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.
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.
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.
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?
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!
What’s next for Fox News Channel (and WBRE-TV alumna) Molly Henneberg? I caught her live Tuesday night at Huckabee headquarters (Henneberg on Huckabee?) breaking the news (if only by seconds) that the candidate was about to take the podium to not only concede defeat in the day’s primaries but also to drop out of the race.
I don’t watch much Fox News Channel, but I take it she’s been on the trail with the Republican candidate. But there ain’t no Mike Huckabee to follow around no more! What’s next for Molly? Probably something big. She’s been front-and-center for Fox on several major stories. She was the first national reporter on the scene at the Virginia Tech student massacre just last April. A tragic story, but Molly did solid work.
I can’t say I know her well. Our time together at WBRE (our “overlap”) was short. She was the medical reporter, so I didn’t see her break any big stories, chase down any big leads. She seemed competent enough and smart enough; but not exactly a hard-charger. She was good enough that her scripts pretty much got a rubber stamp from me in my role as EP. I don't think I influenced her career at all. I make none of those "I taught her everything she knows" claims.
She also wasn‘t glamorous. Past tense—wasn’t.Fox News gave her a makeover. As WBRE anchor Andy Mehalshick might say, “Big-Time.”
Fox likes good-looking women.
Mary Katherine Ham, writing at Townhall.com this week, shared this picture of a Fox Business Channel billboard in New York City: “The Future of Business News Has Arrived.”
The tag line? “See What You Are Missing.”
Uh…yeah…hmmmmm…uh-huh…yup…OK…sure…I see. What I’m missing is a bald-headed white guy with horn-rimmed glasses, or a person of color. What I’m missing is anyone without cleavage.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a mysogo—I mean a mysognis—I mean a misojon—I mean a guy who hates women.
I like to oogle—I mean ohgle—I mean look at pretty women as much as the next guy.
It’s just not my #1 determinant as I pick credible sources for news.
And don’t even get me started on “Fair and Balanced!”
Everybody knows the “Five Ws and the H:” Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. It’s on page 13 of your journalism 101 textbook. No story is complete unless it answers all six questions.
In my teaching days I also taught the “Three Fs:” First, fair, factual.
Let’s face it, in these days of “gotcha” journalism, being first is what counts, right? You can’t really get ‘em if you don’t get ‘em first. You gotta race to get your story on the web, on the air, on the printed page. If it’s incomplete or inaccurate you can always clean it up later, right? These days, more than ever, journalism is “instant history.” Hindsight, someone said, is 20/20. While we’re in hot pursuit some toes will get stepped on: tough.
So when I asked my students which of the three Fs was most important, I was never surprised when “First” came in…uh…first!
And factual is second, right?
You didn’t think you were going to get out of this without hearing a parable, did you?
I’m going to say it was 1970; right around there for sure. I was a producer at WOOD AM-FM-TV in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but still hoping to be a reporter. I had an understanding with News Director Dick Cheverton—if I could develop my own stories (and they were good enough) I could cover them myself.
So I jumped when I got a tip. Someone had dumped several half-dead dogs in a meat rendering truck in Kent County.
SOMEONE DID WHAT, WHERE??????
Look, the caller said, everybody knows—but no one wants to face the fact—that the local humane society has to kill dogs. Not far away from the Society offices, in an industrial area (I’m paraphrasing now), are two semi-trailers owned by a meat-rendering firm. Butchers, cattle, dairy and pig farmers, restaurants—anyone with dead livestock or fat and the like—takes it to this place. They get paid by the pound. The two semis are open at the top. Trucks go up a ramp and the “waste” is dumped into the trailers from above. Every week-or-so the trailers are covered and replaced.
I’m wondering how this guy knows all this when he dropped his bombshell: “The Humane Society of Kent County has a deal to dispose of its dead dog carcasses by dumping them into the trailers.”
It became obvious to me this guy was an insider when he said, “The Humane Society kills by lethal injection, but they screwed up on the last batch. The dogs dumped into the meat-rendering trucks were unconscious, but alive.”
I had a photographer and was out the door in five minutes.
When we got there, no one was around. We hiked up the ramp to look down into the two trailers, and what we found was exactly as described—and worse. There was meat there—rotting meat. And dead animals. I can’t describe the smell for you. I can describe the sound: the buzzing of a million flies feasting in the summer son.
And another sound. The whimpering of dogs. Live dogs. Dogs buried in hundreds and hundreds of pounds of rotting meat and fat.
I was so angry I was shaking. I knew what to do next: I got to a pay phone and talked to Chev—then I called the Humane Society. Hey—they rescue animals in distress, right???
An official came out—and looked shocked when I pointed out what was inside the truck. And photographer Tom O’Rourke and I carefully documented what happened next. At our “urging” the man got a ladder and climbed down into the meat and pulled out four or five half-dead dogs. He rescued them from hell.
He rushed them off to his headquarters with us right behind. Once we saw they were cared for we put him in front of the camera—and under the spotlight. I did my best to be the unbiased, neutral, fair journalist I knew Chev wanted me to be; but the first question had to be, “Those are your dogs, aren’t they?” He said he wasn’t sure. Couldn’t be sure.
Pressing ahead he had to admit that the Humane Society did dispose of animal carcasses in the rendering company semis. He did admit that they had recently taken several dead dogs there. He said he had numbers, but didn’t have descriptions of the animals.
He admitted it was possible (not probable, mind you, but not impossible) that someone had gotten the dosage wrong and that the dogs weren’t dead when they left the facility.
I had my story. I had these butchers nailed! The people charged with protecting animals had, at least in this case, tortured dogs and left them to die a horrible death. In all fairness—wait a minute, WAIT JUST A MINUTE! Fairness? There was no way to be fair in this case. There was no “other side” to interview. There were no "special circumstances to consider."
Yeah, but...
BUT WHAT? There were no BUTS as far as I could tell.
I rushed back to the station and started working on my script while the film was being processed.
Word spread fast. The whole station soon knew what I had. The Humane Society knew, too: they called Chev to try to have the story killed. He refused.
And when the film was ready he came to the editing area to look at my script and watch the footage. It seemed like most of the station came to watch, too. Everyone was stone-faced. I heard sniffling. I remember a secretary became nauseous and had to leave the room.
I took my script into Chev’s office and he suggested a change or two: he even toughened it bit.
Then he asked me if I was sure I wanted to go to air with it.
“Damn right! Why wouldn’t I? We’ve got these bastards right where we want them!”
And Chev said, “I just want you to think about this for a second. For more than fifty years the Humane Society has been looking out for animals in this county. It’s not a public agency. It gets no tax dollars. When we put this story on the air, we’ll end it all. There will be no more Humane Society of Kent County. Donations will stop. The doors will have to close. I’m not sure who will look out for animals then.”
“If this is part of a pattern—if there has been systematic abuse and negligence at that place, then they deserve everything they’re about to get. But if it was a one-time foul-up—a horrible, regrettable accident, but just an accident—we will have inflicted capital punishment on the organization for one mistake.”
"It’s your story and your decision. We’ve got several hours before the newscast. It stays as the lead unless you decide differently.”
I thought it over. I talked to my colleagues. I weighed the arguments for and against my all-time gotcha story.
I'm not much for censorship. I figure it's our job to tell people what we know. Who am I to decide that you shouldn't see a story, hear the facts? I remember the Scripps-Howard motto from back when I was a kid delivering the Cleveland Press: "Give light and people will find their own way."
But I also remembered Chev telling me that television never whispers--it only shouts. Anything I wrote, any pictures I showed would rocket through the tube directly into people's living rooms.
I put the film in my desk drawer: no sense rushing to judgement. The facts wouldn't be fair. Over the the next few days I did more checking. It looked more and more like an isolated incident, a tragic accident. The film stayed in my desk for years.
I called my “friend” at the Humane Society and told him that WOOD and I would be keeping an eye on him. I did. We did. The Society came up with an alternate way to dispose of euthanized animals. Don’t get me wrong—they still killed unwanted pets—that’s a fact of life. But to the best of my knowledge they hadn’t been and wouldn’t be running some sort of “Doggie Dachau.”
Was I right? Was I wrong? Hell, it’s 2008: today I could have started my own news cycle that might have affected every Humane Society and SPCA in America—and beyond. I’d make the cover of Newsweek. Oprah would have me on for an hour. I’d be the PETA poster boy.
In my teaching days I trotted this out for my students as one case where being factual didn’t add up to being fair. I'd like to think I was being fair to the dogs. I hope I looked out for them--they couldn't look out for themselves.
In my book, you want to be FAIR—then factual—and first would, of course, be nice.
What do you think? Discuss amongst yourselves. Post your thoughts in the “comments” section.
I've written before about Roger Grimsby, the legendary co-anchor of WABC's Eyewitness News for almost two decades. I even quoted the sign-off he and Bill Beutel gave for so many years as the #1 anchor team in New York—which made them, de facto, #1 in America.
"Hoping your news is good news, I'm Roger Grimsby."
"And I'm Bill Beutel, good luck and be well."
But I've never quoted Roger's famous opening line. This is from Wikipedia.org:
"Grimsby was known for beginning his broadcasts with the phrase 'Good evening, I'm Roger Grimsby, here now the news' and ending them with the phrase 'Hoping your news is good news, I'm Roger Grimsby.'"
So there you have it, right?
Not so fast! I got to wondering—a quarter-century after I worked with Roger and Bill—was Roger saying, "Here, now, the news"—as in, the news is coming at you here and now? Or was he saying, "Hear now the news"—as in listen up? I had never paid attention to what was written on the scripts, so I just didn't know.
I asked my WABC boss, former News Director Cliff Abromats, and he didn't know--he never bothered to look (and, admittedly, it wasn’t exactly a pressing problem for a guy who was administering a $27 million news budget and ministering to Big Apple egos).
So I dashed off an email to former WABC producer Alan Weiss (now the owner of a successful New York production company)—and he didn't know. He said it was just something Roger ad-libbed every night, and he had never seen it written down. But Alan was kind enough to track down longtime Managing Editor Phil Tucker, the man who polished the prose on just about every Eyewitness News story for years. Phil recalled having seen it once on a script Roger had written—ONCE!
"Hear now the news."
Take that, Wikipedia!
By the way, when Chevy Chase started doing his mock newscast on the very first Saturday Night Live, his greeting, "Good evening, I'm Chevy Chase and you're not " was said to be a subtle tribute to (and poke at) Roger Grimsby.
And now you know the rest of the story. Wait. Sorry. That's someone else's line. My bad.
I guess this is another of those “So You Want to be a News Director?” posts.
If memory serves, it was on an Ash Wednesday some years ago. A photographer was sent out to a local church to get the obligatory footage for the obligatory story on the beginning of the Lenten season. Every station in the country had roughly the same footage that night: I guess you could say we're all religious about covering religious observances.
All was going well until we came out of the footage to a two-shot of our anchor team. SHE: You know what I really like?
HE: No.
SHE: I just love the “host:” the communion wafers. They’re delicious. If you’d put them in a cellophane bag I could eat a whole bag every night while watching TV. They’re terrific!
And your humble news director, realizing that he had about thirty seconds before the phone started ringing and he had his own personal epiphany, his own “Come to Jesus” moment, was left to mutter, “Bless me Father, for my anchor is an idiot.” I probably should have been grateful she didn't mention chip dip. Or salsa! Omigod, it's too disgusting to even contemplate dipping the host into salsa!
Remember what they used to say about foxholes? I’m convinced there are no atheists in news director’s offices, either.
Did I tell you about the time I turned in an expense account for $500 labeled “Bribe Money” and got reimbursed? Actually, I think I had requisitioned $800 in “baksheesh” and wound up turning three hundred-dollar bills back in.
OK, it’s not quite that simple. I had prior approval.
Prior approval for a BRIBE? Here’s the story.
In the summer of 1983, Diana Ross announced a huge free concert on the Great Lawn in Central Park. The concert was free, but she sold the TV rights with a promise to donate the proceeds to create the “Diana Ross Playground” in the park, across Central Park West from her apartment in the Beresford, at 81st Street. When it was announced that the concert would start in the late afternoon—news time!—we at WABC shifted into high gear. We asked for and received permission to cut live for extended periods throughout our dinner-hour newscasts. The trick was to handle the technology and the logistics to get us on the air and make our live shots live up to Eyewitness News standards.
I did the site survey. 25 years later I’m looking for a way to describe the venue to you, and the best way is to ask you to think of a baseball field, greatly enlarged. Picture a stage set up on home plate: a huge stage, hundreds of feet high, wide and deep. On the pitcher’s mound, picture a camera, light and sound tower three stories high. But instead of being a little over sixty feet to the stage, make it about sixty yards! Instead of ninety-foot baselines, picture them running 90-100 yards. And on the first base line and the third base line, put 12-foot high fences. To continue this stupid analogy, the audience is allowed on the field--and only on the field. Outside the fence--where the grandstand would be--was the work area.
See what I’m driving at? A big wedge shaped area for the crowd in front of the stage—sweeping back onto the Great Lawn. Behind the walls and behind the stage; trailers, tents, TV production trucks—all the behind-the-scenes “stuff” it would take to put on a live show for 800,000 people and a TV show for millions.
And to me, it looked simple: have a camera crew and a live camera on the tower, and another on top of a live truck butted right next to the fence along the third-base side. Stand on the truck and you could not only get a perfect shot of the stage and the crowd, but also have a place for a reporter (the late Roger Sharp) to stand and go live.
Only one problem: trucks aren’t allowed to drive on the Great Lawn grass.
What? Truck, tents, trailers, mobile units, port-a-potties, cop cars, ambulances, limos, catering vehicles, production trucks: how were they going to get into place?????
Wellllllll…they were going to drive over sheets of plywood. Park regulations. For something the size of a pickup truck, say, they’d lay down two lines of plywood (one for each tire track) stretching about 40 feet. Drive forward—pick up the plywood from behind and lay it in front—drive forward—pick up—lay down—drive forward—pick up—lay down. For a tractor-trailer, a whole army of workers and huge stacks of plywood were necessary.
For a WABC live van, not that many: but still a good hour’s work for six or eight guys to lay a path from the nearest roadway to our position at the wall. And the site foreman said he just couldn’t spare the manpower.
Back at the station I talked it over with my boss, and he approved the “gratuity.” I took my wallet full of hundreds back to the park, went to the foreman, and said, “You would be doing WABC a huge favor if you could help us park our truck, and we’d be very grateful.” I pulled out five bills, he took them—and thirty minutes later our truck was parked.
We were ready for anything—anything but torrential rains, gale-force winds, lightning and thunder. That’s right, the show started under threatening skies and then God decided to punish someone. I don’t know if it was Diana Ross in the crosshairs, but it felt like me.
I was in our microwave feed area talking to the crews when the guys on the tower told me it was starting to look bad. I couldn’t see what they saw, but I had to take their word for it. I told them that the second they felt it was starting to be dangerous they'd have to pull down off the tower. I told the live truck crew that they’d have to lower the mast and get off the roof. I told the producer that he’d have to get ready to fill 40% of his news hole—the 40% we’d planned to devote to the concert.
The rest is soggy history. The concert had to be halted because of the fear of electrocution. Water puddled six inches deep in some places on the Great Lawn. Drenched concert-goers clogged the subways. Eyewitness News that night was the drowned rat of TV newscasts. I was despondent.
Here’s the way Diana Ross’s Central Park concert ended on Thursday, July 21, 1983. This is concert footage from the production truck. The Eyewitness News audience never saw any of this. Our crews had (rightly) taken cover by the time it got this bad.
About two minutes in, it cuts to the dramatic start of the next night’s return.
Can’t beat this for entertainment.
One other concert clip, just for fun. When Dreamgirls debuted on Broadway at the end of 1981, everyone assumed—knew—that it was the story of Diana Ross and the Supremes. Word was that she hated it, despised it.
But here, 19 months later, she’s on stage in the “Big Apple,” singing “Family” from Dreamgirls.
I wish I could say the story had a completely happy ending. It didn’t. As the crowd left the Friday night concert there were reports of gang muggings. Because the concert was held twice it actually lost money for the broadcasters, and there wasn’t enough profit for the Diana Ross Playground. She donated $275,000 of her own money to the project, helping the city to rebuild an existing playground. Groundbreaking took place in September 1986. Ross reportedly called the event "one of the most fulfilling aspects of [her] life and career.
I'm not going to mention the station. I won't identify the anchor involved. I won't name the General Manager.
Trust me that it was a big enough market that we had big-time consultants, talent coaches, hairdressers, even clothing consultants if necessary. There are some rules about what to wear and what to avoid if you're going to be on TV. For men, no herringbone sport coats (they tend to "run" on camera, to produce squiggly lines). For women, no white blouses (that much white "blooms," and when the camera adjusts to all that white, it darkens your face). Of course NO GREEN or bold shades thereof. It fouls up the chroma-key, the "green-screen."
Some stations provide a clothing allowance for their anchors to make sure they get it right. One I worked at had a rule: everything purchased with station money use had to be approved by the General Manager. The ”talent” would bring in their new outfits and sit on the set for a camera check. I guess you could say we were auditioning clothing! A tape would be made and the GM and the Chief Engineer would eyeball it to make sure the new outfit "worked" for TV. If it didn't, you could keep it—if you paid for it yourself! But you couldn't wear it on the set.
A sidebar. My favorite crotchety, cranky curmudgeon—WABC's Roger Grimsby—had a big clothing allowance to be spent at one of the great men's stores in town: Barney's of New York. Remember, the purpose of the clothing allowance is to guarantee that you look at least presentable at all times (left on their own, I'm convinced many male anchors would dress in K-Mart sport coats, snap-tab shirts and clip-on ties). But Grimsby found a loophole. And you should have seen the look on News Director Cliff Abromats' face when he found a bill for ten pairs of silk undershorts! When Cliff confronted Roger, explaining (as if Grimsby didn’t already know) that the clothing allowance was only for items that you’d see on the air, Grimsby said something like, “You never know, do you?”
But I digress.
I started here talking about a nameless station (in a galaxy far, far away). We hired a new anchor who had a thing for bright colors. Neon bright. Hell, I can't even name the colors she wore—magenta, fuchsia, orange, candy-apple red, electric blue, watermelon green (how'm I doin'?). And for jewelry she favored huge plastic hoop earrings the size of saucers, in colors like (I'm doin' my best here) turquoise and hot yellow. And scarves? Don’t even go there. Scarves like capes, in all colors of the rainbow. Add it all together and the woman looked like a freakin' parrot!
I tried to hint to her that perhaps she should dress in a more businesslike manner, maybe some grays and muted blues, some softer pastels, but she wasn't hearing me (truth is, I wouldn’t take my own advice on how to dress myself, why should she listen to me? ). The GM (he who shall remain nameless) didn't want to spend the big bucks to bring in the clothing consultant. That would involve flying her in from New York, putting her up in a fancy hotel for days, and several big-ticket shopping trips to pick out new outfits (at company expense, of course).
The GM was adamant until...
One weekend the woman went on the air looking like a Chiquita Banana commercial, minus the headdress.
Bright and early Monday morning I looked up to see the GM in my doorway."Alright, get the clothing people in," he said. "Every weekend she looks like the flag of a different emerging African nation."
I posted yesterday about Elden Hale, and his genius for reaching out to an audience. I mentioned that Elden, more than anyone else and before anyone else, saw the Wikes-Barre/Scranton market as not just just Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. I probably didn’t go far enough in recognizing the profound changes—cultural and economic—brought about by the simple phrase, “Proud to Serve Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania.”
If you lived in that area for any length of time you’d know that in the old days Scranton and W-B weren’t just separate cities, they seemed like separate universes. It’s not that they had some rivalry, that they hated each other: heck, the residents of each just didn’t know the other existed. If you lived in Wilkes-Barre, “Scranton” was just a word that probably had no more meaning than “New York” of “Philadelphia” or “Bangkok.” You had a concept of Scranton, but most had never been there.
Heck, if you lived in Wilkes-Barre, there’s a good chance you might never have been across the river to Kingston (300 yards away!).
It’s one of the most clannish areas I ever encountered. “Why should I go to their city? I’ve got everything I need in my city. My church is here, and my kids’ school. There’s a store where I can buy underwear, and a barbershop, and a car dealer. My two favorite restaurants are here—and my three favorite bars. Why should I go to (fill in the blank)?
Two things changed that attitude, at about the same. One was the construction of shopping malls like the Wyoming Valley Mall and the Viewmont Mall. For the first time there was a reason to go someplace else: I could get something there I couldn’t get in my town. Second was regionalism, as first preached and practiced by WNEP. The station served the entire region (as you can see from this old coverage map)—and got the whole region to recognize it as the hometown station. Covering the news in all those counties--and parades, and telethons, and sporting events and making personal appearances--got people thinking regionally for the first time. Elden drummed it into their heads over and over and over again. It sure-as-hell-wasn't the folks who ran 22 and 28 pushing for broader boundaries. You can almost hear them saying, "What are those 16 people doing in Tunkhannock?" While they were waiting for black-and-white to come back, Elden and the Shelburnes were pulling away. Now it's too late for a even a dramatic comeback to make 'BRE or 'YOU competitive.
The “drawback” of not being located in (or identified with) one of the two big cities in the market later turned out to be a huge advantage. So big an advantage that when Elden (by that time GM) picked a site for a new building, he didn’t want it to be in one big city or the other. Even though the land on Montage Mountain Road appeared on the maps as being in Scranton, Elden saw to it that it got a Moosic mailing address. That kept WNEP from being a “Scranton Station” or a “Wilkes-Barre Station,” even if you were just sending in a postcard for the snow-thrower contest.
The same game plan, forging a regional identity, has been tried elsewhere. KLSA, in Shreveport invented (if I’m not mistaken), the term “The ArkLaTex” to describe its coverage area (Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas). I don't know if that's been a uniying force like "PTS" has been, though.
And just today, on ShopTalk, one of the news-business sites, came this news release from KELO-TV in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
"Young Broadcasting Inc., has promoted long-time KELOLAND TV executive Jay Huizenga to president and general manager as he’s about to complete his 27th year in broadcasting at KELOLAND. Mr. Huizenga’s promotion comes less than one year after the company named him as station manager of KELOLAND. The appointment, which is effective immediately, was announced today by Deborah McDermott, president of Young Broadcasting Inc."
I know the stated purpose of this blog is to share my experiences in television news. How does “KELOLAND” qualify?
Well, I just experienced throwing up in my mouth—just a little bit.
I've talked here before about Elden Hale, one of the driving forces who made WNEP-TV in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton market such a dominant station—and certainly the man behind Newswatch 16's phenomenal growth and success.
I'm not sure I told you that Elden and I go back almost forty years. He and I had our first "real" TV jobs together, at the old WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, Michigan, working for the legendary Dick Cheverton. I guess you could say we knelt at the feet of the master. I guess, if we were racehorses, you'd say we share the same bloodlines. (OK, fill in your own “horse’s asses” joke here.)
Why, then, is he so much smarter than I am?
I guess we were friendly competitors when we started out, each building a career, looking for the next big step. I was around for the birth of his children--one now in TV, the other a lawyer. But he beat me in the race for the first news director's job. He landed at WNEP. And he invited me to come see him. It was late in 1974, I think. I didn't know it, but he wanted to offer me a job.
When I got to Avoca (where WNEP was located) I found the worst TV station in America!
WBRE was Wilkes-Barre's station. WDAU (now WYOU) was Scranton's station. WNEP, at the airport, was nobody's station, and it showed.
When I arrived Elden and his wife had yellow paint on their hands. Seems Elden had gotten a deal on yellow high-gloss, and he and Nancy had spent the weekend painting the cabinets in the newsroom. Talk about a Mom-and-Pop operation!
Those were the film days. WNEP had an old, antiquated film processor (the machine, not the operator!). I knew you could mis-mix the chemicals and mis-time the steps and get blue film. I'd even seen green film. I'd never before seen red film.
And Elden got a bargain on some double-sprocket film. Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!
So sure enough, the night I visited the lead story got on the air upside down, backwards and red!
Elden was one of the first to use a big-screen TV on-set as an over-the-shoulder device for rolling film and showing slides. He'd have the director pull "still frames" from film for use in the monitor. One night he told the director he needed something to illustrate a bomb for a Middle-East story. The director made his choice. And that night the anchor (J. Kristopher, maybe?) went on the air with a still of Boris Badonov from Rocky and Bullwinkle. Not this shot, but a cartoon out-take of Boris holding a bowling-ball shaped bomb with a burning fuse!
A few years later I learned that there was time every afternoon when it was a bad idea to try to call Elden. Bowling for Dollars was on, and the pin-setter was butted up to the back wall of Elden's office. You couldn't hear anything but the roll of the ball and the crash of the pins while the show was on.
Elden offered me the job, and I turned him down. I remember thinking, "This is the Elephant Burial Ground of TV news. Poor Elden: anyone who works at WNEP will never be heard from again."
OK, who knew?
But Elden had an instinctual feel for doing news in a compelling way, for seeing news as a service, for making the station a part--an essential part--of the viewers' lives. And he realized that if 28 was going after Wilkes-Barre and 22 was going after Scranton, that left 50% of the audience, in the outlying counties, unattached. He's the one who first regionalized the news, who made "Proud to Serve Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania" a slogan that stuck in people's minds. He went after the outlying viewers—got them—then conquered Luzerne and Lackawanna Counties. The rest is history.
Now, it helped that ABC programming was taking off, that the Shelburne family (WNEP’s owner) was plowing the profits back into the news operation, and that the owners of WBRE and WDAU buried their heads in the sand and didn't keep up. But it was Elden's vision and drive that made WNEP the most dominant TV station in the country.
One story illustrates his chutzpah. This might be apocryphal. I wasn't there. I don't know for sure. I do know that Elden brought "Backyard Weather" to the market. He did it because he simply didn't have room for a decent weather set in the old WNEP's cramped one-studio building. Shooting through a slit in the back garage door made sense.
Anyway, the story goes that on one of the first nights out back a huge rain storm kicked up just as the meteorologist (Paul Douglas, if I remember the tale correctly) was wrapping up his forecast. The winds were so strong that they turned Douglas' umbrella inside out--RIGHT ON THE AIR! After the show the floor director (the late Sid Harris, according to legend) went to Elden and said, "Why don’t you give me $30 and I'll go out and buy a terrific umbrella so that never happens again." And Elden is said to have replied, "Here's $30, go out and buy ten $3 umbrellas so it ALWAYS happens." I don’t know for sure. I wasn’t there. But it certainly sounds like Elden Hale.
It’s a Presidential election year. Maybe the most interesting since the Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail days of 1972. That’s a book, kiddies. By Hunter S. Thompson. Some of the best political reporting of all time.
I mean, this race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O. It’s as tight as the rusted lug nuts on a '55 Ford. On the Democratic side this race is tight like a too-small bathing suit on a too-long ride home from the beach. All that talk just months ago that Hillary Clinton was a shoe-in? Don't bet the trailer money on it yet. This race is hotter than a Times Square Rolex.
Sorry. Don’t know what got into me there. For a second I was channeling my inner Dan Rather. Those are all his lines, those Texas good-’ol-boy down-home-isms I’m going to kind of miss this time around, recited pretty much verbatim.
"Turn the lights down, the party just got wilder." "It's cardiac-arrest time in this presidential campaign." "He swept through the South like a tornado through a trailer park." "Now Florida, that race, the heat from it is hot enough to peel house paint." "It's a ding dong battle back and forth." "They both have champagne on ice, but after the night is over, they might need a pick axe to open them." "It's spandex tight." "The presidential race still hotter than a Laredo parking lot." "These returns are running like a squirrel in a cage." "It was as hot and squalid as a New York elevator in August."
Dan’s still around. But this year the reporter who got roughed up by “goons” on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968 isn’t working for CBS.
If you’re my age, you remember it. While peace protestors chanted “The Whole World is Watching” outside, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago had his security forces take control of the convention floor. It produced this video clip (sorry, you have to click the link: it won’t “embed” into the blog).
This year, if we want Dan Rather’s take on the political process, his quirky wittiness (witty quirkiness?) we’ll have to go to his weekly news magazine on something called HD Net on the Internet.
It’s been almost three years since he left CBS, and he left under a cloud. He vigorously defended a CBS story that claimed that someone may have falsified documents in George W. Bush’s National Guard file: that maybe during the Vietnam war “Dubya” didn’t satisfy his military obligations.
I won’t go into the yes-he-did, no-he-didn’t here; but the flap cost Dan Rather his job after 24 years anchoring CBS Evening News and 44 years with the network.
Still pending: Rather’s $70 million dollar lawsuit against the network and three of his old bosses.
Either way, the finest broadcast news reporter of his generation—maybe the finest since Murrow—won’t be in the CBS booth for the first time in a long time. I’ll miss him.
Don’t get me wrong. I never thought much of Dan as an anchor. Problem is, the spotlight and the accolades (and the big bucks) go to the anchor, the front-man (or front-woman), not the reporter who digs for news and breaks stories. Dan was a dedicated, dogged, determined reporter—as I said, arguably the best. But as an anchor he was always uncomfortable. You could probably get better psychiatric insights for a nickel from “Lucy” in the old Peanuts comic strip, but here’s my take: Rather’s up-by-his-bootstraps-from-humble-Texas beginnings left him with an inferiority complex. He always felt the need to prove himself. He couldn’t be satisfied with being a reporter, he had to push for the one broadcasting job he wasn’t particularly good at, lead anchor.
His tried to communicate with the common man, to overcome his awkwardness, with a down-home aw-shucks manner.
Someone somewhere at CBS actually let him go on the air one night with this story:
Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one, because you have. It’s time-warp time again in the nation’s capital from out of nowhere fast, guess what’s back on the fast track tonight from the White House to Congress? Phil Jones reports the House, after a personal house call and arm-twisting session for Republicans from President Reagan yesterday, yup, the House is again getting ready to vote again tonight on a bracket-to-bracket, top-to-bottom, coast-to-coast federal tax overhaul bill.
“Yup?” Ouch!
But Dan was always at his best (and his comedy lines were at their worst) during election coverage. Here’s another sampling.
"His lead is as thin as turnip soup." "This race is humming along like Ray Charles." "This race is hotter than the Devil's anvil." "Ohio becomes like a sauna for the two candidates. All they can do is wait and sweat." "One's reminded of that old saying, 'Don't taunt the alligator until after you've crossed the creek.'" "The presidential race is swinging like Count Basie." "This situation in Ohio would give an aspirin a headache.'' "Bush is sweeping through the South like a big wheel through a cotton field." "What Kerry needs at this point is the equivalent of Tom Brady coming off the bench to rescue him. But it's still too close to call." "No question now that Kerry's rapidly reaching the point where he's got his back to the wall, his shirttails on fire and the bill collector's at the door." "This presidential race has been crackling like a hickory fire for at least the last hour and a half." "Let's see where it goes from here. Round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows." "In southern states they beat him like a rented mule." "If you try to read the tea leaves before the cup is done you can get yourself burned." "We had a slight hitch in our giddy up, but we corrected that." "Put on a cup of coffee, this race isn't going to be over for a while." "John Kerry's moon has just moved behind a cloud, as far as Florida is concerned." On Kerry's chances: "To use a metaphor, he's gotta draw to an inside straight. But hey, sometimes you get lucky and hit that straight." "Is it like a swan, with every feather above the water settled, but under the water paddling like crazy?" “The election is ‘closer than Lassie and Timmy.’” "You can almost hear the GOP (deep breathing sound). We're getting within maybe smelling distance." "We don't know what to do. We don't know whether to wind a watch or bark at the moon."
But enough of kicking Dan Rather around. Truth is, he believed in truth. And he fought for it. He took his lumps, but it was always facing his accusers, never from behind while running to hide. Here’s one last quote. This one ain’t a quip, and it ain’t somethin’ you’d trot out while whittlin’ on the back porch.
Dan Rather once said, “A tough lesson in life that one has to learn is that not everybody wishes you well.”
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Happy Birthday John Hambrick, born February 12th, in…uh…well…hmmm.
Huh, isn’t that funny?...it says here in 1941 [See Comments below for discussion]. That would make this his 67th birthday, right?
But wait, didn’t John frequently brag about his acting career, and the time he appeared on the old Playhouse 90 TV series? But Playhouse 90 only ran through 1961. So even if he appeared in the final season John would have been in his teens—and no older than 20—when he appeared in a drama on CBS. Really?
And how about this ad that ran in the Cleveland daily newspapers in December, 1967, announcing John’s debut that very night ("TONIGHT A NEW NAME MAKES NEWS IN CLEVELAND") as the new lead anchor on WEWS-TV. If John was born in 1941, that would have made him 26 when he became the top-dog anchor at the big-dog station in Cleveland. But Scripps Howard didn’t just pluck him off a Hollywood sound stage and say, “Here, kid, you’re an anchor now.” He had a career in TV news before WEWS—back in Memphis, or Nashville, I believe. Was he in TV news someplace else, sometime earlier? Don't know.
But John turns 67 today? Only six years older than me? Just another mystery about the most troubling anchor I ever worked with, and (in my opinion) one of the most troubled.
John had tremendous success at every station he anchored: certainly he “owned” Cleveland when he was at WEWS. I used to kid John that I grew up watching him, but of course that’s not the case. Strangely, I do remember his first days on the air in Cleveland. It’s my hometown, and I was on Christmas break during my sophomore year studying TV & Radio at Michigan State. Such a big deal was made of the “new guy” on 5 that I had to watch. And it was a big deal. He was terrific. He had presence. He had the anchor version of a Bible-thumping preacher's charisma: Elmer Gantry for the television age. That first week he made a believer out of me, and out of Cleveland. I think that to this day if you put a decent-sized ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer saying that John Hambrick was going to appear on the corner of East 9th and Euclid downtown at Noon on Saturday—you’d draw a crowd. He defined news for a generation in Cleveland.
But John apparently wanted more. Cleveland wasn’t a big enough pond for him, and he went west in the mid-70s. I don’t know which came first—KRON in San Francisco, or KABC in Los Angeles, but he was on the west coast until he was hired at WNBC in New York.
A pattern was starting to emerge. As big a success as he was, if I’m not mistaken after Cleveland he was “invited not to stay” at each of those stations when he came to the end of a contract. That’s how he got to Miami, to WTVJ—like WEWS in Cleveland the first on the air in town and the most dominant of the stations. At the end of his contract—he was “invited not to stay” at WTVJ. That’s how he arrived at WCIX (now WFOR) in 1990, checkered past and all. The independent station had just been purchased by CBS. I was Assistant News Director at the time, not really part of the hiring process, and I was flattered when the station brass (GM Allen Shaklan and Station Manager Jay Newman) asked my opinion. I told them I knew Hambrick brought a lot of baggage—but that as a station that had recently gone from being an independent with only one half-hour newscast each day, we needed to establish ourselves; and one way was to hire “name” talent, folks already established in the market. I told them WCIX was the “scratch and dent sale” of local TV: if we were willing to overlook a ding or two, we’d get a far better (and better recognized) anchor than a “startup” like WCIX was entitled to.
Parenthetically, I carried that thinking over to my days as news director. Being a bit dented myself (Oklahoma City!) I saw the value in hiring people who had something to prove, who had might have been underappreciated in previous jobs. It worked out pretty well.
But when it came to Hambrick, I didn’t know that I was soon to be John’s boss—and that he was going to be the bane of my existence for the next couple of years.
There’s something about the red light on a studio camera—it gives off some weird ray, I think—that grows egos and shrinks inhibitions. High maintenance? I’m reluctant to make further reference to the only completely obscene posting on this site. You can look up Dietary Preferences if you wish. Let me just say that the advice given to me at the start of my tenure as WCIX news director turned out to be prophetic and true. Every day. A gallon.
John was in my office every day—for 30 minutes, 60 minutes, even longer—needing constant care, his ego needing constant feeding.
Most of those sessions started the same way: “I know I’m coming to the end of a long and mediocre career.” If he didn’t get his way—“IKICTTEOALAMC.” It was his mantra. We were looking to establish a team—John and Giselle Fernandez. And our slogan was “Earning Our Reputation One Story at a Time.” That meant aggressive coverage of big stories wherever they occurred. So we alternated anchors on the big assignments. Giselle went to Haiti—“I know I’m coming to the end of a long and mediocre career, that's why you didn't send me.” Giselle went to Israel during the missile attacks in the first Gulf war? Forget that it was her turn, “IKICTTEOALAMC.”
Every day. In my office. The hang-dog look. The need for reassurance. The “IKICTTEOALAMC.”
Station GM Allen Shaklan (a great guy) and I got into the habit of taking him out to lunch or dinner roughly once a month. If the guy was playing Willy Loman in Death of an Anchor, attention must be paid, we thought. We alternated the chore. Allen came in one morning complaining that dinner the night before had left him exhausted. “You know how celebrities have a way of blending into crowds, looking over the heads of passersby, never making eye contact? John struts down the street looking every person in the eye, even staring—staring—into cars, looking for a hint of recognition. Being with him while he turns the spotlight on himself is so tiring.”
If that were it, that would be manageable. John wasn’t. He was a bully. He bragged about the fistfights he had had in newsrooms, at least one (to hear him tell the story) with a former news director. He hinted that the threat was always there, that he was a dangerous man to cross. He believed in shouting to make a point.
I wondered where his combative nature came from. One day he told a story from his hard-scrabble Texas boyhood, and of the day (as an eight-year-old) he got whipped in a fight and went home to his mother. He didn’t get the sympathy he wanted. Instead she sent him back out with instructions to find the other boy and beat him, or not bother coming home at all. “Why, Momma?”
“Because…you’re…JOHNNY!”
That explained a lot. Everyone was an adversary. Every day was a struggle. Every person had to be bested. All authority had to be challenged. He was Johnny, and he had to fight—even if he had to pick the fight.
And then there's this: I think John was bored as an anchor. He was an actor forced to play the same role over…and over…and over again. He had to find ways to keep his performance “new,” and one way was to be constantly at odds with those around him. Also, he didn’t seem to believe much in TV news. I guess he thought it was beneath him. Maybe it wasn't just self-pity, maybe "long and mediocre career" encompassed self-loathing too.
He didn’t seem to be proud of his success in TV: “IKICTTEOALAMC.” He was prouder of the country and western album he cut, Windmills In A Jet Filled Sky, produced in 1972 with the help of some top-notch Nashville session people. I went looking and found a copy on eBay the other day, “Buy it Now” for $299.99. But I also found a copy elsewhere on the Internet for $16.80.
Either way, actor or singer, the old performer was always lurking in the background. You can’t spell “Hambrick” without H-A-M.
We decided to shoot our afternoon news teases in the newsroom instead of on the anchor desk; to show the hustle and bustle of the news environment. Certainly not a new concept. But the promotion folks had this idea for a bit of “business:” John would walk down the two steps from the assignment desk during the voice-over open, and up to the camera. John resisted. “What’s my motivation?”
But here’s a clip of John from 1991, behind the news desk, delivering an Action News tease. Notice the scowl, the mannerisms, the rolling, raspy baritone, leaning toward you, looking at you over the top of his glasses, the clipped cadences, the hand gesture at the end. Here’s a man who should be playing a U.S. Senator (or the President) in some big-budget flick, instead forced to “play” the role of anchorman in Miami. “IKICTTEOALAMC.” Hambrick or Hamlet, you be the judge.
Once, in the middle of a rating period, John came to my office saying he desperately needed time off. Here we were, trying to gain a foothold against our established competition, and John wanted to walk away from the anchor desk for several days in the middle of an important “book?” He explained that his daughter Mignon, in Los Angeles, needed his help. He was worried about a relationship she was in. He seemed beside himself. When I gave him the time off and promised to run interference with the higher-ups, he shook my hand with (I thought) a tear in his eye, saying he’d never forget me.
A couple of weeks after his return he was in my office arguing about a decision I had made. He ended the “conversation” by saying, “There’s no use even talking to you, you’re mentally ill and should be committed.”
John, I’ll never forget you either.
After Hurricane Andrew in ’92—after I lost everything I owned when the roof of the home I was renting opened up—after I moved into a cheap furnished place an hour away from the station with all I owned (three suitcases worth)—after 18-hour days and 7-day workweeks—I was overwhelmed and exhausted. I talked it over with Allen, and he accepted my resignation. I needed to get my life back. Hambrick told the Miami Herald I had been fired, and said it was because of low ratings (ironically, my last night as news director our 11:00 p.m. was #1 in the market, driven by the lead-in ratings from a Frank Sinatra docudrama: so there!).
But I left on my own. One small factor in my decision was a disagreement Allen Shaklan and I were having about Hambrick. John’s son Jack, working as a reporter (in Tampa, if remember correctly), had applied for a job at WCIX. Allen thought hiring Jack would be a great move, that coaching his son would give John something to do, would keep him occupied and out of trouble. It might even keep him out of our offices.
I told Allen we’d wind up with the biggest yenta in the world on our hands, that Jack would be the only TV reporter in America with his own full-time, live-in agent making demands 24/7 on behalf of his son. Jack was already asking for more money than we were paying more experienced reporters who were established in the market (I wonder who gave him that idea?). I walked away from that one, and never looked back. Jack was hired, but I don’t think I ever saw him on the air.
I do know that Jack later sued the station claiming he had been cheated out of overtime pay. I don’t know how that ended, except that Jack Hambrick no longer works for CBS.
And I know that when John’s contract came up for renewal, he was gone. I think he was “invited” not to be at WFOR any more.
I thought he more or less retired. He and his wife owned a ranch in Texas: he called it “The Little House,” and he was always talking about their plans for a bed and breakfast. I was told later that he was anchoring in Beaumont, Texas (the market closest to “The Little House”), but I can find no record of that.
Now I see John is acting again, and doing commercial voice-over work. He’s got an agent. You can find his web page. The picture there shows him without his toupee. It says he appeared in an episode of the NBC series Friday Night Lights. Good for him. That’s probably where he belonged all along; that’s where his heart was, in performing. John was a terrific anchor—one of the best I ever worked with, almost at Tom Snyder’s level—but if you looked closely you could see he was acting. He knew how to play an anchor, but I think he kept at it only for the money and the strokes. Or maybe it was just too easy for him after awhile. The sad thing is that in his own way he was a cheat. He cheated on his talent, by not using it fully in his job. He cheated his audience by giving less than his best. His best was so damn good that settling for less—when you’d seen what he was capable of—was sad.
Last story. Hurricane Andrew brought out the best and the worst in John Hambrick. I pushed, prodded, wheedled and cajoled him into going into the field as a reporter—and he turned in a magnificent job of field reporting. He and his cameraman confronted a looter rifling through a bombed-out convenience store. John was so much in the guy’s face that the man quietly set down the goods and slinked away.
But then there’s this. All of us were working (it seemed) non-stop. In the early going many of us slept on blankets at the station. Even John was working nine or ten hours daily (with all the restaurants in the area damaged or without electricity, he couldn’t take his usual 2 ½-hour dinner break after the 6:00 p.m.!). After about two weeks, as things were settling down a bit, John came in to ask for two days off. I told him he was certainly entitled to them, and approved them on the spot. I was puzzled, though. I knew his home had suffered virtually no damage in the storm. A fence had been toppled and that was it. He had been without electricity for awhile, but bought two generators to power his house.
Before I could even ask, John volunteered that his wife had been at “The Little House” since well before the hurricane, and was headed home: “If I don’t get the floors waxed she’s going to kill me.”
Happy birthday, John, however many this is. Peace.
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!
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.
The tag line? “See What You Are Missing.”
