50 Years Ago Tuesday: A Night in American Political and Network News History

https://youtu.be/xTeW-wkin6A

This is another interesting week in the transition of life for baby-boomers.

Jerry Mathers (The Beaver) turns 70 June 3, 2018

Already, we’ve shared that today, June 3, is the 70th birthday of Jerry Mathers, an icon of the TV Generation. In our TV minds, The Beav is still between 8 and 14 years old, depending on the rerun we watch. I commented to a friend today, I wonder if Beaver at 70 would be able to get out of that big bowl of soup on a billboard in the legendary “In the Soup” episode.

Tuesday is the 50th anniversary of a dark day in the spring of ’68 and American history. Within the span of five days in April 1968, Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek a second full term as president. That was on a Sunday night. The following Thursday, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis. June 5, 1968, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy won the California Primary. Moments after leaving the ballroom where he delivered his victory speech, he was shot and later died at the hands of Sirhan Sirhan.

Robert and Ethel Kennedy moments before his California Primary acceptance speech June 5, 1968

My colleague Stu Shostak shared with us footage from YouTube of ABC News’ live coverage of the California Primary returns, the victory speech and then the awful news of the shooting (Kennedy died approximately 28 hours later).

This was a different era in politics. Most states in the late 1960s still did not hold primaries to select delegates for the national conventions. In 1968, Sen. Eugene McCarthy stunned the country by finishing within two percentage points of President Johnson in the opener, the New Hampshire Primary. That opened Kennedy’s eyes to a vulnerability in the incumbent. Shortly thereafter, he announced his candidacy and entered the remaining primaries.

Two things led to Johnson’s withdrawal in a Sunday night address to the nation that ostensibly was to announce a new strategy in Vietnam. One was the strong performance of McCarthy and Kennedy’s entry into the race. Second was Walter Cronkite’s series of reports from the battlefront on the CBS Evening News. On the final evening, the Friday before Johnson’s address, Cronkite delivered a rare personal commentary. By that point, Cronkite had overtaken Chet Huntley and David Brinkley as the top-rated anchor in network news. In his perspective, Cronkite suggested that the best the United States could hope for in Vietnam was a negotiated truce. A number of books and other published accounts quoted Johnson as saying to his wife Lady Bird and his close associates, “If I’ve lost Walter Cronkite, I’ve lost the country.”

Two nights later, in a dramatic addendum that was not included in advance copies of the speech to the media, Johnson uttered his famous lines, “I shall not seek, nor will not accept another term as your President.” CBS News correspondent Harry Reasoner, anchor of the late-night CBS Sunday News, reflected first on the stunning news of Johnson’s departure from the campaign instead of the Vietnam strategy.

RFK’s California Primary acceptance speech June 5, 1968

Kennedy, largely on name value, overtook McCarthy in the primaries where both were entered. McCarthy won in Oregon where Kennedy had not campaigned. The X factor was Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

In 1960, Humphrey badly wanted the Presidency but ran out of money after several primary losses to John F. Kennedy. Humphrey accepted the number two slot with Johnson in 1964. With Johnson out of the way, Humphrey opted to enter the race in 1968; however, Johnson’s late decision was past the deadline for Humphrey to enter any remaining primaries.

ABC News covers RFK’s victory speech for the California Primary June 5, 1968.  Note that ABC was still in black-and-white for remote live coverage.

Humphrey was forced to go the traditional route of negotiating with Democratic Party bosses such as Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. CBS News estimated that even with Kennedy’s victory in the California Primary, Humphrey would enter the Democratic National Convention with approximately 1,200 of the needed 1,340 delegates for the nomination. Kennedy would have slightly more than 1,000. The battle between the two to cross the finish line may have been one of the most epic in American political history. We could have seen a brokered convention or perhaps a delegate vote that went beyond the first ballot (something I have not seen in my lifetime).

Howard K. Smith of ABC News reports on the shooting of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy

This historical ABC News coverage takes you back to that fateful night in 1968. I was about to enter my sophomore year of high school. This was the first week of summer vacation from school. As a young political junkie, I sat up after midnight to hear Kennedy’s victory speech for the California Primary, then went to bed. I awoke the next morning to around-the-clock news coverage of the shooting and perpetual analysis of whether Kennedy would survive.

We will never know to the degree this changed political history. Even if you are not a fan of politics, I encourage you to watch this as a snapshot of history.

Glen Broughman: Mr. News

Anyone who enters television news has a few icons who inspired him or her to join the profession.

The first television newscaster I ever remember seeing was the man in the pictures below.

My father was appointed to a church in Columbus GA in 1956 a few months before I turned two. I still have fleeting memories from the age of three when our house was one of thousands in West Georgia and East Alabama tuned to Evening Edition at 7 p.m. on WRBL Channel 4 (more on the station’s switch to Channel 3 in a subsequent post).  Glen Broughman, Doug Wallace with Weather Outlook and Douglas Edwards with the News on CBS at 7:15 were unbeatable.

Glen Broughman was “Mr. News” in the era in Columbus, make no mistake. He was the pioneering news anchor (and later news director) for the station from its inception in 1953. The term “anchor” was yet to be invented.

The ratings for Evening Edition were higher than many of the network or syndicated prime time entertainment programs. With his signature crewcut, often accompanied by a bowtie, Glen was alone in prime time news in Columbus until WTVM, still on Channel 28, launched its Operation Newsbeat in 1959.

Glen served in the Signal Corps during World War II. After the war, he entered college on the G.I. Bill, earning a degree in radio journalism from Ohio State in the late 1940s.

When television came to Columbus in 1953, WRBL had the X factor as a CBS affiliate. WDAK-TV, operating on a weaker UHF signal, was a primary NBC station. Both channels cherrypicked available ABC programs and added a sprinkling of the top syndicated shows of the day.

Glen Broughman was not of the mold of later conversational-turned-humor anchors. With him, the news was the news and it was all serious business. Even when a co-anchor,

 David Lea, was added in 1962, Broughman was the straightforward news presenter.

He covered the gambling-influenced violence that was Phenix City, Ala., in the early 1950s and spawned a movie, “The Phenix City Story.” His reports of martial law in the East Alabama town were award-winning. Broughman also probed the struggles of integration with one-on-one interviews with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Alabama Gov. George Wallace, and Georgia Gov. Marvin Griffin, all symbolic figures of the battle over civil rights.

In those early years, Broughman was also the iron pants of Columbus television.  A look back at the TV logs from 1956 indicate Glen not only did the 7 and 11 o’clock news on WRBL, he presented a five-minute newscast at 1:05 p.m. after five minutes of CBS headlines with Walter Cronkite.  Often, he was on the street shooting newsfilm in the morning.  A long-time viewer, Richard Almon, said to me 59 years ago:  “I wonder when Glen Broughman ever sleeps.”

The late Columbus Council member Philip Batastini once told me, “When Glen Broughman came into a meeting of the old city commission, everything stopped until he put his camera on that tripod and began rolling his film.” When he left Columbus in late 1962, those same commissioners issued a proclamation expressing regret at his departure.

His career took him to a role as a special correspondent for NASA, to WFTV in Orlando and to WNEM in Saginaw, MI, not far from his birthplace of Bridgeport. I caught a promo for his impending move to Orlando in 1969. Supposedly for easier grasp of viewers, he shortened the spelling of his last name to Broman.

The Columbus television news pioneer died in 2014 at the age of 89. More than 50 years passed since he read his last story on Evening Edition and the 11 o’clock Night Edition.   Sadly, only television historians such as I am, along with a few old-timers, remember him. Yet, he was the first person I saw on TV who influenced me to seek to do what he did for a living.

Periodically, I return to Columbus to visit relatives. When possible, I stop in to see my old friend—WRBL’s lead male anchor Phil Scoggins, who has now been in that chair for 20 years—-amazingly more than twice as long as Broughman’s tenure in a profession often known for its revolving door. Phil and I broke in at WRBL News 3 only four months apart in 1976.

In any workplace, someone had to be first so that others could be second, third, and fourth. In Columbus television news, Glen Broughman was the first and set a high bar. Phil and I and everyone who has ever walked through that door on 13th Avenue owe a debt of immense gratitude to the late Mr. Broughman. The job he did in those first nine years of WRBL News on television paved the way for hundreds of us who entered that legendary building in 1976 and in the 40-plus years since.

Not “Oh My!”….But Oh No!: Dick Enberg, Mt. Rushmore Broadcaster, Leaves Us

December 22, 2017

I stayed up past midnight this morning and was making one final flip through Twitter, a dubious exercise some evenings.  In the left-hand column of Trends, I saw a name that led me to one of those moments where I knew what I would see if I clicked on it.

My reaction was “oh no!”  The man who made “oh my” a cemented phrase in sportscasting, Dick Enberg, died at the age of 82.

Without question, he was my idol in basketball broadcasting.  Though he was spectacular at the wide variety of sports he called, he made basketball come alive for me as if it were on an Imax screen.  I never even remotely came close to his talent and recognition, though I enjoyed 25 years as an NAIA and NCAA Division II basketball commentator.  Yet, Enberg was my role model and the main influence for me to go behind the television mike.

This, however, is not going to be a recitation of all of Enberg’s accomplishments.  Plenty of obituaries and radio and television reminiscences will do that quite well.  As a game show enthusiast, I could wax forever about one of my favorites of the genre of all time, Sports Challenge.  The host was Dick Enberg.

Instead, I want to focus on a signature moment that changed the face of one sport.  Dick Enberg was a major reason why.

Nearly 50 years ago in January 1968, Enberg played a seminal role in turning college basketball into a national television sport.  That is no exaggeration.

At the time, Lyndon Johnson was facing challenges from his own party for re-election which led to his dropping out of the race.  Racial strife led to rioting and burning in the Watts district of Los Angeles and Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco.  Dr. Martin Luther King and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy would both be assassinated only weeks apart.  An irreverent satirical hour labeled Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In was about to become television’s number one show.  In a last hurrah, the Green Bay Packers had just won their second straight Super Bowl.  College basketball was a non-entity on network television.

In a game that was a precursor of today’s college basketball Final Four in domed stadiums, John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins were matched against the Houston Cougars of Guy Lewis (who closely resembled Al Lewis, the proverbial Grandpa on The Munsters).  The teams would square off at the three-year-old Astrodome.  If Barney Fife were describing the plans to Andy Taylor, he would say, “It’s gonna be big, Ang.”

A 33-year-old sportscaster with Midwest roots was chosen to call the game.  He was building a name on the West Coast as the voice of UCLA basketball, as well as the radio voice of the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Angels.  Dick Enberg would not only make history by broadcasting in the largest venue ever to house a basketball game, as well as the largest crowd, but his work nearly a half century ago pushed the sport to a major transition.

The game was in prime time (9:30 pm on Saturday night in the East). However, it was not on CBS, ABC or NBC, but on a small regional sports syndication network—-TVS, created by television sports entrepreneur Eddie Einhorn.

NBC gave a valiant six-year run to college basketball and the NBA from 1955-61. The network dropped both despite having voices such as Lindsey Nelson, Curt Gowdy and Jack Drees calling the games because the sports just did not click with audiences as an appointment attraction.  Advertisers clamored for baseball’s weekend games.  They gave support to the National Football League a half century before its multi-billion dollar contracts.  They were not even lukewarm to sponsor basketball on TV.

In 1964, Einhorn launched TVS with regional telecasts of SEC basketball and Big 8 games, later expanding to three other conferences. The C.D. Chesley Co. began a package of ACC games to stations along the Eastern seaboard.

Still, the networks were not interested in the NCAA tournament or a regular season college basketball package.  Fans had to read about the championship game in their morning or afternoon newspapers. When Bob Wiesenhahn and Paul Hoque led Cincinnati to two straight NCAA titles in 1961 and 1962 and the Bearcats lost a thriller 60-58 to Loyola of Chicago in a bid for a third in a row, television was not there.

The UCLA-Houston matchup was the first attempt of Einhorn to go in prime time. The setting of the Astrodome was enough to attract stations as well as the name recognition of UCLA’s powerhouse center Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). A surprising 154 stations picked up the game, most of them network affiliates.  Media billed the showdown as the Game of the Century.  What a cliche that four-word phrase is now.

The decision to assign Enberg, who called UCLA games on a tape delay but was not a national broadcast name, as play-by-play commentator served as an introduction to a wordsmith with the ability to lift a game into an event.  Enberg was limited exposure in about 40 TV markets with “The Perfect Match,” a “Dating Game” knockoff.  In dozens of cities, he was an unknown.

Before the first half was over, viewers knew Enberg was on a level above anyone they had ever heard call college basketball. His spectacular intonation and clarity of voice gave viewers the idea this was a night of sports history and that a possible upset was in the making.

Ironically, this was a game UCLA’s legendary coach did not want to play.  Wooden did not like his Pacific-8 conference race interrupted by an intersectional game.  He felt a non-conference game in January was a distraction to his team’s ultimate goal.

UCLA came into the game with a 47-game winning streak.  Most sports analysts predicted the Bruins would eclipse San Francisco’s 60-game streak set in the 1950s.

The Cougars had other ideas.  Houston’s Elvin Hayes, who averaged 37.7 points a game, went on a tear in the first half.  On his final basket of the first half, Enberg chanted, “ELVIN HAYES HAS 29 POINTS!” Houston led 46-43 at halftime.

The second half was much more defensive. Hayes was held to 10 points but hit two key free throws with 1:54 remaining to put Houston up 71-69. Long before the shot clock era, UCLA worked extensively for a tying shot and possible foul. All-America guard Mike Warren made one of his rare mistakes and threw away a pass with forward Lynn Shackelford wide open.

Houston held onto the ball (this was 15 years before Jim Valvano launched the foulfest on his way to an NCAA title at North Carolina State) and pulled the two-point upset.  Enberg could not be accused of being a homer for UCLA.  He called the game right down  the middle.  He built high drama and made the game a larger-than-life experience.

I was watching the game on WJXT in Jacksonville, which pre-empted “Petticoat Junction” and “Mannix” to carry the game. I had a huge fatigue factor with UCLA, though I was a major admirer of Coach Wooden. I celebrated when anyone could knock off the Bruins. I had no doubt this was a college basketball telecast like none I had ever seen. The setting and the exuberant crowd set the tone but Enberg made that game an American classic that paved the way for a much bigger future for the sport.

The ratings were the highest ever for a college basketball game on American television, once all of the markets reported.  Advertisers began to take note that, given proper promotion and announcing talent, the college game could draw an audience.

The following year, NBC began carrying Saturday games in the NCAA tournament.  By 1969, the championship game and national consolation game became a Saturday afternoon tradition on NBC until they eventually moved to Monday nights.

In the late ’70s, after Curt Gowdy left NBC, Enberg became NBC’s senior voice. His years of pairing with Al McGuire and Billy Packer were of legend. His calls of Super Bowls and Olympics, as well as the PGA tour, placed him on the Mount Rushmore of sports broadcasters.

Study the careers of the classic sportscasters and you will often fine one signature game that propelled them into national prominence.  The great Ray Scott’s disciplined call of the Green Bay-Dallas Ice Bowl 50 years ago cemented his legacy.  Al Michaels’ “do you believe in miracles?” finish of the U.S. Olympic hockey team semifinal win over the Soviet Union in 1980 was a milestone marker.  Verne Lundquist was already a distinguished announcer but his 1986 chant of “yes sir!” when 46-year-old Jack Nicklaus hold a 20-foot putt to take the lead at The Masters is on the all-time, all-star list of TV sports memories.

The night of January 20, 1968, was the key moment in Dick Enberg’s career that elevated him to the A-list of commentators.  Never again would he be regarded as a regional broadcaster.  He changed a sport’s image in the eyes of America on that Saturday night.

I learned a lot that aided my modest career as a sportscaster by watching everything Enberg did and from his autobiography, “Oh My!”  In the book, he wrote that in  basketball, many young commentators attempt to call every basket in the first half of a game as if it’s a buzzer-beater.  “You have to play it calmer early in the game,” he wrote.  “If you have a real thriller, you want to save the drama for the closing moments.”

If we are honest, many of us who have been sportscasters on a much smaller level have patterned our styles after broadcasters we admire. One has to be one’s self at the mike to be a quality communicator but in key moments of dramatic and thriller games, I did my dead level best to pump the drama like Enberg during my 25 years as an NAIA and NCAA Division II television sportscaster. He was my absolute role model in basketball commentary.

I periodically look at a women’s conference championship game I called 20 years ago in an electrified arena.  In overtime and in a record performance by an NAIA All-American, I screamed, “MICHELLE STREET HAS 45 POINTS!” I thought of that UCLA-Houston game at that precise moment.  That call was a tip of the cap to my idol.

That game at the Astrodome nearly 50 years ago was a major reason I wanted to be a sportscaster. Dick Enberg was the catalyst for me.

The news came early Friday morning that Enberg passed away Thursday, likely of a heart attack.  His loss leaves a gaping hole for those who appreciate the art of sports broadcasting.

As another great commentator who is a friend, Tim Brando, frequently says when we lose legends: “We’re not replacing them with people who have half the talent.”  This morning, Brando tweeted:  “(Enberg) was just being himself, a warm human being that brought out only the best in those around him.  No one was better!”

A lot of fine broadcasters are out there today.  Many young men and women want to go into the field.  My two young successors calling NCAA Division II basketball hope they are on a ladder to eventual success.  I only wish they all could learn from Dick Enberg.  He was one of a kind.

Rushing Faster to Unsubstantiated Judgment: No Validation to Journalism

December 18, 2017

ESPN President John Skipper resigned today, acknowledging a long-term substance abuse problem.  His announced departure also quickly revealed another stain on the culture of contemporary journalism.

Yes, you have the typical online soreheads who are irritated at the perceived political climate of the Worldwide Leader.  They are virtually celebrating Skipper’s exit.  Some of those people would throw a party for an animal’s death.

More disturbing is how certain media members and the Twittersphere are already rushing to judgment that something more sinister is behind Skipper’s decision.  The recent rash of sexual misconduct issues of media personalities and executives quickly led the instant opinion crowd to put two and zero together and have them equal four.

The immediate condemnation of Skipper with wagering that another story will follow in his case with no proof of such is an embarrassment to our profession.  True, journalism is a profession in which its practitioners are trained to be skeptical to a fault.  Wading through the spinners and the carefully-crafted public relations statements is part of the job.

However, drawing unsupported conclusions in the name of opinion and commentary or outright boorishness when a man’s reputation is at stake is the epitome of irresponsibility.  We seem to have an epidemic of that in today’s journalism culture.

I am not now nor have I ever been the faculty advisor to our student newspaper at Union University.  As a practicing journalist for the bulk of my adult life, I do offer consulting help on occasion.

More than a decade ago, a student-athlete was suspended from the women’s basketball team and ultimately left the university.  At the time, we were between journalism professors.  An adjunct advisor was hired for the semester.  Suspicions on the part of some students was that the student was caught with some variety of drugs.  Despite various efforts to ferret a confirmation of those conclusions, none was forthcoming.

I cringed when I saw a line in a paragraph in the story which read:  “We contacted The Jackson Police Department but were told no arrest had been made.”  I asked to step into the once-a-week afternoon practicum of the newspaper staff.  My question was simple:  do you have any proof, written or verbal, that the athlete was suspended from school because of drugs?  After a few stammers, the admission was that no confirmation existed.  My response:  then why did you raise the issue that you contacted the Jackson Police Department and received no information of an arrest?

The editor-in-chief of the paper sheepishly grinned as he said:  “I thought it was something that needed to be addressed.”  I then posed a hypothetical to him:  if someone said to you that the president of this university was embezzling money and you could not gain confirmation of it, would you do a story on that just because you felt it needed to be addressed?  “You would find yourself more than vulnerable to a libel suit,” I told him.

If more to the story of John Skipper’s resignation exists, no doubt that will be revealed in time.  His and ESPN’s credibility would take a sharp blow.

However, if his decision to step down is, in fact, strictly because he needs help to cure a substance addiction, then unsubstantiated questions are being raised that create potentially libelous damage to the man’s reputation.

Assuming Skipper is opting to focus on fighting his addiction, he should be celebrated for acknowledging the problem and getting help.  To go public and admit his illness may indeed be a major step toward conquering the problem.

The sad truth is that in today’s media—-especially the largely-unfiltered and unedited social media, we have some elements who can’t wait to stomp with a size 14 boot on one’s head.  That’s not journalism.  That’s arrogance and vulture commentary.  That has no place in a medium designed to inform, educate and provide viewers and readers with a barometer to make better decisions.  Yet, we wonder with astonishment why the cry of “fake news” spreads faster than the California wildfires.

John Skipper photo:  ESPNMediaZone

Ethics graphics:  RTDNA

Sgt. Carter: Gomer’s Rejoining You; Remembering Jim Nabors

Ask me to rank my top 10 favorite characters in TV history.  Gomer Pyle will be in the Final Four playoff, along with Andy Taylor, Barney Fife and Beaver Cleaver.

Ask me who delivered the definitive version of “The Impossible Dream” with a voice as powerful as a riptide and I will not hesitate to answer Jim Nabors.

I was spending a recent Thursday morning doing as I was told in helping to set up and decorate our church for our daughter’s Saturday wedding.  The news came over Twitter and Facebook that Jim had left us at the age of 87.

This one was like a punch in the gut.  The news was another reminder that while characters that strike a chord in our lives through television are immortal, the people who play them are not.

I actually saw Jim Nabors perform for the first time in 1961.  My family had just moved to Waycross, Ga., then the home of what one national magazine described as one of the 15 worst cities in America for television reception.  Unless one had a prohibitively expensive high-gain antenna, the choice was WJXT in Jacksonville or nothing.  Jacksonville had two affiliates but one of those spring thin air nights to pick up the NBC station, WFGA.  Both channels cherrypicked ABC programs.

WJXT opted on Wednesday nights to snag The New Steve Allen Show, a comeback bid for The Tonight Show originator.  Steve’s show was up against television’s number one show, Wagon Train, and failed to last.  However, a young singer named Jim Nabors appeared on several shows.  He could belt out a tune with a powerful baritone.  My parents enjoyed him.  However, with the short life of Steve’s variety hour, Jim faded into the woodwork as did scores of other performers who tried to break into early sixties television.

A little more than a year later, the Christmas Eve episode of The Andy Griffith Show was entitled “The Bank Job.”  Barney Fife set out to prove that The Mayberry Bank was a crime pushover.  A local mechanic who had never been introduced, Gomer Pyle, appeared.  Gomer had a voice that sounded as if he had done a dozen lube jobs in a day.  Bit characters came and went in Mayberry, most never again to be seen.  Somehow, Gomer grabbed our attention.  I remember my father laughing uproariously at the few lines Gomer delivered.  We thought little more about it the next day—but Andy Griffith and his producers did.

Jim had no idea the 23 episodes in which he appeared on The Andy Griffith Show would propel him into major stardom.  This is a guy who just 10 years earlier had been a camera operator, film editor and morning show host at WJBF in Augusta.

The episode of December 16, 1963, was arguably the major turning point in the 33-year-old Nabors’ career.  Directed by actor Richard Crenna, “Citizen’s Arrest” became a signature episode of The Griffith Show‘s middle years.  Frustrated after Barney wrote him a ticket for making a U-turn in the middle of the town square, Gomer catches Barney doing the same thing.  The Mayberry mechanic begins yelling, “Citizen’s array-ust!  Citizen’s array-ust!”  The next three minutes of confrontation between Gomer and Barney were sheer comic genius.  Crenna never received the full credit he deserved for staging that scene.

I knew that episode hit home.  For the next two weeks during my school’s Christmas holidays, I encountered people everywhere—-including myself—-shouting “citizen’s array-ust!”  Along with “nip it in the bud,” Floyd’s “oooooh, Annnnndy” and Barney’s classic “Juanita?  Barn….cock-a-doodle-doooooo,” Gomer’s revenge became one of the ten charismatic catchphrases in the history of the series.

Spinoffs were still fledgling elements of television in the mid-sixties.  Harry Morgan’s character of Pete Porter was spun off into Pete and Gladys, a CBS sitcom derived from fifties favorite December Bride.  The characters of Bronco Layne and Sugarfoot were introduced on ABC’s Cheyenne but not expanded into their own rotating series until Clint Walker engaged in a contract dispute with Warner Brothers over merchandising and salary from Cheyenne.  In 1956, The $64,000 Challenge was a spinoff from the megahit The $64,000 Question to exploit the popularity of winners on Question.  Andy Griffith’s own series was introduced as a one-shot pilot on The Danny Thomas Show but the ensemble characterizations had not been developed.

The evening of May 18, 1964, was the moment of truth for the character of Gomer Pyle.  Gomer enters the sheriff’s office and does a choreographed version of The Marine’s Hymn.  Andy watches and says, “That’s real good, Gomer.”  Quickly, Gomer tells his friend, “Andy….I’m in.”  “In” was his enlistment papers in the United States Marine Corps.

In the following 27 minutes, we had a preview of what would take over sitcom television the following season.  Gomer as a bumbling Marine only embellished his personality as the bumbling mechanic from Mayberry.  We also saw how the chemistry would build between Nabors and one of the most underrated supporting actors in sitcom history, Frank Sutton.  Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. could not have been possible without Jim’s talent but the series would also not have worked without the counterpoint of Sutton as the beleaguered Sergeant Vince Carter.  When the two stood nose-to-nose after Gomer’s initial faux pas, you knew a winner was on the way.

Contrary to information in some of Nabors’ obituary tributes, CBS had already decided to pick up Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. as a series well before the pilot aired.  In those days, the network fall lineups were locked in as early as Washington’s birthday.  Network executives screened producer-writer Aaron Ruben’s pilot and immediately gave it the green light.  CBS intentionally saved its airing until the final Griffith episode of the 1963-64 season.

Ironically, TV Guide—in its fall forecasts—did not see great hope for Pyle.  The prediction was for a middle-of-the-pack rating.  Indeed, the time slot would be a challenge.  CBS had not experienced exceptional success with sitcoms on Friday nights through the years.  Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. would go in Fridays at 9:30.  The lead-in was a new but highly-touted ensemble variety hour The Entertainers starring Carol Burnett, Bob Newhart and a cast of up and coming singers and comics.  The lead-out, Slattery’s People, was a high-concept drama starring Richard Crenna in his first serious role as a state legislator.

The biggest battle for Gomer would be the series’ competition.  After CBS network president Jim Aubrey abruptly canceled The Jack Benny Program after 14 years (the book CBS:  Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye quotes sources as saying Aubrey cruelly told the legend, “You’re through.”), NBC picked up Benny for the Friday at 9:30 half-hour.  Benny promised to feature younger guests (The Smothers Brothers, The Lettermen, Peter, Paul and Mary, Jack Jones) as well as TV heavyweights Lucille Ball, Bob Hope and George Burns.  ABC countered with 12 O’Clock High, an hour-long war drama based on the movie of the same title.  The betting line was the Benny would be tough sledding for Gomer if his audience followed him to NBC.

Until the 1975-76 season, Nielsen ratings were based on two-week averages.  The first Gomer Pyle episode featured a solid premiere as Gomer was inept trying to navigate the obstacle course but worked extra time at night until he succeeded.  Week two fleshed out some of Gomer’s fellow recruits as a platoon member’s girlfriend managed to sneak into the barracks.  The verdict was a stunner for the handicappers.  Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. was immediately CBS’s number one show, finishing third for the two-week period behind NBC’s Bonanza and ABC’s Bewitched.  Twelve O’Clock High was 59th but the shocker was the result for The Jack Benny Program.  Out of 100 network series, the legend from Waukegan was in 97th place.  CBS indeed appeared to be right in canceling him.

in case the early ratings were a fluke, CBS sent Nabors on a promotional swing as he appeared on Art Linkletter’s House Party and the prime time version of To Tell the Truth.  Regular panelist Orson Bean was given the week off from Truth in order to bring Nabors to the popular game show’s panel October 26, 1964.  For a week in a blitz of heavy daytime promos, voiceover announcers touted the star of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. as joining the panel of stars (Tom Poston, Peggy Cass and Kitty Carlisle).  Jim was a bit nervous.  He never before had played on a game show.  Onstage with heavyweight veterans Poston, Cass and Carlisle, the Alabama native struggled to ask pertinent questions of the contestants.  Only two games were played rather than the usual three because the episode was cut to 25 minutes to accommodate a five-minute political talk for the upcoming Presidential election.

As a testament to CBS’ promotional machine and Nabors’ increasing popularity resulted in the highest rating of the 11 years of nighttime To Tell the Truth.  The episode scored a 26.4 rating and 42 percent share of audience, crushing the NBC and ABC competition.

The numbers for Gomer Pyle were no fluke.  They not only held up but increased week-to-week.  For the full 1964-65 campaign, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. averaged a 30.7 rating, finishing in a virtual tie with Bewitched (at 31.0).  For the final 14 weeks of the season, Gomer overtook Bewitched  to become number two overall.

Jim Nabors was no longer a solid supporting actor.  He was morphing into a major network television star.  His musical talents were incorporated into two episodes of the first season.  He recorded his first album for Columbia Records, Shazam!, based on the Captain America yell he comedically incorporated in Mayberry and on the Marine base.  The first recording was in Gomer’s country voice.  That was followed up with By Request, which featured Nabors doing a number of Broadway and movie standards in his operatic style.  A third LP, Jim Nabors Sings:  Cuando Calienta el Sol, went gold.

During the five years of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., more elements of Gomer’s family were expanded.  He frequently quoted from Grandma Pyle (“Sergeant Carter, Grandma Pyle says you should chew your food 12 times before you swaller it.”).  We met his cousin Bridey and his grandfather.  He dated a colonel’s daughter and two Hollywood stars (one of them Ruta Lee).  He gained a steady girlfriend in off key nightclub singer Lou Ann Poovie (played by the incomparable Elizabeth MacRae).  He gave Vince constant nightmares, including one literally in a hilarious episode during which a meal of Welsh rarebit made Gomer and Vince both dream they had switched personalities.

A favorite Gomer Pyle episode was one in which Gomer was entrusted with Vince’s car while the sergeant was dispatched to collect an AWOL Marine.  The vehicle was stolen.  Eventually, it lands on a construction site where the car is destroyed.  The outstanding character actor Ken Lynch, whose TV career went back to the days of DuMont as The Plainclothesman, played the police sergeant who felt a sense of empathy for Private Pyle.  My daughter, watching the episode in rerun as a small child, went around the house for days chanting Gomer’s lament, “Sergeant Carter’s goin’ to kill me.  He’s gonna kill me dead!”  The construction company owner agrees to replace Carter’s car.  A classic line toward the end comes when Gomer explains to Vince:  “This big ball fell on it and smashed your car to Smithereens!”  Every time I saw a similar device when my university’s library was built three years ago, I kept thinking, “This big ball’s going to fall down and smash somebody’s car to Smithereens!”

The writers looked for more openings to incorporate Jim’s vocal talents into the series.  The most memorable musical moment came in episode nine of the fourth season.  During the November rating sweeps, Gomer won a singing contest.  The prize:  a trip to sing before an elite audience at a Washington, D.C., concert.  Nabors had already sung “The Impossible Dream” from “Man of LaMancha” on The Danny Kaye Show and the premiere episode of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967.  The arrangement in which Jim was accompanied by the U.S. Marine Corps Band was unmatched.  People have been tweeting and spreading that version on Facebook in the hours after we learned of Nabors’ death.  I don’t care how many times I hear it, Jim’s powerful delivery still gives me chills.

During its five seasons, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., never finished lower than tenth in the Nielsens (and that was in year three when CBS moved the show to Wednesday nights).  The series was invincible.  Back on Friday nights at 8:30, Gomer finished the first month of the 1968-69 season as the number two show in the Nielsens, runner-up only to NBC’s juggernaut Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.  At that point, TV Guide reported that Jim was thinking out loud about doing a weekly variety hour in 1969-70.  CBS was still non-committal.  With the numbers Gomer was still pulling, the network was willing to offer a Brinks truck for Nabors to do two more years of the sitcom.

Jim had other numbers on his side.  In November 1965, The Andy Griffith Don Knotts Jim Nabors Show, a variety special, went through the roof in the Nielsens.  In 1967, American Motors sponsored Friends and Nabors, Jim’s first solo special, with guests Griffith, Tennessee Ernie Ford, opera star Marilyn Horne and Shirley Jones.  The following year in what would be a fortuitous Thursday at 8 slot, Jim hosted Girl Friends and Nabors.  As a finale, Nabors sang an old Ernest Tubb song rearranged with a big band sound, “Tomorrow Never Comes,” which drew a huge audience reaction.

Gomer Pyle, USMC, had been a far bigger success than even the best of network prophets could have forecast.  Yet, Jim was tired.  Because of the interaction required, he was in virtually every scene.  Back home at night, he had to learn an additional 14 pages of dialogue.  Five years of the grind was taking a toll.

With his nightclub and recording career taking off, Nabors conferred with his manager Dick Linke.  As reported in TV Guide, Linke advised:  “Jim, with your talents, better to gamble now.”

When the fall 1969 CBS lineup was released in April, Gomer Pyle was not on the schedule.  The Jim Nabors Hour was.  The original plan was to go Fridays from 8 to 9 on the same night that Gomer had been such a huge success.  The popular Hogan’s Heroes would return for a fifth season by moving to 7:30.  However, CBS opted late in the scheduling game to go pick up the declining Get Smart from NBC for a sixth season and give a reluctant pickup to The Good Guys, a Bob Denver-Herb Edelman comedy that limped in the Nielsens in its first season.  Those comedies were penciled in at 7:30 and 8.  Hogan remained at 8:30.

CBS looked at the success of two Nabors specials on Thursdays at 8.  Further, after two CBS affiliates experienced success with Family Affair on a delayed broadcast Thursdays at 7:30 in 1968-69, the network opted to move the Brian Keith-Sebastian Cabot hit into that time slot as a lead-in for The Jim Nabors Hour.  The decision was inspired.

In a future blogpost, we will explore the detailed two-year history of Jim’s variety hour.  With a premiere episode that featured Andy Griffith and up-and-coming singer Julie Budd (along with a cameo by Don Knotts), the first week results were impressive.  The Sept. 25, 1969, debut scored a 26.0 rating and finished fourth for the week.  Family Affair drew higher ratings than its traditional Monday night slot.

Some guests were better draws than others.  However, The Jim Nabors Hour finished 11th for the season in the 1969-70 Nielsens.  The following season, tougher competition from NBC’s new The Flip Wilson Show weakened the ratings.  Nonetheless, the Nabors show was still 28th in 1970-71 and was primed for a third season renewal.

What has unofficially been labeled The Great Rural Purge led to what many observers believed was a premature end for The Jim Nabors Hour.  Madison Avenue advertising agencies were pressuring the networks to end a decade of rural appeal shows launched by The Beverly Hillbillies in 1962.  Ad executives wanted more dramas, more shows with urban appeal in the large population centers and more programs appealing to the 18-49 age bracket that was viewing song-and-dance hours in fewer numbers.  The Nabors show was one of the final casualties on the CBS lineup for 1971-72.

Ironically, Jim was still in demand as a guest star on the remaining CBS variety shows during the seventies.  He continued his “good luck charm” appearances on every season premiere of The Carol Burnett Show until its end in 1977-78.  He showed up on Tony Orlando and Dawn, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour and the final season of The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.  A syndicated Nashville-based Music Hall America welcomed Jim as a host.

In 1977, Jim subbed for Dinah Shore on her daytime 90-minute talk/variety series.  So impressed were Dinah’s producers that they developed a similar one-hour format for Nabors.  In January 1978, The Jim Nabors Show premiered on 140 stations, including WCBS in New York.  Many of those stations slotted Nabors opposite the fast-rising Phil Donahue in an early morning time period.  After a strong first two weeks, Jim’s ratings began to sag.  By the end of the 14th week, his distributor announced The Jim Nabors Show would end after 26 weeks.

Jim never did another series.  In 1981, he frontlined a Christmas special, Jim Nabors’ Christmas in Hawaii, which included him singing Silent Night at Pearl Harbor.  His most frequent annual appearances, which started in 1969, were at the Indianapolis 500 where he offered the emotional state song “Back Home in Indiana” for 36 years until a farewell in 2014.

The fact that a native of middle Alabama could be propelled into near-overnight success as a small town mechanic-turned-Marine private is one of the genuine folklore tales of television.  The day of his death, Jim Nabors’ version of “Impossible Dream” from Gomer Pyle, USMC, went viral online.  More than one person reacted in the sixties with the phrase, “That voice just doesn’t go with that face.”  Indeed, it did.

I enjoyed Gomer because I knew people like him in my hometown.  I was an unabashed fan of Jim’s music because our vocal range was similar and his versions of Broadway showstoppers and contemporary middle-of-the-road favorites of the era connected with me.  His variety hour was a weekly appointment for me because Jim was himself, not a craft of handlers or managers who wanted him to fit into a pattern.

Most of us never met him but never heard a cross word about him from those who did.  For most of the sixties when Jim Nabors appeared either in character of singing a powerful showcloser, we watched—and we wanted more.

 

 

 

 

 

“Nature Boy”: Compelling Storytelling at Its Best, A Tragic Tale of the Price of Fame

I have been a non-fan of pro wrestling for nearly 20 years. However, ESPN’s ’30 for 30′ “Nature Boy,” a brilliant and honest portrayal of wrestling megastar Ric Flair, was one of the most compelling documentaries of its kind because of its storytelling.

I first saw Flair in 1974 during my first weekend at the University of Georgia.  I flipped on “Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling” on WFBC in Greenville, S.C.  The veteran Rip Hawk and Flair had just won the Mid-Atlantic tag team championship.  At the time, I didn’t see anything special about the young upper Midwesterner.  During interviews, Hawk—a veteran heel (as villains are termed inside the wrestling industry)—did most of the talking.  Flair was a couple of years away from developing the persona that propelled him to the top of his profession in the early 1980s.

When he based his ring character on the flamboyance of earlier star “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers, Flair struck gold.  His work ethic was unsurpassed in his field.  Ed Capral, one of the great announcers of the era between 1955 and 1975, told me Flair was “the greatest showman I’ve ever seen in wrestling.”  Capral had seen the original Gorgeous George, the legendary Haystacks Calhoun and Andre the Giant.  In his field, Capral knew of which he spoke.

In the microcosm world of pro wrestling, Ric Flair was regarded by people who grew up well before the Hulk Hogan transformation of 1984 as the greatest performer in the genre’s history.  However, as the documentary indicated, Flair sacrificed wives, children, his health and relationships to experience the love from entertainment he obviously never found from his adoptive parents.  In the early moments of “Nature Boy,” we learned that the Fleiers were major patrons of the arts.  Their son Richard was far more interested in the theater of sport.  Behavioral conflicts resulted in him being sent away to a boarding school as an older teen.  People who only knew of Ric Flair as a master of a figure-four leglock may not have been aware of the juxtapositions of his childhood.  He had parents; yet, he conveyed his own emotions that he felt they were never “there” for him.

Flair talked of the difficult year of recovery after suffering a broken back in a plane crash on the way to a Sunday afternoon card in Wilmington, N.C., October 4, 1975.  He experienced days rethinking his presentation in the ring if, against the odds, he could physically return to wrestling.

By 1981, he was the consummate star in his profession.  He won the NWA world heavyweight championship from his consistent foe of the eighties, Dusty Rhodes.  As several of his colleagues related in “Nature Boy,” Richard Morgan Fleier began living the character of Ric Flair.  His first wife Leslie detailed how he would come home for a day, say how bored he was, and leave.  A world of women, sex, expensive clothes and alcohol to a degree few could fathom became Flair’s environment.  He detailed a period of nearly three years in which “I was never at home.” At the end of the documentary, he admitted to being anything but a model husband and father.  I was taken back to an interview with one of the late Jack Webb’s associates on “The Stu Shostak Show” a few years back.  Webb became a television legend with two successful incarnations of the police series “Dragnet” and developed a television empire.  With all that success, Webb had multiple marriages and could not escape his true marriage to television.  “Jack was a bad father,” said one of his long-time colleagues to Shostak.

“Nature Boy” revealed the heartbreak of Flair’s son Reid’s death from a drug overdose.  Ric obviously had a relationship with Reid that he never had with his own father or his older son David.  Reid emulated his father’s alter ego, only the issues with alcohol expanded into drugs.  

The documentary portrayed a man who could not leave the stage.  In sports, I remember the sadness of seeing Johnny Unitas in a San Diego Chargers uniform.  One of the all-time greats of the NFL simply did not know when to quit.  In his last year with the New York Yankees, Mickey Mantle could only muster a .236 batting average and took three feeble swings in a final All-Star game in which he should never have been included.  Ric Flair in his 60s is far more of a nostalgic figure that in some respects is sad to watch.

The two key lines I took away from “Nature Boy” were from one of his younger colleagues and his son David.  Said Michaels:  “Ric doesn’t know Richard Fleier. I don’t think he’s ever taken the time to get to know who he is.”  From David Fleier,  his son from his first marriage: “I don’t want my children to have the kind of life I had.”  David was referring to his perpetually absentee father.

Many of Flair’s long-time fans are probably dissecting the documentary for its omissions of some of pro wrestling history they hoped would be included. Those who are miss the point of “Nature Boy” or any other documentary.

I teach a news documentary class at Union University every spring.  For five years, students are assigned a semester-long project to develop a half-hour examination of an issue of significant community interest.  Some of them have difficulty grasping that documentaries that hit the spot are not just facts and figures, nor are they solely historical.  They are stories.  Storytelling at its most compelling is what sells a documentary to viewers.

The production of “Nature Boy” was a deep and penetrating character study that showed adulation, fame and so-called perks that go with stardom and the contradiction of the selfishness of a man who never should have married or had children. The emotional pain we saw from his first wife Leslie in her interview and from Ric’s oldest son were clearly evident.

While watching, I was reminded how we all are guilty of putting entertainment stars on pedestals because we love or obsess over how they entertain us.  Yet, life away from the stage is often a dichotomy.  Many of us paid to watch Ric Flair deliver a textbook performance in sports entertainment on multiple occasions. He always gave us our money’s worth.  His life away from the ring and the bright lights was another story. 

Ric Flair almost died three months ago.  Years of alcohol to the excess finally took a toll doctors and friends had warned him of for years.  In an interview on SiriusXM radio three weeks ago, Flair said, “It’s a miracle that I’m even here talking to you.  I’m never going to have a drop of alcohol again.”  I hope he sticks to that.  He may not have another comeback remaining.

“Nature Boy” held my interest because of its depth in a fashion that a puff piece on Flair’s career would not have.   Many of those who have showered him with adulation through the decades probably do not see the story through the same glasses as did I.  As the tale unfolded, I was reminded of the closing days of Mickey Mantle when he learned cancer was about to take him after years of alcohol abuse.  The Mick was one of my childhood heroes.  Yet, in the last interview he gave before he died, he said, “Don’t be like me.” Flair did not have to say that in “Nature Boy.” The 90-minute story did.

Monty Hall: Indeed a Big Deal

           Saturday afternoon, I was watching the 41-0 thrashing of Tennessee by Georgia on CBS and waiting for the barrage of callers to talk shows who want to fire the Vol coaches.

            Just before the game ended, I received a message that I knew would be coming at any time.  Monty Hall, the legendary co-creator and original host of Let’s Make a Deal, had died at 96.

            Eighteen months ago, Monty’s agent Fred Wostbrock told me the game show icon’s health was declining.  “He’s on dialysis three times a week and he’s lost about 60 pounds,” Fred said.  Little did we know that Monty would outlive his agent, who died late last year of cancer.

       Like many of you, I grew up watching Monty preside over the world’s biggest daily costume party on the show he co-created with his partner Steve Hatos, Let’s Make a Deal.  I went even further back with him to the living board game he hosted from 1960 to 1962, Video Village on CBS.  To this day, baby boomers my age remember fondly Village but can’t remember the show’s title.

            As a kid from South Georgia who looked on Monty and several of the other classic game show hosts as TV icons, I never dreamed I would meet the man, much less emcee a testimonial event at which he was honored.   More on that later.

            I was privileged to know the man for 17 years.  Another game show legend, Tom Kennedy, put me together with Monty in 2000 at the height of the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire craze.

            He was straightforward with me to every question about his career and the game show business.  He was totally candid about why he moved Let’s Make a Deal  from NBC to ABC after five successful years in 1968 (an NBC executive refused to give Deal a nighttime slot; ABC was glad to offer it).

            Before that interview ended, Monty said:  “I could talk to you for two hours.  You know a lot about our business.  This is one of the few interviews I’ve ever given where someone hasn’t used the word ‘mindless’ several times.”  I figured that would probably be my one-and-done session with TV’s Big Dealer.

            Over the next couple of years as game shows came and went in prime time in the wake of the huge success of Millionaire, I would periodically hear the voice of Carol Andrews, Monty’s administrative assistant, on the other end of my phone.  “Monty wants to talk to you about something,” she would say.

            Monty was a daily reader of my TVgameshows.net online page.  The something he would want to discuss was usually either a new game show or what I thought about a new emcee.

            “Other than having a personality that people like, what do you think is the most important characteristic of a game show host?” he asked me one day.  My response was:  “He needs to be a good listener.  If he doesn’t listen to what the contestant says, he’ll never be engaged with the contestant and miss some choice moments.”

            Monty answered right back, “That is exactly right.”  The new emcee he was asking about was one he was considering for a revival of Let’s Make a Deal in 2005.  “I thought he had all the right tools we were looking for,” Monty said, “but I watched him three days in a row.  He doesn’t listen to a thing anybody says.”

            He and Hatos came up with Let’s Make a Deal in 1962 but the networks weren’t interested.  Monty took the concept to civic clubs.  Instead of boxes and doors to hide prizes which couldn’t be brought into a hotel ballroom, Monty used envelopes that either contained a card with a nice prize or a “zonk,” one of the gag prizes.        

“We knew we had the right concept because these businessmen were having a blast playing the game,” he told me.  “It was all based on gambling, taking a risk on a sure thing or going all or nothing.”

            The production partners finally convinced an NBC executive to go along to one of their Rotary extravaganzas.  That was enough to earn them development money to flesh out the concept in a large rehearsal hall.

            “The ratings weren’t terribly good in the first nine months,” Monty said.  “We were on opposite Password, which was the biggest hit game show on daytime TV at the time.  So, NBC moved us to 1:30.  We started gaining audience and eventually became the first show to pass As the World Turns in the ratings.”

             He had to cope with some unexpected occurrences during the first 18 months of the show.  Let’s Make a Deal was television’s first show in which winning female contestants grabbed the host for what, at times, were physically-threatening hugs.  One woman accidentally pushed Monty down the stairs of the NBC Burbank studio.  He suffered torn cartilage from the joy and merriment.

He missed three weeks of the show because of injuries suffered in an auto accident.  Bill Leyden, who hosted Hall’s Your First Impression, subbed.

Monty did not like one insertion NBC placed in the show near the end of the first 39 weeks.  With early ratings stagnant, the network opted to do a week of shows with celebrities playing for studio audience members and home viewers.  The segments fell flat.  “Let’s Make a Deal is not a show about celebrities.  It’s a show about average people from all over the country,” he said.

Until Let’s Make a Deal, NBC had not aired a 1:30 p.m. show since the Chicago-based Club 60 in the mid-1950s.  The ratings gradually climbed and Monty as America’s top trader presided over the linchpin show in the NBC daytime lineup.

 A nighttime version of Let’s Make a Deal in the spring and summer of 1967 rose to number four in the ratings, beating both The FBI and The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights.  Monty thought it was a sure thing to return in January as a midseason replacement at night.

            “You know what I was told?  I was told by an NBC executive, ‘Oh, we don’t schedule a show like yours during the regular season.  You may have done well in the summer but we think a show like that is beneath us to put on in the fall and winter.’  That was the first shot that led to us going to ABC,” Monty said.

            In 1968, the show switched networks.  The time slot was the same.  One of the few changes was a reduction in the number of traders on the floor from 42 to 31.  Otherwise, everything stayed the same.  

NBC clearly miscalculated the power of Deal.  Within six months, the entire ABC daytime lineup—especially afternoons—enjoyed ratings increases while NBC’s schedule declined.  Opposite Deal on ABC, NBC tried everything from soap opera Hidden Faces, Words and Music, Joe Garagiola’s Memory Game, Life with Linkletter, and Leyden’s final game show before his death, You’re Putting Me On.  Nothing worked.

         Let’s Make a Deal received the coveted nighttime slot, which continued for three years.  Its most successful slot was during two years on Saturdays at 7:30, where it formed a one-hour block with The Newlywed Game leading into The Lawrence Welk Show.  When ABC dropped the evening version in 1971, Monty went into nighttime syndication with a twice weekly Deal.

            After 14 years of big deals and boxes of Creamettes, the original Let’s Make a Deal finally came to an end.  The show returned in syndicated versions in 1980-81 and 1984-86.  Remakes in 1990 and 2002 on NBC failed in no small part because Monty felt he was too old to host the show.  Younger emcees bombed.

In the process, the Hatos-Hall company became a game show factory.   As packagers, their most successful entry was one of television’s fastest-moving quiz shows, Split Second, which ran from 1972 to 1975 on ABC and should have lasted much longer.  Cancellation was a huge disappointment for Monty.

“It broke my heart when ABC canceled that show,” Monty said.  “Our lead-in show had been doing poorly for more than a year.  We always picked up audience and stations wanted Split Second for a nighttime version.  ABC wouldn’t give us the right to do it and then they let us go.  I always felt like they threw the baby out with the bath water because they had a new executive who came in and wanted to remake daytime.”

            Monty could erupt over what he felt was unfair reporting.  When Cleveland Amory reviewed the nighttime version of Let’s Make a Deal in TV Guide in 1970, Amory largely lampooned and trashed the show.  Monty saw Amory at a Los Angeles Kings hockey game and went through the review point by point.

The first time I interviewed Monty, he told me the story of his beef with the debut issue of People magazine.  A writer profiled him and the long success of Let’s Make a Deal.  Two words in the story ruined the piece for Monty.

“The writer was detailing how I was picked to substitute for Jack Barry on Twenty-One in 1958, just a few months before the quiz scandals broke,” Monty said.  “He wrote this:  ‘Hall had no knowledge of the rigging of the show, he claims.’  When I saw those words ‘he claims,’ I saw red.  I called my lawyer and I wanted to sue them.  He told me to forget it.  He said, ‘All of your fans know you didn’t have anything to do with it.  Besides, you’d spend more money taking them to court than you’d get out of them.’  So, I let it go….but it still irritated me for months.”

One subject he never wanted to revisit was the 2003 NBC revival of Let’s Make a Deal in prime time.   He licensed the format to the network on which the game originally aired.  A decision was made to periodically bring Monty back to do a classic deal with contestants from the ’60s and ’70s version of the show.  

The first 10 minutes of the show convinced Monty he had made a big mistake.  Billy Bush, who was an up and coming NBC personality, was given the keys to the car as host but appeared to be hopelessly miscast.  The producers from the syndicated show Blind Date were brought in to run the show.  Obviously, they had a mindset to turn Let’s Make a Deal into the same kind of vulgarity they dished out on late night syndication.  The opening deal—which was an outright copy of a segment from a cable game Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush—was as close to an X-rated segment as possible on network television.  People who gathered with their children to watch the show at 7:00 in the Central and Mountain time zones were horrified.  Nielsen bore out that reaction.  Between the first 15 minutes and the final quarter hour, the audience tuned out by more than half.  This was not the Let’s Make a Deal they were expecting, nor the one Monty thought he had licensed.  As one reviewer wrote, “You could hear the sounds all over the country of people saying, ‘There’s another one gone bad.'”

                I called Monty the day after the premiere.  He did not want to talk about it.  Finally, a couple of years later, he told me:  “I hope we can bring back Let’s Make a Deal eventually—-but I’m never going to let anyone else do to my baby what those guys did at NBC.”

After the original Deal ran its course, Monty emceed a few unsuccessful shows:  It’s Anybody’s Guess, The All-New Beat the Clock and a revival of one of the best quizzes ever, Split Second.  Yet, he was one of the best businessmen in television and he knew how to close a deal with a network, not to coin a pun.

One of Monty’s favorite stories came unexpectedly in 1972.  “I’m in the office and the phone rings.  The voice said, ‘Please hold the line for Jack Benny.'” Monty said.  “I nearly fell off my chair.  I’m thinking Jack Benny!  He was one of my idols.  Why would he be calling me?  I’d never met Jack Benny.”

Benny told Monty he was a regular watcher of Let’s Make a Deal and an admirer of the emcee’s work.  “Of course, that made me feel great,” he said.   Jack then told Monty of something he detected during Deal episodes. 

“Monty, I notice you never take a closeup, unless you’re pitching to a commercial,” Benny said.  “The closeups are always on the contestants.  If you’re on camera, it’s a two-shot.  That’s the same way we’ve always done my show.  Except during the monologue, we save the closeups for the guests or the other characters because they’re the ones who need to be spotlighted.”

Said Monty:  “I can’t believe Jack Benny was actually noticing something that technical about our show.  We always put the closeups on the contestants because they’re the stars of the show and it also milks the drama when they’re trying to decide whether to risk everything.”

Jack invited Monty to lunch the following week.  Monty said, as would be the case for any of us, the day was one he would never forget.

               In 2005, I had the joy of emceeing the Game Show Congress Legends Luncheon in Glendale, Cal., at which Monty, Jack Narz and Tom Kennedy were honored.  That remains one of the greatest thrills and most surreal experiences ever for a South Georgia boy.  You never see yourself standing alongside a TV hero.  

            When CBS called in 2009 to seek a replacement for the aging Guiding Light, Stefan Hatos had long since passed away.  Monty told the network the key was finding the right emcee who understood the contestants were the stars of the show.

            After several hopefuls were auditioned and ruled out, Wayne Brady came into the picture.  Monty had seen him on Whose Line Is It Anyway?  Before the debut, Monty called me in my Union University office.

            “I had Wayne come out to my house,” Monty said.  “I told him we have three important questions to answer.  First is:  do you want to do Let’s Make a Deal?  The second is:  do you think you can do Let’s Make a Deal?  The last question is:  do I think you can do Let’s Make a Deal?”

            Brady was hired.  Eight years later, the show is still having a healthy afternoon run.  Until her death, Monty split every royalty check from CBS right down the middle with Stefan Hatos’ widow.

            Monty lost his wife Marilyn in June.  Most people who knew him did not think he would last much longer.

            I talked to him a couple of years ago and he was a bit wistful.  “Steve, the bad thing about getting old is that all my friends are dying,” he said.  I had never pondered that until I began to lose some of my long-time friends.

            He was proud of the success of his children.  Daughter Joanna is a Tony-winner for the play Into the Woods.  His other daughter Sharon was executive producer of The Good Wife on CBS and now has her own production company.  Son Richard is a long-time co-producer of The Amazing Race.

            Monty did two hour-long telephone sessions with my media students at Union.  I will never forget his key words of wisdom to them:  “Whatever you do in television, radio, or any media, always give back to your community.  Whatever success you have will be partially from your talent but also because people watch you.  Always give back.”

            He told them why giving back was important. 

“I couldn’t afford to go to college,” he said.  “One day, one of my father’s customers came into his store.  He told me, ‘Young man, you need to go to college.  I’m going to pay for your education.  I just want you to do three things in return:  one, to pay me back when you can afford to; two, keep up your grades; three, whatever you do, always remember to give back to others in your community.’  I never forgot those words.”

            The son of a Canadian butcher gave back to us over and over again.  He left us with a television classic that has appeared in six consecutive decades.  He gave millions of dollars to charities and raised millions more for children’s hospitals across the world.

            I had a chance to know Monty Hall, the man, and not just the game show host.  He was one of the nicest people I ever met and you would have liked him.  That is the simplest and highest tribute I can pay.  I think I’ll go see what’s behind Door Number 3.

And So It Is Done: An Exhausting, Emotional Murder Trial Ends

A young man walked out of a West Tennessee courtroom on the morning of September 23, 2017.  In a matter of three minutes, Zach Adams learned that, barring a legal reprieve, he will never again walk a step as a free man.

For a family, friends and community acquaintances, six and a half years of waiting are over.  Twelve days of draining testimony, deliberation and sentencing are at an end.

For reporters, videographers, digital still photographers, producers and assorted support personnel, the job was not altogether over but—-after two weeks of grueling and exhausting activity—-the finish line was near.

Many of the journalists reporting for television stations across Tennessee were under the age of 30.  For some, this was their first experience covering a high-profile murder trial with regional and even some national interest.  In that group were some who had never reported on a case in which a defendant’s life was on the line.

The abduction of Holly Bobo, a 20-year-old nursing student at University of Tennessee-Martin, in April 2011 did not suggest a good ending.  Within days, more than a thousand people gathered in the small Decatur County, Tn., town of Parsons as an impromptu search party.  They combed woods, garages, back roads and even church yards in the hopes of finding her alive.  Their hopes were not realized.

Reporters in Memphis, Nashville, Jackson and even hosts of some of the national cable crime shows did their own investigations.  Most of the stories were speculations, what-ifs, or maybes.  For nearly three and a half years, the Holly Bobo case appeared to be a mystery that may never be solved.

I was in my Union University Jackson 24-7 control room on a Monday night in September 2014 awaiting the appearance of Tennessee Bureau of Investigation director Mark Guin.  Three minutes after he assumed the podium, Guin delivered the news everyone feared.  The remains of Holly Bobo had been found.  A distinctively audible gasp was heard in the media room.

Eventually, six men were arrested in connection with the Bobo tragedy.  Four—-Zach Adams, his brother Dylan, Shayne Austin and Jason Autry—were all charged with multiple counts of kidnapping, rape and/or murder.  Austin took his own life in a hotel room in Florida before facing a jury.

For the Bobo family, the discovery of remains was only the first step toward closure.  Three and a half years of grief and hoping against hope for a miracle were over.  The next step would be to endure the testimony of a painful and emotional trial.  

I knew that for reporters and videographers and their associates, that trial may well be the biggest story of their young careers.  Those days in court would not be the biggest in the respect of career-altering stories, but in the demands to be right and maintain balance—-because more people would probably be watching their reports with intense interest than any they had previously delivered.

Some viewers who have a lemon juice view of journalists frequently go to the attack during a trial.  I know.  I covered 16 murder or violent crime trials during my years in the newsroom.  Sensational, melodramatic, or biased are among the kindest words I heard from critics.  One newspaper columnist in a city where I was a broadcast reporter chose to rip me about my use of the word “landmark” in stories on a 1977 that was the first of its kind in our state.  He perceived my use of the word as part of my “trademark sensationalism.”  

Part of the reason I used the word “landmark” was simple.  The case was the first in which cameras were allowed in the courtroom in Georgia.  Judge John Land, once profiled in a national magazine as “The Hanging Judge,” also enjoyed the limelight.  He was more than pleased to receive the publicity for being a pioneer in allowing broadcast journalists to use the tools of their trade.  Shortly before the final day of that trial, the judge stepped back to ask reporters how everything was going.  Said Judge Land:  “I guess I better get ready to go into the studio.”

Fast forward 40 years.  Reporters from throughout the state of Tennessee and some from neighboring areas watched and told stories over 12 days of testimony that was often nauseating to hear.  Virtually every station and Law Newz Network were streaming the trial live.  None of those reporters had a frame of reference to the transformation of 1977 when a Sony TK-76 camera manned by Lee Davis provided pool coverage to a group of reporters taking VTR meter times outside a courtroom for the first time.  Their tools of today are commonplace.

I watched outstanding work from some brilliant young journalists who faced the pressures of delivering Facebook and Twitter updates as well as their own live or streaming reports.  Chris Conte of WTVF in Nashville offered an easy-to-understand description of what the options were for sentencing after Adams’ conviction.  The day after the sentencing, Conte was right back in the air reporting on the tragic mass shooting at a Church of Christ in Antioch, Tn.  Bridget Chapman of WREG in Memphis provided straightforward reports without unnecessarily charged or melodramatic words.  Our own crime reporter from The Jackson Sun, Maranda Faris, and her colleague Kenny Cummings were on their A-game.  Maranda was clicking Twitter snippets seemingly every 40 seconds.  Kenny’s still photography captured the essence of emotion in the exhausting dozen days.

In every trial, you have selected moments of testimony that provide choice soundbites.  None measured up to sentencing day when Karen Bobo, mother of the young victim, looked Adams squarely in the eye and said, “I know my daughter begged for her life, because she loved and enjoyed life….but you took it from her….and you have shown absolutely no remorse for anything you’ve done.”  Without a doubt, I knew that would be the signature moment that would stand out from 12 days in a small Mid-South county.  Indeed, those words were repeated over and over Saturday evening and Sunday on the state’s television newscasts.

An intangible to covering trials is they are often physically and mentally draining.  Hour after hour of testimony, some technical in nature and others emotional, can wear down even the most youthful reporter’s stamina.  In the Adams trial, listening to repeated graphic descriptions of individual perceptions of what happened the day of her death can take a toll of absorption.  Without doubt, some of the media needed a second and third wind to revive their concentration skills.

In my days as a news director, I recognized three types of stories that would make me vulnerable to losing personnel.  One is a major weather disaster.  In 1984, I lost five reporters in four months to bigger outlets than Wilmington, N.C., because their work was seen during Hurricane Diana.  Another is a man-made disaster.  I lost two more top-level journalists in 1986 after their coverage of a 78,000-acre fire over a period of 10 days.  The third type of story is a high-profile trial.  The skill required to summarize hours of testimony into digestible reports and communicate that information in non-legalese to viewers is not everyone’s talent.  I saw several examples of quality work during the Adams case that would be attractive to news directors in larger markets.

My students and I followed this case for its entirety for our Jackson 24-7 daily cable newscast.  At times, millennials can be indifferent to complex stories.  In the case of the Adams trial, I watched as my student reporters and anchors were captivated by specific moments of testimony.  Equally, I was heartened by the numbers of questions they asked to better understand the legal process.  They even learned a lesson that is not in a textbook.  When Thursday’s closing arguments, which we were carrying live, ran over into our regular noon news time, we did not go on but stayed with the trial.  We even had to cancel two second-half interview segments.  As I told them, “When you are following a live continuing story that you know will irritate viewers if you step away from it, you stay with that story.”

One of the other lessons I tried to impart in my role as The Old TV News Coach was one of heart and restraint.  I told more than one of my students that in a trial, a defendant may be more obviously guilty than knowing algae is in pond water turned green.  Yet, one has to keep emotions or language from in any way becoming a reporter-determined verdict rather than a jury-determined decision.  Likewise, I told them you always need to remember that the family of a victim is likely having hearts broken again over hearing painful stories dredged up of what caused their loved one’s death.  I added this:  if they are kind enough to consent to an interview after a trial, be sensitive with how you ask questions.  If they do not want to talk because to do so would be too difficult, respect that.

The Adams trial took me back in more ways than one to those four days in Muscogee County Superior Court 40 years ago.  In that case, a lovely and much-beloved church choir director who had what was describe as perfect pitch, was senselessly kidnapped from her home while doing laundry in her parents’ utility room.  She was in her twenties.  She was engaged.  The future of life was promising.  Jeannine Galloway was raped and murdered.  The community who knew her reacted in much the same way as the disbelief over Holly Bobo’s fate.  A young man named William Anthony Brooks was convicted and sentenced to die.

Nine years later, the judicial landscape changed in West Georgia.  In a new trial, Brooks was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.  One of my closest friends in journalism, columnist Richard Hyatt, has written multiple times of the dissatisfaction with the new verdict, particularly when details emerged of what happened in the original trial:

It came at a time the innocence of a community was being destroyed.

Brooks was sentenced to die and no one winced. He was not a good person. Like the members of that jury, most people believed he deserved execution.

Brooks, a man in his sixties, is still in jail in North Georgia.  He comes up for parole every few years but so far has been denied.  

Zach Adams could have faced the death penalty last weekend.  Saturday morning, Judge Creed McGinley announced an agreement between the prosecution and defense, the Bobo family and Adams.  He would be sentenced to life without parole plus 50 years for the rape and kidnapping charges.  

When that decision was made, my mind drifted back to Jeannine Galloway and her parents Earl and Hettie, both of whom I personally knew and who have passed away.  I wondered if some legal technicality will someday lead to a new trial for Adams and all of the old testimony will be smoked out yet again.

Just as we did 40 years ago, reporters covering the Zach Adams trial were blazing new ground.  They were using technological tools we never even dreamed of in 1977.  They can report instantaneously as testimony merits.  They can let the audience into the courtroom because of a little development called streaming.  

They covered a murder trial that was in many ways larger than life.  I just hope they all recognize this:  that trial and any other they cover in the future will never be larger than death.

 

 

A So-Called Viewer of WALB Who Should Be Shamed and Ashamed, Whether He Realizes It

My long-time friend Al Fleming, a multiple Emmy-winner, won one of his statuettes with a commentary which began:  “In the news business, it’s been said to never, ever, ever answer your critics.”

Al explained he was inclined to let the issue pass but that he was about to take on the United States Army.  He did.  In one of the most powerful perspective pieces in any city in America, Al took off the gloves as if he were in a rematch with Ali vs. Frazier.

I am about to take on a single television viewer.  However, this one individual is a reflection of one of the sickest elements in social media since its invention.  Trust me, plenty more are out there like him.

Emileigh Forrester is a young weekend anchor and reporter at WALB in Albany, Ga.  I have a fondness for that station.  WALB is located about halfway between the two hometowns in which I grew up in the fifties through the seventies.  At one point, before all of the nutsy battles over compensation from cable companies, WALB was seen in almost every city in deep South Georgia.

WALB is one of those markets that for more than 60 years has been the lifeblood of local news for many rural areas of lower Georgia.  People in cities such as Sylvester, Tifton, Hahira, Valdosta, Ashburn, Nashville, Enigma, Fitzgerald and Hazlehurst have looked to Channel 10, the long-time NBC affiliate, for news and information.  No doubt, that has been exceptionally true during the past weekend with the threat of Hurricane Irma to WALB’s coverage area.

Emileigh is like hundreds of young men and women in television newsrooms across America.  Except during a couple of weeks of vacation during the year, her weekends are spent in a place that is far quieter than it is during an average weekday.  She has to fill two half-hours of news on Saturday and Sunday.  Emileigh has what has historically been known as a “skeleton staff” to help find enough local, regional and national news to deliver those newscasts to viewers who expect it, even if the content is largely softer than the Monday-through-Friday output.

If she is like many weekend anchors in small markets, she is reporter, videographer, producer, and editor.  Emileigh is in that professional period in which jobs like hers are part of the pay your dues years.  One with a solid work ethic agrees to such a role in the hope one can vault someday to a better-paying and more prestigious role either in the same station or one in another city.

Since my purchase of two Roku smart TVs more than a year ago, the NewsON app—one of the greatest inventions for a former news director—has allowed me to reacquaint myself with WALB, as well as a number of other stations across the country.  I watch the station’s newscasts a few times each month in order to reconnect with what is happening in the region of my roots.  Jim Wallace, an old college classmate from the unofficially labeled Bill Martin School of Broadcast Journalism at the University of Georgia, is WALB’s senior news anchor.

Occasionally on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon after football season ends, I click NewsOn over to WALB to catch one of Emileigh’s weekend newscasts.  I have always found her pleasant, engaging, personable and authoritative in her presentation.  One afternoon, I sent her a thumbs up message on Twitter as I periodically do with a number of young reporters and anchors across the country.  As a former professional in the field, I feel a calling to offer encouragement to the next generation of reporters and anchors.  I did so several times Sunday afternoon with reporters from WINK in Fort Myers, Fla., who were exemplary during their coverage of Irma.

The weekend just past was a rare one for the WALB newsroom and staff members such as Emileigh.  Hurricanes, or threats of them, rarely reach as far as Southwest Georgia.  Remnants, tropical depressions, maybe even the leftover tropical storm may show up.  This time, the path of a powerful storm had people who live in those many rural communities surrounding Albany on pins and needles and depending on the long-reliable news staff of WALB to provide accurate, frequent and consistent weather and safety information.

As I write this, I am watching WALB News 10‘s late Sunday evening newscast after the Cowboys-Giants NFL game on NBC.  In the first 12 minutes, I counted crucial emergency information for 11 different counties in the WALB coverage area.  That is exactly what viewers expect and deserve in a weather crisis.  Emileigh, as usual, carried the ball solo until she handed off to weekend meteorologist Andrew Gorton.

So, you ask, why all of this about one young woman among many in newsrooms in hundreds of cities toiling with a limited number of colleagues in order to keep people informed on Saturday and Sunday evenings?  A few times a week one of the jackal pack of dunderheads (I borrowed that term from Al Fleming’s award-winning commentary in 1979) demonstrates utter ignorance as well as abuse of the privilege of social media use.  Just read what was posted on Twitter by someone calling himself @Tblake762:

Well, well, well, Mr. @TBlake762, your brilliance and articulation are overwhelming.  If we had a Mount Rushmore for insolence and cruelty, you would be carved on it.

People like this have been out there well before social media was created.  They used to use an item called a landline telephone.  Just as on Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr, they would either often lie about their names or refuse to reveal their identity.

This guy, who claims to be a Marine, has exhibited enough mental skills to make Gomer Pyle appear to be a Rhodes Scholar.  What he did only energized the troops.  Look at some of the responses:

I am equally heartened by the WALB web producer.  Most of the time, difficult as it is, colleagues will just turn the other cheek.  In most instances, that is the right thing to do.  However, in this situation, I appreciated the retaliation:

As for Emileigh, she took the high road.  Trust me, even if you have been raised with the Biblical principle of turning the other cheek—as have I, the toughest thing to do when you are hit with a cruel slap in the face is to respond with salt and light.  Here is how Emileigh handled it—-and her web producer chimed in with another appropriate salvo:

I have never forgotten what happened shortly after I hired a young woman named Natasha as a reporter in 1991.  This was her first job out of college.  She had a great education and interviewed well.  I was glad to get her.

Admittedly, Natasha struggled in her first few weeks.  She had difficulty with speed and with editing skills.  I saw huge potential in her, so even though her early work was not up to snuff, I decided patience was the appropriate posture.

At the end of the third week, a call came after the 6:00 newscast from a viewer.  He called himself Charlie, though I doubt seriously if that was his name.  Twenty-six years later, I am paraphrasing this conversation but Charlie said something to the effect of:  “How come you can’t do any better than that new girl you have on there?”  In the next five minutes, Charlie proceeded to provide every generic reason why he did not like Natasha.  Then came the payoff.  Charlie had to throw in the firebomb that he didn’t understand why we had to have so many people who had the color of skin as Natasha.

I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts before I responded.  Again, paraphrasing, I said:  “That, sir, is something to which you and I could never agree.  You have just demonstrated the fallacy and insolence of your entire argument.  Since this is the direction you have taken it, this conversation is now over.”

I wonder what he thought over the next year when Natasha blossomed into an outstanding reporter with more and more confidence.  She overcame the speed issues and the editing deficiencies.  She broke some significant political stories, some of which had statewide impact.  She went on to a larger market and stayed in touch with me for several years.

I equally ponder what the @TBlake762s of the world will think when Emileigh’s career blossoms even more than the way it already is at WALB.  Then, again, he had his one evening in the Twitter moonlight.  That is probably all he cared about at the time.  Next time you look in the dictionary, see if he isn’t listed as one of the definitions of the word “cruel.”

What this guy does not realize—probably among many things—is that a large fraternity and sorority of journalists, both active and retired, will not sit back and allow a colleague be unfairly and unreasonably assailed.  The troops are on the warpath and we have Emileigh’s back.  

I retired from being an active news director 25 years ago and went into broadcast journalism education.  Yet, for the last nine years I have been a quasi-news director because I supervise a daily cable newscast on local television produced, reported and anchored by my students.  I will unequivocally say that I would have been proud to have had Emileigh Forrester as a student or on any of my news staffs when I was still in the daily TV news profession.  Further, I will at any time be equally pleased to use Emileigh’s work as a role model for my graduates who want to follow her into the field.

Emileigh, hold your head high, just as high as the road you took with @TBlake762.  What is gross?  Anyone who would take to Twitter to invoke such a despicable post fits the description.

As for people like him, remember the famous words of my good friend and homespun humorist Don Hudlow, who said:  “There are a lot of naysayers in this world…..and they’ve all been vaccinated with lemon juice.”

 

A Story in Courage and Perseverance: Dave Jordan Returns to Work at WITN

I had not watched a newscast on WITN in Washington, N.C., in 31 years—-until last night.

A man did what he had to do to go on with life.  Yet, September 5, 2017, had to be one of the most difficult days of Dave Jordan’s life.  He went back to work.

Only two weeks earlier on Tuesday, August 22, Dave’s boss suddenly died.  She was not only his boss, she was his wife.  Stephanie Shoop, at the tender age of 46, was news director of WITN where Dave Jordan is the prime time co-anchor.  One day, she was wife, mother of two, and a respected leader of a television newsroom.  The next day, with no warning, Stephanie slipped away.

 

Dave’s co-anchor Lynnette Taylor told viewers of the loss in an emotional moment at the end of the August 22 early evening newscast.

In a previous blogpost, I wrote of how sadness can pervade a newsroom in a fashion that critics of journalism can never believe. It happens in moments when the unthinkable happens. The constant buzz that is usually the hallmark of a television news operation suddenly becomes as quiet as a public library.  What brings on the uncommon calm typically is in that rare instance when someone whose face and personality are as familiar as a member of one’s family is suddenly gone.  The stark reality strikes that the someone in question will never return.

My father was a minister for 65 of his 87 years.  Often, he told me that the most difficult times were when he had to reach out to a family who just experienced a sudden and unexpected loss.  

Stephanie Ann Shoop was a native Pennsylvanian.  In 1995, she married a man named David Giordano who grew up in the small Pennsylvania town of Sheffield.  Dave made his way to Eastern North Carolina 20 years ago after a brief stop in a small West Virginia market.  In 1998, Stephanie joined WITN as a newscast producer—a job that is frequently rewarding because the producer shapes a half-hour of news much as a sculptor does a bust.  Three years later, she became news director; in reality, her promotion made Stephanie her husband’s professional superior.

Husband-wife pairs can be an emotional boon or a periodic headache for management.  Some corporations have specific policies against spouses working for the same television station, or at least in the same department with the same boss.

In the mid-1980’s in Wilmington, N.C., I had two couples who worked for me at WWAY.  They could not have been more pleasant or more professional.  One husband was my chief photographer.  His wife was in production.  The other couple were my 11 o’clock anchors.  Richard and Jill Rogers were an immediate hit when I hired them away from WSAV in Savannah, Ga.  Richard also did the 6:00 news.  They were equally gracious off the air.  Jill did not stay in news over the long haul.  Richard is still active as the lead anchor at WRDW in Augusta, Ga.

On the other hand, I had another spouse combo in another city which I will not name.  They were not difficult people.  Yet, I often came away with a stomach ache in dealing with them.  They never grasped that their performance evaluations were as individuals, not as a couple.  One of the twosome was a reasonably good journalist.  The other spouse should have either been on PM Magazine or in an allied field.  I will leave my comments at that.  Regardless, had I cause to call the weaker performer of the two in for a conference, I knew the other would be appearing at my office door shortly after.  At least a half-dozen times, I had to issue the reminder, “I can’t talk to you about this at all.  You are two individuals on the corporate payroll.  I like you both personally, but I cannot discuss anything about a conversation with an employee with another employee even if you are married.”

From all accounts, that was never a problem with the Jordans.  In her obituary, this was one description of Stephanie:  “She treated each and every employee and co-worker like her own and made them family.”

To stay in a city such as Washington, N.C., for nearly 20 years, one has to love it.  Dave and Stephanie apparently made a real home there.  Here’s what you may not realize:  Washington is part of Greenville-Washington-New Bern, one of those challenging animals of television known as the hyphenated market.  Each city’s viewers are typically jealous of their own local news and are not crazy about seeing many stories about the other two cities on their station’s newscast.  Here is something else you may not know:  the estimated population of Washington, N.C., as of 2016, was 9,801.  That may be the smallest city in America to have its own television station.  

What may not be an understatement is to say Washington may be the Mayberry of television cities.  In a town of fewer than 10,000 people, everybody tends to know everybody—or at least that is the way it seems.  If I lived there, I would probably see people who would light up if they saw their anchorman in a local restaurant.  “There’s Dave,” I’m sure they would say.  When you are in a viewer’s living room or den every night, you become a member of the family, especially in a small town.

Stephanie was not a household name in the community except to her close friends.  News directors, unless you are like this old guy was when I held that job and did commentaries three nights a week, are typically unseen and unfamiliar to the general public.  Yet, she found her fulfillment as the guiding hand of WITN News.  Over the years, she no doubt saw dozens of young journalists come and go.  At 46, her news staff was likely like an extension of her own two children.  Sometimes, a news director has to make unpopular decisions.  At times, you have to hand out discipline.  On occasion, you have to let people go—-truly never a pleasant decision even if the person being axed was not one who would be missed.  When you are in a leadership position for 16 years, you no doubt will have some people who decide they don’t like you.  However, my perception is those were few and far between in Stephanie Shoop’s world.

Even if you have occasional dysfunction—and every newsroom does at some point—a TV news operation becomes a family.  The morning of August 22, the head of the family at WITN News was snatched away in the twinkling of an eye.

I found a couple of tributes on Stephanie’s Facebook page that are worth sharing.  Here is one from a retired colleague, Steve Crabtree:

Prayers from here that our Heavenly Father wraps family, friends, news staff and other co-workers in His warm embrace giving each His comfort, peace and understanding. Stephanie was the consummate news professional and a gracious, compassionate, passionate and empathetic human being. She was dedicated to excellence in all she did and loved her family as well as her TV family with all of her heart. I respected few news directors in the U.S. more than her and feel blessed God allowed our paths to cross. My heart goes out to each of you! With love, Steve Crabtree; WVLT-TV VP/News, Retired; Knoxville TN

This one from Bill DiNicola tugged at me because I had the same emotions about a couple of the people for whom I have worked over the years:

It’s really hard to find the words… and fight back the tears long enough to write this. She was an amazing news director — but an even better mom, we all knew her as both. I am where I am now and more importantly I am who I am because of Stephanie Shoop — She was my News Mom, she was our News mom – she raised us right, she took in kids often for their first job, and turned us into well-rounded compassionate hardworking journalists, and she did it with love. You were the best possible example of a leader I could have hoped for. You let me get on the anchor desk when I weighed 500 lbs — who does that!?!? Like everyone in the WITN family, we were not ready for this. But because you were in our lives we will find the strength together. Dave, David and Grace — we’re here for you.

I can think of no finer tribute than for Stephanie to be called one’s News Mom.  That says to me—and should to many others—that she was much more than a news director.  One is not handed a label as Bill presented to Stephanie without being one who truly cares about people.

Without question, I hope Bill’s words were among many to help sustain Dave and the Jordans’ two children David and Grace.  A family, whether in television news or in any aspect of life, is a rallying center in times of sadness and deep tragedy.

Labor Day morning, I scanned TV Spy and saw that Dave Jordan—a man I have never met—was returning to work Tuesday.  He told reporter Stephanie Siegel:  “I’ve gone back to the station to visit as part of the healing process.”

In the same e-mail, here is how he reflected on his wife of 22 years:

“Stephanie was simply the most amazing person I have ever known and is deeply missed. Stephanie was also a very strong and determined person, and we are all drawing our strength from that. We all plan to do our best to pickup and carry on, as we know she would be telling us to do just that.”

Emotions are not one size fits all.  A sudden loss can send some people into an extended tailspin that requires a longer period of adjustment and grief before returning into the workplace.  Another family I knew lost their son on a Sunday afternoon in a skiing accident at a lake in South Georgia.  The next Sunday, three days after the teen’s funeral, the family was back at the lake.  “If we didn’t do this now, it would take us a lot longer to get on with life,” Bewick Murray, the father, said.  Everyone is emotionally different.

When I read that Dave was returning to the air Tuesday night, I had to log on to WITN.com.  I was not watching out of a viewer’s curiosity but as a member of the broadcast journalism fraternity.  I have not experienced the specific type of loss as has Dave Jordan, his children and the WITN family; yet, on the same day as Stephanie’s death, I received a call informing me of the death of my last living uncle, only six days after the passing of my oldest uncle.

Dave did his job with the same professionalism as he has for more than two decades in Eastern North Carolina.  At a designated moment in the six o’clock newscast, co-anchor Lynnette Taylor turned to Dave to share what was on his heart.  Here is an excerpt:

 

“I’m not going to pretend this is easy.  But I’ve reached a new reality in my life and it’s going to be that way for me and for our two children.

Family, friends, all of the viewers that have reached out with comments and cards….it’s amazing at a time like this how comments can lift you up.  I am grateful to all of you who have reached out to us. I want you to know that I’ll continue to need those because it’s going to be a journey.”

Dignity in a time of deep difficulty—that was the personification of Dave Jordan Tuesday night.

No doubt, many of those comments of encouragement and condolences have come from people Dave has never met.  I will add one of my own:  Dave, I’ve done the job you do and the job Stephanie did.  You don’t know me…..but if you need me, The Old TV News Coach is here.  May God continue to bless and comfort you and your family.