not everyone remembers the next morning when Richard Nixon, surrounded by his stricken family, addressed White House staffers at an impromptu farewell in the East Room. He was (as was typical) sweating under the TV lights. He was (as usual) trying to be funny—and the man had no sense of humor. He was trying to be warm—and we had most often seen him coming across as stiff and wooden. I remember thinking that the only people who “got it” that morning were his staffers--openly weeping—and his family, trying to be brave while obviously devastated. It was a funeral service, and the only person in America who didn’t get it, was the corpse.

And then—and then—Nixon started talking about Teddy Roosevelt, and about the death of Roosevelt’s young wife. He put on a pair of glasses. We’d never seen Nixon in glasses before. And in a choked voice he read from TR’s diary: “And when my heart's dearest died—died, the light went from my life forever.” He was barely in control of his emotions. His voice caught. He was teary-eyed. Everyone in the room wept. I remember glazing over at the tragedy before me. And it was unfolding at the same second in living rooms around the country and around the world. Here was a broken man telling the truth about how he felt, and for the first time in my life I felt I KNEW him. I cared about him. I felt pity for him. I wished him peace. Amazing!

Nixon being Nixon, he finished with self-justification. The man who lived for revenge, who hated his enemies (and was sure he saw them lurking behind every White House pillar) went on to say, “Always give your best; never get discouraged; never be petty. Always remember others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.” And I knew that Nixon, too.

Richard M. Nixon wrote his own epitaph that morning. I know. I saw it. Thanks to television I was there. And because television is a TRUTH DETECTOR I felt it in every bone of my body. I remember thinking, “The New York Times can write thirty full pages tomorrow on what just happened, but it won’t convey the experience I just had.”

And I thought, “My God, television is a wonderful tool.”

I spent the first few years of my career bemoaning the fact that I wasn’t a “journalist” like the folks working for newspapers. It dawned on me that day that I should work my side of the street and let them work theirs.

That’s even more true today in this time of cable news saturation and the Internet. The lines that used to so clearly delineate the news delivery systems have blurred. I don’t know how people will be getting their news 20 years from now (or even 20 months from now!). But I do know a camera and a microphone and the truth make a potent, irresistible combination.

I say we should seek to do more truth detecting. It works for us, and for our audience. And I think we should do less of the stuff that doesn’t work.

Sounds simple. But if I’m so smart, how come I ain’t rich?

By the way: here’s a link to a web page with the video of Nixon’s farewell speech as well as a full transcript. If you’re my age, it’ll bring back memories. If you can’t remember Nixon, here he is, warts and all. Here’s the truth detector at work.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/richardnixonfarewell.htm

Getting a Kick(er) Out of Grimsby

I’ve posted before about WABC uber-anchor Roger Grimsby. Did I mention that he was a masterful writer?

Don’t know where he got it, but somehow over the years he seemed to have been granted carte blanche to write five or six segment “kickers” to end various blocks in the 6:00 o’clock news hour. No editing. No veto. For years Roger did an ABC Radio Network newscast each afternoon so he’d have an excuse to sit down and scan the wires looking for three or four stories that caught his fancy.

Of course the best was saved for last: the final spot in the final block at 6:00. Grimsby would come up on camera, and if he had that certain twinkle in his eye news director Cliff Abromats would groan, “Oh, no. Please Roger. Don’t do this to me. I’ve got a wife and a mortgage. I need this job. Please don’t do this to me.”

I committed to memory—more-or-less—one of my favorites. It went pretty much like this:

“Finally tonight, from Kansas City, the story of Ricky Smith, who wants to be known as Raquel. And to that end he is halfway through a series of sex-change operations which will turn him into a her. But police say he/she has been financing his/her re-gendering by sticking up liquor stores. They caught him/her last night, and now they’ve got a problem: do they throw HIM in the mens’ cells or HER in the womens’ cells?

(LONG PAUSE)

“Either way, it’s too early for a halfway house.

“Hoping your news is good news, I’m Roger Grimsby.”

Bill Beutel chuckles, the studio camera bobs and weaves while the cameraman tries to stifle his laughter, and Cliff Abromats turns and says, “I guess it could have been worse.”

Selective Perception

I'm knee-deep in writing my masterwork, my dissection of charges that the media are biased: longer than the Bible, footnoted throughout, sure to sell at least five or six copies to not-so-leading academics.

But you don't have to wait to plunk down your $49.95 at Amazon.com. Let me share with you one of my major conclusions: bias is in the eye of the beholder. You see what you expect to see. Your opinion is colored by--well, by your opinion! Anything that runs counter can be rationalized and explained away.

In the late seventies, at the annual convention of the Radio Television News Directors Association, Ted Koppel told this story to make the same point.

Guy gets home very late one night, very drunk, his wife is very upset. "Just where have you been?"

He says, "I've just been to the most fantashtic bar. It had a high blue ceiling with twinklin' lights like teeny-tiny stars. It had red velour on the walls. And in the bafroom it had a golden urinal."

His wife, disgusted, sent him to bed. But the next day, after he shame-facedly headed off to work, her curiosity got the better of her and she started calling around town looking for this "fantastic bar." No luck, until in the afternoon she got hold of a bartender.

"Excuse me, does your bar have a high blue ceiling with twinkling lights like little stars?"

"Yes, ma'am, yes we do."

"And do you have red velour on the walls?"

"Yes, ma'am, yes we do."

"This last question is a little embarrassing, but please bear with me: do you have a golden urinal?"

And the bartender covers the phone with his hand and shouts, "Hey, Ernie, I think I've got a lead on the guy who ruined your saxophone."

Selective perception: you see what you expect to see.

The Greatest Spectacle in Racing

Just finished a Memorial Day tradition, watching the Indianapolis 500. That's Dario Franchitti on the right, slugging down the traditional drink of milk (no one ever finishes the full bottle) after winning this year's rain-shortened 500, the 91st in Speedway history.

Of course my mind drifted back to when I drove the pace car at the 500, back in 1976.

OK, OK: it wasn’t the pace car, but it was a pace car. And it wasn’t in the race (or even on race day) but it was on the track.

I started as Executive Producer at WISH-TV in Indianapolis in April, ’76, knowing something about the famous race, but not knowing that in those days before NASCAR hit it big the 500 was the premier auto racing event in the world, and that it turned the entire town of Indianapolis on its ear for race month.

But I’m a fast learner. At the end of my first week, on a Saturday, I was getting gear stowed in my new desk when Sports Director Chet Coppock (I’ve written about him here before) walked into the newsroom, said he had some errands to run at the track, and asked if I’d like to tag along. Would I!

So we piled into his loaner car: a pace car replica. Don’t know if it’s still a 500 practice, but back then dignitaries and local sports figures were given replicas of the official pace car to drive around town for the month of May. Several dozen replicas were loaned out. Chet got one—a silver Buick LeSabre, if memory serves, with orange markings.

First stop, the Speedway Motel (the one at the top of Turn One, with the balconies overlooking the track). There we met up with Sid Collins, the long-time radio voice of the race. Sid was about to call his 25th Indy 500. No one knew then that it would be his last. A year later, less than a month before the 1977 race, Sid Collins killed himself after being diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS). But on that long-ago Saturday, being with Sid Collins at the Brickyard was like being with Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium: he couldn’t move ten feet without being asked for his autograph, and he couldn't have been a nicer guy.

As we left, Chet asked if I’d like to take the car around the track. “You’re kidding! They won’t let us do that!”

“Sure, if the track is empty, you can take it around.”

And so…I did!

First impression? The smoothest piece of interstate asphalt feels like a rutted gravel road compared to the racing surface at Indy. A hundred miles an hour felt like 35 on I-70. Next thing you know I was going 110, then 120, then 130 (the Buick didn’t have the full race tuning of the actual pace car, but it was plenty quick). That’s when Chet started narrating: “Over here is where Billy Vukovich was killed. ‘Course, that was back in ’55. Now up here is where Swede Savage crashed and burned just three years ago. But he didn’t die in the wreck; he died a month later from burns.”

Next thing you know I’m going 90, then 80, then 70.

That was fun, and memorable. But the experience of race day—the crowds, the colors, the people, the sounds—words fail me. When the command “Gentlemen, start your engines” was given, and all those cars started revving up, only to be drowned out by a half-million cheering fans—I tell ya, it took my breath away.

The race that year was cut short by rain, just like this year’s. Johnny Rutherford won the “Indianapolis 255:” the race was called 102 laps in, making it the shortest race in 500 history.

I remember pledging after that day that no matter where I was, no matter what I was doing, I’d always return to Indianapolis for the race. Sadly, I’ve only made one since. And every year I regret not being there for “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”

One other note. In those days the race was seen around the country on a tape-delay basis, hours later—except in Indianapolis. In Indy the ABC races played every year as a Christmas Week special: the track owners didn’t want to dilute their fan base by making the race to accessible for the locals: didn’t want to give them an excuse to stay home.

BUT, each TV station in town was allowed to shoot and air its own one-hour race-night special. The logistics of placing and manning the cameras, then rushing the film (in relays) back to the station for processing during the race, is a story I’ll save for another time.

I've been to an NFL championship game--pre Super Bowl, December 27, 1964 when "my" Browns won football's biggest game. I've been to a World Series game. I've never been to an NBA playoff game, or a Stanley Cup final. But what’s the line from that old movie: “Friend, I been to two state fairs a rodeo and a goat show and I ain’t never seen nothin’” like the Indianapolis 500.

Congratulations to Dario Franchitti, the winner of the 91st Indianapolis 500. Hope you had as much fun in ’07 as I had in ’76.

Some Thoughts from Howard Beale

And he said it in 1976, in the movie "Network." Which means that Paddy Chayefski wrote it.

No, this isn't the "I'm Mad as Hell" speech. This is something scarier.

"Right now there is a whole, an entire, generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this Tube. This Tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation. This Tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers. This Tube is the most awesome, goddamn force in the whole godless world, and woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people...Listen to me. Television is not the truth. Television is a Goddamned amusement park! Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, story-tellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, side-show freaks, lion tamers and football players. We're in the boredom killing business! So, if you want truth go to God. Go to your gurus. Go to yourselves because that's the only place you're ever going to find any real truth. But, man, you're never gonna get any truth from us. We'll tell you anything you want to hear. We lie like hell. We'll tell you that, uh, Kojak always gets the killer and that nobody ever gets cancer at Archie Bunker's house. And no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry. Just look at your watch. At the end of the hour he's going to win. We'll tell you any shit you want to hear. We deal in illusions, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds...We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the Tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the Tube tells you. You dress like the Tube; You eat like the Tube; You raise your children like the Tube; You even think like the Tube. This is mass madness! You maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion! So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off right in the middle of this sentence I'm speaking to you now. Turn them off!"

I saw "Network" with a friend who was working in news for one of the "Big Three" networks. As we drove away from the theater she said, "I know those people." 31 years later I think we all know those people. The scary thought is that perhaps we are those people!

If it's been awhile since you've seen William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall and Peter Finch (as deranged anchorman Howard Beale) you owe it to yourself to take another look at "Network." See if you can spot Walter Cronkite's daughter in a bit part!

You May Quote Me...I Guess

I said it…sort of.

Some people know me for my all-inclusive description of what makes a compelling television news story:

ACTION, REACTION…
MOTION, EMOTION…
WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU SAY,
AND THE GOOD STUFF GOES UP TOP.

A dear friend even had it framed for me; it was on the wall of several of my offices over the years.

It’s really self-explanatory. The stories that reach out and grab you are the ones that contain action, reaction, motion and emotion. TV doesn’t do a very good job of showing what people are thinking. That’s why the city council meeting probably doesn’t produce interesting TV unless someone is ranting and raving: action, reaction, emotion. Space shuttle takes off: action, reaction, motion and (possibly) emotion. Think of any story that ever made you lean forward in your La-Z-Boy and my guess is the more of those four elements it contained the more caught up you became.

“What you see is what you say” means that the words and pictures better match—exactly. When I was in Miami anchor J.D. Roberts (now “John” Roberts of CNN) and I had a running disagreement over having the words and pictures coincide. My contention was that if you were saying “The cow jumped over the moon” you’d better see the cow…jumping…over the moon. His idea was that the “MTV Generation” could process audio and video separately and simultaneously. He contended that complementary information could be conveyed at the same time; that the whole could be the sum of the two parts.We went ‘round and ‘round. Finally, when one of our news consultants came to town, I asked his opinion. He told me he didn’t have an opinion, he had fact: that several research studies had been done and that all showed it was cleaner and clearer to present information if both audio and video matched. He said it demands too much attention to ask people to weave two separate strands into a whole—better to do it for them. So what you see had better match what you say.

“The good stuff goes up top” means that you put your most compelling story at the top of the broadcast and your most compelling video at the top of each story. Put the hook into your viewers and don’t let them go.

Bad news for telegenic reporters: no matter how attractive you are, the best video is probably not your face! So no stand-ups at the top of the story. No talking heads, either, unless the sound itself is the most compelling part of the story: the mother of the kidnapped child asking for help, Vice President Cheney glaring and denouncing detractors.

Yup, that’s everything you need to know about putting together a compelling news story.

And I said it.

I just didn’t say it first.

And I don’t know who did! I got it (a gift, as it were) from a photographer named Tom Lehnen at the old WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids more than 35 years ago. Tom may have been the best photographer I ever worked with: he had an uncanny eye, a great sense for what was going on around him, a terrific rapport with the common man. That’s because he was an “Average Joe.” I don’t think he graduated from high school. He was not a lettered man. The only time I ever saw him read anything it was a newspaper—or some publication that would make him a better photographer. I visited him at home: not a book or a magazine in the place. So while he was a brilliant man, I don’t think I’m doing him a disservice by saying that I’m sure the “Action, Reaction” mantra wasn’t his. He never told me where it came from.

A quick sidebar. Tom got his first job in TV while working in the camera department at a local K-Mart. A reporter and photographer from WZZM-TV were filming in the store when the shooter fainted. After an ambulance hauled him away, the reporter asked if any bystander could finish shooting the story. Tom Lehnen, who had never held a 16mm camera in his life stepped up—and stepped into his new career.

As good as he was (and as I said, I think he was the best I’ve ever seen) he was frustrated because he couldn’t get better, faster. His drive was always pushing him for more, more, more. Sometime in the late 70s he got frustrated enough, I’m told, that he got out of the business. I don’t know where Tom Lehnen is today. If anyone out there does, let me know.

And I don’t know the origin of the phrase I sort of co-opted. If you do, let me know and I will gladly give credit where credit is due.

So You Wanna be a News Director?

Then I have a tip for you.

When you visit your prospective new employer, as part of your "due diligence" ask to be left alone in the News Director's office. Shut the door. Close the blinds. When you're sure no one can see, turn over the desk chair and look for a label on the bottom of the seat.

If you find one that says, "In Emergency Seat Back May be Used as Flotation Device," govern yourself accordingly.

The last survey I remember seeing said the average ND's tenure remains under 2 1/2 years. That means for everyone like WISH's Lee Giles who served 30+ years at one station, there's someone else who's out after 30+ weeks!

Seriously: the times I've gotten into trouble have all been when I didn't know what I was getting or my new boss didn't know what he (or she) was getting. Be careful!

A good friend once said that being a news director is like being a pro basketball coach. The day you're hired, you're also fired--we just haven't worked out the timetable.

Fingernails on the Blackboard

I heard it again today. It drives ma crazy! You’d think I’d be used to it by now. You hear it everywhere. No one complains. No one but me. And I’m right. The “Radio Reader” told me so!

A talk-show host on one of our local stations, WILK, went to a commercial break saying, “This is Dub-You-I-L-K.”

The 23rd letter of the alphabet is pronounced duhb-uhl-yoo. I learned that from Dick Estell in my first (and only) radio announcing class at Michigan State in the mid-sixties. Recognize the name? Dick still appears on many public radio stations every day reading books as “The Radio Reader.” Today you can buy audio books narrated by Dick Estell, but the truth is that reading books on-air goes back to the beginnings of radio. Michigan State’s radio station, WKAR, had a daily reading show as far back as the mid-1930s. Larry Frymire was “The Radio Reader” for twenty years. When he retired in 1964 WKAR’s young General Manager, Dick Estell, took over the duties—in addition to running the station and teaching classes. Dick was instrumental in the formation of National Public Radio and served as board Chairman from 1972-74. Even though he retired from MSU in 1986, he continues to produce “The Radio Reader” from his home.

On our very first day in Dick’s class he had each of us tape a mock newscast for WKAR. When he critiqued mine, he taught me two valuable lessons.

First, he told me to look at the letter “W” and see it for what it is: a double-“U.” Got it! I was reporting for Double-You-K-A-R, not Dub-You-K-A-R.

Then he asked, “If a cow moos and a kitten mews, how do you pronounce N-E-W-S?” Got it! It’s not “Dub-you-K-A-R Noos,” it’s “Double-You-K-A-R knews.”

One other note about “The Radio Reader.” Dick’s habit (one that I imagine hasn’t changed) was to read each book “cold,” without so much as skimming through it. He said that he liked discovering the work a page at a time, just the way a reader (or listener) at home would. He had a safety valve: he recorded each book weeks in advance. That way if he found, halfway through, say, that the book was worthless he could abandon it and move on to the next without torturing his audience. He’s read more than 500 books on-air in his more than 40 years behind the WKAR mic.

Oh, and he was also—for many, many years—the public address voice of the Michigan State Spartans football team. He has a clear, bell-like voice. Good guy. Good teacher. Obviously, I learned my first lessons from him well enough that they’ve stood the test of time.

In Harm's Way

I couldn’t have picked a more interesting time to work in Oklahoma City than 1988. KWTV produced and aired Oklahoma State University head football coach Pat Jones’ weekly TV show. Who knew the “Cowboys” were going to go 10-2? Who knew Barry Sanders was going to become a superstar at running back and win the Heisman trophy? Who knew that the Heisman announcement would be made while Oklahoma State was in Tokyo, Japan (of all places) where the team was playing Texas Tech in the “Coca-Cola Bowl?” Who knew that we’d arrange a live-from-Japan satellite interview with Barry right after the announcement in New York? Really a memorable football season for OSU football, for the station that billed itself “The Spirit of Oklahoma” and for me.

Also memorable because of KWTV General Manager Duane Harm.

When I started as news director Harm told me, “You can delegate some responsibility—but never trust anyone. That way you’ll never be surprised when they screw you. And they’ll always screw you.” Duane Harm ran his station and lived his life by those words.

Here’s how the coach’s show worked. Our KWTV crew, led by Sports Director Bill Teegins, would shoot the game then hurry back to the station the 60 miles from Stillwater, edit the highlights, and prepare for coach Jones’ live studio appearance at 11:00 Sunday morning.

That’s fine for a home game. But what if the game is on the road? The charter plane gets back to Stillwater at, say, midnight (or later). Then it’s back to the station at 1:00 a.m. (or later!), edit highlights for four or five hours, catch a quick nap (if you’re lucky) and air the show.

Duane Harm let me know that a good news director, a smart news director, a news director who didn’t trust anyone would find some excuse—any excuse—to “accidentally” show up at 4:00 Sunday morning. That way a smart news director could catch the crew goofing off and nip it (and them?) in the bud.

Duane’s suspicion was that he was being taken for a ride. My suspicion was that by 4:00 Sunday morning we had a crew that hadn’t seen a shower, a toothbrush or a bed in about 20 hours. But I desperately wanted to get off to a good start with my new boss, so I started showing up at 4:00.

I showed up, though, with two dozen donuts, fresh coffee, and an offer to play “go-fer” and do anything I could to help. I don’t know how much help I was, but maybe I provided a little moral support and I enjoyed being a part of the process.

As I said, that was Barry Sanders’ superstar, Heisman-winning year. The show was terrific, Pat Jones was what you’d expect from a big-time college football coach (whip smart, entertaining, a walking advertisement for his school and his program), and the dedicated efforts of the sports staff made it a big success.

The story has several endings; not all of them happy.

I left KWTV not too long after the football season. I told Duane Harm that I didn’t know why he had hired me in the first place, that I couldn’t be the kind of news director (or person) that he wanted me to be.

Some months later Duane Harm left KWTV; and here’s where things get cloudy. I have no personal knowledge of what happened, I can only tell you what little birdies told me. KWTV was and is owned by the Griffin family. After the death of company founder John Griffin, there were (the story goes) a lot of questions about how station money was spent. Specifically, I’m told, the Griffins (husband and wife) had signed a lot of paperwork Duane Harm had put in front of them without (it was said) really looking it over: like leases on a lot of equipment (cars, live trucks, a helicopter) that turned out to be owned by members of Duane Harm’s family. An insider told me that folks named Harm made a lot of money leasing equipment to people who thought they already owned it.

I do know that when a luxurious state-of-the-art horse racing track opened in OKC, KWTV had the most lavishly decorated suite in the place (to entertain clients, we were told); and I knew that Duane's wife did the decorating and spent (here's that word again) lavishly. Apparently the Griffin family didn't know it.

One day (I’m told by someone who was there) the staff was assembled, told that Duane Harm was no longer with the station, and asked to exchange their door keys for ones that matched the new locks.

Maybe when Duane told me that employees will always try to screw you, he was speaking from personal experience. There apparently were lawsuits and countersuits, but in the end everything was quietly settled.

Nice note: some time after Harm's departure I got a call from David Griffin, John’s son, who was trying to sort things out. He said he’d had individual meetings with every single employee to talk about the station’s direction. He said one question he had asked was, “What’s the biggest mistake we’ve made in the last few years?” and that many people had said letting me resign. On the phone, on the spot he offered me the job back. It was tempting—I really liked OKC and almost all of the people at KWTV—but I was already working for the CBS O-and-O in Miami, and didn’t want to look back.

Bill Teegins (whose real name was spelled “Tietgens”) eventually became the radio play-by-play voice of both the Oklahoma State football and basketball teams. In January, 2001, three chartered planes left Denver after a basketball game against the University of Colorado. The one carrying Bill, two players, a flight crew of two and five others connected to the basketball team crashed. All ten died. A memorial has been erected at the crash site 40 miles outside Denver, and there's another with a statue of a kneeling cowboy on the OSU campus in Stillwater. Bill was 48, and left a wife and daughter. I didn’t realize until I did some research as I started writing this that he was an eight-time winner of the Oklahoma Sportscaster of the Year award. That figures. He was good enough to win it, and modest enough not to talk about it. A good man.

Focusing on Film

On a shelf here in my den—where I can put my hands on it at any time—is a Bell & Howell 70-DR camera. Sometimes I pick it up just to feel its solid weight. I put my left hand through the worn leather strap, use the wing-shaped key to wind it up, brace its bulk against my forehead and crank off a few imaginary feet of film.

That’s right—film. 16mm single-perf Kodak film. Silent (you saved the more expensive magnetic stripe, or "mag-stripe" film for your bulky sound cameras). Kodak film: Ektachrome 7242 for daylight or 7240 for use indoors under tungsten light. Of course, in a pinch you coulduse 7240 film outdoors by putting an 85B filter in the filter holder. The orange tint of the filter brought the tungsten film closer to daylight: otherwise tungsten film shot outdoors would be bluish.

I twist the turret and bring one of the three lenses into position—and the ratchet brings the proper viewfinder lens into place. That, of course, is the difference between the DR and the DL. With the DL you had to manually move the viewfinder lens every time you changed lenses. With the DR when you rotated the lens turret you were rotating the viewfinder turret as well. No zoom lenses here! “Through-the-lens” viewing?—hardly. In theory the viewfinder lens showed you what you were getting on film. In theory.

Focus you can guess—especially at larger f-stops. f22 for bright sun on snow—f16 for bright sun—f11 for overcast. All the way down to wide open (f1.9) at night under a frezzi lamp. Remember, though, that if you’re going to shoot wide open in low-light you probably ought to use a wide-angle lens to minimize focus problems.

Did I just say, “Remember, though?” I did, didn’t I? How the HELL do I remember those obscure facts from almost forty years ago? I have no idea.

My first job at WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, back in 1969, was producing the 11:00 p.m. news. But I knew I was in my apprenticeship years, and that anything new I could learn, anything more I could learn, would pay off for me down the road. I went to Chief Photographer Tom O’Rourke and told him I wanted him to teach me how to shoot film.

“What makes you think I’m going to give you an expensive film camera to play with?”

“Well, how about high school football games on Friday nights? You never have enough photographers to go around.”

“Kid, now you’re making sense.”And that’s how I tricked Tom O’Rourke into teaching me how to shoot football games—how to wander the sidelines about 20 yards ahead of the line of scrimmage—when to move from the sideline to the end zone for the (anticipated) touchdown—what to do when you get trampled on a sideline play (jump up quickly and pretend you’re not in agony).

Film was expensive. Our 70-DRs took 100-foot reels. At 24 frames a second, 33 feet a minute, one spool was good for just over three minutes of exposed film. By the time you factored in film processing (every TV station had its own on-site lab), it cost 14½ cents to shoot a foot of film (and how did I remember that?). You wanted to keep costs to a minimum, so in a medium-sized market like Grand Rapids Tom O’Rourke had us aiming for a 3-to-1 film ratio. That is, for every three minutes of footage you shot the station hoped (expected, demanded) one minute would make it to air. If you got to 4-to-1 or (God forbid) 5-to-1, you were either working in a big market with money to burn or working on a special project. Tom kept a chart that showed each photographer’s shooting ratio.

The joke—absolutely apocryphal—is that O’Rourke once sent a photographer to a minor league hockey game with 100 feet of film. When the photog. complained and asked how he was supposed to shoot an entire match on one roll of film, O’Rourke (it was said), replied, “Easy. Just shoot the goals.” Obviously untrue—but a cute legend.

That, of course, was the first thing we noticed when we (the TV news industry) switched to videotape in the early 70s: shoot as much as you want of anything you want. We can always reuse the tape later.
The old Bell & Howell 70s were the workhouse of the newsreel and TV news business for decades. You can still find them on eBay—even, occasionally, brand-new government surplus DRs in factory cases. But even if you could find film, and if you shot some footage, and if you wanted to get it on TV, I don’t know how you'd do it today. Not many photo labs handle 16mm film anymore—and few TV stations can air it. Film projectors are almost nonexistent in most TV stations. Too bad. Film was fun.

I was around for film's final days. One of my chores at WABC in New York in the early eighties was to find a buyer for the station’s film freezer: a huge walk-in meat locker used to keep the film fresh. But WABC was a film holdout, keeping some film crews on staff until about 1982 and mostly, if memory serves, for union reasons. Those were the days. Cameraman, soundman, lighting man (and I mean no sexist disrespect: 99.99% of the crews were male).

Field Producer Eddie Galorenzo once told me of the problems of a five-person crew (five when you add the field producer and the reporter): “No matter what you need to do and when you need to do it, somebody’s always off taking a pee.”

Forget the debate about the aesthetics of film, about which looks better—tape of film. Forget the fact that an ENG camera’s output can be beamed back via microwave or satellite for live news coverage. Film had a couple of advantages from a reporter’s perspective.

First, the film had to be processed: which meant you got to finish your day in the station! No trying to write a complete script in a notebook, no trying to record an audio track in the back of a live truck.

Second, you knew it was going to take at least a half-hour for the film to come out of the lab and be ready for editing. That meant you were in the station, at your typewriter (no computers, kiddies!) with time to craft your piece. Yeah, we lacked immediacy. With film runs at, say, 10:30 a.m., 2:00 p.m., 3:00 p.m. and 4:30 p.m., that 5:45 fire didn’t get on until 11:00.

Want to know the scariest thing in a producer’s world back then? Going back to the lab at 5:00 to see how the film run was coming—and finding the door locked. A locked door meant that the lab was sealed—a sealed lab meant it was dark in there—dark meant that there was a processor problem (the film probably jumped off one of the guide rollers) and the technician had opened the light-tight processor trying to fix it—and you stood outside trying to figure out what to do if two-thirds of your newscast was lost in a vat of chemicals. It happened.

The film went over-and-under, over-and-under, over-and-under a series of rollers through various tanks of processing chemicals—then through a dryer box where hot air and light bulbs finished the job. Hundreds and hundreds of feet of film working its way through the "soup" during a film run. I remember a day when the dryer broke, and sticky wet film started coming out of the machine. Somebody got a huge take-up reel and sat with it in a chair about twenty yards down the hall while the rest of us ran up and down with borrowed hair dryers trying to save the run.

Adapt—improvise—overcome. We had our film that night.

What else? When my friend Elden Hale was news director at WNEP in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre in the early 70s he got a great buy on some “double perf” film stock: with sprocket holes (which pulled the film through the camera) on both sides, instead of on one side like single-perf. I was visiting Elden and watched as his lead story got on upside-down and backwards. Back to single perf!

Teases, bumpers, promos, headlines: sick of seeing the same shot over and over and over and over again? Not in the film days. Catch the building collapsing on film? Great! It goes in your story. But there’s no way to use and re-use it until you get it dubbed to tape. When I was starting out that meant 2” tape (no 3/4” yet). Not an easy thing to do in most medium-sized TV stations in the early 70s.

Let’s end with a primer on B-Roll and DP.

The term “B-Roll” is still used today—it refers to a shot laid over a jump cut to minimize the distraction. But what does it mean? DP (“double projection”) was rolling two film projectors for the same story. At WOOD, with an hour-long newscast, we might use 20 minutes of film telling our stories—but only use DP to cover jump cuts in five or six stories.
Your main film reel was spliced together, in order. It was loaded on your main film projector. The DP, maybe a minute-and-a-half in all, was spliced together (again, in order) and loaded onto your secondary film projector. Since the main film was on the “A” projector, the DP reel became your “B-Roll.” B-Roll covers jump cuts, get it?

Here endeth the lesson.

Meryl and Me

OK, make that "Meryl and I," as in "Meryl Streep and I had a conversation about TV news. "

I was sitting at the WABC assignment desk early one morning, maybe 7:30, answering phones. The voice on the other end said, "This is Meryl Streep, and I have a complaint."

Y'know how sometimes you just "get" that the person on the other end of the line is for real? Maybe it was the anger in her voice, and I knew it was Meryl Streep and I knew she was upset, so I asked what was on her mind.

She told me she was watching Good Morning America, that she liked the show, but that she couldn't stand the local news cut-ins: they were all doom-and-gloom and body counts (my words, not hers--but you get the idea). She said she was trying to raise children in the city (I think she said two, but I'm not sure), and that she didn't want her children growing up thinking the world around them was evil and ugly and dangerous.

So I got the chance to trot out "Standard Reply #17:" "I understand completely, and certainly sympathasize with you. You have to remember, though, that we're in the 'news' business, and NOT MUCH NEW happens overnight that's not bad for someone. The Mayor doesn't cut many ribbons on new bridges at 2:00 a.m.--the cure for cancer won't be announced at 3:00 a.m.--the Knicks won't win the NBA championship at 4:00 a.m."

No, I explained to her, the "new" news overnight is pretty much murders and fires and robberies (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!).

I think she got my point, and I know I got hers; but it's even more of a concern today. In the 25 years since she and I talked local news has gone in for more camera-pointing and less reporting. Al Primo's "Eyewitness News" concept preached taking people to the scenes of stories, introducing them to the participants and letting them get the same feeling they'd have gotten had they been there themselves by giving them a balanced look at the facts.

It was "we report, you decide" decades before Fox--but there was more reporting back then, more tackling of tough topics, more making sense out of complicated issues for the viewer.

How do you make sense out of a dead body on a New York street corner?

Ironically, I think the networks did an excellent job covering the biggest non-war "body count" story of this decade, the Virginia Tech massacre. They certainly did the "Ain't it a shock?" and "Ain't it a shame?" stories, but then they went further. They quickly got to "What does it mean? and "What does it mean to you?" and "What can we learn?? and "How do we prevent it from happening again?"

Felt like "Eyewitness" to me.

Mean is as Mean Does

I’ve talked here about mean bosses. I guess I forgot to mention me!

Honest to God, I’ve never considered myself mean. Often straightforward, sometimes blunt, always demanding, but never (at least to my way of thinking) mean-spirited.

There’s a story that refutes that claim. My-right-hand-on-the-Bible, I don’t remember this at all; but I’m told it’s true by an absolutely unimpeachable source: Jerry Giesler. Jerry was a reporter and anchor when I was news director for WEEK-TV in Peoria in the mid-70s. He’s since gone on to an excellent career in news and station management. Last I heard he was running a station in Ft. Wayne.

Jerry swears this story is true, and who am I to doubt him? But if called upon by a Congressional committee, my answers would all be along the lines of, “Senator, I don’t recall.” “Not that I’m aware of, Senator.” “It depends on your definition of ‘is,’ Senator.” Or maybe just a plain, “Who, me?”

And I don’t recall the circumstances: but apparently Jerry and his photographer had just made a major gaffe on a big story and were returning to the Channel 25 newsroom after having pretty badly screwed the pooch.

I’m told (“…by reliable sources, Senator”) that I reached them on the two-way radio and had a conversation that went something like this:

“I want you two to pull over to the side of the road.”

“What?”

“Pull over to the side of the road.”

“Pull over to the side of the road??????????????”

“You heard me.”

“Why?”

“Don’t ask questions, just do it.”

“Uh, wait a second.”

“I don’t have a second. You need to pull over to the side and stop.”

“OK.”

“Are you stopped?”

“Yes. Why did you have us stop?”

“Because we have a company policy that only station employees can drive station vehicles.”

LLLoooooooonngg pause.

As I say, I have no recollection of any such incident, Senator. But if it did happen—and Jerry Giesler is an honorable man, who can doubt him?—it was kind of funny, wasn’t it? A little bit, maybe?

And One More...

And then there's this one. Keith and I had a meeting scheduled one day with another department head (who shall remain nameless here).

Keith, however, called out sick that day.

I told the other manager (OK, let's call him "Chase," just for fun), who replied, "Keith's sick? Nothing minor, I hope."

Daddy Dearest

I’m surprised—and a bit embarrassed—to find, as I write these entries, how much space Keith McKinney still occupies in my mind and my life. You’d think I’d be over him after 30+ years, but apparently I’m not.

In my defense: did the crew of the “U.S.S. Caine” get over Captain Queeg? Did the crew of “HMS Bounty” get over Captain Bligh? Did Woodward and Bernstein get over Nixon? The man who gave me my first news director’s job still looms large in my life.

Anyone out there remember the “ascertainment” process? Too complicated to explain here, but it involved a series of one-on-one, not-for-broadcast interviews with community leaders to determine ("ascertain") what they considered to be pressing community problems. And it led WSPD-TV, headquartered then in downtown Toledo, to take several top-floor rooms in the (now closed) Commodore Perry Motor Inn around the corner for a day-long series of interviews. Big old hotel—maybe 12 or 13 stories high. At our first break Keith and I get on the elevator on the top floor, headed down past the mezzanine to the lobby. Five or six people in the car.

Two or three floors down the doors open and in steps a man about my age (late 20s). Doors close. We ride. We stop. We pick up some people. We drop off some people. Doors open. Doors close. No one says anything. Finally we get to the Mezzanine level and the man starts to get off.

McKinney says, loudly, “GET A HAIRCUT!” The man (whose hair wasn’t that long) never breaks stride, never turns, never acknowledges McKinney’s presence in any way.

Doors close, and as we ride down to the lobby Keith, staring straight ahead, says, “That was my son.” It was my turn to stare straight ahead in silence.

I don’t recall hearing the word "dysfunctional” until later in life, but I knew what it meant in 1975.

I don’t make a habit out of it, mind you, but often when I hear of a hostage taking, or a barricaded gunman, or a sniper attack, or a bombing in the Toledo area I check to see if the perp is named “McKinney” and if he’s about my age.

"Koch," Rhymes with "Crotch"

Koch, as in Ed Koch, the feisty Mayor of New York City through most of the 1980s. And crotch as in the lap dance he almost gave me.

Really.

Sort of.

My first boss at WABC was noted News Director Jim Topping. Jim always thought that the worst thing that could happen to a newsman or woman was to be yanked away from journalism and dipped neck-deep into a pile of managerial paperwork. I think it drove him nuts to see his newsroom management team doing scheduling and budgets and labor relations instead of news. He became determined to keep us in touch with the news by insuring we were in touch with the people who make the news.

With that in mind he decided to set up a series of off-the-record lunches for the Eyewitness News managers with some of the leaders our reporters would be shoving microphones at on a day-to-day basis. He wanted us to get to know what makes these people tick, and he wanted us to get an insider’s look at the issues and the players in “The Big Apple.”

First up, Ed Koch.

So on a nice spring morning eight or nine of us took the subway down to City Hall and presented ourselves at the Mayor’s door. The Mayor came out, said he had picked a nice restaurant two or three blocks away, and asked, “Where are your cars?” But we didn’t have any cars.

Now, the bunch of us—Circle-7 types, the Mayor and his aides and one or two cops from his security detail—could simply walk. But this is Ed Koch: he shows his face in public and the cheers, jeers, heckling, hand-shaking and autograph seeking will start. We should be able to make it three blocks to the restaurant in about two hours!

The alternative? The Mayor had a limousine. Well, not really a limo—just a large sedan, with a police officer behind the wheel. And there was a cop car with another two cops as security. Some “entourage.” We did the math, and figured we could squeeze in, somehow.

Now, the Mayor’s car was equipped with a ton of two-way police and fire radios. Remember rear-wheel-drive cars, with transmission humps running front-to-back? The rear-seat hump had radios on it—but there was room for someone to straddle the radios and the hump. I—somehow—became the designated straddler. And as the piling in and piling on continued, Ed Koch wound up sitting on my lap (the straddlee?). It was only three blocks, it was only five minutes, and all of us were laughing, but that’s how we got to the restaurant, with the Mayor of New York City sitting on my lap! When we arrived we must have looked like circus clowns unfolding themselves out of the car.

I don’t remember the restaurant or what we ate, but I do remember how impressive Koch was. He seemed to let his hair down with us—apparently trusting us to keep his remarks off the record—and was frank, funny, biting, a bit obscene and completely engaging for two hours. Now, it’s certainly possible I was star-struck and gullible (two of my less-praiseworthy traits), but whatever Ed Koch was selling, that day I was buying.

After lunch there was no repeat performance of the car ride: we WABC folks hiked to the subway station on our own, and Hizzoner piled into the (now spacious) back seat of his car for the ride to city hall.

Ed Koch was famous for asking his constituents, “How’m I doin’?” That day he did just fine.

Uh-Oh

In the late eighties I started believing my own press clips about what an innovator I was, and started looking for that next big challenge.

So far every news department I had run had shown steady ratings growth—in one or two cases, phenomenal growth—and I figured I’d bestow my blessings on some poor benighted station somewhere. I’d walk through the door and the people would scrape and bow: “Sun-Ra the News God is here to deliver us. All worship Sun-Ra.”

And I would answer, “Rise up my people, and look me full in the face (if you dare). I have come to lead you to the land of ratings milk and honey money.”

Uh-oh.

Remindeth me againeth: what doth pride goeth beforeth?

I went to WMAR in Baltimore. Forget, for a second, my ego. WMAR was a station with a long and proud history of driving away the audience. I honestly figured I could make a difference. Something was needed. WMAR’s newsroom had been rudderless for a long time, and the #1 station in town, WJZ, was a damn dominant juggernaut. WMAR’s General Manager, knowing change had to come, decided to do the new News Director a ”favor:” he left a dozen news positions (out of a newsroom of about sixty) unfilled. That way the new ND could shape his or her own staff.

So I get to Bawlmer (a wonderful city, by the way) and I take over WMAR (which has a lot of wonderful people on the staff). But the challenges are stiff: learn the staff, learn the city, learn the strengths (many) and weaknesses (few) of the competition, and set a new winning direction.

Oh, and along the way hire one-fifth of the news staff and bring them up to speed.

Let me admit one of my more serious shortcomings. It takes me forever to hire someone. I worry and fret and stew and second-guess myself. I want every hire to be a perfect hire. I want people who work with me to be happy, productive, fulfilled and rewarded. I don’t want them to work 24 hours a day, but I do want their undivided attention, their enthusiasm and all their effort while they’re on the job. I honestly want to believe in everyone on the staff, and I want the staff to believe in me. When Marv Levy was coaching the Buffalo Bills he said, “The secret of leadership isn’t getting people to follow you, it’s getting people to join you.” I wanted (and still want) to be a part of a team.

So the hiring (12—count ‘em—12 positions!) went more slowly than I would have liked, and a lot more slowly than the GM wanted.

Finally he came to me and said, “Listen, stop the stalling. We’ve got a 90-day probationary period here. Just hire any old people and if they don’t work out you can fire them within the first three months, no harm done, and move on.”

And I thought, “Uh-oh.”

And I thought, “One of us has made a big mistake: but I'm the one who's going to have to pay.”

Right again. But I’ll say this in my defense: most of the few people I hired at WMAR went on to successful careers there.

Happy Damn Anniversary!

The more I think about WSPD-TV General Manager Keith McKinney, the more I wonder if he really was stupid and nasty. Maybe he wasn’t stupid at all—just the meanest man in the world of broadcasting.

He had one trick to squeeze blood from the turnip that I think was his alone—and not necessarily official Storer Broadcasting policy. Don’t get me wrong—Storer could be cheap. But McKinney raised tight-fistedness to an art form.

Example? This one’s a beaut.

It’s certainly not unusual for GMs to keep pay rates and pay raises under their direct control. But McKinney was a master manipulator.

In the mid-70s when I was news director, WSPD employee pay raises averaged about $5 a week, and were given on the employee’s anniversary date. You get your raise from your department head, but he couldn't give it without direct written authorization from McKinney.

So let’s say you work for me and you’re supporting a wife and two kids on $130 a week. On February 1st, your anniversary date, you know, I know, and Keith knows you’re supposed to go to $135 a week. Joy of joys! Now you might be able to replace that cracked windshield on the Studebaker!

So in the middle of January your department head (me!) goes to Keith with the paperwork. He takes it and puts it in the pile on his desk.

And nothing happens.

Come the middle of February, and your pay raise is two weeks overdue. You approach me and say, “Did you forget?” I express my (legitimate) surprise, and promise to look into the situation.
I approach Keith, who angrily says, “I haven’t had time to get around to it. Leave me alone.”

March 1st, you’re getting impatient, I’m getting embarrassed, and Keith is getting angrier every time I mention your pay raise.

April 1st you’re looking at me like I’m probably personally pocketing your pay raise and Keith has kicked me out of his office twice.

Finally, long about May 1st, I screw up my courage and approach again. Keith—still angry—signs the paperwork. When I ask if the raise is retroactive to February 1st, he kicks me out of his office.

This scene if repeated over and over with everyone who works in my department. EVERYONE loses three months of pay raises. OK, it’s only $65 a head—but that’s a lot of cracked windshields on a lot of 15-year-old cars.

But here’s where McKinney’s genius pays off. Next February 1st, I go upstairs and say, “Keith, it’s So-and-So's anniversary date.” Keith stalls, but finally looks in his magic ledger and says, “What kind of trick are you trying to pull? He had a pay raise just last May. He’s not due again until this May!” And he kicks me out of his office.

Of course, in May Keith is “too busy” to give you your pay raise. He finally gets around to it in August.

And so it goes, for everyone, every year. Each year, your pay raise is delayed by three months and your "anniversary date" slides back by another three months. In four short years each employee has lost an entire year’s worth of pay raises. Keith and Storer have pocketed $265 per employee just by stalling.

Did I say earlier that my surprise was legitimate? Only the first two or three times.

Fool me once, shame on me—try to fool me 25 times a year, shame on you, Keith McKinney.

Virginia Tech Talk

This week’s tragic shootings on the Virginia Tech campus made me stop and think.

I’m wondering—not saying, not hypothesizing, just wondering—what role TV plays in all of this. When Charles Whitman killed 15 and wounded 31 from a sniper’s next on top of the University of Texas tower in 1966, there were no 24-hour cable news outlets. There was no satellite beaming of stories instantly around the globe. There were no cell phones—much less phones with video capability. There were no Lear jets to rush anchors to the scene.

So we didn’t get the fancy show titles like “Virginia Tech Massacre,” we didn’t get the somber theme music, we didn’t get wall-to-wall coverage of every psychologist with a sheepskin who wants to pontificate on the breakdown of society as we know it.

Back in 1966 we got straight news coverage that left us shocked, questioning and feeling helpless: but it wasn’t a theme park ride for the national psyche. We dealt with it. Today we’ll dwell on it—until something bigger and better comes along.

Here’s a question: how are conditions today for Walter Reed Army Hospital outpatients? It was less than a month ago that the story of neglect and mismanagement was THE…BIGGEST…STORY…OF…THE…YEAR! But hey, we’ve had Anna Nicole Smith’s death since then—and Britany Spears shaved head (parenthetically, why the hell do I know the correct spelling of Ms. Spears’ first name?!?!?!)—and Attorney General Gonzales bobbing and weaving his way around the truth—and the “Troop Surge” in Iraq. People don’t get their fifteen minutes of fame anymore—stories do. Walter Reed got its obligatory run at the top of the news cycle, but now we’ve moved on. We keep tossing more garbage down the chute and onto the air. Is it because there’s more to cover—because it’s easier to cover—because the viewers want it—or because it’s easier to point the camera at the disaster than to report? We live in a violent society. Does TV magnify and encourage violence? But if it does, why aren’t we all armed and taking pot-shots at the paperboy who tosses the paper into the puddle?

And all this publicity—will it make for more “copycat” crimes? I’ll admit I lived a sheltered life growing up. In the fifties, there were no mass murders—or were there? There was no drug abuse—or was there? There were no child molesters—or were there? There were no kids taking guns to class—or were there? Maybe such crimes just didn’t get noticed. Maybe—just maybe—the coverage itself made such crimes a part of the national “playbook.” Not acceptable, not by a long shot, but sort of “out there” where poor, sick people could mull them over. There was a time when the response to a tragedy like Virginia Tech’s would have been, “Not possible.” Now it’s, “Not again.”

I know: if I’m so smart, how come I ain’t rich? Dunno.

One other note. For 38 years we’ve been hearing, “He was a quiet guy, kind of kept to himself. I didn’t really know him, but he always nodded to me when we passed in the street. I never would have guessed in a million years that he was capable of something like this.”

This guy in Virginia seems to have been an exception.

I only know of one other exception: one of those “mad gunmen” some years ago in Cleveland. Guy shot up his neighborhood—to the surprise of his neighbors—NOT!!!!!

“Oh, yeah, he was a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. He used to go duck hunting in his canoe—in the driveway!” That’s right: this maniac would pull his canoe out of the garage into the middle of his driveway and sit in it in full hunting gear pretending to shoot ducks. The neighbors never saw evidence that the gun was loaded—no shots were fired—but he went through the motions. If we’re going to have homicidal maniacs in our midst—and I’m afraid they’re a fact of life—THAT’S the kind I want, the kind who go around drooling and howling at the moon. HIM I’ll know to steer clear of. English majors from South Korea who write violent short stories? How do we defuse them before they go off?
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A postscript. I stand corrected. The VT shooter was a madman, and did send out signals of his lunacy for years.

Suddenly the debate has become, "How dare NBC air those tapes and publish those pictures?"

I think NBC was doing its job. What's the old Scripps-Howard motto: "Give light and the people will find their own way." But how come college officials weren't trailing this young man around campus in squad cars with lights flashing and bullhorns sounding? His fuse was lit a long time ago. Did no one think to put it out?

Every (Yellow) Dog Has His Day

I’ve said here that I’ve worked for some very good bosses.

I’ve also worked for some jerks: mean bosses, stupid bosses.

If you’re unlucky enough to get a mean boss, you learn to gauge his/her mood. Catch such a general manager at the right moment and you’ll get a respectful hearing and a wise answer. You just have to know when to make your move.

If you’re unlucky enough to get a stupid boss, you learn to work around him or her. I won’t mention the station or his name here, but someday I’ll tell you about the GM I worked for who had his computer sitting squarely in front of him on the middle of his desk, instead of on the computer credenza behind him. At first I was surprised that he and I were staring at each other over a computer monitor. Didn’t take me long, though, to realize the placement was intentional: it kept office visitors from realizing that he was playing computer solitaire five or six hours a day (and drinking lunch another three).

But I once had a boss who was stupid and mean—and that's one ugly combination.

Keith McKinney was the General Manager for WSPD-TV, the Storer Broadcasting station in Toledo. A bit of history (you can find more on the web if you wish). In the 1920s George Storer ran an oil company in Toledo called “Speedene.” He made his fortune by locating gas stations next to railroad sidings. That way he didn’t have to truck the gas to the stations, and he could pass the savings along to customers. Brilliant. And his radio advertising was so effective that he bought his own radio station and changed the call letters to “WSPD” to further push his oil brand. Next thing you know “Storer Broadcasting” is a major player with a solid lineup of radio stations and network-affiliated TV stations in markets like Detroit, Atlanta, Cleveland, Milwaukee, San Diego and, yes, Toledo.

But the Storer descendents could sure pinch pennies.

My first news director’s job was at Toledo's WSPD-TV in 1975. We were in second place in news—and destined to stay there. While our main competitor, WTOL-TV ventured boldy forward, we were determined to stay right where we were.

Why?

I blame the never-articulated but omnipresent Storer theory of news spending.

“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? Just don’t spend anything, and we can
still make some money.”

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.

And GM Keith McKinney, whose philosophy was, “I’ve been outvoted before, but I’ve never been wrong,” kept control of the purse strings and (I’m convinced) kept the purse shoved down the front of his pants for safekeeping.

Let me repeat: Keith McKinney said, in several department head meetings, for all to hear: “I’ve been outvoted before, but I’ve never been wrong.”

I knew from the get-go that this was not a marriage made in heaven. But I also knew that I was 27 years old and had a chance to be a news director in a top-fifty market at a station with a staff of roughly two dozen. This, in 1975, was pretty close to big-time and this was going to be my big break. I was determined to make the most of it. OK, so what if we don’t have money, or technology, or facilities. We’ll work hard, we’ll pull together, we’ll tap-dance around out shortcomings!

Do you know what “Yellow Dog” is (or was)? It is/was the cheapest yellow paper you could buy, and it’s what we used for scripts. It was like the paper in your first grade “Big Chief” writing tablet, only yellow. Remember, no computers—no TelePrompTer—but we still need an original and four copies of each script. So every reporter and producer sits at an old manual typewriter, pulls out five pieces of Yellow Dog and four pieces of carbon paper, shuffles them all together, and starts typing. We are awash in yellow dog, and every finger in the place is ink-stained from the carbon paper, and it wastes time.

But I know the answer. CARBON SETS. Multi-page script sets with the carbon paper already built in.

So I do my homework. WSPD in 1975 is airing half-hour newscasts at 12 Noon, 6:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. Monday -through-Friday, and two newscasts each weekend day. I figure out the number of script pages we turn out in a year, add up our paper and carbon paper bills, get samples and costs from several carbon set makers, and come up with my answer. WSPD can switch its entire news operation to carbon sets for an additional yearly expenditure of $86.

As in $86 A YEAR! Total. All inclusive. No hidden costs. No add-ons. No extras.

And that's LESS THAN 24 CENTS A DAY! Pepsi, in those days, was a quarter a can in the basement vending machine. This cost less than a Pepsi a day!

So I write McKinney a memo. I quote prices. I attach samples. I explain the increased efficiency. I wait.

And I wait, and I wait and I wait. A week-or-so later I ask Keith if he’s had a chance to look over my memo. He says yes, then turns and walks away.

I wait a couple of weeks, and ask if I can proceed. He says, “Not now.”

Another couple of weeks—I’m in his office on another matter—I bring up my copy set idea.

Keith reaches down into the “In” box on his desk, takes out my original memo, crumples it up into a tight ball, and throws it overhand, hard, directly into my face. “You might as well do it, because I’m getting pretty f--king tired of hearing about it.”

And that, boys and girls, is how WSPD got out of the Yellow Dog business and started using copy sets.

If it Bleeds...Then What?

In the early 90s, as News Director for WCIX-TV (now WFOR-TV), the CBS O-and-O in Miami, I sat on a panel with all the news directors in the area, discussing television news with members of “Leadership Broward.”

You know about these “Leadership (Fill in the Blank)" groups, right? Civic organizations made up of the leaders of tomorrow—educators, doctors, lawyers, politicians, civic leaders, other professionals—designed to open a dialogue between the up-and-comers and the “establishment” of today. “”Leadership Broward” took in the entire Ft. Lauderdale area.

The heaviest of the “heavy hitters” on the panel was Joel Cheatwood, the man credited (blamed?) for WSVN’s “If it Bleeds, it Leads” crime-heavy, glitzy, flashy, Miami Vice-style newscasts.

You can argue with the concept, but you have to give Joel credit: WSVN was (maybe still is) the most “on-message” TV station in America. WSVN staffers know what their newscast is and the roles they have to play, and they are RELENTLESS about pushing their product. They are who they are—and there’s no mistaking WSVN for anyone else. They do more news than any other station in town, and they do it in a way that has been imitated around the country.

So here we are, sitting behind a table in front of a group of Ft. Lauderdale’s best and brightest, taking questions, when a woman rises. She is striking: not just looks, although you can’t (for lack of a better phrase) overlook her looks. But she is impeccably dressed, she carries herself with supreme confidence, and when she speaks she commands attention. This is obviously a well-spoken, intelligent woman who is every inch a leader of tomorrow.

She stands, she looks Joel Cheatwood straight in the eye, and she addresses him directly:

“I…DO…NOT…watch your newscasts. I …WILL…NOT…watch your newscasts. I consider what you do to be pandering. I consider your efforts to be bordering on the pornographic. In aiming for a ‘lowest common denominator’ audience you have demeaned and degraded the very people you pretend to serve, the people you are licensed by the federal government to serve.”

(The rest of the news directors are trying not to grin.)

“For example: on Monday you covered these stories…on Tuesday you covered these stories…on Wednesday you covered these stories…”

Jeez, the woman never watched anything BUT WSVN.

And it was Joel Cheatwood’s turn to try to suppress a grin.

People will frequently say what they think they should say, but will always do what they want to do. That’s why no one will admit to ever eating a Twinkie, but your local 7-Eleven can’t keep them in stock.

Here endeth the lesson.

Bobby Knight, You Bastard!

There are people who think Texas Tech basketball coach Bobby Knight is an ass.

I don’t think, I KNOW—and I’ve known it for more than thirty years. Put me down as one of his earliest and most vocal (if not well-known) detractors.

First, a word about Chet Coppock. Chet was Sports Director for WISH-TV in Indianapolis when I was EP there in 1976. You’ve heard the term “larger than life?” Chet most certainly was. He stood at least 6’7” tall. Got his start in sports announcing, if I remember, with the Roller Derby. I've seen a picture of him from those days wearing a white floor-length fur coat and a white fur gangsta hat. His voice was what is charitably called “booming.” His laugh shook rafters.

Chet, if you ever read this, sorry to be referring to you in the past tense. I know you’re still alive and kicking and working for “ESPN Radio 1000 AM” in Chicago. I’m still a fan.

Some people weren’t fans. Chet would say just about anything to start the juices flowing, to get a rise out of people. In Indiana, of all places, he was critical of the Notre Dame football team (although a lot of that bluster was just to stick the needle in anchorman Mike Ahern, a ND alum). And, sacrilege, he was critical of “The General,” Bobby Knight, and the heavy-handed way Knight ran the Indiana University Hoosier basketball team.

I don’t need to fill you in on Knight’s long and…uh…”colorful” career: the chair tossing, the referee baiting, the screaming, the player choking, the profanity, the bullying. All I can do is tell my own, “Bobby, You Bastard” story.

In the fall of 1976 The Hoosier basketball team was coming off a national championship. The football team, under Head Coach Lee Corso (that’s right, the same Lee Corso who works as a commentator for ESPN today) was, as usual, struggling. Chet and I went to Bloomington to cover the Indiana/Nebraska football game.

We were in the Memorial Stadium press box (the football stadium press box, mind you) when Knight caught sight of us and started loudly demanding that we be kicked out of the facility and off campus. His reason, apparently, was that Chet had said some things that made Knight unhappy—and as we have all come to know, an unhappy Knight is a vocal, insufferable, bullying Knight.

What I remember best is what happened next. This small army of university officials—toadies, suck-ups, brown-nosers, ass-kissers, sycophants, hangers-on—surrounded Knight and tried to calm him.

I couldn’t hear much of the conversation, but I swear several of the voices sounded like Elmer Fudd:

“Pwease, Bobby, heh-heh-heh. Pwease don’t make any twubble, Bobby. Dis is the footbaw pwess box, heh-heh-heh. We aw not shoo Coach Corso would appwoove. Pwitty pwease wet dem stay, heh-heh-heh.”

Coach Knight, ever the "gentleman", deigned to allow us (the rabble) to stay. And that small army of university officials slinked to the men’s room to clean their own pee off the front of their pants.

I haven’t had much use for Bobby Knight since that day: but hey, he can’t control himself, he’s mentally ill. I’ve had ZERO respect for Indiana University officials since: it took another 14 years for IU President Myles Brand to grow a pair and fire Bobby Knight. What price basketball success? Indiana University sold its soul to the devil and got Bobby Knight in the bargain. I don't think the basketball success was worth it.

By the way, the defending National Champion Hoosiers basketball team went 16-11 the next season; right, Chet?