Skip to main content

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!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE FINAL CURTAIN

   The years floated by and like all things, familiarity bred contempt.  I started to bite the hand that fed me (add you own cliché here).  As my job became repetitive and routine, I started not to believe the slogans that I was promoting – making communications accessible to everyone became grabbing a buck from as many as possible.   Telecommunications was not mired in the old ways as evolved into an “entertainment and online store for the customers.  Many of the old guard were disappearing and the mantra for all of America’s blue-chip companies was “down-sizing.”  I used to quip to my secretary – “If my boss calls get her name!”  Then even those quips ended.  I became a “Self-Sufficient” manager which actually meant many of the support staff was laid off or reassigned.  Along with producing programs  I had to type my own contract letters,  make copies at Office Depot and stop by the post office – we no longer had company mail.  Email had taken it’s place.  As technology was introduce
Post a Comment
Read more

TELE-TV

From 1984 to 1996 I had a wonderful time producing, directing and managing freelance production professionals as the telecommunications industry had major change.  New Jersey Bell morphed from a major part of ATT into Bell Atlantic and with a merger with NYNEX it became Verizon, one of the largest most profitable businesses in the world.  But getting there was a herculean task at times as I live 50 miles south of the facility. And each day I made my way to Newark NJ mostly by taking the 6:05 train to Newark.  I hated getting up this early.   Each morning was a series of challenges - trying to find a parking spot at Princeton Junction, grabbing a coffee from a crowded ruck and then battling the preppy Princetonites who would knock down a pregnant lady to get a seat so they could read their bible - the WSJ.  They had an obsession not to let anyone sit in the middle seat of the three in a row on the NJTransit cold, uncomfortable conveyance.  Their “evil-eyed” stare didn’t phase me as I pl
Post a Comment
Read more

A CAVALIER DIRECTOR

     I was happy working at the telephone company - but frankly I wasn’t a “Bell Head”.   Many of the 96 staff in media relations and public relations on my floor took a month to do simple jobs; three people produced a newsletter; two people produced the bill insert (by the way none of these people actually did the work, they hired freelance graphic artists and writer to fill their publications.  And we had a ton of informational products including a monthly newspaper that even had want and selling ads.  Frankly, I could have done all of their jobs in a couple of weeks.  But I soon realized that the phone company had a lot of non-wire stringers who did minimal work.  Why because if the company didn’t spend all of it’s money the government allowed it to make it would have to be returned to the rate-payers. An  incident that stands out as an example of the cultural climate at the headquarters is a shoot I was assigned to do with the president of Bell of Pennsylvania.  It was a simple
Post a Comment
Read more