No Grapefruit Bags

You won't believe it. I'm not sure I believe it. But here's the story of how I more-or-less covered the 1976 Democratic National Convention in New York's Madison Square Garden. I was almost in the hall the night Jimmy Carter was nominated for President. And I'm going to bury the lead.

First, you have to put up with some hopeless-old-geezer exposition, some background, some reminders of the way we were.

If you don't remember (and there's no reason you should) 1976 was before satellites were in general use for news coverage. I think the networks might have been just starting satellite program delivery (in place of lines). Satellites for news gathering? I don't think so.

It didn't really make much difference to local stations anyway. Most were still shooting film. I've written here before that in 1974, when Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, I was the WWJ field producer who flew with Bob Vito and a two-man film crew by light plane from Detroit to Grand Rapids to cover reaction in Gerry Ford's hometown, and we ferried most of the film back on that same plane to make the newscast.

Actually, now that I think about it, I got up at 5:00 the morning after Nixon's speech (on about two hours sleep) and ran some of the film out to the airport and handed it to a stewardess (no "flight attendants" yet!) to have her hand-carry it to Detroit where someone from WWJ would pick it up.

And I guess that's another "remember when" note: FedEx was barely up and running. If you wanted to ship film you took it to an airline and either had it checked in as baggage or found a friendly crew member to hand-carry it. So a kindly "stew" made sure that at least our early film got back to Detroit for the noon newscast while the rest of us shot more footage so we could fly back, process and edit the rest for 6:00. Whew!

Which brings us to grapefruit bags. You know, those cloth mesh bags, usually red or yellow? We'd tape the film cans tightly shut, toss them into a grapefruit bag, label the bag ("COUNTER-TO-COUNTER," "HOLD AT AIRPORT") and hope to make a flight.

Even the handful of stations that had started shooting videotape instead of film still hand to put those 3/4" U-Matic cassettes into grapefruit bags for shipment.

WISH-TV8 in Indianapolis was a pioneer. Under News Director Lee Giles, WISH was one of the first (maybe the first) in the country to go all-ENG (Electronic News Gathering)--all videotape. That didn't mean we weren't still in the grapefruit bag business. When WISH crews traveled, they traveled with a supply of mesh bags.

That's how WISH began its coverage of the Democratic National Convention in the Big Apple in sweltering mid-July 1976.

Anchor Mike Ahern and the station's Chief Photographer (forgive me, please, I don't remember his name) got there for day one and started covering the Indiana delegation. Now here's the challenge. Back at the station we were lifting the real convention news, the breaking news, off the CBS feeds. Mike couldn't feed anything: he had to rely on (gulp!) grapefruit bags! Which meant his stories were all at least 12 hours old (maybe more!) and all pretty generic: "Here are the folks from Indiana starting at some big buildings. Here are the folks from Indiana eating New York-style pizza. Here are the folks from Indiana at the top of the Empire State Building." And if Mike was lucky enough to be there when news was made--and we could get it back for a newscast--so much the better.

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BURIED LEAD ALERT! HERE'S "THE GOOD STUFF."
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But then . . . BUT THEN . . . Lee Giles played his trump card.

Dunno know how he did it--but Lee had engineered the world's greatest trade-out: the "Channel 8 News Jet, The Spirit of Channel 8." Honest to God, we had a deal with a charter outfit called "National Jet Services." Four times a year they'd loan us a Lear Jet to fly anywhere for 12 hours. That's 12 hours to get there--shoot a story--and return to Indianapolis.

Well, hell, if you know what you're doing that's just about anywhere in the continental U.S.

The deal, the stipulation, was that every time we used the plane, each story it was used for had to be clearly labeled with the phrase ". . . the Channel 8 News Jet, The Spirit of Channel 8, provided by 'National Jet Services,'" and that mention had to be logged as a :10 commercial in the station logs. And that was it. That was all. National Jet even painted the plane with our logo. The other 361 days of the year it was available for charter. Those four, it was ours!

And that's how co-anchor Lew Choate and I found ourselves on a 5:00 a.m. flight to Teeterboro airport in New Jersey the morning of the nomination. At Teeterboro a limousine (dat's right, Ma, I rode in a limo!) was waiting to take us on the half-hour ride to Madison Square Garden.

The Indiana delegation was housed in the old Pennsylvania Hotel right across 7th Avenue from the Garden. That's where we met with Mike and the photog just in time to tape the delegation casting their final straw poll ballots for Carter prior to the evening's real vote. We interviewed Senator Birch Bayh and other bigwigs--did a couple of other stories--and wound up inside Madison Square Garden, up on the podium, where we shot opens, closes, bumps, think-pieces and recorded Mike's tracks. We got back to Teeterboro at 1:30 and back to WISH at 4:00. That night WISH opened it's 6:00 newscast with 20 minutes of look-live same-day coverage from the Democratic National Convention. Hot stuff.

So I missed Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. Tough. I think WISH won a bigger victory that day than they did in November. And we did it without grapefruit bags!

I guess the question could be asked, Did you guys sell your soul for the price of a plane ride?

I've been critical in this space of that TV station that sold product placement on its morning newscast so McDonald's could plop down coffee cups on the anchor desk. What's the difference? I'm not sure. I guess it's that setting a branded cup down on your anchor desk doesn't just imply an endorsement, it is an endorsement. Most TV stations I've worked at have used trade-outs to purchase cars. Does driving a Subaru wagon traded for advertising time imply an endorsement of the car? Not necessarily. I've worked at stations that traded fir airline tickets. Does flying American mean endorsing American? Where does cutting a deal with National Jet Services (the mother-lode of all deals!) fit in? I'm not sure. I wasn't thinking about it that day 32 years ago when Lew and I were winging our way back to Indy with the Big Story.

Over and Under

"Fay," what's left of her, has finished passing over Florida and left much of the state under water. The winds, while stiff, didn't cause anywhere near as much damage as the rainfall, which reached record proportions. Hundreds of thousands are suffering.

In all the excitement, I almost forgot that the 24th marked the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew's sweep across South Florida.

Funny, because last week I asked a former colleague at WCIX (now WFOR) if the station had any plans to mark the anniversary. You know, documentaries series, whatever. He said no, none of the current management had lived through Andrew, and not many had the heart to look back at those gut-wrenching days. I asked him if, after all this time, Andrew was just a "speed bump" on the "road of life" and he agreed.

Some bump.

So I won't do much reminiscing about those days. How about one or two quick "So You Want to be a News Director?" anecdotes. Maybe some lessons learned. I guess these fall under the heading of "The Best Laid Plans..."

Because everybody had a plan. I don't know what the hurricane game plans look like today, but back then they came in big three-ring binders. Everyone on staff had one, and they were constantly being updated.

If I remember, WCIX's divided the staff into "teams;" "Gold" and "Silver." When the spit hit the fan the plan was for us to go 'round-the-clock, 12-on and 12-off. The "Gold" team of newscasters and anchors and producers and reporters and staff would work 12 hours, then be relieved by the "Silver" team.

Lesson One: someone's on vacation, and someone else is stranded in another city and can't make it back, and someone else has a pregnant wife and has just rushed her to the hospital. You can have all the designations you want, but you can't have all the people you want when you want them. And you'd better look out for your staff's well-being by making sure they have time to look out for their families' well-being. So we did a lot of scrambling. But the plan was otherwise solid. The idea was when a hurricane closed in and the winds and rains started picking up, staffers would get their families to safety and then meet and fan out throughout the area. Where to go? We suggested hospitals. The parking garages are built to handle force-five winds, they're big enough to shelter live trucks, and the hospitals themselves make great havens.

Lesson Two. Early in '92, thinking about hurricanes, our news operations chief came to me with the idea to put some four-wheel-drive vehicles on reserve. His thought was that a hurricane would knock down trees and flood roads and we'd be stranded without high-clearance 4WDs to drive. He also was smart enough to start rounding up some hand pumps so that if the power went out we could still fill our gas tanks at local stations. Great ideas.

But I upped the ante on him. WCIX in those days had no helicopter. I figured a chopper would be critical, so I told him to line up two helicopters. I told him I didn't care where he got them or where they were hangared, but I wanted two choppers in the air over South Florida within three hours once the weather had cleared.

Damn, I'm brilliant!

With Andrew heading at us I double-checked with my ops guy. He said he didn't know where they were, but that the helicopter owner had ferried both ships to Miami and had them stashed. I didn't ask (and didn't really care) where.

I found out later that he had them both in the same hangar at Tamiami Airport. I found out later that two of our guys in a live truck saw them in the hangar and figured that might be a safe place to weather the storm. It wasn't. I gave a silent prayer of thanks when I found out that no one was hurt when that hangar collapsed.

Much later--much, much later--I was able to laugh a little when I realized that I lost two helicopters and one live truck at Tamiami Airport that morning.

Tamiami is about ten miles north of Homestead--where the eye passed and where it knocked down the WCIX tower.

Best laid plans? And you want to be a news director?

Unique Up on Him

The lexicologists will tell you that the word “unique” takes no modifiers. Nothing can be “very” unique, or “truly” unique, or "really" unique, or "absolutely" unique or "somewhat" unique. Unique stands by itself. So does Sonny Elliot. Let’s take a trip on the “Wayback Machine” and watch Sonny in the early 70s on the old WWJ-TV in Detroit taking the weather “toss” from anchorman Dean Miller.

Thanks, Dean. You folks all know Dean Miller. He had a family of beavers move into is water bed—and loved it! Dean wrote the book, Love Thy Neighbor—But Don’t Get Caught. Dean once said, “An optimist is a man who thinks he can marry his secretary and still dictate to her.” Well, I think an optimist is a man who thinks we’re going to have a nice weekend. It’s hot now: so hot that thieves are breaking into only air conditioned cars. And coming up next, moving in from the west, is heavy rain. In Chicago it’s raining so hard right now that they’re playing leap frog—using real frogs!

That’s one I more-or-less memorized from my days at WWJ. In transcribing it I probably should go back and add in some more exclamation points. Sonny was—and is—all exclamation points, all energy, all jokes—all the time.

And for the longest time he was the biggest TV personality in Detroit—and one of the most recognizable faces in the state! (See, I’m doing it already—all exclamation points!) In a sports-crazy city, he was bigger than any sports star. He was more recognized than any politician. He’s in his eighties now, but he’s still working, still tossing out gags, still irrepressible, and still beloved.

If you worked in any newsroom thirty-or-more years ago you’ll remember those big, clunky Associated Press printers—and the bells. Alarm bells. They sounded whenever major stories started to clear the wire. Ten bells was the ultimate: the end of World War II got ten bells—as did the Kennedy assassination.

Sonny Eliot was a private pilot in his spare time. One day, landing his single-engine plane at Detroit City Airport, the front landing gear collapsed and the plane skidded on its nose. And in every newsroom in the state, the AP sounded eight bells—SONNY ELLIOT IN PLANE CRASH! He wasn’t hurt; but just the hint that he might be was bulletin news. Eight Bells!

Sonny had survived worse. “Marvin” Eliot was a B-24 pilot in World War II. Here’s what I know, and here’s how I know it. A couple of blocks from the WWJ TV and radio studios was the “Lindell A.C.” Before anyone in America knew what a sports bar was, the Lindell was one. The “A.C.” stood for “Athletic Club.” It was an inside joke. When the Detroit Lions or Tigers or Red Wings or Pistons headed home after a night of boozing they could—honestly—tell their inquiring wives, “I was at the Athletic Club.”

It actually may have been flamboyant New York Yankees manager Billy Martin who suggested the sports theme. That’s one story some people have heard. Another story every baseball fans has heard is that Martin—in 1969, as manager of the Minnesota Twins—got into a fight with his pitcher, Dave Boswell, in an alley behind the bar. Martin got seven stitches after that one. Boswell got 20.

Lions All-Pro tackle Alex Karras once owned a piece of the Lindell. His jock, framed, hung on one of the walls. He got into a famous dust-up with pro wrestler “Dick the Bruiser” there.

The real owners were the Butsicaris brothers, John and Jim. John and Sonny were best friends—and co-owned that light plane I mentioned. Even though Sonny never drank, he could be found most nights after the 11:00 o’clock news hanging with his friends—the center of attention—at the Lindell.

One night I was headed to the Lindell men’s room, past walls of celebrity photos, when I spotted a picture of Sonny I hadn’t seen before. I thought it was some sort of gag photo. It was Sonny in a black-and-white striped uniform—complete with striped cap. He looked like one of the Three Stooges dressed up for a prison bit.

When I returned to the table and mentioned it to Sonny he eyes narrowed, his jaws clenched, and he shot out of his chair and over to John Butsicaris. It was obvious he was livid. Butsicaris rushed to the wall and took down the picture.

When Sonny returned he explained that the picture was of him as a Prisoner of War in “Stalagluft I” after being shot down by the Germans in World War II. Sonny was a POW for a year-and-a-half; but this was the only time he ever mentioned it, and I’m sure most Detroiters had no clue that this mischievous weather elf was a war hero.

One last Lindell story before I move on. In 1974 I moved from WOOD in Grand Rapids to WWJ to produce the 6:00 and 11:00 p.m. newscasts. I was going to be Sonny Eliot’s producer! He was most welcoming.

I had been there for a month when one of my Grand Rapids friends and co-workers, Denny Arger, said he and his wife were passing through Detroit on vacation, and would like to see the station. Absolutely. I went to Sonny, and asked if he was going to be in the Lindell that Friday night, explaining that I had friends coming and they’d really get a kick out of it if he’d come to our table and sit for a minute or two. For Sonny—no problem.

So after the 11, a little before midnight, my guests and I adjourned to the Lindell—and sat at the big round table in the corner, where Sonny soon joined us.

A few minutes later the door opened, and in walked Roman Gribbs, the former Mayor of Detroit! He saw Sonny, came over and sat down. A few minutes after that the door opened and in came Tigers star Al Kaline. He saw Sonny and Roman Gribbs and came over and sat down! Later still—just before closing—the door opened and in walked bandleader Woody Herman, in town playing the Pontchartrain Hotel with his orchestra. Extra points if you remember the orchestra’s nickname: “Woody Herman and the Thundering Herd.” Anyway, he saw Sonny and Gribbs and Kaline and came over and sat down.

Denny and his wife had eyes the size of saucers. I was nonchalant—“Oh, yes, I’m with these people most nights.” Uh-huh. Sure. As if.

A bunch of us went to a Tigers game or two (or more) after the six o’clock. You never needed a ticket when you were with Sonny Eliot: no door was ever closed, no hand went un-shaken. One night Sonny led a bunch of us right into the club house to hang out for a bit with Manager Sparky Anderson.

Look up the word “ebullient” in the dictionary and you’ll find Sonny’s picture.

Sonny in those days did weather on WWJ radio and TV, maybe six or seven weathercasts a day. He kept index cards of jokes, and joke books on his office shelves. He told me once that he could go for an entire year without repeating a one-liner.

His corn-ball vaudevillian shtick made him unique—but it also caused him trouble. As the technology of TV moved forward, station managers started to look at Sonny as the past, not the future. They started trying to mold him and shape him. They wanted tighter control over his format. He resisted. His thinking, I’m sure, was “I’ve outlasted ten news directors and five GMs, I’ll outlast another dozen of each.”

He didn’t. As TV news moved more and more high-tech, the bosses felt TV had passed Sonny by, and before too long Sonny was off the air—fired, or resigned I never knew which. The powers that be wanted younger demographics, and to them the one thing that made Sonny unique was that he was old!

And here’s why TV managers (myself included) are stupid. It’s 2008, and what I hear (even in my small consulting business) is, “We have to give viewers a reason to watch. We have to come up with something (someone) that makes people take notice. Something (someone) that stands out. Something (someone) that the competition doesn’t have.”

That’s why we get Super-Duper-Dual-Level-3D-Four-on-the-Floor-Cinco-de-Mayo-Full-Range-Live-Infrared-Red-Bull-Aerial-Bend-Over-and-Kiss-Your-Ass-Goodbye-Satellite-Doppler-Radar-with-Neighborhood-Seismic-Detection. We're so into meteorologists and away from "weathercasters" that no one remembers how to be a communicator. We've come a long way since Sonny first used chalk to draw on a blackboard. We're into computers and graphics programs and hard drives. Sonny could talk to you about isobars and occluded fronts if he had to. Most nights he didn't have to. He gave you the forecast.

I dunno: maybe in 2008 we could find someone with a unique personality who connects with the viewers and makes them comfortable.

Just a thought.

Sonny kicked around Detroit TV for awhile. WWJ-TV long ago became WDIV-TV—a new WWJ-TV signed on some years ago—and Sonny’s back on WWJ-AM. You can go to their web site http://www.wwj.com/ and listen to Sonny live every weekday at 4:20 and 5:20 p.m.

Sonny has been on the air for more than 60 years now! Here’s a piece from WJBK-TV from 1997, when Sonny marked fifty years as a Detroit superstar. That means he's at 60 now, and counting! Here's a good sample of Sonny eliot at his shtick-iest.



There are several Sonny Eliot videos on YouTube. They’re worth a look. The man was, and is, the consummate professional and a good guy. I’m blessed that I had a chance to work with him.

Working with Sonny made me glad and happy--"Glappy."

Youth in Asia

I guess I’ve been lucky. Almost every time I’ve had to fire someone it’s been a “mercy killing,” someone who just had to go; someone who had no one else to blame for his fate.

Take, for example, the young assignment editor who “borrowed” (of course, without authorization) a marked news car to take some of his buddies drinking one Saturday night.

When state police spotted those happy campers tossing their empty beer bottles onto the interstate, they gave chase. Fortunately, miraculously, no one was hurt when my young employee rolled our news car three times in the median.

Question: how much sleep do you think I lost the night I fired him?

And yet some have said I'm one of the meanest SOBs to ever run a newsroom.

Here’s a good example. The way the story is told, one of my reporters called in sick one day—so sick he couldn’t get out of bed—and I refused to believe him and told him I wanted him to drag his near-lifeless carcass to the bathroom, phone in hand, and flush the toilet so I could hear that he really was home.

Y'know, that’s exactly what happened—sort of.

Truth is, the guy was famous for using sick days to give himself three-day weekends. He was famous for walking away leaving stories with gaping holes in them, with questions yet to be answered (he apparently had an active social life and didn’t want work to get in the way). And “work,” now that I think of it, is a bit generous. He gave 100% effort 50% of the time (or was that 50% effort 100% of the time—either way it worked out the same). On this occasion he had come to me the day before asking for a last-minute vacation day. I checked the schedule and told him I was sorry, that we were already at limit for the number of people who could be off at any one time. I explained that he should have asked a lot earlier; that I would have tried to accommodate him or helped him trade vacation days with someone else. He argued that I should make an exception in his case. It wasn’t possible.

The next morning, you guessed it, he called in sick (or is that out sick, I'm never sure). Anyway, I was in my office with another news manager. When I put the call on speakerphone it seemed my poor, sick little reporter was being rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. He didn't say that, but how else could we explain why we clearly heard the whooshing sounds of tires on pavement! No sirens, just car noise. We rolled our eyes and held back our laughter as he said, in a weak and scratchy voice, that he had come down with the flu and couldn’t make it in. He got indignant when I told him that I was having a bit of a problem believing him. The other manager and I were rolling our eyes and trying not to laugh out loud—when it came to me. It may not have been the most mature move I've ever made, but I couldn't resist. I asked him to go into the bathroom, hold the phone next to the toilet and give it a flush just to prove he was home. He refused. I told him I understood; but that I was worried about him, and that I’d check back on him later in the day to make sure he was feeling better.

The other manager and I had a good laugh. We agreed that while we were both born, neither of us was born yesterday!

Funny. When I called to check on the reporter’s well-being later in the day, no one answered the phone. Gosh, I thought. Golly gee whiz, I certainly hope he’s not passed out somewhere! I was tempted to ask the police to break down the door in case he was in real danger. (Is this the point where a teenager would insert “LOL?”)

You may think I’m a jerk. I think I’m a nice guy. When his contract was coming up, he and I both knew I was going to get rid of him, but I called him in a month earlier than stipulated by contract to tell him it would be wise to start looking for his next job. He wound up with almost three months' notice, my gift to him. It’s always easier to find a job when you have a job, and I wanted to give him the opportunity to save face.

He was successful. He found another job. And when he came into my office to tell me, he looked at me with contempt and sneeringly said, “You know, I’ve been here almost two years and I haven’t learned a thing!”

And I replied, “Yes, I know.”

I guess you can make a case that overbearing, demanding news directors are a major problem in broadcast journalism. Maybe so.

I’m prejudiced, of course, but I think a major problem is no-talent pissants who can’t lead, won’t follow, and have to be forced to get out of the way.

By the way, the picture up top is of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, proponent of euthanasia (“mercy killing”). The title "Youth in Asia" comes courtesy of Miss Emily Litella. If you're under 40 you'll just have to Google her name.

The “News” Math

What's the old saying? "Figures lie and liars figure"?

Did you see that the New York Times is raising the newsstand price of its paper, Monday-thru-Sunday, by a quarter to $1.50? A buck-and-a-half for a newspaper? Damn! There'd better be some terrific grocery store coupons inside. Maybe $1 off a pint of Ben & Jerry's. No? Oh, well.

How about the Wall Street Journal, raising newsstand prices by fifty cents to an even $2. Two bucks? I guess anyone who's anyone in high finance can afford it.

Math was never my best subject, so help me out if I get this wrong. The Times, when last I checked, had a daily circulation of about 1,100,000. So (forgetting about advertising) it will take in about $1,650,000 a day just from selling the paper.

The WSJ, with a readership of just over 2,000,000 will take in about $4 million a day from peddling papers.

The Journal seems to be holding its own in circulation. Times readership has dropped precipitously.

In newspapers in general we've seen dramatic drops in circulation—huge cutbacks in news staffs—shrinking page sizes (to save on costly newsprint)—and now big price increases as they try to stay afloat waiting for the "magic bullet" of Internet revenue to ride to the rescue.

I don't know. I haven't heard of any huge successes in Internet news delivery. I know people are spending big bucks trying to coax people to their web sites—but is anyone making big bucks yet?

If the New York Times circulation drops to, say, 700,000—will the Times start charging $2.25 for a paper? Won't that drive more readers away? When circulation is down to 500,000—will the paper got for $3.30?

I know, I know—think of all the cost savings when newspapers no longer have to have printing presses and delivery trucks. Maybe a staff of 1,000 of the best reporters, editors, photographers and layout people can produce the gol-durndest web-based New York Times ever!

Maybe they can sell off that fancy new office building in midtown and have everyone work from home via computer.

But how are they gonna make money from an on-line newspaper?

If you have an answer, send it to me wrapped in a $20 bill. Don't worry; I am, at least to my way of thinking, a tax-deductible charity.

This Week's Sign of the Apocalypse

This blog is more about reminiscing than about current events and commentary--but I can't resist this one.

It's an article in the Las Vegas Sun by Abigail Goldman.

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Eye-opener with a pitch
TV news program tries product placement as revenue source

Oooooooh, they’re calling out your name.

Two cups of McDonald’s iced coffee (BUY!) sit on the Fox 5 TV news desk, a punch-you-in-the-face product placement (BUY!) to chase down your morning news.

They’ve been on the Las Vegas station set for about two weeks, following the lead of a few TV stations across the country, and they’re still looking every bit as frosty and tantalizing (BUY!) as they were the first day you laid your eyes on them.

But wait, here’s the best part: They’re not real. Fake coffee on the real news, two plastic cups permanently filled with some kind of bogus drink. The anchors aren’t even supposed to acknowledge them, McDonald’s reps explain. That’s part of their genius, my little lambs! They get into your mind without you knowing it. So they just sit there, two logo-emblazoned plastic cups, percolating into the psyche. Made-to-scale models that weigh something like seven pounds each — refreshing, and bottom-line boosting!

Fox is starting its day with a “nontraditional revenue source,” KVVU news director Adam P. Bradshaw says.

The station and McDonald’s won’t disclose how much the fast food empire paid for the product placement. But lest there be any concerns about mixing fact (the morning news) with fiction (fake coffee), he points out that the cups are put out only after 7 a.m., when the hard news gives way to light lifestyle news.

“I stress the fact that it is being done on a program that is a combination of news entertainment and lifestyle programming,” Bradshaw says.

And if there’s ever an E. coli outbreak beneath a certain set of golden arches, he says, KVVU will report the daylights out of it, gosh darn it.

Kelly McBride, the ethics group leader for Poynter Institute, the nonprofit journalism training organization, isn’t convinced. Product placement in a newsroom, she worries, represents the “slippage” of news into advertisement, a descent into a dark world where conglomerate companies control coverage.

If so, the slippage is also occurring at stations in Chicago, Seattle and New York.

And when Las Vegas is done suffering this dry-your-eyeballs-out-of-their-sockets summer heat, Bradshaw says KVVU might switch to ceramic mugs with massive McLogos filled with fake black gold McDonald’s coffee. (BUY!)

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I tell you, friends, I didn't leave television: television left me. I'm so glad I no longer have to try to explain to the higher-ups that anything that makes it look as if we're in bed with a sponsor damages our credibility, and credibility is all we newspeople have to sell.

"Non-traditional revenue sources?" Sounds to me like BJs for bucks, the oldest "revenue source" in history.

Don't get me wrong. I ain't no saint (hey, it rhymes!). In my last (and I do mean last) ND job, I fought in vain against having the "news ticker" along the bottom sponsored. It came down to make more money, or have fewer people. I had already trimmed fat, gristle and bone from the news budget, what's a little blood donation if it keeps blood off the floor? So I rationalized it all by saying I was looking 0ut for my people. Shame on me!

Tan His Hide

Can you put up with one more Roger Grimsby story? This one is folklore, and I can't vouch for it personally. It happened long before my time at WABC. I'm not even sure who told me; maybe newswriter Sandy Lechner, who I remember as being something of a Grimsby archivist.

Roger, as I've written, was famous for his acerbic put-downs. He's the guy who, one night when Howard Cosell had the night off, said, "Howard isn't here, he's walking his pet rat."

On another night (as the story goes), WABC had a new guy on sports, a tryout of sorts. Cosell and his backup were both off, and WABC had about a week's notice to come up with a fill-in. They arranged (I'm told) for a well-known ABC Radio sportscaster to air sports that night. If I ever heard his name, I don't remember it. It's not important. Let's call him "Joe Blow."

Joe was a popular radio sportscaster, no longer young. When he was a kid he had flaming red hair. Now he still had flaming red hair, know-what-I-mean, know-what-I-mean, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say-no-more!

Joe went to a friend who knew something about TV and expressed his concern that he might look a little . . . well . . . uh . . . old on TV. Did the friend have any advice?

"Yeah, get a tan. Look at Bill Beutel. He's always got a terrific tan. It takes ten years off you just like that!"

"Yeah, but how am I going to get a tan in less than a week?"

And his friend told him about makeup--theatrical makeup--pancake makeup--and what shade (dark!) to wear to have a perfect tan.

And that's how we got to this "Roger Grimsby Moment:"

"Time now for sports. Joe Blow is sitting in for Howard Cosell. Don't adjust your set. Joe Blow is ORANGE!"

And that, as they say, let the air out of the tires.

As I said, I wasn't there. I wasn't an "eyewitness" (forgive the pun). But it sure sounds like Roger Grimsby, so I'm going to move it from the Legend pile to the Fact pile unless someone tells me differently.
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6/19 Update:

Got a nice note from Al Primo (yes, the Al Primo) confirming the substance of the story--so it stays in the "Factual" pile.

He also gave me the name of the sportscaster involved. It's a name I know and a voice I've heard: you too, probably. But I'm not going to reveal it here. Seems to me once you've been hip-checked into the boards by Roger Grimsby, no further humiliation is warranted.

The Next Generation

A little political incorrectness here.

Back when I was starting at WABC 25 years ago, we had a ton of people on the staff. One of them was a kid named Dori Kam, one of the Eyewitness News production assistants.

A kid, as I said—but whip-smart, really nice, and cute as a pail of puppies (that’s the politically incorrect part). Just one of those people who lights up a room when she walks in. And no disrespect intended: she was as intelligent, as hard-working and as dedicated as any of us, and we were all intelligent, hard-working and dedicated. And she’d already been there for several years. As a newcomer I worked just as hard to win her respect as I did to win the respect of News Director Jim Topping, or anchors Roger Grimsby and Bill Beutel.

In the years since, she got married—had two kids—and got divorced. She’s teaching school. Now comes word that one of her sons, Ari Cohen, is finishing work on his college degree with an internship—AT WABC!

I wrote her a note saying I had hoped for better for her son: I don’t know, drug dealer, mass murderer, politician. But broadcast news? What is the world coming to when the best and the brightest decide to squander their talents on TV journalism? Is the kid brain damaged? What kind of mother would allow her son to get into TV? Sounds like a case for "Children and Youth."

But—on the other hand—maybe there’s a chance for broadcast journalism yet. I just don’t think it will be on TV as we know it: TV and print are going away. As soon as HDTV-quality programming is available on-demand over some web link on your home entertainment center/computer, the end of TV stations and over-the-air will be at hand.

But people are still going to want news. That means someone is going to have to report it and shoot it and edit it and “air” it. Maybe Ari Cohen will be one of the “someones” who invents the “new” news business.

Still, for Dori it must be like sending your son off to war. Eyewitness News? As they say in Minnesota, uff da!

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

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

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

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

Oy vey!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Teddy rolled his eyes and waved his arms.

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

A Love Story?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few weeks later, Tom Conner was dead.

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

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

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

We cried.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Bonus Round

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

Mem'ries

Light the corners of my mind

Misty water-colored memories

Of the way we were

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

We are seeking a News Director/Multimedia Content Manager who will be responsible for producing and managing great journalistic and visual content for WEEK-TV, Peoria, Illinois’ most honored broadcast, internet and related information outlets.
The candidate chosen will have an obvious enthusiasm for the future of local news in a rapidly advancing environment. She/he will carry on a 30 year tradition of news dominance guiding an outstanding award-winning veteran staff while recruiting and shaping future talent, using all tools available to new media.
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Number One for thirty years. Damn right! When I took over the WEEK-TV newsroom in 1976 the station was #2. When I left two years later, we were #1. It's been that way ever since.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uh-oh!

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

Yes, sir!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can it be that it was all so simple then?

Or has time re-written every line?

If we had the chance to do it all again

Tell me, would we? Could we?

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

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

Not buying it, are you.

Hey, I took a shot.