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THIS IS TELEVISION?


       The fall of my first year in my first "real" job turned into winter - and I visited all 32 school districts of our TV consortium; delivered literally a ton of workbooks; and put about 15 thousands miles on my car - and I was still very far from the World of TV.  Very far.

Boss Bob and I had develop a really great relationship - matter of fact I was doing most of his work now except attending the multitude of national conferences in which he participated or many times spoke to - I was surprised to learn I was "on the cutting edge" of instructional television working with some of the ground breaking educators who were instrumental in bringing broadcasting, teaching and schools together.

And then one Monday morning Bob called me into his office and hit me right between the eyes with, "Cal, you are going to have to hold down the fort until we bring in a new boss for ya...I'm leaving for Washington on Friday."  I was floored,  Bob had been offered a job as the Executive Director of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, an off-spring of the mighty NAB, the broadcasting association which had the major networks and their executives ocn the roles. 

 Now I finally knew why Bob had attended so many conventions and accepted every speaking offer - I would use this lesson in "networking" many times in the future - "It is not who you know - but who knows you that counts."

Bob had already rented an apartment that he would share with a new friend he met on the speaking circuit  - a VP for Jansky and Bailey - one of the world's largest television engineering firms.  Bob really fooled me. All along I thought he was just a fair bored ex-teacher and in fact he was a "handler" as they say in yiddish.

The rest of the day - I sat at my make-shift desk in shock.  On Monday Mary Jane started putting Bob's calls into me as he packed up his office - we, his former staff of one,  bought him lunch at the new Arby's - his recently found favorite and he waved goodbye to me as he drove into the mist of Folsom PA.     It then struck me hard - I was now the acting Executive Director of a regional and major instructional television producing agency after just a couple of months on the job.  But that elation didn't last long.

After several weeks of office work and signing stuff for Mary Jane I was summoned to the Ridley Park Superintendent's Office,  Dr. R. was the President of our non-profit board of directors.  I was now going to learn first hand how "one hand washes the other," as grandmother Ethel would have said.  "Calvin, the Board has been very impressed with your work and we would like to see you take on the job of our Director...(which would double me salary I thought!)...but...the GM of WHYY TV, as you know, (and left unsaid - the manager who decides how much airtime Tri-State gets for programming needs a favor. He has a producer/director who needs a job and he strongly suggests that we make him our Exec since he moved his whole family here from New Orleans here, etc. etc. blah, blah.  (I had stopped listening.)  In other words he needed to dump a guy who uprooted his family to come to a major broadcasting market but it wasn't a good fit (translation - he probably wanted to actually produce shows which Channel 12 avoided as much as possible!)

My meteoric rise in the TV biz just had a flame-out.  My second new boss in two months was going to start work the following week.  As I left the brief meeting, Mr. R intoned, "Cal please make Vernon feel welcome!"

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