Goofy Tales From My Stations

As you may recall, I wrote a piece in this space a few weeks ago about some of the experiences I had at TV stations where I worked during my 40-year career in broadcasting.

A long-time friend read it and reminded me that I had left out a few funny and even crazy stories that I had told her over the years we’ve known each other.

Okay, Susan.  This one’s for you — and for anyone else who cares.

**

KFSN-TV, Channel 30, Fresno

I’m going to start at Channel 30 in Fresno, where I was hired as a quite-young TV reporter.  But I’m beginning my story before the reporting gig — when I was still at Fresno State, working part-time at the station during summers.

My first job there was in the summer of 1970. I was hired as a floor director.  I should tell you that a floor director back then (they’ve largely been phased out now) stood beside the cameras, cueing the anchors to the cameras that were “hot” (and therefore they should look at that camera), counting down videotape and film roll-ups, and generally keeping order on the studio floor.

Thus, the term “floor director.”

It was a starting job for kids like me who wanted to work in TV.  So there I was, on that Friday night in June 1970, wrapping up my first night’s work. All I had left was the 11 o’clock news.

Unfortunately, the man I would be cueing was also ready to wrap up his first night’s work — as the anchor on that 11 o’clock newscast.

I tell you this, and you won’t believe it. But it happened.

Back then, our news open was a simple full-screen slide that said something like “Channel 30 News.”  When Director Mike called for that slide to be put on the air, he also called for the audio man to roll a cart tape with an announce that said, “Channel 30 News, with (name of anchor).”  Simple open. Nothing fancy.

But it was a Friday night.  11 o’clock. From what would turn out to be decades of experience in TV news, I can tell you that if a newscast is going to “blow” — that is, have technical issues — it’s more likely to be on a Friday night (because crew members are all weary from the week’s work) or Monday night (because they’re weary from the weekend).

And so it was that on this particular Friday night — my first night as an employee of a TV station — when the director called for the audio man to roll the cart tape for our news open — the tape machine ate that cart tape.  Crinkled it.

What came out on the air was something that sounded like the prelude to regurgitation.

So the director told our audio man (in his headset — we all wore headsets) — “Read it!”

Understand that every audio man always had a “book” in front of him — with copy for every station break.  All he had to do, on this Friday night, was read the words in front of him and no one in the viewing audience would be any the wiser.

Except the audio man — tired from the week, of course — had not turned the page in his “book” since the 10:30 p.m. station break. So he had the wrong copy in front of him, and he was flustered because the cart tape had just been “eaten.”

So what came out of the audio man’s mouth was, “Uh, this is Channel 30 News with….” Of course, he had only a vague idea who was anchoring that night — so he could only mumble something so completely incoherent that no one listening could possibly understand who was anchoring.

Okay. Rough start. But now came my time to shine. The director told the technical director to “take” the camera the anchor would read to.  I was right beside that camera. My hand was underneath the camera lens — ready to cue the anchor.  My hand was trembling. First night, remember.

So when Mike the director told me, “Cue him,” I did.  Threw my hand and index finger right at the anchor.

Everyone who has ever worked in TV knows that cue. Everyone.

But the anchor had come from radio. So he just looked at me, and the camera, and did nothing. He did not know what I was trying to get him to do.

Now Director Mike is yelling in my headsets: “CUE HIM! CUE HIM!” I did — truly I did. Several times.

No response.

Now the director’s head is about to explode, and he’s yelling some more, so I did the only thing I could. I gave the anchor the only cue I knew he would understand.

I said, with the whole Valley listening because his mic was open:  “Roy, read it.”

Yep.  The whole Valley heard me.  My parents, watching at home, heard me. My debut on Channel 30, indeed. Welcome to the world of TV.

Then we proceeded to lose every film story in the first segment.  Those stories were all tied together — edited together — on one film reel. Back to back. Every station did that in those days.

So if an edit broke anywhere on that film reel, no other story after that broken edit could make it through the projector.

Of course, the edit that broke that night was right before the first story — immediately after the “leader.”  I held up the “no film” sign for that first story. And the second. And every story in that segment.

By the end of what was supposed to be a 10-minute segment (that actually lasted about 90 seconds), viewers could see the sweat on Roy’s face. And on his shirt.

When we got to the first commercial break, he croaked at me, “Is it always like this?”

My extremely literate and well-thought-out response:  “I dunno.  It’s my first night, too.”

Long story short from that first night:  It was a disaster, one that ended, appropriately, when one of the wooden letters that  spelled out “Channel 30 News” on a flat behind the anchor — fell to the ground, right behind his head. Seems the hot lights had melted the glue holding the letters onto the flat.

Yes, the letter fell so all the Valley could see it.

The next summer — the summer of ’71 — I had been promoted to commercial film editor.  That meant I was responsible for putting together each day’s commercial film reel that would be played during station breaks throughout the day.  No funny stories that summer — but wait.

Because here comes the summer of ’72. I’ve graduated from Fresno State — and I’m a part-time announcer-director. That means I ran local station breaks, made any live announcements needed during those breaks, and occasionally got to direct what was now known as “Action News” when regular-director Mike was gone.

Two incidents stand out as far as those station breaks go. Of course, there was the usual “initiation” that all new A-D’s had to go through.  You’d be in the middle of a live station break when a fellow A-D would walk into your booth and set your copy on fire.

You had to get through that break, somehow.  Somehow, I did.

Then there was the Friday night (remember what I said about Friday nights) when I came up to the most complex station break we did.  It was at 7:28:20, and it was a booger.  It involved playing two cart tapes — each of which supposedly had a weather forecast that had been automatically fed onto those tapes before the break — then a filmed commercial — then a live “read.”

Well, I had my copy page turned to the correct page — and I was ready to go. At least, I thought I was.

I hit the first cart tape — and it blew up.  Just like the one two years ago. Nothing came out on the air.

No problem.  There was still the second cart with another weather forecast for another part of the Valley.  I hit it.  Nothing.

It had not recorded the incoming weather  cast.

Now I was sweating, and not just through my shirt. I still had this live “read” to go — a 30-second spot of some kind. I started reading it.

But I had not, unfortunately, “pre-read” it.  And as I glanced down the copy, I knew I was about to die on the air.

Because there was a word ahead of me that I had seen many times but had never pronounced out loud.  Ever.

So when I got to that word and said, into a live mic around the Valley, “corn-oh-ko-PEE-uh” — instead of the actual pronunciation, “corn-oh-KO-pee-uh,” I knew I was a Dead Man Sitting.

And sure enough — once we had “taken” the network for its first Friday night show, the phone in my announce booth rang. It was my boss, the chief announcer.  A really good guy.

He did not bother introducing himself.  He simply asked me, “Do you know how to pronounce that f–king word?”

I managed only a one-word response: “Yes.”

And my boss, the chief announcer, followed my one-word response with one of his own:  “Good.”

And then he slammed his phone down.

I never heard about that incident again.  I never mis-pronounced “cornucopia” again.  And I always, from that moment on, pre-read my station-break copy.

Now, “Signs of Life.”  My announcer-director shift that summer of ’72 included working Saturday and Sunday nights. And between our 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts on Saturday nights, we recorded a 15-minute show that would air the following morning. It was called “Signs of Life.”

It featured a pastor from a local church who gave a sermon that was signed for the deaf by one of his fellow church members or staff members — who was standing right beside him.

It truly was an innovative program.  No one had “open captioning” for the deaf back then — and no one was using signers to help those with hearing problems understand what was being said.

I was proud to direct “Signs of Life.”

But on those Saturday nights, things were, shall we say, “loose” at the station.  There was fun to be had, and we often had it.

When I was directing “Signs of Life,” the man who had directed the just-aired “Action News” cast became my audio man. I had run audio during the newscast he had directed.

I’ll call him “Robbie.”  And I’ll call my floor director “Ken.”  Ken and I had gone to Fresno State together. Robbie and I were sharing an apartment in Fresno.

And during those 15-minute tapings on those Saturday nights, Robbie often could not help himself. He would say, into our headsets, the craziest things about what the pastor’s signer might be, well, signing.

It was completely inappropriate stuff.  Outrageous. And totally funny.  So much so, that Ken, the floor director, had to keep turning away from the pastor and his signer because he, Ken, was busting a gut, trying to keep from laughing in front of them.

Remember, anything someone said on the headsets — could be heard by everyone else on the line.

All I’ll tell you is — those “Signs of Life” tapings have remained burned in my memory for more than half a century. Ken and I still laugh about them.

Now — let’s move ahead, to early 1974.  I’m the youngest TV reporter in Fresno, on Channel 30.   And we had some great, great fun in those days, helping Action News overtake KMJ-TV’s newscasts in the ratings.  KMJ had been No. 1 since it had signed on two decades earlier, but we whipped them.

And because we were young and energetic, we tried things no one else had tried on Fresno TV news.  And it all worked.

Take, for example, the first “Vintage Days” held on the Fresno State campus.  That was designed as a three-day spring funfest for students and faculty, and it still is, to this day.

I was assigned to cover that first Vintage Days celebration for Channel 30.  I was game.

When a camel (yes, there was a camel) came up to our camera lens and licked it, we filmed it and put it on the air.

And after I wrist-wrestled the world’s wrist-wrestling champ who was at Vintage Days (he crushed me, of course) — I took off a shoe and foot-wrestled his hand and wrist.  He threw me over.  And we put it on the air.

People loved it.

In those early days of Action News, we had a former Major League baseball player as our sports guy.  He had been a fine ballplayer — and he was a colorful sportscaster.

But sometimes he and the English language had fall-outs.

Thus, it was that one night, when he was giving baseball scores, he referred to the American League team in Chicago as the “White Cocks.”  And another night, he referred, on-air, to a German speedskater (whose real name escapes me) as “Heinrich SHIT-en-heimer.”

And then there was the night he and the news anchor were in a commercial break when they decided to flip each other off.  Of course, one camera was pointed at both of them (we called that a two-shot), and, of course, the moment the flip-off took place was exactly when the technical director accidentally hit the button on his switcher that put that camera on the air.

Yep.  The Valley saw — in the middle of the commercial break — our sports guy and the anchor flipping each other off.  All in fun, of course — and all in exquisite good taste.

One more note from my Channel 30 days as a reporter.

Yes, it was a Friday night (remember what I said about Friday nights).

Another reporter and I were screwing around in our upstairs newsroom in the rickety old building we then occupied on L Street in Fresno.

We were just having harmless fun — until I put my hand through the glass door leading from the newsroom to the stairs heading to the first floor.

I had shards of glass in my hand.  I was going into shock.  The other reporter rushed me to the emergency room at the downtown Community Hospital.

They put 13 stitches in my left hand.  I was bandaged from my fingers halfway up my arm. I still have the scar.

The next day — Saturday — I drove to Sharon’s house in Easton for our first official “date.”  (We had met on Valentine’s Day a few months earlier — a story I have recounted before.)

When I knocked on the door, Sharon answered. Her left leg was bandaged from her toes to just below her knee.

We were both flabbergasted.  I told her my story.  She told me hers.  Seems she had been cutting the lawn with a Trimmer mower — which had a roller in the rear to push the mower forward — when she got her foot caught underneath the moving roller.

Yikes.

We headed up to the mountains in my classy 1971 blue Ford Pinto. But unfortunately, because I had been tied up a bit in the emergency room the night before, I had not had time to stop anywhere for gas.

And by the time we reached Coarsegold — about 35 miles from Fresno — my trusty Pinto was thirsty.

So I stopped at the Chevron in Coarsegold.  A station attendant filled it up.  I reached for my wallet in my left rear pocket.  Of course, I could not grab it because my hand was immobilized by bandages.

So I asked Sharon — who was 17 years old — I asked her if she could reach into my rear pocket and pull out my wallet.

It was our first date, remember.

And her response was classic:  “Is this how you treat all your first dates?”

Next week — on July 5 — we’ll celebrate our 49th anniversary.

**

KPNX-TV, Channel 12, Phoenix

If it seems as if I’ve spent a lot of time relating really strange events at Channel 30 in Fresno — well, there were lots of them.

Not so many at my next TV stop — KPNX in Phoenix. It was another great station and we had a ball.  But, yes, there were unforgettable incidents.

Like the time our news anchor was doing a 30-second, primetime live headline promo for our 10 o’clock news.  He was seated in front of an unmanned, stationary camera in the newsroom.  Only when he went live — on the air — did anyone notice the camera was pointed not at his face — but his crotch.

But our anchor was, somehow, ready.  He bent down and read that promo, sideways.  A classic night at Channel 12.

There was another story involving our anchorman.  He went to the grocery store one day before he was scheduled to go to work.  The clerk asked him how President Reagan was.  He replied, “Well, I think he’s a fine guy.”

She asked him again:  “But how’s he doing?”  And he responded the same way.

Of course, that was the day President Reagan had been shot and wounded. And our key male anchor had somehow not heard that news.  He came to work later that day and laughed about it.

No one else in the newsroom did.

However, he was truly a nice guy.  One of the nicest anchors I worked with.

Then there was our sometimes-crazy producer named Bruce.  Bruce produced our 5 p.m. news, and he was good at it.

He was also a free spirit, who often — to relieve the deadline tension that always roared into the newsroom before every newscast — would stand up and say outrageous things.

Understand — it was just to break the tension.

Like the day — soon after I arrived at Channel 12 — he suddenly started singing (well off-key):  “What a friend we have in Jesus. Christ. What a friend.”

Or the day he stood up and started waving his arms and bellowing, “Stand up for Jesus. Christ all mighty, stand up.”

Yes, Bruce was a character, and everyone loved him.

Then there was the day when our egotistical-but-great helicopter pilot came back into the newsroom after a 6 p.m. newscast in which his live appearance (flying the chopper) had somehow gone south.

He was not in a happy mood, and he began yelling.  I was new to the newsroom — only been there a month or so — and it was not my newscast — so I stayed out of the way.

But our then-executive producer confronted our pilot and told him, reasonably enough, to calm down.  The pilot did not take those words kindly.

He stalked to the other end of the newsroom, turned around, and yelled out to our EP:  “F–k you, (EP name)!!”  The EP then jumped into this detailed and highly informative discussion by yelling back, from across the other end of the newsroom:  “No, f –k YOU!!”

And this yelling, screaming match went on with the same words being tossed out for another 20 seconds or so before the pilot stomped off into the night.

But none of that matched what happened to me and my newscast on another one of “those” Friday nights.

I’m producing the 10 p.m. news, and I had put together a good one.  We begin our tale right after NBC signs off at 9:58:50. We had a 30-second news tease to do, live, before we hit the commercial break that preceded our news open.

I had put four tapes into that tease — promoting four different stories.  The anchors were to read over all that video.  It was simple. We did it every night.

Except we had a new technical director that night.  And when Tom — our director — called the roll cues for each of those tapes — all we got on the air was hash.  No video.

Okay.  We had died.  But surely, things would right themselves when the actual newscast began, right?

Wrong.

The opening theme aired — it was on a separate, pre-produced reel with the commercials — and then we proceeded to lose every single tape in that first segment.

This was in 1981 — 11 years after the same thing had happened — with film back then — at Channel 30 in Fresno.

At one point — as our floor director put up the “no tape” sign to our anchors for every story — I tapped Tom on the back (I was sitting behind him) and asked, reasonably enough, “Do you think we can get anything on the air?”

His response was classic.  Pointing to the technical director sitting to his left, Tom said, quite memorably:  “I don’t think that son of a bitch knows how to punch up anything.”

Well, Tom was right. Our first segment — which I had scheduled to run about 10 minutes — lasted about two.  Then we mercifully went into our commercial break, which was run out of another control room.

At that point, I phoned my weather guy, Dewey Hopper, on the anchor desk. His segment always came up after the first break.  He usually got about two minutes of airtime because, after all, this was Phoenix and there usually was not much weather to report.

But that night, Dewey was about to get a bit more time in order to fill what we had lost in the first segment.  When I told him that he was going to get 10 minutes — yes, 10 minutes — he screamed into the phone:  “Are you shitting me?”

Well, I wasn’t.  So Dewey slammed the phone down and ran off the set. Literally ran off the set.

During the two-minute commercial break we were in, Tom the director turned around and asked me:  “What are we going to do in the next segment if Dewey doesn’t come back?”

A good question.  So I gave Tom the only answer I could: “I have no idea.”

But I actually did have an idea.  That our careers were about to end on this Friday night.

Our male and female co-anchors got on the phone with me during the break and also asked what we were going to do if Dewey did not return. I said, without much conviction:  “I’m sure he’ll come back.”

Well, he did. And it was amazing.

About 10 seconds before we came out of the break, Dewey stalked back onto our news set.  He was dressed as Zorro.  Yes, Zorro.  Complete with cape, mask and sword.

Director Tom said to anyone who would listen: “What the hell is this all about?”

Of course, I was only the newscast producer, so I quickly said:  “No idea.  Just fly with it.”

And we did.  Our anchors — laughing their rears off — introduced “Zorro Dewey.”  And Zorro Dewey proceeded to do the greatest ad-libbing job I had ever seen.

He used his cape to play hide-and-seek with the camera — now you see me, now you don’t — as he swash-buckled his way to his weather board. He swished that sword around as he talked about — well, I guess he was talking about the weather, because we were all too shocked to understand what was happening.

He played around with his outfit.  He joked about the weather. He had us in stitches. Dewey had, indeed, become Zorro.

And he filled 10 minutes of airtime.  Just what we needed to get us back on track.

When it was over — when Dewey had finished — I got him on the phone on the set.  I asked him where he got the Zorro outfit.  He said he’d had it in his office for a long time, waiting for the right time to use it.

Well, no one could doubt that this had been, indeed, the right time.  I told Dewey that — for as long as I was at KNPX — whenever he needed more time for his weather, he would get it. No questions asked.

And I followed through on that. Always.

One more note from KPNX — about the Saturday afternoon when Sharon and I joined Director Tom and his wife Barbie and station tech Jack James and his wife in Tom and Barbie’s hot tub.  It was early September — not terribly hot — and all of us had tickets to a pro football exhibition game in Scottsdale that night.

(It was before the NFL moved a team to Phoenix — so this was a big deal, with two NFL teams visiting us.)

We were imbibing adult beverages and discussing ways to change the end of our newscasts to make them more energetic.

We kept going in and out of the hot tub to get more adult beverages.

And on one of those trips, I broke my big toe.  Don’t ask me how.  Don’t remember.

It hurt like heck.  But I wasn’t about to miss that NFL game.  So we finished our drinking and talking and went to the Saturday night game.

I was in agony. The toe was killing me.

But we saw most of the game before the pain got to be too much.  Sharon and I left.  I believe we went to an emergency room.

It became a great story around the station.  But what was more impressive was that we implemented the format Tom and I had devised in that hot tub to end our newscasts.  And KPNX kept those endings for years, after we left.

**

WJBK, Channel 2, Detroit

Not a lot of stories from Detroit because we weren’t there long.  But two things still burn brightly in my memory.

Sharon and I went to a Tigers game at the great old Tiger Stadium at Michigan and Trumbull. Historic spot where Ty Cobb had played.

It was April.  A sunny day.  Freezing.  But it was Tiger Stadium, so we had to go.

And I bought a beer.  It froze in its cup.  Remember, it was a sunny day.

Second memory:  Sometime in early summer, our 5 p.m. producer and our 6 p.m. producer decided to get together and roast a pig in one of their backyards.

They had no idea what to do, but they dug a hole, put some charcoal in it, lit the charcoal, and dropped the pig (dead, of course) onto it.  Then they covered it all up with dirt.

And they proceeded to drink beer all afternoon.  That’s all they did.  Drink beer.

Six hours passed.  Now it’s late Saturday afternoon, and Sharon and I and other invited guests show up.

And the two producers stagger over to the spot where they’ve buried the pig.  They dig it up.

Of course, the pig had not been cooked.  Not even a little bit.

So what they did next was classic. Our two producer heroes dug the pig out of that hole, cut it into small chunks of meat, and microwaved those small chunks in the kitchen.

Yes, we had microwaved pig that Saturday night.

**

WKBW, Channel 7, Buffalo

As I’ve written before, this was dominant station with a dominant male anchor.  This anchor had the habit of berating his newscast producers, loudly and in the middle of the newsroom.

When we arrived — my buddy John as news director and me as assistant news director — John gave me the job of keeping this anchor from destroying newsroom morale.

So early on, I called Mr. Anchor into my office and told him — smiling as I said it — that if he had a problem with a producer, he needed to come into my office first and tell me what it was.

If I agreed that something in the newscast needed to be changed — I told him I would discuss it with the producer.

But if he did not come to me first — if he threw a scene in the newsroom — I told him I would always side with the producer, and not him.

He understood. Did not like it. But understood.

And for the few months John and I were there — before we decided Buffalo’s blizzards were too much for us Californians — everything worked well. No outbreaks from the anchor in the newsroom.

Then John took another job — in Pittsburgh. I also took another job — in San Francisco.

And I found out that the day after I left the station to go West, Mr. Anchor threw the biggest and loudest fit in the newsroom that he perhaps had ever thrown.

You see, it had all built up inside him.

**

KPIX-TV, Channel 5, San Francisco

One more quick note, this one from San Francisco.  Back then — in the ’90’s — stations were flush with money.  Money was simply no object.

So when David Letterman decided to leave NBC (after he had failed to get Johnny’s job on “The Tonight Show”) and move to CBS — KPIX decided to make hay.  After all, we were CBS in San Francisco.

We spent tons of money to send me and another producer and a local comedian who knew Letterman to New York to interview Dave.

Yes, it was nice to get to meet Mr. Letterman.  But that’s not my story.

My favorite part of the trip was when I took a photog (we had hired a union guy from NYC) right into the lobby at the 30 Rockefeller Plaza headquarters of NBC.  I was the on-camera “talent.” I walked up to several people in that lobby and asked them what they thought about Letterman leaving NBC and moving over to CBS.

Naturally, this attracted quite some attention from the NBC guards, who immediately ordered my cameraman and me out of the lobby.  We went — but we already had recorded some priceless answers to my question.  We used those answers in the three-part series we aired on KPIX the week after we got back to SF.

It was a memorable moment in my career — being tossed out of NBC’s lobby.

**

So that’s it, Susan, and whoever else reads this. Some of the wild and crazy things that happened to me during my broadcasting career.

It really was a great life, and I’m only sorry it passed so fast.

But the memories — ah, they’ve lived forever.  And I’m totally grateful for that.