Brought to You by . . .

By Dan Rapak

With a career spanning 37 years in television broadcasting including 29
years at the ABC Television Network, Dan Rapak gives us a glimpse of
what went on behind the scenes to broadcast major events. The stories
range from televising The Super Bowl and The Olympics to the accident
at Three Mile Island. Learn about the extraordinary efforts to get The
1989 World Series back on the air after the Loma Prieta Earthquake struck
San Francisco. Find out what it took to bring home those unforgettable
images of Captain John Testrake sitting in his cockpit being interviewed
by ABC News while a terrorist waved a pistol behind the Captains head
following the hijacking of TWA Flight 847.

Here is a rare look at what happened behind the cameras and microphones
to bring those events and others into our homes. Read about the obstacles
that had to be overcome, the hard work, the triumphs and the sometimes
zany antics of the professionals who worked to put those broadcasts on
the air and bring those stories and images to America and to the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477290507

Dan Rapak

Dan Rapak is a television broadcast engineer. He is a three time Emmy Award winner and Certified Professional Broadcast Engineer - the highest level of certification available in his field. For twenty years he worked on the road with ABC Field Operations covering major events for ABC Sports and ABC News, plus an additional nine years at ABC’s Broadcast Studios in New York. He is currently retired and makes his residence in Central Pennsylvania.

Book preview

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the following individuals, in alphabetical order:

Harold Bucks

for teaching me the fundamentals of what would become a terrific career.

Harold R. Denton

former Director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation for his help in reviewing the technical aspects of the story of the accident at Three Mile Island.

George C. Griesemer

for teaching the value of dedication and hard work coupled with having fun!

E. Frank Longenecker

a colleague with whom I learned the ropes of this business and one of my very best friends.

Chuck Rhodes

a colleague and a friend of many, many years. Thank you for your help in editing this book.

Donald Rosenberg

for unknowingly imparting a sense of humor that would serve me well throughout my life.

Dick Seger

for mentoring a wet-behind-the-ears kid in the fine art of network broadcast engineering the ABC way.

About the Cover:

At the beginning of many broadcasts, an announcer will state the name of the program, the phrase Brought to You By . . . and then go on to list the names of the sponsors. In broadcasting, this is known as the Opening Billboards. The front cover photo is the actual highway billboard along Route 17 South in Lodi, NJ that marked the entrance to the ABC Field Operations facility in the late 1990’s.

Photos:

Unless otherwise noted, all photos in this book are from the author’s collection.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

Growing Up

College Studies and The First Paid Job in Television

Licensed to Be a Broadcaster

Cable Television

A Beginning in Broadcast Television

Three Mile Island

Moving to ABC

Early Days at ABC

Golf Coverage

Cape Kennedy

Mini-Cam

Shenanigans

Mini-Mobile

The New York Marathon

TWA Flight 847

Hurricane Gloria

The XV Winter Olympic Games and The Birth of Phase 2

Political News Coverage and a Railroad Crossing Gate

The Indianapolis 500

The 1989 World Series

Football

The End of The Road

Glossary

Preface

Several years ago I was sent to Salt Lake Clty for a figure skating event being covered by ABC Sports. Salt Lake City is the home of the Church of Latter Day Saints and while I was in the area, I took some time to visit the church’s renowned Family History Library. I had never been especially interested in genealogy, but my sister Sharon had some interest in exploring our family roots so I thought I’d take the opportunity to do a little research. The research turned out to be more like detective work and as happens with any good mystery, I was drawn in.

While genealogy isn’t what I would call a passion, I do continue to check things out on a casual basis from time to time. As I learned more about my ancestors I found that you can easily dig up a fair amount of basic information about your progenitors. You could learn that this person was a farmer and they were born in this town. That person was a laborer and went to this school and so on. What is missing in nearly all cases is any kind of in-depth information about what their lives were like or the kind a person they were. This made me start thinking about what kind of information future generations might be able to unearth about me.

I realize that I have truly been blessed with a life that, at the risk of sounding immodest, has been both unique and interesting. And as I thought about it, there are a great many stories worth passing on. As I write this, I am not married. I have no children; no grandchildren and so there is no one to sit on my knee and listen as I tell these tales. There is no way for me to pass these yarns along.

For that reason, I’ve decided to take some of the best of these stories and commit them to the written word so that someday, perhaps a hundred years from now, someone in a future generation interested in genealogy will have a little more to go on. To that end, this writing is a memoir rather than an autobiography; a collection of stories that hopefully will give a general sense of what Dan Rapak’s professional life was like in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

I confess to being somewhat uncomfortable in undertaking a work such as this. It is the nature of such a writing to appear somewhat self serving. I want to assure the reader that it is not my intention to blow my own horn. Rather, I simply want to pass along these stories in a more permanent form before time and loss of memory turns them to ashes.

Note that this writing is primarily about my professional life and other than the first few chapters, it does not delve into my personal life nor does it delve into the personal lives of my colleagues. This is not a tell-all about who was doing what drugs or who was sleeping with whom. If you’re looking for that kind of dirt you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Indeed, the personal stories of the early chapters in this book are intended for that family member a hundred years from now performing that bit of genealogy research. Non-family members might even want to skip those chapters as it’s really pretty dry, run-of-the-mill stuff.

Finally, the accounts in this writing are primarily from memory, both mine and my colleagues’. For that reason I must point out that the quotations in this book may not be exact but nevertheless are representative of the conversations that took place.

With those caveats stated, I hope that you will enjoy the stories that follow.

Introduction

In the heydays of network television a man by the name of Roone Arledge ran the sports division for the ABC Television Network. Roone had been working at rival NBC and later at a company called Sports Programs, Inc. which, for a time, was the sole supplier of sports programming for ABC. Eventually ABC purchased Sports Programs, Inc. and the company became ABC Sports. With that purchase came Mr. Arledge. At the fledgling ABC network, Roone would find the opportunity to experiment, to innovate and in the process turn ABC Sports into the world leader in sports broadcasting. In so doing, ABC Sports would provide the seed money that would help turn the entire ABC Television Network into the industry leader.

Mr. Arledge had a vision for what television sports journalism could be. He didn’t want to simply cover the contest. He wanted to cover the event. He wanted the viewer at home to get a feel for what it was like to be on a college campus the day of the big game. He wanted you to know what it was like to stroll around Churchill Downs with a mint julep in hand before the running of The Kentucky Derby. He wanted to let you experience the party atmosphere surrounding The Indianapolis 500.

He also wanted to provide viewers with far better coverage of the sports contest itself. No more would a group of cameras be clustered on the roof of the press box at the center of a football field under the theory that the best seat in a football stadium is on the 50 yard line. In Roone’s view, if the ball is on the 50 yard line, the best seat in the house is on the 50 yard line. But if the ball is on the left 15 yard line, then the best seat in the house is on the left 15 yard line. If the ball is on the right 20 yard line then the best seat in the house is on the right 20 and that’s where Roone’s cameras would be. Meeting Roone’s goals meant more cameras in more locations. It meant mobile cameras that could roam the sidelines to wherever the line of scrimmage was. It meant more tape machines and completely new technical innovations. Things we all take for granted today like slow-motion and instant replay all sprang from Roone Arledge’s vision of what sports broadcasting should be.

Another part of that vision included bringing events into people’s homes that, while they might not be major sports contests, were nonetheless events people would enjoy going to see if only they weren’t so far away; the kinds of events where you’d load the wife and kids into the station wagon and head over to the county fairgrounds. Things like the lumber jack competition, the firemen’s competition, sprint car racing or a rodeo championship. It was to present these kinds of events that a new anthology program called, ABC’s Wide World of Sports would be born.

It was clear early on that Roone’s vision would require far more in the way of remote technical facilities than ABC currently had. No longer could studio equipment be temporarily strapped into a rented truck and bounced down the road to a stadium to cover a game. (The joke around the industry was that sporting events were covered by three networks: CBS, NBC and Hertz.) ABC would have to step up to the big leagues and design and build true, network quality, mobile television production facilities. This meant Big-Time TV Trucks, the tractor-trailer trucks you see parked outside sporting events to this very day transmitting programs to sports fans all over the globe. It also meant that a facility would be needed to house and maintain those mobile units and all of their associated equipment. And so, ABC’s Broadcast Operations and Engineering division established a completely new department: ABC Field Operations.

The American Broadcasting Company not only owned the ABC Television Network, it also owned the ABC Radio Network and a series of AM and FM radio stations and local television stations in the nation’s largest cities. In the 1960’s in New York City the company owned an AM radio station, an FM radio station and a VHF TV station. The AM radio station was WABC. Music Radio 77 was a Top-40 Rock & Roll station. It was not only the number one station in New York, it was the most listened to radio station in the nation. A 50,000 watt, clear channel blow torch, WABC could be heard over half the country and even by ocean liners far out at sea.

AM radio differs from FM and television in the facilities used to transmit the signals. While FM and TV require a high building or mountain top location for their transmitting antennas, AM radio requires a large antenna tower situated on many acres of open, low ground. As it happened, WABC’s AM radio transmitter was located across the Hudson River from New York City in the town of Lodi, New Jersey.¹ It was there on that patch of real estate that ABC chose to construct ABC Field Operations or as it was more commonly known, The Lodi Field Shop.

What follows is the story of how I came to be involved in ABC Field Operations. It’s a story of growing up and learning the ropes. It’s a compilation of tall tales. Most involved the direct participation of yours truly. Some were told first hand by the parties involved. Others are simply the stuff of broadcast engineering legend.

For readers who are not involved in the business of broadcasting, fear not. I’ve done my level best to keep the technical jargon to an absolute minimum, only delving into technical explanations when they’re essential to understanding the story at hand. Even then you’ll find the techno-speak explained in layman’s terms. If you think of technical people as nerds or stuffed shirts or if you think engineering topics are difficult to understand or boring, stay tuned. Read on. I believe your mind will change.

To my friends and colleagues, I apologize in advance if the details of some of these stories differ slightly from your own recollections. Stories invariably change with their telling and retelling over the years and the memories of men fade-especially my own. But I trust you’ll find that I’ve stayed true to the gist of the tales as best I could.

Friends and colleagues may also ask why their favorite story was not included. It may be that it is a story that I haven’t heard or perhaps one that simply slipped my mind. It may be that it was omitted because it was one of those stories where you hadda be there to appreciate it. Finally, it may be a tale that simply ended in my word processor’s bit bucket as I attempted to keep the length of this book to something shorter than War and Peace. Lord knows there are enough stories to fill two or three volumes this size. If you do have a favorite story that I’ve omitted, let me know. Who knows? Perhaps someday there’ll be a Part II.

As you read these stories it’s important to bear in mind the time and the context in which the events took place. The earliest of these stories takes place at a time before the proliferation of media outlets that exist today. There were no personal computers and no Internet. There were no cell phones, no smart phones, no mobile data access and no mobile video. Cable television was in its infancy. Basically, there were three major television networks and not much else. Those three networks garnered more than 90% of the prime-time television audience. The three broadcast networks were king.

Remember also that most of these tales take place before the events of September 11th, 2001, well before the days of political correctness, before diversity training, before the days of smoking bans, before anyone had heard of AIDS and when going to jail for DUI was a rarity. It was a different era and the world was a very different place.

For these reasons, be warned! If you are offended by ethnic humor, if you are hung up on political correctness, if you are disturbed by foul language, PUT THIS BOOK DOWN NOW because the stories that follow are told in the context and spirit of the time in which they occurred, decades ago. For those of you who are mature enough not to be offended by the social climate of those times, enjoy!

Growing Up

It’s hard to say exactly when I became interested in broadcasting. I know that even as a kid I was fascinated by electricity and electronics. AM radio was in its heyday when I was a youngster. There were three local AM radio stations in my home town of Reading, Pennsylvania. There was also an FM radio station, but in those days FM had very few listeners. Most radio sets couldn’t even tune FM stations and the music they played was what we called wallpaper music-the stuff you’d hear coming out the wall in the waiting room at the doctor’s office.

One of the local AM radio stations, WEEU, had its studios on Penn Street in Reading between 4th and 5th Streets. The studio was in a store front window and you could walk right up and watch the announcer at work. I remember my dad, Louis and I stopping there when I was very small. I was fascinated to see the announcer through the glass while hearing his voice and the music coming out of the loudspeaker on the sidewalk. Perhaps that was when my interest in broadcasting began.

There were also several radio stations that could be received from Philadelphia, about 55 miles away and at night the signals of powerful AM stations in far away cities would skip in from halfway across the country. Big-gun, clear channel stations like WLS and WCFL in Chicago, CKLW near Detroit, WKBW in Buffalo and WABC in New York could all be clearly heard. As I listened to the radio, I was amazed at how it all worked. A disk jockey would speak into a microphone in a studio in Chicago and his voice would come out of the speaker of the radio at my house in Pennsylvania a thousand miles away! Most people take these things for granted. To me that was way cool and I had to learn how it all worked. I even had dreams that someday I might sit behind a microphone and spin my favorite records.

A milestone of sorts occurred on my 10th birthday. My parents bought me a gift I’ll never forget. It was made by the Remco Toy Company and was called a Caravelle. It was a real live AM radio transmitter! It was low power. You didn’t need a license to operate it, but you could speak into a microphone and hear your own voice coming out of any AM radio within a hundred feet or so. It was the neatest thing I’d ever seen. The microphone alone wasn’t enough and soon I had rigged up a bunch of switches that would allow me to play music from a record player and two tape recorders. At the age of ten I’d constructed my first broadcast studio in my bedroom!

As I got older my interest in radio continued to grow. Like nearly everyone my age, I was into listening to Top-40 rock-and-roll and the disk jockeys who played it. I’d wake up in the morning to an old Westinghouse clock radio that operated on vacuum tubes. My favorite station was WFIL in Philadelphia. The morning disk jockey there was the late Dr. Don Rose.

To this day Dr. Don is without question the greatest morning man radio has ever known. They say that Henny Youngman was the King of the One-liners. Well with all due respect, Mr. Youngman had nothin’ on Dr. Don Rose. For 3 hours every morning, six days a week, DDR would pummel you with one-liners, jokes and puns. He’d bombard you with one gag after another and rarely repeat himself. Try to imagine coming up with enough fresh material to do a live radio program 18 hours a week without repeating yourself! This was the sixties, a time before morning teams and with the exception of two, 5 minute news inserts each hour, Dr. Don did the program all by himself. No co-hosts and no sidekicks to help carry the load.

What’s more, Dr. Don wasn’t a shock jock. There was no cursing. No talking about the private parts of the human anatomy. No casual discussion of sexual activities. Some of the gags could be a bit off color to be sure, but Dr. Don’s programs were G Rated. The whole family could tune in together and laugh together. I doubt that there is any morning disc jockey anywhere in the country today that is capable doing anything close to what Dr. Don did. With Dr. Don on the radio, you couldn’t help but start the day with a smile on your face. I’d tune in Dr. Don on the kitchen radio while I was eating breakfast and soon my mom Joanne would be laughing too. Listening to Dr. Don would infuse me with a sense of humor that would serve me well throughout the rest of my life.

At some point, while I was still in elementary school my parents and I went to see my sister Sharon perform in a high school play. After rehearsals she would sometimes come home and talk about the stage crew and what they were doing to help put the play together. The play was Pillow Talk and when my parents and I went to see the play it really was enjoyable. The students, my sister included, did a fantastic job. I remember the applause getting noticeably louder when Sharon made her curtain call. The students were all having fun and the audience couldn’t help but have a fun time too.

As enjoyable as the play itself was, the thing that was really interesting to me was what the stage crew was doing. I watched as the curtains were opened and the lights came up. I heard the sound effects and saw the scene changes. Hey, this was pretty neat! That entire evening would be filed away in my memory banks.

Other than my home-built radio studio, there wasn’t much opportunity to develop skills in anything even remotely related to broadcasting until I got to high school. My first real exposure to mass communications was in junior high where I signed on to the staff of the school newspaper. There I worked as a sports reporter-my first experience ever in covering a sporting event.

A few years later in senior high school I would be faced with a major turning point. Up to that time there had been three basic curriculums in area high schools. One was Business. Students in this curriculum (mostly girls) would learn typing, bookkeeping, short hand and so on, basically gearing them up for secretarial positions. Then there was a College Preparatory curriculum which included science, math and foreign language classes. Finally there was a General Curriculum which was a sort of catchall for everyone else.

When I was in ninth grade, schools in the U.S. were just beginning to develop vocational and technical education programs. Typically, a separate, regional school would be constructed with specialized classrooms to teach skills such as carpentry, auto mechanics, hairdressing, electrical wiring, heating and air conditioning, data processing and so on. All the high schools in a given region would bus students to the Vo-Tech school for half the day. The other half of the day, the students would attend their regular high school for classes in English, History and the like. Basically, the Vo-Tech curriculum was intended for students who wouldn’t or couldn’t attend college.

One of the technical courses that was being offered at Vo-Tech was Electronics. The course was geared to teaching students how to repair household electronics like TV sets and stereos-something which I knew I disliked doing. It would nevertheless teach all the basic skills of electronics-something I liked very much-so, I applied. There was no reason for school officials to turn me down, but administrators were clearly dragging their feet on approving my application. I was being stonewalled.

All students were assigned to a Guidance Counselor whose job it was to help you pick courses and generally steer you in the right academic direction through your high school career. My counselor was a thin, gray haired, bespectacled woman, Mrs. Alma Herb. Mrs. Herb was a very nice woman and I know she was genuinely concerned about what would be best for me. Although we had never really discussed college, she clearly had it set in her mind that college was where I belonged. Attending Vo-Tech would take me out of the College Preparatory curriculum and in Mrs. Herb’s mind I would be a lost soul forever.

Well, I did in fact have a lukewarm desire to go to college and study electrical engineering but my family wasn’t exactly wealthy and if I didn’t go or couldn’t go, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. And I wanted to learn electronics now, while I had the opportunity.

Mrs. Herb was upset. If I went to Vo-Tech there would be no way to schedule the math, science and language courses I’d need to be admitted to a college and I just had to go to college! Ultimately, my parents had to have a chat with Mrs. Herb before she reluctantly acquiesced.

She needn’t have worried. I’d already taken two years of foreign language, I’d had science courses every year since starting junior high and I’d already had my first year of Algebra. I was also able to take math courses out at the Vo-Tech school which I did, studying more Algebra, Geometry and Trigonometry. Back at my home school I kept my grades up in English and so on. The only courses lacking were calculus, chemistry and physics which I simply couldn’t schedule. As an end run around this problem I took the Scholastic Achievement Exams for math and physics. Even though I hadn’t had a single hour in a physics classroom, physics turned out to be my highest test score. In fact, I scored as well as most of the College Prep students. (To me, this demonstrates just how worthless tests like the SATs, Achievement Tests and the like really are.) I made sure a copy of those test results went along with my high school transcripts when I began applying to colleges. I was accepted everywhere I applied and became the first student in my high school ever to complete a Vo-Tech curriculum and then go on to college. Mrs. Herb was thrilled!

Since I attended Vo-Tech the first year it was in existence, the teachers and administrators at Vo-Tech were still feeling their way, developing lesson plans and figuring out just how to make the whole thing work. Their job was made more difficult by the fact that the administrators back at the home high schools also had no experience with the Vo-Tech concept and had even less of an idea on how to handle things. As a result Vo-Tech became-at least in part-a dumping ground for students the home high schools wanted to get rid of. If a kid was a trouble maker they were sent to Vo-Tech. If a kid couldn’t or didn’t learn at the home school they were sent to Vo-Tech. If a kid was mentally handicapped and attending Special Education classes they would be sent to Vo-Tech in the hope that they might just learn a trade and be able to support themselves when they graduated.

Consequently, Vo-Tech contained a very odd mix of students. On the one hand there were students like myself who had requested Vo-Tech and genuinely wanted to be there. On the other hand were the students who had nowhere else to go. There were students in technical curriculums like electronics and data processing and there were students in courses that taught trades like masonry, carpentry and plumbing.

That was all fine as far as it went, but what made the situation rather bizarre was that once back at the home high school, all of these students would be in the same classrooms together studying English, social studies and the like. At times this could be like putting physicist Stephen Hawking in the same classroom as Mortimer Snerd and expecting both students to do well. The teachers simply didn’t know what level they should be teaching to. There was one advantage. This eclectic gathering of students taught me an awful lot about how to get along with people from a variety of backgrounds and a variety of skill levels.

Academically, Vo-Tech couldn’t have been better. In electronics class I was finally in my element and began soaking up knowledge like a sponge. My electronics instructor was Mr. Harold Bucks and he was as good a teacher as you’re likely to find. He was easy going and gave his students a lot of latitude, but when it came to getting the lessons across he was all business. There was no fooling around in his classroom-too dangerous when dealing with electricity and electronics. Mr. Bucks was the absolute best at teaching us knot heads the fundamentals of electronics. It was there in his classroom that I learned the things that any decent technician takes for granted. Not just the formulas and electronic theories, but the simple things like how to make good connections when soldering components to a circuit board, how to hold a pair of needle nose pliers so they work like they’re a part of your hand, how a transistor works and so on. Attending Mr. Bucks’ classes put me light years ahead of anyone else my age tinkering with electronics.

Back at our home high school, every year we had the opportunity to join in various extracurricular activities. In my sophomore year, one of the choices on the list was the Stage Crew. Oh yeah, I remember that from my sister’s play! Count me in! Before long I was working behind the scenes helping to present programs to fellow students and to the public. We were constantly busy, doing every type of production imaginable: plays, band concerts, choral concerts, movie presentations, sporting events. You name it, the Stage Crew was there.

The Stage Crew was run by Mr. George C. Griesemer. Mr. Griesemer was a big, mean looking, bear of a man from good, solid Pennsylvania Dutch stock and he was physically extremely strong. He was a history teacher with a reputation for being very strict. There was never any hanky-panky in Mr. Griesemer’s classroom. This was at a time when corporal punishment was not only permitted, most parents encouraged it. (If only parents were as wise today!) Many teachers actually did have the proverbial wooden paddle waiting in wings to deal with students who got out of hand. Mr. Griesemer was no exception and the last thing in the world you wanted was to have a man the size of George Griesemer swinging a paddle in the direction of your butt! Trouble makers in Mr. Griesemer’s classes were few and far between. The result: his students actually learned! What a concept!

As stern as Mr. Griesemer was in the classroom, he was also very likable and an extremely good man. He was hard working and very generous with his time, willing to work one on one with a student whether in history classes or when teaching one of the boys on the Stage Crew how to swing a hammer. He was an honorable and decent man with a strong work ethic and anyone who worked with him on The Crew couldn’t help but be affected by it. He also had a good sense of humor and was willing to have a good time. Those of us who were lucky enough to be on The Crew learned to work hard and play hard. We also learned to always get the show on, no matter what the obstacles. These were very important lessons that I would take with me into my professional life.

The high school owned a baby grand piano that lived in the high school auditorium. On one occasion that piano put Mr. Griesemer’s tremendous physical strength to the test. Depending on the needs of the particular stage production, the baby grand piano would from time to time need to be moved between the orchestra pit and the stage itself. The piano was on a wheeled caddy and could be wheeled up the inclined center aisle of the auditorium, out into the lobby, down a corridor past the dressing rooms and finally onto the stage. It would be an understatement to say that a baby grand piano is a bit unwieldy. It was no easy task to push it up the incline of the auditorium aisle without smacking into the seats. Nor was it easy to wheel it through the hallways without bashing door frames and door handles. Moving the piano between the orchestra pit and the stage by this route tended to be hard on both the piano and the building.

Mr. Griesemer had a far better approach. The auditorium was often used for scheduled study hall periods, sometimes with two sections of students at once. When it was time to move the piano onto the stage, Mr. G. would recruit about two dozen of the biggest boys in the study hall. Half would gather in the orchestra pit and the other half on the stage. With Mr. G. in the pit in the middle of the heavy keyboard end, one group would simply lift the piano and hand it to the other group and that would be that. This process was repeated innumerable times over the years without incident.

One day the piano needed to be moved from the orchestra pit up onto the stage. As the piano was being lifted off the ground someone in the pit stumbled, tripping several other students in the process. With the piano already part way off the ground several students had simply let go of the piano to get out of the way while others had fallen to the floor, some of them under the piano! There was a collective gasp from everyone in the auditorium. While there were still a few students lifting the lighter end of the piano, George Griesemer was left standing alone holding the keyboard end-the heavy end-all by himself! He looked down, saw the students under the piano and calmly said to the kids still standing, Well, let’s keep ‘er goin’ fellas. Then, as casually as you please, he just lifted the piano up and onto the stage! Everyone in the auditorium just stared at him in slack-jawed awe!

Mr. G.! How’d you do that?!

With his thick, Pennsylvania Dutch accent he shrugged and matter-of-factly replied, Well I hadda do sometin’ wid it. I couldn’t chuss put it don. There wass kids don air! ²

Amazing!

One of the pieces of equipment the Stage Crew had charge of was a single, closed circuit television camera. Television cameras were an extreme rarity at that time. VCRs, DVDs, digital recorders and camcorders were many years in the future. The camera ran on vacuum tubes and put out a black and white picture on any TV channel between 2 and 6. There was wiring in the school auditorium projection booth that tied into the school’s antenna system (there was no cable TV in the school buildings as yet) so you could feed pictures of what was happening on stage to any classroom with a TV set. I latched onto those jobs as fast as I could.

In my senior year, the school district began to purchase more television equipment and decided to set up a small studio in the high school building. Just as with the Stage Crew, students were recruited to run the equipment. The school administrators went to Mr. Griesemer to ask for recommendations. Mr. G. called several of us in to give us the opportunity to jump to the about-to-be-formed TV Crew. While he never would have said anything negative and never would have denied any of us the opportunity to expand our horizons, we knew he was clearly concerned that he was about to lose good people. When he asked me if I’d be interested in switching from the Stage Crew to the TV Crew I told him no-but I would be willing to do both! So it was with all of us. Down to the man, none of us were about to abandon The Crew or Mr. G.

The students in charge of The Crew were the co-captains. When I was a junior, one of the co-captains of The Crew, Eric Albert, was also captain of the school announcer’s staff. These were the kids that broadcast info on school activities every morning over the school’s public address system, made the PA announcements at school sporting events and so on. Eric was a senior and asked if I’d be interested in taking over the announcers’ staff after he graduated. Naturally I said yes.

There were five of us on the announcers’ staff. Each of us would announce one day a week, but the captain would be there every day to operate the equipment and fill in for anyone who couldn’t make it. This yielded just a wee bit more experience in something akin to broadcasting.

Consequently, in my senior year I served as Co-captain of the Stage Crew, Captain of the Announcer’s Staff and Co-captain of the TV Crew. All of this turned out to be a great way to get started on the road to what would become a terrific career.

Image435.JPG

Mr. George C. Griesemer History Teacher, Stage Crew Faculty Adviser and one of the finest men I’ve ever known.

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The studios of WEEU radio on Penn Street in Reading, PA. Watching the announcers work through the store-front windows is likely where my interest in broadcasting began. Sign also shows evidence of WEEU’s brief flirtation with UHF television. (Photo courtesy of Bonnie Gounder)

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At the microphone of the Remco Caravelle bedroom radio station, age 11.

College Studies and The First Paid Job in Television

During my senior year in high school I managed to get a bit of scholarship money. That, combined with some help from my parents and with savings from working during the summer and after school allowed me to scrape enough money together to go to college. My college years were largely unremarkable, though there were a few events that were noteworthy.

I started college at Temple University in Philadelphia. At that time, most colleges threw all students into a Basic Studies curriculum the first year or two. It was there that you’d take your English and Social Studies and other courses that were required of all students, no matter what the chosen major happened to be. At the end of the basic studies curriculum, usually the end of your sophomore year, you would declare a major and then begin the specialized courses you needed to graduate with a degree in your chosen field.

When I started college I knew I wanted to get into broadcasting, but I was still undecided whether to go into the technical end of broadcasting or work in front of the microphone. The reason I chose Temple University was because they had both an Electrical Engineering Curriculum and a very good Radio, Television and Film department. I figured I would take a few elective courses in each area while I completed my Basic Studies and then make up my mind after getting my feet wet.

It was a good plan, except for one thing. As soon as I arrived on campus, Temple University announced they were doing away with Basic Studies. You’ll have to declare a major right now. Great.

As it turned out, the courses required for the Radio, Television and Film department continued to be nothing more than basic studies for the first few semesters anyway. On the other hand, the specialized courses for the Engineering program began immediately.

Decision made. I’d declare Engineering as my major and if it turned out not to be my cup tea I could always switch over to RTF later without having lost any ground. In the mean time, I signed on to work at the campus radio station. I ended up working four nights a week doing newscasts and by the end of my freshman year I’d actually become reasonably good at it. In the end though, putting together and broadcasting those newscasts night after night taught me that this wasn’t something I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life. I’d stick with Engineering instead.

By the end of my freshman year I’d become disappointed with the quality of education Temple was dishing out. Not that I didn’t enjoy the Engineering program, it was just that the professors at Temple weren’t up to snuff and frankly didn’t seem to give a hoot. For example, one of the required freshman Engineering courses was technical drafting. This was before the days of personal computers and Computer Aided Drafting software. All technical drawings were still done by hand at a drafting board with pencils, paper, triangles and T-squares. Basic skills in preparing and reading those drawings was something every engineer had to have.

The drafting class was a double period-two consecutive classes back to back-taking up most of an afternoon. The professor would walk into the classroom (often arriving late) and write the day’s assignment on the blackboard. Duplicate the drawing of a nut and bolt on page 256 of the textbook. Then he would turn on his heels and leave. If you had a question, he wasn’t there. If you went downstairs to his office, he wasn’t there either. If you checked around, you’d find he wasn’t even in the building!

While this might have been Temple’s idea of a college education, it sure wasn’t mine. Though I did have some scholarship money, the bulk of my tuition was being paid by me and I wasn’t going to be paying for this garbage much longer.

Throughout my freshman year, I continued to return home to Reading on weekends where I would work in a local supermarket on the overnight crew cleaning floors and restocking shelves to help earn money for school. Going home on weekends also gave me the opportunity to visit my girlfriend. (Hey! I wasn’t a complete nerd!) One day near the end of my freshman college year, I