Skip to main content

180 LIVE SHOWS

    Everyday that year for 180 required school days I was up early braving the highway and crossing the Walt Whitman bridge in the full flood of commuter traffic - pitching and diving and looking for an opening like an "Indy Driver".  It was not a relaxing ride.  And as the sun filtered through the smog - yes there was a yellow haze that hung over Philadelphia on most mornings in those pre-catalytic converter days.
    It was my goal to have a "live guest" interview on each show which sure beat a dead guest (ask Dick Cavett who had one die on his show).  Filling a five minute program is not easy as a one person production team I learned the first week.  I decided if I didn't want to air a re-run I had to book as many in advance as I could and they needed to represent as many of the city's schools as possible.  After an introductory memo was sent to every administrator and teacher in the system from the Assistant Superintendent of Instruction, Dr. Ezra Staples I rushed from the studio to canvas the City.
    Thankfully, Dr Staples had expressed a mild mandate that the show be watched everyday in the system - "this was good news for a change" he reported - and I found almost everyone I met was not only willing to appear on the program - they "wanted' to promote their work to their peers and parents.  And so to my surprise I had no trouble getting folks to show-up at 8:AM for a live five minute show at 9 - many had to drive over an hour for their brief moment of fame - and it wasn't even 10 minutes as Andy Warhol had recently prophesied.
    By October I was getting calls from principles asking for a spot.  I was getting totally booked as they say - unless something major caused me to substitute and postpone an appearance.  Dr. Mark Shedd, the controversial, strong and vocal City Superintendent of Schools did a turn and my boss showed up to hover around him - she brought coffee for us.  Rev. Nichols, a School Board member and notable black community leader did the program.
    I didn't have a budget for news film shoots so I took slides with a borrowed 35mm camera.  The School District PR office has a ton of film and no problem developing them for me overnight with a service they contracted.  My first shoot was at the student driving's training depot as a fleet of dual controlled cars poured on the city streets.  My director created a nice montage put to canned music for this segment going beyond what was required for the production - frankly WHYY was very cheap with our facilities taking into consideration that the School District deposited over 1 million dollars a year in their coffers for the production of 7 live, short in studio instructional programs.

 And so after a few weeks of "flop-sweats" and worry that a guest would forget to come I know had a few "good" programs in the can incase one of us had a fender bender - and most of all I was getting very comfortable being on the air.

 This is until one of my guests made an comment that changed everything!

Comments

Post a Comment

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

LUNCH WITH TERRY

          (Note: One of my most memorable of all corporate TV memories starts with Don Amendolia, Broadway and TV actor,  a dear friend I worked with at Glassboro State when we “starred” in a couple of Campus Players productions.  Dominic (his real name) was very talented and could sing and dance - two skills I could never master.  Matter of fact, when I played Harold Hill and he was my sidekick Marcellus in The Music Man the director cut my dance scenes - but that’s another story.    After graduation, Don went on to NYC and studied acting at the famed American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He urged me to join him, but I wasn’t that brave - I chose television (which I thought was a much more reliable way of earning a living than on the big stage, especially for a tone-deaf actor with two left feet)  A choice I don’t regret, but I always wondered where I would be now if I had taken the “performing path not chosen”. Oh well. We ke...
Post a Comment
Read more