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180 LIVE SHOWS

    Everyday that year for 180 required school days I was up early braving the highway and crossing the Walt Whitman bridge in the full flood of commuter traffic - pitching and diving and looking for an opening like an "Indy Driver".  It was not a relaxing ride.  And as the sun filtered through the smog - yes there was a yellow haze that hung over Philadelphia on most mornings in those pre-catalytic converter days.
    It was my goal to have a "live guest" interview on each show which sure beat a dead guest (ask Dick Cavett who had one die on his show).  Filling a five minute program is not easy as a one person production team I learned the first week.  I decided if I didn't want to air a re-run I had to book as many in advance as I could and they needed to represent as many of the city's schools as possible.  After an introductory memo was sent to every administrator and teacher in the system from the Assistant Superintendent of Instruction, Dr. Ezra Staples I rushed from the studio to canvas the City.
    Thankfully, Dr Staples had expressed a mild mandate that the show be watched everyday in the system - "this was good news for a change" he reported - and I found almost everyone I met was not only willing to appear on the program - they "wanted' to promote their work to their peers and parents.  And so to my surprise I had no trouble getting folks to show-up at 8:AM for a live five minute show at 9 - many had to drive over an hour for their brief moment of fame - and it wasn't even 10 minutes as Andy Warhol had recently prophesied.
    By October I was getting calls from principles asking for a spot.  I was getting totally booked as they say - unless something major caused me to substitute and postpone an appearance.  Dr. Mark Shedd, the controversial, strong and vocal City Superintendent of Schools did a turn and my boss showed up to hover around him - she brought coffee for us.  Rev. Nichols, a School Board member and notable black community leader did the program.
    I didn't have a budget for news film shoots so I took slides with a borrowed 35mm camera.  The School District PR office has a ton of film and no problem developing them for me overnight with a service they contracted.  My first shoot was at the student driving's training depot as a fleet of dual controlled cars poured on the city streets.  My director created a nice montage put to canned music for this segment going beyond what was required for the production - frankly WHYY was very cheap with our facilities taking into consideration that the School District deposited over 1 million dollars a year in their coffers for the production of 7 live, short in studio instructional programs.

 And so after a few weeks of "flop-sweats" and worry that a guest would forget to come I know had a few "good" programs in the can incase one of us had a fender bender - and most of all I was getting very comfortable being on the air.

 This is until one of my guests made an comment that changed everything!

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