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The Premiere is Here

The Premiere broadcast was 10 days away and it was a madhouse of details to be decided.  One must understand for the months leading up to this big event only the essential employees needed for building the studio and building our programming = me were on the payroll.  The full staff was “hired” but not being paid but many of my production folks were working anyway.  They were finding apartments and rooms as most were not local.  Nora our “street” reporter was out and about every day for several weeks shooting “B” roll clips of police cars, fire trucks, boardwalk scenes, etc. which could be used to supplement our news stories because of our limited story shooting staff (and we only had one RCA handheld news camera ($15K) and two  studio models $25K each).  (The handheld would be used in the studio on a tripod after it returned from the field.  This budget factor limited our daytime production capabilities).

Seven days out from going on the air I made (what I thought was a very reasonable statement).  I suggested that the hourly news crew start working a few days tbefore the first show to rehearse.  The response from our chairman, “What are you nuts? I am not going to pay for folks to play TV!  The first day on the job will be the first show.”  Bob and I rolled our eyes as the “boss” marched out of the office.  There was no arguing with an insurance man who became an instant media maven of AC.  (This was the beginning of a downward spiral that started our grand Titanic voyage in the Wonderful World of Atlantic City - WWAC.)  When I informed our news director he started to sweat and I thought he might faint.  We were going on the air whether we were ready or not - and we were not.

Not to bore - here’s a list of what I accomplished - how I did it would take to many keystrokes!

  • I named our news show News & More - every other news cliche was take in the area…Action News…Eyewitness News…all taken long before us.  No one like this until it caught on and became a well known brand.

  • I invented and designed logos for 5 movie programs.  The Million Dollar Movie - the most successful movie series in independent television history was coined by Bob decades ago.

  • I produced a full daily schedule which was faxed to TV Guide in time to be added to the growing little book of TV shows info.

  • I had booked the first of 50 weeks series for a daily entertainment magazine show - Atlantic City Tonight - which BTW was the format that  preceded Entertainment Tonight - which would looked exactly the same when it began

  • A week’s worth of movies had been transferred to tape and the commercial breaks were marked.  

  • And many more details were completed - but far too many to mention because I would feel exhausted all over again!

Bob pulled off a major coup d'etat about ten days before air time which would help guarantee we would have an audience at the beginning.  He and Frank cajoled the local cable company and the all the casinos to add Channel 53 to there in room line up and also all of the south Jersey cable companies would air us on the first night.  

And then it was the day of our premiere - Lynn Weidner and I were going to host the “Big” first show.  Stay tuned - we go on the air in our next edition of My TV Journery.  



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