MY TV JOURNEY

The By the Way meetings continued as Frank brought in a series of local entrepreneurs who “advised” me on how to program the station.  Frank insisted that WWAC look like a Philadelphia UHF station that had been on the air for years as I tried to convince them that we should do a few things well and grow our schedule - this was denied. I was ordered to it all and my days turned into days, nights, weekends, sleep times.  The only steady force was Bob who constantly supported and assured me I could do this as he taught me the independent TV business day by day.  So I stopped trying to crawl and began to sprint without worrying about cost, budgets or the outcome of our haste.  What would naturally take a year to do was done in 5 months - this was my “herculean task” that somehow I completed. By first week in May after wading through literally 150 resumes and 100 phone calls I had assembled the Production Department and Bob handled the salary negotiations (needless to sa...

Haste makes waste as the old adage proclaimed and it is especially so in television station building and in programming.  As we raced to the premiere date the construction of the facilities was at “warp speed”.  The concrete floor in the studio was poured and then the chief engineer reported that it was great for a cellar but not for a TV production studio - much too bumpy and uneven for the camera to make dolly moves.  Frank of course asked, Why did we have to make dolly moves…just don’t do them?  I left this with Bob to duke out.  Bob won after a morning of wrangling.  The fresh concrete was jack-hammed out and a special company from the West Coach was contracted to lay a “TV flooring” - a rubberized substance that when dried was absolutely pristine.  We could now call for a dolly shot - at an added cost of $75,000.   While the studio was progressing I was working on filling it.  If we going to do a news cast we needed a “news set”....

As me and the Chief Engineer hired staff  our TV53 family was growing everyday.  Every space in Frank's insurance business office was occupied by my production staff trying to look busy in the boardroom - but we were running out of chairs and only one phone line was on the long meeting table.  The engineering staff was hanging at the studio location that was entirely empty.  They spent the time helping to clean out the trash from this long vacant building, fighting off panhandlers who used it as home and watching the massive crew of carpenters, plumber and electricians. In one of my countless morning meeting with the "What About Boss" - was told, "Get these people out of my office and put them to work...I ain't paying people to sit around.  I replied, "Frank, I can send our news team out into the City to meet key people and news sources and when we get a handheld camera I have them shoot stock footage."  I had to explain then that they would be shooting...