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SERENDIPITY

A lazy listless summer as there were less visits to schools and I now was having long conversations about the history of public TV with my boss.  As Jack Benny once said, "the secret of success in show business is either genius or just being there."  At Tri-State I was just being there and it became the place I rather not be - I began looking for an opportunity to move on.

But once again I found myself in the right place at the right time.  Mr. C sent me to Public TV station WHYY one afternoon to meet with the Philadelphia School Districts Director of ITV.  The Philadelphia school system was not only our primary supporting member - it was famous for being one of the first major players in the history of TV and produced dozens of live shows for classroom supplemental instruction - it was ITV.  

Most  media history books have mentions Ms. Martha Gable, the first director of an Office of Instructional Television for a major school district.  She  was a nationally known figure and one of the founders of an educational industry.  Over a decade she had developed her own stable of "TV Teachers" who performed daily lessons.  When she retired her replacement - was Ms. Nina Eberma, wife of a Temple University Dean and widely known in educational research.

I  met Ms. Eberman to discuss the amount of "slots" Tri-State would have to fill around her "live" production schedule for the upcoming fall term.  I think I met with the department  heard rather than Mr. C. because he  didn't want the WHYY staff to see how far he had moved away from being a broadcast executive producer to a regional school administrator.

We met at TV studio, once the home of WFIL and the national program Bandstand - going there was a thrill for me I must admit.  Nina talked - I listened.  This seemed to be her usual style of “meetings”.  I also noted that when she entered the office area of her performers the place immediately hushed.  Apparently, her minions were ruled with an iron hand.  (Later I learned that all of them constantly feared that their "live" broadcasts would end after years of doing the same shows. They dreaded the day they would be "taped" and then sent back to urban classroom teaching.  Ironically their fears would be realized soon after this meeting.  WHYY acquired a bunch of the new RCA VTR’s that needed to be tested and tweaked.  When our brief meeting came to close Ms. Eberman uttered a life changing sentence!

 "By the way,  we will be supporting that new preschool program tentatively called Sesame Place.  It's a very expensive production so the producers,  Children's Television Workshop will produce daily live shows that are only 55 minutes so the local stations can "fundraise" around them  for 5 minutes each day.  And so I need to fill 5 minutes 5 days a week.  I have to add a new program instead of giving this slot to the station - we pay them a million and half bucks already, So I want to do a  "news" show about the  good work our schools are doing to counter the constant bad publicity we usually get.  DO YOU KNOW ANYONE WHO HAS A EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND AND THE SKILLS TO PRODUCE AND HOST THIS SHOW."

I didn't miss a beat - "YES I DO! - You're looking at him.  I would love to do this show for you!"

We talked another hour about my public relations degree, my performing experience and most important,  my educational credentials.  To my surprise -  I left the studio that day with an appointment for a "screen test"  for next week.  (This is definitely - To Be Continued!)

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