Skip to main content

Seeing the Finish Line

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 say he talked them to the lowest acceptable salaries as he did me)


  • News Producer - a top reporter from the AC Press

  • Staff Director - a former program director from NY local TV

  • News Reporter - a NJ cable station reporter

  • News Anchor - top morning radio host in the market part time for evening news

  • Sports Reporter - local radio sportscaster

  • Weather “Girl” (Frank insisted on this) - a former Miss NJ 

  • Production Manager/Senior Producer - NJPTV production department

  • Production Department Secretary - our reporter’s sister!

  • 2 News & production assistants - Frank’s partner’s daughters (no experience necessary)

  • 3 camera persons - from NJPTV and local cable

  • Video editor - local broadcasting major graduate (who turned out to be a great editor)


While I was working on programming Bob assembled a sales crew of 4 seasoned Philly TV hustlers and Dan put together an engineering staff (and because of the full program day he needed two shifts). Our payroll was going to have to cover 30+ employees on opening day.  In my spare time I created a 14 hour day - weekly schedule.  Bob and I met with a Paul C. a vice president of Viacom syndication compnay and we negotiated the biggest film deal in the history of independent TV.  We bought $1,500,000 of classic and new movies.  Bob has invented the “Million Dollar” Movie series in Philadelphia.  But with a major difference.  While a typical station could air a “John Wayne or Bette Davis Week” I could aire a John Wayne month of films. My task was to “cherry-pick” the movies we wanted (a term that I learned from Paul) from the entire RKO and Warner Brothers libraries.  This was another daunting task for me.  Every niight for a week I spend hours on the phone with my mother and grandmother checking out titles and to my surprise the had seen most of them and we put together our list of over 250.  An unbelievable film vault for a start-uip like us. Paul set up the deal so we would get about 30 movies and their original press materials each month.

Another oops-glitch - they were new first generation prints from rejuvenated master - great like new quality.  The glitch we didn’t have a telecine to dub the films to our 1 inch tape machines adding stops for commercials.  The budget was increased by $80K and another special rush order was made.  I proposed a plan that solved filling some of my program slots.

My rationale - AC was a 24 hour town so I would air the same movie at a different time each day for a week.  I created a 10AM Movie show - “Surf Theater”; 2PM “Boardwalk Matinee”; 9:PM “Best Bet Feature Movie” - thus getting maximum plays per the contracted movie broadcast rights - which were unlimited for one week per film.

To summarize a long arduous tale - by mid May I had a full schedule that included two newscasts and 5 nightly entertainment shows (including Atlantic City Tonight which will be a post of its own) and several syndicated series.  I had succeeded to my surprise at becoming a v Program Director - but time will tell how good I was when my schedule aired in June...(to be continued)




Comments

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...

MR CHAIRMAN

   During my 10 years of Corporate Television work I must admit I was called on to produce some real "boring" shows - but there were also moments that made me want to go to work.  Here's a brief list of the "highlights" of my time - that I can remember. Over the years I saw many changes in the stodgy old phone company as it expanded into a communication giant. Working with James Earl Jones was an event.  We shot a piece with him in his NYC Village apartment - what it was about I really can't dredge up but I learned an amazing fact.  Mr. Jones stuttered!  He said he lived with it growing up and he went into acting because when he memorized scripts he didn't stutter.  I also learn that he was paid $10,000,000 to exclusively do VZ commercials and $1,000,000 every time he made a new commercial.  Not bad for someone who was speech challenged. For another taped employee recruitment show which was going out to higher learning institutions I suggested ...

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 preside...