MY TV JOURNEY

     A few days after my viewership revelation was shared with the Parkway  (which was the euphemistic name for the School District of Philadelphia's monolithic Central Office building at 21st Street and the Parkway, I was summoned to Nina's corner office.      She was infamous for her very long meetings - "chatting around things" - bringing someone in for something very important and then regaling them with stories about her homeland of Yugoslavia.  These "meetings" could go on for hours and then finally she would get to the point of the visit.  (Most of her staff avoided these chats whenever possible - it was plain to me that she really just needed someone to talk to as most of her staff feared her and avoided contact.)  But I had an office right outside her door and was fair game when other staff disappeared.  Plus, I wasn't afraid of her.     O n one occasion it turned out to be a "real" meeting and  she came righ...

     After  six weeks into School News/Philadelphia I made a startling discover and it was totally serendipitous once again.   I had an elementary school teacher on the show (her name and school have long faded - but her impact on my show will always remain in my small grey brain cells as Hercule would say).   This teacher talked about helping kids learn to read and at the end of the five minute show she mentioned "mimeographed" pamphlet that she had produced that parents could use to test their kid's reading levels and it could help in deciding if they should seek assistance from their school.    She offered this to our invisible audience and I closed the show mentioning my office phone number as a way to get the give-away - "call this number and we will send you this great reading tool...etc.   I thanked my her and went to my closet/office. And then the revelation hit me like a bolt from Olympus.      The comm...

     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 Superintende...

I finally made it home after a ferry ride that reminded me of a scene from the TV show  Victory at Sea about “Halsey's Typhoon” - the usually placid Delaware was churning along with  my stomach after my day of wrong turns and really stupid decisions. Dinner was waiting for me; I had been gone half the day.   I couldn't eat much.  My spouse was a trained counselor and she started to work on me.  By the time I had dried and put away our dishes, I felt a lot better - matter of fact, I had made up my mind not to be defeated by this.  I was going to call Mr. Bob Maull and honestly plead my case for another appointment; one more chance.  I tossed and turned all night as the rain  beat on our windows. The next day after pacing around for an hour I picked up the phone..."Hello, Mr. Maull, this is Calvin Iszard and..."  "I thought you would be calling," he interrupted.  "This better be good!"  I knew that Bob Maull, Executive Director of the...

     September and the school year began and so did I - I got to the station early for my first "live" School News/Philadelphia newscast  airing "live" at 8:AM - I hadn't slept much the night before - my main thought driving in and dodging crazy drivers was "Why am I doing this? You left a fairly cushy job for a two thousand dollar raise and a live show at this hour.  I was going to have to fight this Philly traffic everyday crossing the Walt Whitman Bridge to do this show.  What was I thinking?"      I reported to Studio A and saw my new blue (which didn't matter since this show was in living B&W (black and white) set for the first time.  Met "my director" Tim Ward (He looked nervous too!  I would learn later this was his first directing job and that's why they assigned him to my 5 minute show.  School News: Philadelphia was not Masterpiece Theatre that was for sure!)   I put on my own makeup.  Pull up my ...

On a very hot summer day I took a day off  from Tri-State and instead drove to a Philadelphia high school that had a closed circuit TV “studio where I .  Waiting for Ms. Eberman and several of her ITV department staff.  I had prepared a "newscast" from articles about education I pulled from the Philadelphia Bulletin in at the Glassboro State campus library.  (My wife Nancy was a "dorm mom" and we were living in a very nice faculty apartment in Mullica Hall while she studied for a Master Degree in School Guidance)  This was long before the Internet and Google - what a difference having those tools would have made in my career, my life, but that's another story. I sat at a desk and read my copy.  John, the coordinator of ITV services for the School District was as my “crew”  - he started a tape rolling and cued me.  I read three stories.  Nina barked, "That’s great, when can you start?"  Just like that I was hired as the Producer/host for ...

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...

        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...

     I slogged through the winter as I traveled the highways and byways of three states visiting great and small schools with my packages. My stint as the "Acting Director" came to an end as the Board thanked me and hired a new executive director.         In our first conversation, I mainly learned how to pronounce words like a native of his hometown - Nu Or-lins!  And over the next months I would be corrected on the words c ra-ole, pray-leans and crawfish - he was constantly wrestling with my words and his as he took days to write and rewrite simple memos - this became very aggravating and within two months I was polishing my resume' - our relationship was a strained but professional and 180 degrees opposite of what Bob and I had.  Bob was Bob to me.  But I never once called my new boss by his first name.   But correcting me did give my new boss something to do as he did very little else except ...

And so my journey began - not on tape yet, that would take another year.  But I was on my way to realize my dream and it only took one job interview to get started.  This was a cinch I thought (I would soon learn it wasn't as easy as it first seemed.)        Tri-State Broadcasting did not produce instructional television programs; it was a consortium of public school districts that purchased them from stations mainly in the Eastern Educational Network (EEN).   This was new territory for education members, using the airways to deliver supplemental instructional material via TV rather than the traditional film library services.  Our show came with a variety of  accompanying workbooks (many that we printed without color and on newsprint to save money).   I learned that we "rented" air time on the Philadelphia Educational Television Station to broadcast our schedule  - WHYY Channel 12 and WUHY channel 57 (which was owne...

My wife printed my resume on really heavy stock at her office.  I put on my best suit and new tie and I was ready for my first real job interview.  I got in my car just as the heavens opened up with  a torrential downpour.  This was either a good or bad sign, I couldn't decide which. As I drove toward a ferry ride (this was before the new southern bridges on the Delaware and an adventure on a windy day) across the Delaware to Chester, PA and then to Ridley Park, wherever that was?  My appointment was at 2:PM so I left at 11:AM for the less than one hour trip - just to make sure I was there on early. As I had learned in my PR course - being on time meant you were already late.  As I made my way the deluge continued. The ferry was on schedule and the crossing wet, but uneventful.  Now the fun began.  This was 1968 and well before a phone with GPS tracking, Google Maps and the ability to call for directions from one's auto.  I pulled over and...

      Graduation day, finally.  A Master of Arts!  But now what?   It was finally time to get a job and that was not going to be easy in the field I desired - TV broadcasting!  What was I thinking?  I had two teaching certificates and now a Master's in Public Relations - my future could be fairly secure. But I just could not see myself teaching - watching a bunch of high school kids wage their war against learning for the next forty years.     My whole life  I  needed attention,  an audience to watch me!  I was voted the class clown in high school.  I was a “professional” magician when I was nine on the Cub Scout Blue & Gold Dinner circuit. Now,  I want to be on television!      And so without a Google to browse or a computer, what's a computer?  Univac?  I began a  job search. But where to start?  I never looked for a job - all my summer jobs f...