A Half-Century Ago
It was, incredibly, exactly a half-century ago this very week when I was hired by Channel 30 as the youngest TV reporter in Fresno.
I was 23 — and, of course, almost completely unqualified. I had graduated from Fresno State with a degree in broadcast journalism and taken my first full-time broadcasting job as a radio news director in Susanville in northeast California.
There, I made a cool $500 a month and got to work 70 hours a week, including six hours on Saturdays as a DJ, spinning the platters and pretending I was hosting NBC Radio’s legendary weekend-long “Monitor.”
That lasted all of five months, after which I was bankrupt and needed to move back to Fresno. There, I took the Graduate Record Exam at Fresno State, got a gig as a student teaching assistant in the broadcasting department, and lived in the dorms as I started a master’s degree program.
And then — because I had worked part-time at Channel 30 as a floor director, film editor and announcer-director while I was still an undergrad at Fresno State — people at 30 knew me, apparently liked me — and invited me to a Christmas party at someone’s home in 1973.
And that night, things happened. Channel 30’s news director, Roger Rocka, was at that party. Turns out he needed a temporary reporter on Action News to replace another reporter who was running for public office and who was required, by federal law, to stay off the air during his candidacy.
Roger saw me — saw that I had grown a bit more “mature” in the past nine months since he’d last seen me — knew that I had been a radio news director — and hired me, that pre-Christmas night, to become part of the Action News team for a few months.
Things worked out. I stayed five years.
Working at 30 was the greatest blast you could imagine. We were all young — all energetic — and we were on the cusp of finally defeating Channel 24, the Valley’s longtime No. 1 news station, which had grown fat and sassy. But more importantly, 24’s newscast looked like something out of the 1950’s — slow. Painfully slow. Painfully old-fashioned.
And we were Action News — fueled by new station owners (CapCities, which eventually would buy the ABC-TV network), by the best and most aggressive TV news consultant company in the business (Frank Magid and Associates), and by the sheer energy and force that all of us “younger” folks brought to the airwaves. (The photo at left was part of a promo shoot. I’m the one with my arms crossed, far left.)
Yes, Channel 24 had been No. 1 in news since it had signed on the air two decades earlier. But those top-rated days ended quickly once Channel 30 turned our newscast into Action News just before I arrived.
I will never forget that afternoon in the summer or fall of ’74 when our dynamic station manager, Phil Beuth — who eventually would take over ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America” and lead it to victory over NBC’s “Today” show — walked up into our newsroom on L Street in Fresno with the latest Nielsen ratings book that had just come out and said, “Folks, congratulations. You did a 48 share at six. More than the other two stations combined.”
And that was the end of Channel 24 and the start of the Action News dynasty that continues to this moment in the Valley. We followed up that win at 6 o’clock with wins at 11 p.m., noon, mornings, weekends — everywhere.
Working at 30 was the most fun anyone could have. No one ever told us what we couldn’t do — so we went out and did it. We were a contemporary, fast-paced broadcast that also created great TV journalism.
And I got the chance to do everything. I reported on-air; anchored weekday sports when our “big guy,” Gus Zernial, was gone; anchored our morning news — even got to report for the CBS network during the infamous Chowchilla school bus kidnapping in ’76.
I covered everything there was to cover in Fresno. The City Council. Board of Supervisors. Cats up trees. Fires. Wrecks. The first “Vintage Days” celebration at Fresno State, where I wrist-wrestled the world’s “wrist-wrestling” champ. He won, of course. At that same event, a camel came up and licked my photographer’s camera lens. We put all of it on the air.
I even got to interview famous people, like the great network radio announcer Harry von Zell. I asked him about his famous fluff when he tried — while he was live, on the air — to read President Herbert Hoover’s name during an introduction. Yes, he called the president “Hoobert Heever.” It happens.
It was wild. It was exciting. And most importantly, it was life-changing, because on Valentine’s Day that first year I was at 30 — in 1974 — I covered a story that involved a young woman who was editor of her Washington Union High School newspaper, and who had gotten into trouble for publishing a story about drug use on campus.
Today, that story would create absolutely no fuss. But a half-century ago, it was controversial enough for the school principal to stop the paper from being distributed. That act of stupidity became a front-page story in the Fresno Bee and a major story on the local TV newscasts.
And so it was that, on that cold, foggy, dreary Valentine’s Day in Fresno — my assignment manager sent me and photog Scotty Sherlock to cover the school board meeting at the high school. The trustees quickly resolved the issue — the newspaper was allowed to come out — and I had a few minutes to interview the editor. Her name was Sharon.
Sharon was not only attractive — she was incredibly smart, as she showed me when I asked her questions about the legal issues involved in her story. She knew all about court decisions and legal precedents.
I went back to my newsroom at 30 and told the folks there, “I think I’ve just met the woman I could marry.” They all laughed at me. “Sure, Dennis.” “Right, Dennis.”
This coming July 5, that newspaper editor — Sharon — and I will have been married 49 years. Thank you, Channel 30.
There would be other stops at TV stations across the nation. We would work in Buffalo and Detroit and Phoenix and Atlanta and San Francisco and Los Angeles. We’d cover presidential campaigns, candidates, and nominating conventions in several cities.
We were working at KPIX-TV in San Francisco that October day in 1989 when the major earthquake hit, killing dozens, bringing down part of the Bay Bridge, and destroying San Francisco’s Marina District and downtown Santa Cruz.
We were working at KNBC-TV in Los Angeles when a flood roared through the San Fernando Valley — and during the Rodney King riots.
Yes, there were lots of major stories on our long and winding broadcasting road — and awards that resulted from some of them. And along the way, we even took occasional time-outs to teach journalism at Iowa State University in Ames and at Fresno State.
Somehow, 50 years have come and gone. Of course, I can’t remember all the stories and all the people — but I will never forget what happened a half-century ago this very week — in January 1974. That’s when Channel 30 and Action News — and all the great folks who worked there — gave this young kid out of Fresno State the chance of my lifetime.