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A FREELANCE FALLACY

The day WWAC sank made the national news in the print media and TV stations ran the final signoff of our 7:00 PM newscast.  (This made news because our license was the first new UHF station built from the ground up in many years).  Twenty-one of us reported for unemployment that week and I officially became a freelance producer/director (another term for being out of work).  I took a few days off and then started making calls to my long list of contacts I made during my long tenure at NJPTV.

After a few calls I got a job.  One of my co-workers at NJPTV was now a manager of ATT Corporate TV.  I couldn’t believe he it when he said, “Can you be here at our headquarters tomorrow?  Wow, I was unemployed for just a weekend!


I drove over an hour to the ATT’s massive executive complex in Basking Ridge Nj, a building that housed over 4000 middle and upper managers who ran the world’s communication.  Phil show me around a studio that was better than any I had worked in broadcast TV. And to my surprise he paid me $100 bucks just to sign paymaster papers and forms that day.  The next week I had my first assignment - the subject is long gone from my memory (as subsequent I have done 100’s of telecommunications videos) but I remember the deal.  I had one day to research and write a very simple script; one day to shoot a program; and one day to edited the show @ $300 a day per diem.  My first job and I would bank almost a grand for half a week’s work.  I believed my new ship for providing for my family had come in already.  The first day I got to the new studio early and had to have a guard let me in - by noon I had written a really good script.  I gave it to Phil who then gave me some “freelance information” I would never forget.  “Calvin you don’t understand - you have a DAY to do the script, a DAY to shoot…I got the point and he didn’t go on with the obvious.

When the show was in the can I came home with a check and told my wife, “This is easy…I can make more than I made in WWAC in just a couple of days without killing myself…I making more calls tomorrow…!

It took six weeks to get another job.  And I had a hard revelation -  TV freelancing was not as easy as I thought it would be.

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