Katie Couric

The main summary below was written in May, 2006, posted on May 18th of that year. Five months after that, I added the “To start off” lines immediately thereafter, and below that I will insert the five-years-later postscript to Katie’s anchor history, as she had failed. I will not start a “new” post on her successor, mainly because Scott Pelley does not merit such standing. He even will lose some of the audience Katie had. And it will happen within the next year…. in other words, before June, 2012. Suffice it to say that Scott Pelley is drab, dull and not interesting. He is puffed up, and that “air” will not pull viewers over from ABC and NBC. The fact that the collective audience of the nets keeps declining does not give Scott Pelley any room for error. He possesses all of the Katie negatives and adds a few of his own. Katie’s last day on The CBS Evening News was Thursday, May 19, 2011. CBS kept her so as to serve the full five years in her contract. When the ratings in the latter part of 2006 confirmed that Katie was a big mistake, CBS already was on the hook for the duration, and decided to have Katie work it off, which she did for the full five years.

In his review of Scott Pelley’s first night on “The CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley” Monday, June 6, 2011, Jonathan Storm of the Philadelphia Inquirer said the network offered the viewing audience the “same old same old” human-interest fare. “It was so low key,” said Storm, “even a whale couldn’t hear it.”

The column concluded with a Katie review hitting the nail on the head, something predicted five years before in these lines. Said Jonathan Storm: “Couric consistently finished last in the ratings, in part because her personality didn’t jibe with the evening news audience. But it was her frequently lackluster report, filled with the same kind of emphasis on personal stories, that turned a lot of viewers away.” So concluded Jonathan Storm in the Philadelphia Inquirer, my morning yawn.

The choices in news (anchor) talent made by the network suits often show how ill-equipped these people are to make multi-million-dollar decisions. Katie’s future may be brighter simply because her future “bar” will be so much lower. In early June, 2011, ABC-TV announced that Katie, in 2012, will host a syndicated daytime talk show. She will be the show producer along with her former “TODAY” show executive producer, former NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker. The two spent more than a decade together on the “TODAY’ Show. Katie should have stayed there. As part of her new job with ABC-TV, she will “have a position with ABC News starting this Fall”. MEMO TO DIANE SAWYER: If you want to maintain your own ratings, don’t let Katie do any “pieces”.

It is a bit difficult to NOT SAY “I told you so” but the three major networks that do world news at 6:30 p.m. Eastern were anything but fertile field for Katie Couric. The nets have been in a steady decline for nearly 50 years. There are several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the liberal biases of the network newsrooms are a super drag on their potential. It has been clearly shown over the years that the “audience” has been in steady decline due to the networks’ overwhelming liberalism. It has been a scourge. The network suits do not have time to devote to mere news ratings. And they have little knowledge of journalism, especially as it relates to sending pictures through the air.

So, here then is the “insert” written in late 2006 after the blog, which follows, which had been posted in May of that year:

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

To start off, this is an update entered Wednesday, October 18, 2006.  It is not a gloating statement  nor an “I told you so” but simply to point out that Katie Couric so far is not setting the world on fire at 6:30 p.m.  EDT or EST.  On Monday, October 14, the DrudgeReport gave ratings for Katie in New York City, Los Angeles and Washington, DC.  These were ratings for the LOCAL VIEWERS in each of the three markets.  In New York, WABC (Charley Gibson) was at 7.1, WNBC (Brian Williams) was at 5.3 and WCBS (Katie) was at 3.7.   In Los Angeles, KABC was at 5.9, KNBC was at 3.1 and KCBS was at 1.5.  In Washington, NBC was out front with a 9.3, ABC scored 7.8 and CBS (Katie) was at 2.5.

Then, on Thursday, October 26, 2006, the Drudge Report had even more sobering news for Katie and CBS:  on Wednesday night, she was SEVENTH in the ratings in Los Angeles.  Katie had fewer viewers in LA than a “FRIENDS” re-run, and also “KING OF QUEENS” and “MILLIONAIRE”.

Katie’s rating in Los Angeles Wednesday (October 25) was a meager 1.1 with a 2 Share, which means just 2% of those who were tuned into television at Katie’s news time were watching her in LA.

  What follows is my “blog” on Katie from this past summer (meaning the Summer of 2006).  This is NOT a sexist statement:  I will not watch Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News. So you and I are clear in the comments below, it has nothing to do with gender.   My reasons are not the same as Andy Rooney’s, but rather are of many years in the making, deep-rooted long before Andy thought he would be in any way affected by Katie Couric.

I  respect  any person who can attract a multi-million-dollar salary legally.  Whether they deserve it or not, the fact is the individuals can  laugh all the way to the bank.

So it doesn’t matter to me whether Katie Couric took a “cut in pay” to move from the TODAY SHOW on NBC-TV to the CBS Evening News.  Her annual salary will be in the millions, and she deserves credit for impressing her future bosses who agreed to pay her even above what her competitors are receiving.  Truth to tell, that DOES matter to me.  But it’s not my money, it’s NBC’s and now CBS’s.  They can afford her, whatever they pay her.

That is not a key point, except to Katie.

Katie… in this week’s Newsweek cover story …. is more or less commended for getting more ink during the week than the announced resignation of Tom DeLay.  She was featured in a recent story in the AARP Magazine.

Tim Russert, moderator of NBC’s “Meet The Press”, hired Katie in Washington in 1991.  She was a reporter on a local Washington TV station.  She was “Katherine Couric”.  Tim is the Bureau Chief for NBC News in Washington.  It always has been fashionable to hire liberals for network jobs.  You won’t find as much slant on this at the local stations, but they are themselves changing, as has been noted elsewhere on this blog. 

Tim told the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Gail Shister  (who writes columns on television):  “I saw a spark, an energy, a tenaciousness.  She was all over the place.”

Tim mostly does not show his own liberalism.  But there, in commenting on Katie Couric, he clearly was.  But this is not about Tim Russert’s own liberalism, which, as indicated above, does not reveal itself very often.

He said he thinks Katie Couric will succeed as anchor for CBS News. 

Part of the problem here is that the three major networks’ early evening newscasts have been transformed into treatises for senior citizens.  As a senior citizen, I feel insulted.  The so-called “magazine pieces” on television news started back when I was working as a TV reporter.  In those days, they were founded on journalistic principles.  Today, the magazine pieces are fluff and often liberally, not journalistically, oriented.  I am not going to cite examples here.  Just listen to any of the three networks any evening.  Not only is there the liberal slant (Brian Williams on NBC is the least guilty) but there is the constant effort for magazine pieces aimed at the assumed major TV audience of the newscasts:  older people.

Will Katie Couric attract younger viewers?  That is probably going to be her main appeal, although the “audience” that tuned to her on the TODAY SHOW also can be counted on to be somewhat loyal to her on CBS.  Yet the young people, generally speaking, are not tuned in to the news of the day.  If you listen to Jay Leno or Sean Hannity doing a MAN ON THE STREET interview, you find that young people have almost no clue who national figures are.  They probably can tell you all about the kind of guitar a rock star has, but they don’t know who the Vice President is.

A long-time star of the news spot Katie will occupy later this year, Walter Cronkite, applauds the selection of Katie Couric.  He occupied the chair from 1962 till 1981 when whatshisname took over.  To hear CBS tell it, Walter was “the most trusted man in America”.  Of course, this ignores the fact that the Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC enjoyed a higher audience.

“I think she’s a terrific choice,” said Walter.  “I’ve followed her.  I knew her work apart from TODAY SHOW.  She’ll be fine.”

That line is precisely why I am writing this.  Katie’s work apart from the TODAY SHOW was a collection of liberal diatribes masking as journalism.  She started with the completely biased reporting she did on the Clarence Thomas (Anita Hill) Senate confirmation hearings. Along with millions of others, I watched those hearings virtually non-stop, and was appalled at her reporting.  I could not believe she would be long for the job once the coverage was concluded.

Sad to remark:  NBC News loved her.  There was more bias in her reporting than you’ll see in a month of reporting on all three networks of the evening newscasts.

The Media Research Center has done an outstanding job of compiling Katie’s liberal diatribes. citing year after year of her various liberal slants. Check out  http://www.mediaresearch.org and put “Katie Couric” in the search line.  They currently have more than 900 “links” to Katie, and while it takes a while to retrieve the various items, the summary is absolutely riveting and compelling:  Katie Couric is a flaming liberal, and likely will emerge as more of a biased reporter than Dan Rather in the same spot.

She starts on CBS-TV September 5th, the day after Labor Day. She may enjoy an early boost in the ratings due to viewer curiosity.  Sorry, I won’t be among her viewers. 

She is replacing Dan Rather, and more recently, Bob Schieffer.  The irony of Bob Schieffer’s tenure during the past year is that he has garnered better ratings than Rather.  Schieffer is a nice fellow, but nevertheless decidedly on the liberal side, based on his questioning on FACE THE NATION, which he hosts each Sunday morning. 

Said Bob Schieffer:  “I’ve known Katie Couric since she broke into journalism and she’s going to be a great addition to the CBS News team.  She’s tough, she’s fair, she’s a straight shooter…..  She’ll be terrific.  Just watch.” 

The comment is carried in TV ads on the air this summer.  Of course, CBS would not quote him saying something negative.  And I suppose he pretty much feels the way he is quoted above.

Not so Andy Rooney.  Andy Rooney is clearly a liberal, admits it and lets it all hang out. But he doesn’t dig Katie Couric.  It should be noted that Andy favors good journalism, with an aim toward objectivity  (except on SIXTY MINUTES, where he appears!!).  He doesn’t think Katie will be a benefit to CBS  just as he thought Dan Rather was a poor excuse for a TV anchor.

Said Andy on IMUS IN THE MORNING June 22:  “My problem with Dan was always that you knew where he stood politically.  And the fact that he stood on my side didn’t have anything to do with it.  I thought he was a bad representative of the liberal side because he was SO OBVIOUS with his opinions.  There were just little words he used when he was on the air that made it apparent to everyone that he was a liberal Democrat.  And Walter Cronkite on the other hand had the same liberal Democratic opinions as Dan had but you would never know it.  No one knew it during all the time Cronkite was on the air.”

About Katie Couric coming to CBS??  Said Andy:  “I’m not enthusiastic about it.  I think everybody likes Katie Couric.  I mean how can you not like Katie Couric.  But, I don’t know anybody at CBS News who is pleased that she’s coming here.”

CBS is arranging for Katie to go on a “listening tour” in at least six cities this summer.  She will meet with viewers who will give her their ideas on how CBS should report the news.  That is a laugh-and-a-half. 

Over the years, television people have organized so-called “focus groups” to tell them why they tune into TV news.  By and large, these focus groups courageously say they turn on TV news to get the weather.  And boy, do they get the weather.  The TV newscasts “lead” with the weather if it rains (see other item in this blog on this remark).

So, come September, Katie Couric may be giving us the weather !!!  Now, lesseee…… how can you give a LIBERAL WEATHER FORECAST  ???

In mid-July now, Katie has given her new bosses something else to think about:  she told “Access Hollywood” she would NOT venture in the Middle East to cover that hot spot  (Israel and Lebanon for the moment).  Said she:  “I think the situation there is so dangerous, and as a single parent with two children, that’s something I won’t be doing.”

Katie will have great appeal to the wusses of our society !!!

 

Journalism, a Disgrace

Journalism is corrupt. It is not getting there. It is there. It has been there more than 100 years. But it now is worse and more immoral than ever.

It swoons. It slobbers. It exaggerates. It evades. It lies. It embellishes. It omits. It enables. It amplifies biases.

It informs. It educates. It amuses. It entertains. It investigates.

But, it is not deteriorating. It already has deteriorated. And because of the many, many media outlets spewing the filth, it is, more than ever, clearly corrupt and in need of a super transplant.

This is no cheap shot: it is liberalism. It masks itself in biased news.

Liberals cannot stand to hear themselves criticized. Until liberals realize what has happened, and what they have done to this society through journalism, deterioration will continue, although already it doesn’t have far to go to reach the dungeon.

Perhaps the easy targets are the liberals in the classrooms. The problem did not start in the classrooms, but it explodes there.

Liberals in the classrooms at all levels of education (elementary school through graduate school, both teachers and students) have perpetuated the distortions first offered through various forms of journalism.

The non-liberals of this society are left with hoping liberals someday will see the light. Some think this never will happen. This is not because liberals outnumber non-liberals . . . because they don’t. But liberals are not charitable. They will not give up their reign easily.

Bringing the issue to light is one task. Working on it looms as a far greater problem.

Corrupt journalism knifes into fairness. It knifes into objectivity. It knifes into the truth. It knifes into everyday life.

It is a national disgrace. It is ripping away at our society. It is ripping away at our republic. It is tearing apart our democracy.

And this is laughed at by the controlling (or “mainstream”) media.

Reform is necessary and urgent.

Conservatives cannot lead the changes that are necessary, at least not alone. It will take journalism professors who admit the fact of the national scandal.

While journalists the world over wring their hands over the future of newspapers, for example, the underlying issue is largely ignored. Many of those newspapers have been publishing political garbage masquerading as journalism.

Dean Walter Williams, University of Missouri School of Journalism’s first Dean, a century ago wrote the Journalist’s Creed that says in part: the supreme test of good journalism is the measure of its PUBLIC SERVICE.

We must reevaluate: just what is that public service? The school’s own professors need to reevaluate.

Many books have been written on the subject of corrupt, biased journalism. Most of these have been dead-on, but often ignored by powerful people in journalism.

It is time for journalism schools to admit these tomes into the curriculum. It is important that journalism schools return to teaching objectivity and exposing biased reporting. Journalism schools must start teaching students who are NOT out to change the world, but are interested in a good story and, and this may be hard for you, the truth.

Journalism professors know about this. Most are on the liberal side.

In Philadelphia, both the Inquirer and the Daily News are liberal organs. Nearly all of their local columnists are liberal. The national columnists the two papers use are overwhelmingly liberal. This nation is NOT overwhelmingly liberal. These papers, just as all the others, need to balance their opinion columns. And they need to get opinions out of their news columns.

When Congress Sunday (March 21st, 2010) passed the health care bill, the so-called “mainstream” media explained little about the many negatives in the legislation. There was no examination of the huge cost to the taxpayers of the nation.

The Philadelphia Daily News sometimes uses its “cover” page for a biased headline, an editorial of sorts. Take, for example, the day after the passage of the health care bill. Said the Daily News on its cover: “Health-care reform: PASSED AT LAST!”

The Journalist’s Creed says in part: “I believe that clear thinking and clear statement, accuracy and fairness are fundamental to good journalism.”

That Daily News headline did not suggest fairness. Nor was it accurate; it was an opinion. Nor was it a clear statement … because health-care reform, in the fashion it cleared Congress Sunday, is opposed by a majority of Americans.

If newspapers (and other liberal media) are to regain their standing as organs of GOOD JOURNALISM, they must return to good old investigative journalism.

Dig. Dig into illegal immigration, which poises to be the Obama administration’s next cause.

Dig into the TARP bill and how its money is being spent.

Dig into the czars. Do you know about them? Do you know who they are, and how they got their jobs?

Dig into cap and trade. The debate on global warming is not over, although Senator John Kerry recently said it is the next cause. So, which is next, immigration or cap and trade.

Dig into the related crisis: increasing governmental controls on our lives.

Dig into what President Obama has in mind for his “redistribution of wealth”.

Dig into the corporate bailouts. It is bizarre to even think that two major auto manufacturers are now controlled both by Obama and the auto workers union.

Expain to the American public just how much the nation is in debt. Do not blame it on the Republicans under President Bush, although that was part of it. The problem has been mushrooming because Congress is totally out of control. The nation’s media are assumed to be the watchdog of the Congress, but I submit to you that most reporters are going to more cocktail parties in Washington than they are devoting themselves to investigative reporting.

On this blog at some point in the near future, I hope, I am going to talk at greater length about the INSANITY now going at full speed in Washington, DC. As an example, earlier this year, President Obama submitted to Congress a huge, huge, huge $3.8 trillion national budget. Not long after that, somebody phoned into Rush Limbaugh’s show to try to put the national budget in perspective.

He pointed out that George Clooney’s Haitian telethon raised $66 million. That’s alot of money. The caller said George Clooney would have to have a $66 million telethon EVERY DAY FOR THE NEXT 158 YEARS to match Obama’s spending in the 2010 budget.

In fact, as of March, 2011, with the national debt at $14 trillion, that situation is dramatically more graphic. To raise the $14 trillion, the ever-rising total of the national debt at the rate of $66 million each day, it would take 581 years!!!

Scary beyond words is the fact that this nation has increased the national debt by one-third in just the last three years. Do you understand that? Three years ago, the national debt had been increased to a level of near $10 trillion in the first 200+ years of the nation. Then, another third of that already huge, huge amount was heaped onto the pile in the past three years! Do you understand that this is ridiculous?

Hey, you reporters: investigate the money situation in Washington. See what we are doing to this nation. See what we are doing to our grandchildren.

It is a disgrace.

A year ago, in mid-April, 2009, I attended the Centennial of Sigma Delta Chi, the professional journalism fraternity, at Depauw University in Indiana. Sigma Delta Chi was founded at Depauw in 1909.

Keynote speaker was Jane Pauley, NBC-TV anchor and TODAY SHOW host. Jane grew up in nearby Indianapolis. To a full auditorium, Jane gave a thumbnail sketch of her life and how she got into television, first in Indianapolis, then in Chicago, and soon to the Big Apple. She spoke about today’s journalism, and how some people in the industry consider “objective” political reporting “too passive”. It has been one of my complaints that today’s media, mostly newspapers and magazines, insert opinion into supposed news articles on the so-called news pages. Opinion belongs on the opinion page!

Jane Pauley said she thinks today’s news too often finds itself competing with entertainment programs. For this reason, she said, she regularly watches THE NEWS HOUR on PBS because she can count on getting news presented in as objective a fashion as possible.

Near the end of her talk, Jane said she thinks news today must eliminate its opinions in news reports. As she put it, in a rather off-handed way, “One way for the news media to get its niche back….. is to get straight.”

In a question-and-answer session after her main remarks, I went up to the microphone on the left side of the auditorium. She called on me for my question which was a bit long, it ran 90 seconds…but I said that I was attending my second journalism Centennial in less than a year, having attended the Centennial of the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri in September, 2007.

I told Jane that I attended quite a few Centennial seminars in Columbia, Missouri, as well as several that day at Depauw University, and at no time did any of the professors or professionals address the great problem of biased journalism “until tonight”.

I went on: when a reporter is sent to cover a speech, he or she must seek to identify the “lead” story or comment by the speaker. I said I thought I heard my lead from Jane Pauley that night: did she say that “one way for the news media to get its niche back is to get straight”, in other words, report the news fairly and objectively?

It was a bit humorous as Jane seemed a bit nervous over what I was going to say about her speech, and then relieved when I finished with this conclusion: “In all of the Centennial seminars I attended, you’re the only speaker to address this very important subject.”

The crowd broke into a loud and prolonged applause. Jane Pauley thanked me for my comments, and said to the other person on stage, the man who introduced her, “I’m not gonna say anything else.” And she walked off the stage as the applause continued.

BOTTOM LINE: that audience was crying out for good journalism, objective, fair, accurate, truthful journalism.

Several people stopped me on the way out of the auditorium to thank me for my comments.

There is no doubt that the general public is quite aware of the biases in journalism, and there also is strong evidence, therefore, that the poor journalism of today is causing problems for newspapers and magazines just as much, if not more, as the Internet.

So, my point is that the starting place for reform in journalism is in the classrooms of America, both for journalism and general education.

So, hey, you journalism professors. You are nice people. But get to work!! Get straight.

Radio Icon Paul Harvey

Paul Harvey, star network radio newscaster for decades, died Saturday, February 28, 2009, at 90. He was on the air within the past year; he was heard nationally for nearly 58 years, since 1951.

I met him six years later (1957).

It was during my year at the School of Journalism, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO. Every Spring, the Journalism School would sponsor “J-Week”, when classes were suspended in favor of students listening to a score or more of journalism professionals, experts in the field, pros who had “made” it. It was a terrific week.

One of my classes that spring was in radio news. I was an “intern” for the early morning newscasts on Radio Station KFRU. This was the same station I worked for each night from 6:00 to 11:00 p.m. It wasn’t fun getting up early but it helped me get through Journalism School in one year.

Among the guest speakers for J-Week was Paul Harvey.

I was told I would assist him in his preparation of his morning newscasts on ABC Radio coast-to-coast. I was told to be there (at the downtown newspaper newsroom from which the newscasts were aired) at 5:00 a.m., a bit tough for somebody who worked till 11:00 p.m. No way he was going to be there at 5:00 a.m., but I was a student. What could I say ??

I got there about 4:55 a.m. and Paul Harvey was waiting for me.

He was about 38 years old at the time, but like most “elders”, to a young guy he seemed like 60. As you might expect, he was all business. He wanted me to sort the copy from the news services, and all I had to do was watch him work. He had gobs of blank newsprint paper. He wrote his copy on this stuff.

To me, the irony was to see how this radio newscasting star prepared his copy. Every story was on a separate sheet of paper. Some of the stories were hardly more than one line long, but I realized this was the “style” his listeners easily tuned to.

He also wanted me to locate all the “kickers” I could find. Wire services often lumped kickers into a single dispatch. A kicker was a funny news story.

He would close his newscasts with a kicker. He always led it off ….. “For what it’s worth”…… Sometimes he would call it “our ‘for what it’s worth’ department”.

Knowing how unfunny the kickers were that morning, I thought he would start hollering at me for not finding at least one good kicker.

I soon got a liberal education in radio journalism, Paul Harvey Style. Paul Harvey took one of the unfunny stories and made it funny. And he always could get away with it, with that two-second pause after he uttered the punch line: “Paul Harvey…………… Good Day!!!”

I was so pleased and frankly honored that I had been selected to be his intern that morning.

His appearance in Columbia climaxed with his speech at the noon luncheon that day. He was one of the J-Week star pros.

Paul Harvey gave a great speech. He was already considered “conservative” and for some at the already liberally-tinged J-School, he was off his rocker. And because he was perceived as somewhat of a comic and cynic on his radio broadcasts, he surprised. He presented a clear description of the waste in government (yes, they even had it way back then) and the various hypocrisies in the news of the day. His audience discovered a conservative is not a whacko.

When he finished, he got a standing ovation.

Dean Earl English then came back to the microphone to thank Paul Harvey, and he brought down the luncheon when he said, rather sheepishly: “There were some of us who weren’t sure about inviting Mr. Harvey, but I must say, after listening to him today, I don’t know how we could have thought anything like that.”

Paul Harvey. Good Day!!!!

Why President-elect Obama won

Even more than a week after the election, nobody seems to be expressing the following points, so maybe the opinions are off the mark. I don’t think so, and I approve this message.

Barack Obama won for five main reasons. There might be 100 more but even the most significant of them only could come in at Number Six.

Here are the five main reasons, about which I will comment at length below: 1) The Media. Everybody can dance around that, but the media represent a highly powerful engine and serve to scare the daylights out of politicians while, with prejudice, sway the thinking of millions.

2) Bush hatred. Let us assume for the moment you don’t need an immediate further explanation for this.

3) The third reason Obama won was, no question about it, Senator John McCain.

4) For Reason Number Four, I copy Rush Limbaugh’s major point, the failure of the Republicans to be conservatives, and let the world know it. I am paraphrasing Rush but I think that’s close to what he said right after Election Day.

5) Reason Number Five is not overkill. It umbrellas a great deal. President-elect Obama knew how to deliver a manuscript speech from a Teleprompter. HIs first news conference after election last week confirms this point when Obama, at the brief news conference, demonstrated he is no master of the ad-lib.

As acknowledged above, there are other reasons that led to the Obama victory. But remember that more than 58,000,000 people voted for McCain, so the 7% difference in votes was anything but a landslide. It also bodes well for the opposition party four years from now if the GOP can wake up from its collective slumbers and blunders. In fact, it bodes well for the GOP in 2010 when the next House of Representatives races come up.

It is not my intention to try to list all the factors identifying victory and defeat. Blacks voted almost entirely for Obama. Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin drew many voters to McCain who otherwise might have stayed home on Election Day. She was much more effective than the media are admitting, yet she likely turned away some so-called “moderates” due to the disgraceful trashing she suffered. And so on. Victory has many fathers; defeat is an orphan.

So, back to Reason Number One. Many people in and out of politics do not want to give credit to the ability of the media to control this society. Such people are fooling themselves, but they are falling for the media feints. The media collectively did not just favor Obama; they were in the bag for Obama. They shamelessly bulldozed their biased support. It is a national disgrace and will not be corrected unless or until the people in journalism call cop.

As a generalization, the people in journalism mostly are liberals. That goes double for the educators in college schools of journalism. Generally, they are quite comfortable in their skins. Yet much of their work is journalistic fraud, an abrupt rejection of the Journalist’s Creed, which says “the supreme test of good journalism is the measure of its public service”.

If there was news favorable to Obama, it got front-page above-the-fold treatment. If there was a favorable McCain story, it was elsewhere in the paper. If there was a negative Obama story, you often only heard about it on the Fox News Channel. The so-called “Mainstream Media” ignored it, or countered it with bogus angles or otherwise “buried” it.

Deborah Howell in the Washington Post Sunday said stories and photos about Obama in the news pages outnumbered those devoted to McCain. Reporters, photographers and editors found the Obama candidacy more newsworthy and historic. For example, the op-ed page ran far more laudatory opinion pieces on Obama, 32, than on McCain, 13. There were far more negative pieces about McCain, 58, than there were about Obama, 32. The number of Obama stories during the past year, going back to last November, was 946, compared with McCain’s 786. After Obama eliminated Hillary Clinton, the tally was 626 stories on Obama, 584 on McCain. Obama was on the front page 176 times, McCain 144. This was just the Washington Post. While we have no comparable statistics, it is pretty safe to say that most newspapers’ coverages would reveal the same percentages of biases.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism found that from June 9 to November 2, two-thirds of the campaign stories in the national media were about Obama, 53 per cent were about McCain. (Of course, some stories were about both candidates.)

You will find elsewhere on this blog that I do not admire Katie Couric. She has enjoyed a kind of rebirth for her interview in September with Sarah Palin. What a joke. Katie interviewed Palin for two hours and aired just six minutes. Anybody could interview Katie Couric for two hours and clobber her. Couric’s questions were described as fair by the Mainstream Media. Several of those CBS-TV aired were not fair. One was when she asked Palin to list several of the U-S Supreme Court rulings she disagreed with. When the question was aired, I did a double-take, trying to think of even one Supreme Court ruling besides Roe vs. Wade.

I would like to ask Katie to name the last three years’ winners of Movie of the Year. After all, she was star of the TODAY show and should have broad knowledge of news. I would like to ask Katie to name the new President of Russia. She may know now it is Dmitry Medvedev, but “I betcha” she couldn’t have told you three months after he became President. I would like to ask Katie to name the Prime Minister of Canada. Even today. It’s Stephen Harper, Katie. But believe me, in interviewing Katie for two hours, my training would enable me to “sandbag” her in the fashion of the Mainstream Media, including Katie. While it would not be good journalism, it would be revealing. For that matter, Katie interviewed Palin after the Alaskan Governor had been a national candidate for less than a month. Katie would have been easy prey to question a month after she switched to CBS-TV.

Below the radar in the subject of the media, consider the way certain stories become recycled to promote liberal causes. One day I recall USA Today running its top story on an upturn in homeless numbers (the numbers themselves were comparatively insignifcant and would have been ignored with a Democrat in the White House) and across the page was a story about a slump in car sales. Right now the Big Three automakers are in big financial trouble, but do you know the “stimulus package” Obama promoted at his first post-election news conference could be correctly identified as a UAW bailout. The auto workers’ unions exercised their extreme power to achieve wonderful union contracts that cost the Big Three $72 per hour. It takes a lot of dollars to buy a car built by $72 per hour workers. It also costs more than $1,500 in the price of a new car to pay the worker his or her hospitalization costs. Foreign cars have much less in the price for employee medical benefits. For example, Toyota cars have $110 for employee hospitalization.

So when we talk about the Big Three, there is a lot to the story you may not be told. There were similar omissions in the recent political campaign coverage. You were fed liberal viewpoints but rarely conservative ones. And the weight applied almost always leaned toward Obama.

The second reason for the Obama victory, Bush hatred, was an overwhelmingly successful effort by (Reason Number One) the liberal media. President Bush did not receive objective reporting out of the White House and he was not shown the respect the office calls for.

For example, in San Francisco, 12,000 people signed a petition in support of a proposition on a local ballot to rename an Oceanside sewage plant after George W. Bush. Classless disrespect.

President Bush endured relentless attacks from the left while concurrently having to see conservatives abandon him.

I did not like everything Mr. Bush did during the past nearly eight years. I thought he should have responded to the opposition diatribes. He thought it would demean the office of the Presidency.

Unlike most Americans who opposed the war in Iraq, I support him. I have heard nobody on either side, really, observe that the Presidential campaign among Democrat Party candidates listed Iraq as the Number One issue. But that was more than a year ago. It hardly came up as an issue during the final two months of the campaign, thanks to the tanking economic news. The fact remains that Al Queda and similar enemies did not repeat the destruction of 9/11 because, frankly, they were afraid of George Bush.

But taken as a whole, no matter what Mr. Bush has done, he was blamed for everything. He remains despised by liberals while continuously disappointing the right, even though it should seem obvious that many of our nation’s current problems either existed long before Mr. Bush came to office, or are beyond his control.

Ironically, Obama will not suffer in the same disgraceful way. Attacks against Obama as President may sometimes be cruel and slanderous, similar to those against George Bush. But Obama will escape the same barrages because he will enjoy the fawning of a favorable liberally-biased media. Just as during the campaign, the media will serve to protect their chosen one.

Investigative reporter Jeffrey Scott Shapiro in the Wall Street Journal said our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world, he said, how disloyal we can be when our President needed loyalty — a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House. It was juvenile; it was often virtually childish.

The media fed off Bush hatred and disseminated it, broadcast it regularly.

The third reason for the Obama victory waS Senator McCain himself. At times I wondered how he could be so unwise as to avoid obvious chances of scoring three-pointers against Obama. McCain could have clobbered Obama on many points, many issues. But he seemed more interested in getting Boy Scout merit badges for good behavior, which helped him not a whit. McCain could have campaigned on the immigraton issue, from a conservative viewpoint. Support legal immigration, oppose illegal immigration. Forget the fact that George Bush was weak on this. In fact, it would have demonstrated a key issue where he disagreed with the President. It would have challenged Obama’s campaign speech that with McCain, you get another George Bush.

McCain was politically less than astute to pull out of Michigan weeks before election day. What a terrible negative image that portrayed. It would have been much better had Sarah Palin not mentioned it, but it demonstrates how reckless the move was that Sarah Palin wanted to see the decision reversed. She just should not have said so pubicly. Obviously, McCain never discussed the move in advance with his running mate. (The only other Palin gaffe, by the way, was her reference to looking toward 2012.) She has to be careful when she speaks her mind. Comments like that do show inexperience, but Palin was one of McCain’s good decisions, and generally, conservatives thank McCain for selecting her. They won’t admit it but liberal media types feared Palin because she was so effective in defining liberalism.

And while we are beating up on John McCain, it is necessary to point out that his silence when there were negative stories did not make him look good. He needed to show some outrage when somebody asked him how many houses he owned. There were several ways he could have answered this that would have prevented the subject from showing up on the late night comedy shows.

And McCain was nothing short of stupid to alienate and ignore Rush Limbaugh.

Speaking of Rush, he described the fourth reason listed here for Obama’s victory. Rush put it at Number One. When you survey the American public, you find many people have more conservative viewpoints than THEY realize. Rush said the Republicans did not run on conservative issues, and this not only hurt them with conservatives but also denied them the opportunity to bring more voters into their camp. So Republicans need to recognize their conservative issues are far more powerful and universally appealing than they realize.

The fifth reason was the way Obama could appear impressive on the stump. He drew big crowds, thanks to extra efforts to attract audiences with rock shows, including that one in Berlin. He was especially effective in reading from a TelePrompter. He was not effective in ad lib situations, but even here, he is better than George Bush who became infamous for speech gaffes. The liberal media ignored Obama’s gaffes, such as when he made the reference to the nation’s 57 states, We don’t have 57 states, do we???

Jimmy Carter was a joke as President, and has continued to be the same as former President. It will be interesting to watch Obama to see if he can avoid becoming the remake of Jimmy Carter. Based on his liberal voting record in the U-S Senate and his leftist views and supporters, it will not be surprising if Obama mirrors Carter. Despite his fawning media, Obama will not have a cakewalk.

Ann Coulter put the status of Politics Twenty-First Century in focus by suggesting that Republicans show Obama the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that Democrats have shown “our recent Republican President”.

A Very Costly “Killed Series”

By John Pierron BJ57

The University of Missouri School of Journalism is celebrating its Centennial September 10-12, 2008, and has asked journalism graduates to provide books, news stories or anecdotes from their careers. Nearly all of the articles submitted are likely to be from broadcast or published news stories. This account, an “anecdote” by John Pierron (BJ 1957), is an exception. It is a summary of a television news series in Philadelphia more than 40 years ago that was killed by a New York lawyer, and what happened thereafter.

The subject of the series itself, and the reason it was killed, though unrelated to each other, are described in this “non-story”, the story that never got on the air. Fortunately, it triggered related stories that kept me on the case of the Philadelphia Boy Wonder Jerry Wolman.

Let me say at the outset the cancellation of the series soured me on the news business. It was not difficult for me to “resign” from it a few years later. At the same time, I never have lost my love for journalism itself.

I have written this “anecdote” on a journalism career mostly as a 2008 story to reflect the developments through the years and concluding with today’s news, some of which is anything but pretty.

The station I worked for was then known as KYW-TV, Philadelphia; the “name” was changed to CBS3 in recent years, and within the past year, the station has received far more than its share of notoriety due to the firing of both of the station’s top/star anchors. I bet that hasn’t happened in your town!

Alycia Lane and Larry Mendte were co-anchors at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. Monday through Friday on Channel 3, Philadelphia. Lane was discharged January 1 of this year, and Mendte was fired June 23. Unbelievable.

Alycia Lane was fired after getting her name in the gossip pages of Philadelphia and New York newspapers too often. The final straw came last December after she was arrested in New York City after Saturday midnight, charged with hitting a New York police officer in a bizarre car stop.

Her co-anchor, Larry Mendte, lost his job after the FBI started investigating allegations that, for about two years, he had snooped on the e-mails of Alycia Lane, and fed gossip about her to the media. Yep, he was spying on his co-anchor: more than 500 e-mails just this year since she was fired! Hundreds more in the two years prior. He was charged in mid-July with a felony: intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization to obtain information. He pleaded guilty in August. Sentencing is scheduled for November, 2008.

I’m not making this up. That’s the CBS3 infamously of today. It is not the kind of news you expect from the original Eyewitness News newsroom.

My anecdote from the 1960′s in some of its ramifications never made it into print. You are reading about it here for the first time, and be forewarned: it does not have the explosiveness of Alycia and Larry.

But it cost you and your friends and neighbors a lot more money, especially if you live in or near a “major league” city.

THE ANECDOTE:

One of the many things you learn at the University of Missouri School of Journalism is word usage. You are taught that the word “very” in nearly all instances is unnecessary, a kind of redundancy, at least in news stories. If you are tired, it says little if any more if you say you are “very” tired. If you are happy, you are happy. It does not say much more to say you are very happy. And so on. Those are quick illustrations describing word usages in a news story.

It is this Mizzou journalism graduate’s clear declaration that if something is VERY costly, it must be VERY extraordinary. Thus, this story about a VERY COSTLY series prepared in the 1960′s is very exceptional and very unique. The actual cost is incalculable. We will just have to agree we are talking megabucks.

Said another way: the result of the cancellation of the series by a New York lawyer cost the taxpayers of the United States many millions of dollars.

The reason the series was spiked was not revealed (to this reporter) until 15 months later. It was bizarre. I will explain that later.

The events described below started in 1963. Jerry Wolman, a Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, one-time grocer, bought the Philadelphia Eagles for $5,505,000. At age 37, he was the youngest owner in the National Football League. In Philadelphia, he soon was known as “The Boy Wonder” as he also was expanding his vistas in the field of construction. He was a fun guy to meet and know, and he was very popular in his new city.

In the mid-1960′s, he was in partnership with co-owners Ed Snider, Bill Putnam and Joe Scott as they put together plans for a franchise in the National Hockey League, which became the Philadelphia Flyers. The team needed an arena to play in. Philadelphia had nothing.

Jerry Wolman proposed building a hockey arena in South Philadelphia. Working with Philadelphia City Council and Mayor James H. J. Tate, he proposed spending $8 million to build it. Key to the plan was to build on city-owned land. Yes, the City was allowing Wolman to build a private facility on city land. So terms had to be arranged. City Council bragged that the Boy Wonder was using his own money to build the arena! The taxpayers can avoid the obligation!! Isn’t that wonderful? That became the typical City Council answer when there was any question about the arena deal.

City administration financial people, working with Wolman and lawyers, put together a 50-year lease that was the sweetest sweetheart Wolman could have hoped for. The cost was $15,000 per year, or $1,250 monthly for 50 years. In addition, he was given a high share of the parking fees on the basis that he needed guaranteed income to pay for his lease. But Wolman had to pay no real estate taxes. You would have to be crazy to think it was not a great deal for Wolman. No real estate taxes. Most of the parking revenues. And a lease he probably could pay off annually with profits from one rock concert each year.

This (City Hall) reporter sought to question all the sweetness. One of my first stops was to see Harry Ferleger, Executive Director of the Philadelphia Civic Center. As they say, FULL DISCLOSURE: in the 1970′s, for eight years I was the Civic Center’s Executive Director after Harry Ferleger. How I got there indirectly stems from this anecdote caper but is not parcel to this story.

Harry Ferleger was glad to see me. He said he had to be careful with what he said, but Mayor Tate knew of his opinions and concerns, and he was authorized if not encouraged to speak more or less as a concerned city official. He told me he had reviewed the arena planning (this was before the facility got the name “Spectrum”). What it revealed was that, thanks to City Council, the taxpayers were on the eve of giving Jerry Wolman a license to print money. He knew the Civic Center would lose the Philadelphia 76ers as a tenant, and that was OK, he thought. But he pointed out that basketball revenues that had been coming into the city coffers for many years would now be going to Wolman. The future of the arena business was to be rock and other concerts, and Wolman would be getting that (moolah), too. Not the Civic Center and the city’s tax coffers.

Also, he said, the Ice Follies and Ice Capades and the circus road shows surely would want to move to the larger, new arena. Should the city’s taxpayers underwrite this, seeing these revenues go elsewhere? It was more money destined for Wolman’s deepening pockets.

Subsequently, Harry Ferleger stood outside Convention Hall (part of the Civic Center complex) and spoke to me in a fairly lengthy filmed TV news interview, which became the main theme of the five-part series I wrote and edited. He would not tell me on film what he had offered in his office: the City Council hearing on the arena lease, which took a mere one hour in Council chambers (without public hearing for taxpayers), was a sham, a joke. City Council did not call him for testimony (Ferleger thought it was on purpose), and the comments offered by the learned Council members were either extremely naive (unlikely) or wink-wink let’s-get-this-done-in-a-hurry.

Of course, he couldn’t describe the Council hearing for what it was if he wanted to keep his job.

Working with our News Director Al Primo, we prepared five scripts, complete with film for each night’s series segment. The series declared that City Council had given Wolman a “lucrative” lease for the new arena. I said this in the first sentence of my copy.

Said in brief, the key to the whole issue was the mathematics. Rock shows had just started to become popular, and Harry Ferleger wanted to see the City and its taxpayers get the revenues to be achieved, not Jerry Wolman.

Al Primo told our station General Manager, Fred E. Walker, we had a hot series ready for air. Fred was totally in support of the series, but thought the word “lucrative” could get us sued. He arranged for the three of us to go the offices (a few blocks away) of Dechert Price & Rhoads, the station’s legal counsel. The head of the law firm of more than 200 lawyers and the firm’s chief Vice President in charge of financial law greeted us, and we sat down to discuss what we had. I was told to read out loud each of the five reports. Where there was a sound-on-film interview, they accepted my ad lib comments as to what the spokesman said. The key concern was that word “lucrative”.

The financial officer said it was his opinion that the overwhelming evidence of both the mathematics of the bookings and the obviously sweet “lucrative” lease clearly demonstated the series represented “fair comment and criticism” under the laws of libel.

He said the series did not even hint of libel and needed to be broadcast to the people of Philadelphia. I sat there, shall we say, very, very happy and I am pleased to say Fred Walker and Al Primo walked back with me to the station similarly elated. We knew we had a big story.

A few days later, we were on the eve of station promotionals to “plug” the series when Al called me into his office.

“We have to go back to Dechert Price and Rhoads,” he said. He said Fred Walker had received a call from the Group W (station owner) corporate office in New York, which was sending a lawyer to Philadelphia to review the series. The reason?? Al Primo had no clue, nor, I later found out, did Fred Walker, although he apparently had phoned New York, the Group W corporate office, to crow a bit about how we had a story that should stop City Council from a major taxpayers gift to the Boy Wonder.

Nevertheless the series was “on hold” and of course so were the news promotions.

In a day or so, back we were in that same law firm conference room, and this time a (six feet four inches tall) unfriendly, unsmiling Group W lawyer walked in, shook hands all around. He asked that I read the series as I had a few days before.

You had to be there. It was most bizarre. As soon as I started and passed the word “lucrative”, the New Yorker shook his head, but did not interrupt. Everybody froze, though. I saw that. As I continued, the head-shaking continued at periodic points, and I could see the financial officer trying to get a facial read from his law partner, the head of the firm.

When I finished, the New York lawyer quickly declared that the series was generally faulty and probably libelous, and it could not be aired. The Philadelphia lawyers wanted better clarifications, but the New Yorker was abrupt and offputting, and before we realized it, he was getting up with his briefcase and heading for the door. Decision made.

After the New Yorker left to return to the Big Apple, the financial officer felt compelled to tell us he thought the New York lawyer was crazy.

The three of us from the station walked back in a daze, trying to figure it all out. We could come up with no explanation. We all felt we were had, for some reason.

Turns out, we were. And so were the taxpayers of Philadelphia, and subsequently the taxpayers in cities and towns all over the United States.

This year, I contacted Fred Walker and Al Primo for comments about the 1960′s arena series. FULL DISCLOSURE AGAIN: Earlier this summer, neither could remember the series and the trips to Dechert, Price and Rhoads. I did not understand this but I accepted it, of course. (In early September, after reading a copy of this anecdote, Al Primo sent an e-mail saying that now he did, in fact, recall the saga. For a while, the writer here was questioning the writer’s own level of senility.)

After the series kill, our “non-story” got around. The whisper campaign assured that the rumor was spread: Channel 3 killed a series that basically said the arena deal was a colossal nightmare and probably precedent-setting. I know I told one particular influential figure who did not keep the story quiet. But it never went public until the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on the lease, and yes, described it with that very word: “lucrative”.

Ironically, this was in connection with my Jerry Wolman scoop.

While the arena was under construction (it opened in the Fall of 1967) or soon thereafter, Jerry Wolman suffered a devastating setback on his major construction project in Chicago, the 100-story skyscraper John Hancock Building. He was prime contractor. The ground sank at the site. It cost him $20 million and started him on the road to bankruptcy.

I found this out, and told the News Director. However, I had just one source, and this source only could speculate that it would have negative implications for the Eagles, the arena and the new hockey team . And the News Director was scared. He feared we would be sued for libel, and KYW-TV would end up paying for the John Hancock Building. I realized the vulnerability, of course. And besides, Jerry Wolman already had reached icon status with his Philadelphia Eagles and it was impossible to know how deep his financial troubles extended.

It took nine months to get my scoop on the air. And I still was first with the story.

I had kept in touch with the Jerry Wolman news in the intervening months, so my source tipped me that Wolman, a Jewish man, was about to do the seemingly unthinkable: he was heading to Kuwait to seek a 43-million-dollar loan. From Arabs!!!! My story did not need to include this tidbit, and didn’t. It was blockbuster without the Mideast problem needlessly overshadowing it.

Because our newsroom knew all about Jerry Wolman’s problems for months, it no longer was a belabored decision to LEAD with the story on the 11 p.m. newscast one Friday night. I know Vince Leonard, newscaster, enjoyed the thrill of delivering the opening line, saying that Philadelphia Eagles owner Jerry Wolman is “on his way” TO TRY TO SAVE HIS FINANCIAL EMPIRE. Then he turned it over to me and I was able to give the total story “live” on camera in by then typical Eyewitness News coverage. In those days Channel 3 news was way ahead of the opposition and enjoyed a much larger audience and therefore higher ratings.

The Wolman story really had come out of the blue, so to speak, as far as the public was concerned. Shortly after I finished, I had a phone call from a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter (City Hall guy the same as I) who desperately wanted help on matching the story. He said his editor was screaming at him for not having it, as though it was some halls-of-City Hall story. I told him it took me nine months to get to tonight, and while I understood his comments, he should not be the least bit ashamed at being scooped, as it was a very long and sometimes frustrating saga. However he did it, he put together a fairly accurate front-page story in the Sunday Inquirer.

This reporter, Don McDonough, in writing follow-up stories years later, having heard my sad tale about the killing of the series, used that word “lucrative” (in print) in including reference to the arena lease more than once.

In November, 1967, with the new arena just opening, Wolman called a news conference to confirm that he was in a financial squeeze. He blamed a tight money market. That never was my understanding.

Now that Jerry Wolman no longer was hands-off insofar as any negative publicity was concerned, the arena lease came in for public review. A lawsuit was filed in United States District Court in effect contending that the taxpayers of Philadelphia had been defrauded. In 1971, U. S. District Judge A. Leon Higginbotham ruled. It might have been one of the first “modern” examples of a judge legislating from the bench. The basic charge was that the Spectrum paid no real estate taxes. But the Judge ruled the arena was situated on city ground that was used for a “public” purpose. Therefore, the City Council lease was legal and proper. The sins were in the terms of the lease.

Some lawyers considered the ruling a stretch. Nonetheless the federal court declared in loud language that a private entity, frankly, could receive sweetheart deals in the creation of public assembly facilities. It really started the ball rolling.

For much of the past 40 years, since Jerry Wolman, taxpayers have opened up their wallets to pay bills for wealthy sports team owners. Philadelphia was first, and Judge Higginbotham served as the legal enabler in a stretch of what public purpose should accrue to the pockets of a private citizen (i.e., Jerry Wolman). People defending Wolman back there in the 1960′s pointed out that Wolman’s own $8 million would pay for the arena. But remember he did not have to pay for the land (valued at perhaps $6 million) and he got that lucrative lease. That word has been a buzz word ever since, especially by those opposing taxpayer financing of public assembly facilities and sports franchises. Example: in a New York Times article on the subject published July 27, 1996, writer Leslie Wayne wrote:

EVEN AS MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR SPORTS PALACES ARE BEING PROPOSED FOR ASSORTED BEARS, BENGALS, HAWKS, VIKINGS AND OTHER PROFESSIONAL TEAMS, A LOT OF PEOPLE IN WASHINGTON WOULD LIKE TO CLAMP DOWN ON LUCRATIVE PUBLIC SUBSIDIES THAT THEY CONTEND DO MUCH MORE TO HELP ALREADY-WEALTHY PROFESSIONAL SPORTS TEAM OWNERS THAN THE COMMUNITIES THAT SUPPORT THE TEAMS.

The article said the controversy over stadium financing dated back to the 1986 Federal Tax Reform Act, which was thought to have eliminated the public subsidies by forcing team owners to finance stadiums with taxable, rather than tax-free, dollars. The effort, however, backfired.

The National Taxpayers Union has written extensively about the “spending spree”. It said that although a casual observer might believe the flood of tax dollars poured into new stadiums sprang from some public mandate, appearances are deceiving. When asked, taxpayers generally oppose spending tax dollars to build stadiums. This margin of disapproval probably would be even higher were it not for extreme pressure from public figures, and the media-fueled belief that bad publicity associated with losing a sports franchise will harm their city’s image.

The Taxpayers Union declares that those who favor stadium subsidies cite a variety of economic and emotional arguments to influence taxpayers. Many of these are disingenuous or are based on inadequate data and the misinterpretation of economic principles. It is safe to say that regardless of what stadium backers claim, taxpayers are not getting the most for their money. So said the taxpayers union.

So the upshot in 1967: Jerry Wolman no longer could afford his first love, the Philadelphia Eagles. I made a half-dozen trips to United States District Court in Baltimore to attend the hearings of the Bankruptcy Referee (starting in April, 1968) that climaxed with Wolman being forced to sell the team to Leonard Tose for $16.1 million, at the time a record price for a professional sports team.

I interviewed both of them (TV sound-on-film) together on the federal courthouse steps a half-hour after the Referee issued his peculiar ruling.

This is perhaps the only somewhat amusing aspect of this whole story, although Jerry Wolman would not agree. What the Referee did that day when Leonard Tose was introduced to the Philadelphia TV audience (yes, we were the only station covering the hearing, so it was an easy exclusive) was presented in the form of a suggestion from the bench.

The Referee said he would approve Wolman retaining the Eagles if Tose would agree to loan him the money which he (Tose) would borrow from the huge First Pennsylvania Bank. I could tell Tose did not like it, but he was powerless to say so in my interview. He came across as Wolman’s best buddy, although Leonard Tose wanted the Eagles late that afternoon as much as Wolman wanted to keep them.

The next morning, I got a call from John Bunting, Chairman and President of First Pennsylvania Bank. He had watched my interview the prior evening and asked me to clarify what I had reported for his legal and financial officers. Imagine that! John Bunting’s office was just a two-block walk from the station and I got there at 10:30 a.m. There were eight people in the room (sorry, ladies, this was the 1960′s; they were all men).

John Bunting started: “Now, John, we appreciate your coming over here to explain your story. I think I heard you clearly, but some of these men didn’t have you on. What you said is that the Federal Referee suggested that we should loan the money to Tose (he paused, I nodded) and he will loan it to Wolman???”

Right. The bankers all shook their heads not unlike that New York lawyer.

Right there, I had my last Jerry Wolman story. He would lose the Eagles.

Some days later, I saw him and asked him about the reporting on his financial difficulties. When he returned from the Middle East without that loan, was he told who reported on his threatened bankruptcy? He said he knew I was the reporter. What I wanted him to know, though: it took me nine months to get the story on the air!

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, with his usual big and winning smile. I was dumbfounded. Why? I asked. And I still don’t know exactly how to understand his answer, no financial wizard I. He said: “You would have saved me alotta money if you reported it when you first knew it.”

Jerry Wolman never got to enjoy his arena. Because he could not afford it, the arena had to be operated under the protection of federal bankruptcy court. Ed Snider, who had been a Vice President of the Eagles and Wolman’s partner, took over the operation of both the arena and the Flyers.

Suffice it to say that Snider became a super mogul and a very, very (emphasis intentional, and School of Journalism guidelines roundly considered) wealthy man. The newly-named Spectrum made great history for Philadelphia sports and entertainment over the years. Snider got all the plums that Jerry Wolman might have enjoyed if that Chicago ground was not so squishy.

A key reason Snider escaped greater scrutiny over the lucrative lease was quick in coming after the Spectrum opened. At a matinee of the Ice Capades in February, 1968 (four months after the opening), as spectators waiting for the show to start watched in amazement, high winds ripped away a 50-by-100 foot section of the Spectrum roof and sent it crashing to the ground outside. This added to the overall arena financial woes, and Snider quickly became a sympathetic figure, shrouding the friendly lease terms.

More than 20 years ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer provided keen perspective into Edward Malcolm Snider.

“I had decided to bring a National Hockey League franchise into Philadelphia”, Snider said. “And to do that, the Spectrum had to be built. We would build the arena with private funds, and the city would get extra revenue without spending a dime. Everyone thought it was a fabulous deal at the time.”

Not everyone, Ed.

“So we started the construction, and Wolman and I ended our partnership. I got the Flyers, he got the Spectrum. When the Spectrum went bankrupt, I stepped in and paid off the debts 100 cents on the dollar.”

In that same era, the President of the Philadelphia Phillies at the time, William Y. Giles, said: “Ed Snider has to rank as one of the most successful and imaginative sports entrepreneurs ever. With the exception of the O’Malley family and the Dodgers, I cannot think of anyone else who has made a lot of money on a sports franchise. Most people make their money somewhere else, then buy a team.”

Another stretch.

In “Ballpark Boondoggle”, a summary of the public funding of arenas and stadiums by the National Taxpayer Union, the largesse given to sports franchise owners is described at length. The article points out that not all businesses can get away with what sports franchises do. If Wal-Mart and Home Depot depended on taxpayer subsidies to meet payroll, they would not be in existence very long. Taxpayers would rebel at this type of corporate welfare and Wall Street would devalue the company’s stock.

“Professional sports franchises are different,” says the National Taxpayer Union. “Because they are closely identified with the cities where they play and are frequently mentioned in the media, sports teams hold a special place in the fabric of many American cities.”

The origin of largesse for the owners and operators of sports and public assembly facilities clearly originated in the City Council of Philadelphia in the mid 1960′s.

City Council did not want Harry Ferleger to testify. The impact of this has been multiplied into millions and millions of taxpayer dollars. City and other public financial people (at the state and federal levels) do not want to conduct serious and accurate analyses of how much public money has been wasted (funneled into the deep pockets of wealthy sports franchise owners) due to the tremendous public relations and taxpayer backlash that would occur.

The taxpayers are left with having a good (or bad) cry.

Actually, the Spectrum will not be able to fulfill all of its obligations over 50 years, the lease term. This year, it was announced that the now-named Wachovia Spectrum, “the city’s oldest major professional sports venue”, will be demolished next spring to make way for a proposed hotel, retail and entertainment complex.

“This has been one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make,” Snider said. “The Spectrum is my baby.”

Need we mention that the new project, known as “Philly Live!”, will be built on city-owned land?

So, what was that New York lawyer up to? Why was the Eyewitness News arena series killed, and killed so abruptly, without even the suggestion of a re-write, perhaps?

Fifteen months after the lawyer went back to Group W headquarters in New York, I came to work one morning and was told that “MacDonald” wanted to see me.

MacDonald was Kenneth T. MacDonald, KYW-TV Vice President and General Manager, who had replaced Fred Walker.

The newsroom was abuzz about why Pierron, a reporter, was being called into the big (and new) boss’ office. Most unusual.

I went from the Eyewitness News newsroom on the second floor to the executive offices on the third floor, somewhat fearful, but telling myself that I soon would know the why.

He obviously knew his summons was unusual. “Come in, John. No problem!!” he assured me.

He explained that the station, the previous evening, had hosted its annual sales staff – clients’ cocktail party. Advertising and broadcast executives from New York and Washington came to Philadelphia to rub elbows and mutually thank each other for the high Channel 3 ratings.

I do not remember whom MacDonald referenced. He did identify the fellow from the Group W offices in New York.

“John, he asked me: WHAT EVER BECAME OF THAT REPORTER WHO HAD YOUR ARENA SERIES?” said Ken MacDonald.

He was unfamiliar with the whole saga, and wanted me to add the final details.

What Kenneth T. MacDonald told me, though, rather turned my stomach.

He asked the New York broadcast executive to explain. Remember this was at the annual Channel 3 sales department cocktail party.

The New Yorker said that it more or less had been an amusing story around the Group W headquarters that the lawyer had been instructed to go down to Philadelphia, and kill the series, whatever the hell it was. He was told not to bother to come back to New York if he didn’t.

Ken MacDonald was all ears. (And it was nice of him to think I should know about it, more than a year later.)

The New Yorker said there were five executives at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in Pittsburgh who were working confidentially to combine to buy the Philadelphia Eagles.

The Pittsburgh men were acting as private citizens, and knew Jerry Wolman was having money troubles. The team could not be purchased by a corporation, but some of its officers could do so on their own.

The Jerry Wolman financial situation presumably was a known quantity in both New York and Pittsburgh. Looking back, this was not difficult to believe, as former Philadelphia Mayor Richardson Dilworth was representing Wolman in seeking big loans from New York banks (which they did not obtain).

MacDonald said the Pittsburgh executives feared that any news series about Jerry Wolman would spoil their secret efforts to own an NFL franchise.

Said bluntly: electric company executives engaged in private activity for their own personal gain had tampered with a news story in the company’s broadcast division.

My bosses obviously wanted to keep their jobs, so the sequel to the series also went unreported. Until now.

Middle School Career Day May, 2007

Ennis Manns, Principal of the Edwn H. Vare Middle School, Philadelphia, PA … asked me to talk to some of his seventh, eighth and ninth grade (middle school) students Thursday, May 10, 2007. It was Career Day at Vare. Allow me a bit of humor in the following remarks when I refer to the school as Ennis Manns Middle School.

Here is what I said to the young people of Vare Middle School:

Thursday, May 10, 2007
Edwin H. Vare Middle School
24th Street and Snyder Avenue
Philadelphia, PA

Last September, most…. if not all of you ……….. made a decision. You decided you should go back to school. You might have thought ……….. “I have to go back to school.” ………………. (You might not have been happy about it. Or you MIGHT HAVE BEEN.) ………….. The situation this morning is….. YOU’RE STILL HERE.

And whether you LIKE SCHOOL or don’t like school…. down deep…. inside… when you think about it…. you most likely realize: YOU BELONG IN SCHOOL.

Is school tough? Yes. Sometimes. If you wish to excel in life, you must confront school head-on. It is a grind. School was a grind when I attended. It is a grind today. School always has been a grind.

You NEED to go to school. And…. you need to STAY IN SCHOOL.

So it is a pleasure to be with you this morning at Ennis Manns Middle School!

Now, as part of Career Day here at Ennis Manns Middle School, I will tell you about myself. You will hear that I have had three jobs in my life (three “careers”), each fun….and rewarding. What you may find surprising is that ……..at AGE 73…. I am still working and also launching my fourth career. I don’t HAVE to work… but it’s just continued to work out that way.

(Don’t think that you may have to work until you’re 73…but also know… if you do …. it will be because you LIKE the job.)

However, while I will talk about myself, I first need to talk about YOU.

YOU ….. as an INDIVIDUAL. One person in this classroom.

YOU are the important consideration today. And YOU are the one who needs to make an important decision today . . . . . . even though you don’t have to DO ANYTHING about it right today.

I want to show you the photograph of a little boy. His name is Kevin Pierron.
(Photo)

He is my GREAT GRANDSON. He is a very nice boy.

He lives with me. Yes, he lives in my home in Philadelphia.

His lives with me….because his Daddy…. my grandson…. decided when he was in the ninth grade…. that he didn’t like school. Not only did he not like school…. he started SKIPPING SCHOOL. He started neglecting his homework. He fell behind. He got disgusted about himself. And about life.

And then……….. SURPRISE !!! He quit school.

In the ninth grade.

Over the next few years, my grandson tried to learn about computers ………………… how they work and …………. how you can put a series of them into a network. And he has made some progress. But he is still looking for his first good job. And he has to continue to look ……… and look…. because employers at all levels of work are seeking EDUCATED job candidates. Whatever it is you do, you need to do … and be …… YOUR BEST. You need to be educated.

DO YOUR BEST at WHATEVER JOB you get.

So, about my grandson ……. In the midst of this period after he quit school, he had a girl friend. And nearly three years ago, they became the parents of Kevin.

Neither my grandson nor his girlfriend was able to SUPPORT Kevin. It takes MONEY. They were teenagers who thought everything would just be so easy, so “duckey”, and they would have so much fun being parents. ………….. (They would not listen to others who told them how important it is to get a good education. And to finish school.)

No, it just didn’t turn out so easy. It doesn’t turn out that way.

If you quit on your education, and become a Mommy or a Daddy at a young age, you are suddenly trying to lift a TRAIN LOCOMOTIVE to get through life. It doesn’t matter how strong you think you are: you cannot lift a train locomotive.
My grandson was trying to do that.

And then he and his girlfriend broke up . . . . . . after they had pledged themselves to each other ……….. FOREVER. ……… They no longer are a couple. ………. They had no means and no money to take care of Kevin.

This happens all over Philadelphia. All over America. All over the world.

WHY? It is relatively SIMPLE. Mommy and Daddy thought it would be DIFFERENT in their case. They could DO IT…….IT WOULD BE SO WONDERFUL to be parents….. to have a child. They knew more about it than the older folks in their families.

Teenage Mommies and Daddies (such as has been Kevin’s parental situation) ……. are going to fumble every single time.

Not almost always. Every single time.

And what did my grandson and his girlfriend do ???

Well, the question REALLY is: WHAT DIDN’T THEY DO ???

They did NOT STAY IN SCHOOL.

So, now, at age 73, I ………. Kevin’s GREAT GRANDFATHER…. am the one who plays basketball, and baseball, and football and golf …. with Kevin.

___________________________

When he was a young teenager, I tried to tell my grandson how important it was to go to school. I told him how I had made up my mind….at a very young age….that I was going to try to get the best grades. I told him how I NEVER cut a class……. I NEVER skipped school. Some of my classmates over the years thought cutting classes and skipping school was COOL.

I just did not agree. What I said (to my grandson) went in one ear and out the other. Ask yourself: is that happening to you this morning? You are listening to me with deaf ears?

__________________________________

Before I finished college, I got a job…. at age 19…. at a small radio station in Missouri. In four years, I was the station’s manager.

During that period, I was graduated from the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri. The school was the FIRST JOURNALISM school in the nation…. it was started 99 years ago.

It was a terrific school. And I got high grades. Unlike some of the other students, you wouldn’t find me drinking beer at two o’clock in the morning. And I never cut a class in college, either.

After graduation, I went to a radio and television station in Des Moines (????? what state ?????)….and after five years, my work there led to my move to Philadelphia. Channel 3 and what eventually became “Eyewitness News” ….. where I worked eight years. I was a street reporter ….. newscaster …….. investigative reporter.

________________________________________

I had great teachers…. both in college …. and in radio and television.

I learned how important it is to speak well…. to speak clearly. And I learned the tricks of speech. For example, I was taught not to say the word PARTICIPATE; instead, TAKE PART.

I was taught not to try to say PAR TIC U LAR LY.

It is much easier to say ESPECIALLY.

I was taught the difference between the word LIE and the word LAY. You lay a book on a table. You LIE DOWN AND REST. It has been my experience that perhaps 90% of the doctors and nurses I have met…. have asked me to LAY down….. so they could examine me.

I am a public annoyance, frankly. I usually tell the nurses and doctors that they have used the wrong word. They should have asked me to LIE DOWN.

___________________________________________

I was taught the difference between FARTHER and FURTHER.

To win the NFL’s Punt, Pass and Kick Contest, you have to throw the football FARTHER than anybody else.

If you want to know more about the football contest, you can look into the matter FURTHER.

Said simply: FARTHER means distance; FURTHER means EXTENT.

__________________________________________

When you answer the phone, do you, as a boy, when somebody asks for you….. do you say “This is him” ………. or …. if you are a girl…. do you say “This is her”. To be grammatically correct….you say: “This is he” or “This is she”.

And what about the difference between “I” and “me”? You boys who watch football on TV might have heard John Madden describe a pass: “The quarterback threw that right between he and the defender.” (The “he” in the sentence referred to, most likely, is a receiver on the quarterback’s team.)

John Madden is wrong every time he says it. He should say “between the defender and him.”

How do you know what is correct? (STAY IN SCHOOL…and you’ll find out.)

_________________________________________

I was taught proper grammar. And spelling. I was taught so well that I now know how badly many of today’s speakers SPEAK, especially those on the air….on your TV screen. And too often, I see where television people behind the scenes do not know how to spell.

And they don’t know their history…… the history of this country, and the history of the world. This is very important to be able to handle all kinds of life issues as you become an adult.

It is so important that you learn how to speak. And how to spell. Your ability to speak well….. and to spell words…. demonstrates not only for others….. but for YOURSELF….. that it is SO IMPORTANT TO BE EDUCATED.

TO BE EDUCATED….. YOU MUST STAY IN SCHOOL.

You must pay attention to your teachers. Get to school on time. Attend all your classes. Attend school every day the school is open for you.

_____________________________________

I was very busy during my 18 years in broadcasting. Perhaps my most significant TV work here in Philadelphia came more than 40 years ago… during one two-month period. I appeared three times on the Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC. In those days, the newscast was watched by 36-million people, so that’s a big audience to speak to.

(Ironically, there were more viewers for that newscast than …. today …. for ALL of the viewers for NBC, CBS and ABC combined for their 6:30 national newscasts …..).

________________________________________

A reporter experiences a thousand stories, a thousand incidents. I once attended a news conference with former President Harry Truman.

I shook hands with former President Dwight Eisenhower on his 73rd birthday and (for NBC) I covered the speech he made that night.

I was assigned by Channel 3 to President John Kennedy’s Philadelphia appearance just one month before Dallas.

In 1964 …….. yes….. this was 43 years ago!!!! ………… I interviewed Richard Nixon, then the former Vice President, a year after he lost the 1962 race for Governor of California.

And in 1975, after I had left Channel 3, for the only time in my life, I shook hands with a sitting President, Gerald Ford, who died four months ago at the age of 93.

My work at Channel 3 led to an invitation from the incoming Mayor of Philadelphia, Frank Rizzo, to be the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Civic Center. At the Civic Center, I was the boss of 200 employees. I was in that job for eight years …. all the time Frank Rizzo was Mayor.

That was a great job. Being the boss of 200 employees is not unlike being the boss of 20 or 2,000. You must have leadership qualities. You must be able to “lead” people ….. to manage them…….. to direct them. If you cannot do it, your shortcomings will reveal themselves quickly. You won’t stay in the job very long.

At the end of the two terms of Mayor Rizzo, I helped to start a business that is still operating 27 years later. Included in this operation is a travel agency which also conducts day trip and overnight tours. During those 27 years, we acquired five motorcoaches. We had to hire travel agents for the travel agency, drivers for the motorcoaches.

I’ll tell you a little secret. Don’t let this get around. One of our travel agents was a young fellow by the name of Ennis Manns.

Your Principal. This was before he became famous.

_______________________

Whether at the Civic Center or at the travel agency, the challenges are the same: you must lead, you must perform, you must be ready at all times to handle problems and emergencies. You must be able to “think” on the spot and act accordingly.

Only experience in life …………. and a proper education….. will enable you to make the correct decisions.

And yes, the way you speak…and the way you WRITE …. in your job ….. and in your life ……… is critical to your success. Whether you are one of the employees….or the boss…. you must be able to present yourself effectively. Said another way: YOU HAVE TO BE “ON THE BALL”.

You can demonstrate “leadership qualities” even if you are not the boss. The boss is looking for people who can produce work, who are reliable …. who are intelligent …. who show up for work on time….. do not call in sick every time they get a sniffle …. and who are on the ball….. and who are “educated”.

____________________________

Let me speak for just a moment about “MISTAKES”.

When you do not get an “A” grade, implicit is the likelihood that you were not perfect; you made a mistake or two in completing your assignment. A “mistake” never should be so great a problem for you that you lose confidence in yourself. You try to do better…and work harder…. the next time.

Because “MISTAKES” are part of life. I see “mistakes” every day. Sad to say, many I see are due to a person’s lack of education. What I see clearly allows me to tell you: there is great opportunity for YOU after you complete school. So many employers are looking for EDUCATED employees. And I assure you…. once you have that nice job you want…. you can…. from time to time…. make mistakes.

(Just don’t make too many of them, and don’t make the same mistakes over and over.)

___________________________

I am sorry to have to tell you but some of you are not going to make it. It is not because you are stupid. But it IS BECAUSE you are not smart. You did not pay attention in school. You did not get to school on time. You missed homework assignments. You stayed up so late at night, you were too sleepy the next day to pay attention. You let your friends drag you down. You did not have the “guts” to tell your friends you had to get home and get to sleep…because you had school the next day. And school is more important than your friends.

Wait a minute: Did I just say that ? Yes you heard right. School is more important than your friends! And more important than TV shows.

Oh, please forgive me. I should not have said that! At your age now, there is no way you will agree with me: School is more important than your friends. But do me a favor and write that down. School is more important than your friends.
And then put the piece of paper you wrote that on….. someplace where you know where it is. Because…. 10 years from now… I want you to re-read the statement and see if you have a different opinion of my statement….than you do today.
______________________________

If you cannot dig it, you will fail. Failure never pays off. Failure becomes a statistic. Failure becomes a life sickness. Do you want to just become another of the thousands of statistics in Philadelphia?

Why do I say that some of you in this class won’t make it in life??? Because that’s what the percentages say. I hope you prove me wrong. ……….. The news is filled today… with losers. Guys and gals who could not dig it. Who did not show up on time. Who let their friends dictate their lives. Who showed up late or cut their classes in school.

The losers are weak. They are weak people. They did not grab their lives in their hands and decide to succeed.

Because y’see, success is easily within reach …. if you have a plan for your life. At your age right now, you can make that decision I told you about. You can decide to stay in school.

Yes, I know you won’t remember much of what’s being said here at the Ennis Manns Middle School Career Day. That is understandable and normal. (Your teachers may give you a quiz on what you heard today from the various speakers so pay attention to today’s speakers!)

___________________________________

But you will make me very happy….. if you walk out of school today and remember ONE THING YOU HEARD FROM ME. It is so important; at your young age, it just may not be sinking in. But I hope so.

I hope you will show up every day …….. on time ….. And I hope you….get a great education and become a leader. The world is waiting for leaders. The world is waiting for YOU.

How do you do it ? Throughout MIDDLE school……….. HIGH school…. college……….. you stick with it. You do your homework. You don’t just dig it. You dig in.

You stay in school. Thank you for your kind attention. ####

The above remarks were made before four of the Vare Middle School classes. You might have seen a reference above to my “fourth” career. As an unexpected feature at the close of each talk, I looked to the hallway and welcomed into the classroom ONE MASTER KEVIN PIERRON. Each time, on cue, Kevin ran to my arms and said “Hi” to the school children (on one occasion, he was bashful and said nothing). I admit to considerable bias, but he was terrific.

Santa Claus and the Philadelphia Eagles

One of the legends of the Philadelphia Eagles football team was the day fans threw snowballs at Santa Claus. Its origin, however, has been roundly misreported. I have thought about this frequently, as the story recurs every year. At age 73, I think it is past time for me to clarify the errors attached to the legend. I had an accidental but not insignifant part in the origin.

So here goes.

It was Sunday, December 15, 1968. It was the last Eagles home game of a (for them) dismal season. I was working as substitute Sunday night newscaster for KYW-TV, Channel 3, Philadelphia. The well-known and highly popular weekend newscaster until that summer, Harry K. Smith, had retired and given me as his legacy a very high Sunday night audience. It was my job to handle the last four months or so of the year and not mess things up until a replacement for Harry was free of his contract in Atlanta.

The Eagles were not popular in our newsroom that year. The assignment editor, Bill Dean, would give me a 100-foot film can each Friday when the Eagles had a home game. Bill would instruct me: “Give this to (the film cameraman of the weekend) and tell him to just shoot the touchdowns.” Everybody would laugh. But the mission statement was clear: don’t waste film on the Eagles.

One can of film, 100 feet, was fewer than three minutes worth of run time. But we just needed a good 20 seconds for the 11 p.m. newscast. And not very much was expected of the Eagles that year. That was the final year of Joe Kuharich as coach. That summer, on the shore beaches, the small plane streamers had proclaimed “Joe Must Go.”

I do not remember the name of the cameraman. In those days, it was normal to hire a free-lancer for the weekends, which served low budget newscasts. The cameraman would work eight hours Saturday and eight hours Sunday, and you would hope there would be some news worth airing. It was silent film only; no sound. The cameraman probably was NOT Denny Bossone but I do not remember. I asked his son, Larry, another Channel 3 news cameraman, if his Dad ever had mentioned taking pictures of Santa Claus at an Eagles game. Larry said he could not recall, but that his Dad kept a library in his garage of discarded film, and the Santa Claus clips could have been there. However, he said the whole garage load of Denny Bossone film work subsequently was sold to a New York film company. And Larry added that he thought his Dad was full-time in 1968.

Some years later, I read a newspaper story that said thousands of feet of KYW-TV newsfilm had been given to Temple University. So is it there??

Anyhow, in the late afternoon that Sunday, I went to the editing room with the film editor to review the film shot that day. When it came to the Eagles 100 feet of film, we did a double-take. We saw Santa Claus walking down the track at Franklin Field waving energetically to the fans in the stands. He was a jolly old soul but could not have expected what he suddenly was confronting, made possible by the snowstorm the day before.

In those days, the film came in “negative” form; the reverse polarity occurred when the film was projected for the TV screen. This was film of yesteryear: black and white, not color. But the scene was unmistakable. Those were snowballs flying past Santa Claus.

There weren’t that many but Santa went into double trot and quickly finished his on-field season’s greetings. So much for the cheerful half-time show. By checking the rest of the film with the brief play action we had, we could tell this occurred at half-time. I don’t recall if the cameraman captured any touchdowns, but the Eagles lost.

In those days, the newscast at 11 p.m. ran a half-hour. I was alone in the newsroom all evening except for the copy boy, who would continually check the news wires. Sundays are slow news days generally; we relied on national and international news and the newsmaker from “Meet The Press”. We covered the complete weather in not more than two minutes on Sundays, unlike the obsesssion with the subject the rest of the week, continuing even to today.

When the NBC-TV show ended at 10:59 p.m., I came on and gave a few headlines as was routine, and ended with: “AND TODAY SOME EAGLES FANS THREW SNOWBALLS AT SANTA CLAUS. Details with film coming up next.”

When it came time for the sports news, I gave the Eagles story straight but then went to the snowballs film. I could tell from the reaction of the studio crew that this was a grabber. It was a rather bizarre incident, and when you saw Santa Claus vigorously waving and then being forced to duck, you had immediately sympathy for Old St. Nick.

The next day, at the station, especially in the newsroom, snowballs and Santa Claus were about the only discussion. Vince Leonard, the regular Number One newscaster, made sure the Santa film was re-run during the Monday evening casts. And later in the week, Jim Leaming, sportscaster, ran it twice as a rueful analysis of the Eagles sorry season.

I know it ran at least four times that week (after Sunday night). It was only maybe 20 seconds long so it was easy to repeat.

When you do an unusual news story, it is common to check other media to see how they handled it (if they did). We knew Monday that nobody but KYW-TV had film of the snowballs and Santa Claus. I was a bit puzzled to read only one mention of the incident in the Monday newspapers. Frank Dolson, Inquirer columnist, made reference to it in about the seventh paragraph of his sad treatise on the windup home game.

I really thought we had a bit of an odd scoop, especially with the film. I believe my fellow news people in the Channel 3 newsroom agreed, based on their replays of the yarn during the week. For the most part, the incident otherwise was viewed as a non-story.

I should point out that Harry K. Smith had a huge ratings advantage on his weekend newscasts, and for as much as we could compare, the ratings for the four months I did the newscast sustained their weekly lead. During the week, Channel 3 had a decided ratings lead in news. In the late 1960′s, before “Action News” at Channel 6 surpassed us in the early 1970′s, the City Hall reporter from Channel 6 would say: “We (Channel 6) clean the transmitter when you come on at six o’clock.” Regretfully, it did not continue that way for a period of years in the 1970′s. Action News became Number One in the ratings.

But this was long after a few Eagles fans threw snowballs at Santa Claus and thousands saw the whole “legacy” that night.

Wow! It’s Going to be Colder Tomorrow!!!

Unfortunately for the viewing public everywhere, not just in the Philadelphia area, weather “news” has overwhelmed the typical TV newscasts today more than ever.

Back in the 1960′s, this writer was a member of the Channel 3 “Eyewitness News” team.   We were the first of the “Eyewitness News” shops.  News Director Al Primo is credited with launching it.

As part of the new Eyewitness News, Channel 3 built a new studio/newsroom set.  It likely was the first time a television newsroom actually was in the studio.  More about this below.  If you are a senior citizen, you probably saw this studio in your youth.  This was where Ernie Kovacs did his network show.

Last night, on the 11 p.m. news (I usually watch my former station, Channel 3), the news had not been on for long when the “weather girl” was introduced.  Forgive the sexism but the “weather girl” has been a TV news staple since Trudy Haynes did the weather on TV news in Detroit.   Trudy moved to Channel 3, Philadelphia, not as a weather girl, but rather a reporter.

The television bosses don’t want to read items like this,  but rest assured or at least informed:  they want the babes doing the weather.   It is assumed you know why.   This is not a sexist statement but I think you also have noticed there are a lot more news bunnies today.  Some people will say that’s a good thing.  I would prefer that if they must be of the feminine gender, they ought to be able to show the professionalism of, say, Marge Pala, of Channel 3.   I think the high number of females in TV news has enabled the continuing softening of “hard news”, and I believe the station executives prefer it that way.   Some day I will have a lot more to say about this on thishere blog as this is nothing directly personal ”against” the women of today in TV news.   In large part, they are unable to fulfill a full commitment to journalism not due to their gender, but rather the policies of their bosses.   But this yarn is about….. lessee….oh yeah….the local weather!!

Last night, what was the reason the weather bunny was on almost at the start of the newscast?   It was to get 20 degrees colder “tomorrow”, i.e.,  Sunday (today, as I write this).  My, my, as I write this in the early afternoon, the temperature is 31 degrees.  The low today was 23.  The weather lady more or less suggested by her tone and commentary that weather terror was just ahead (“tomorrow”).   It may go below 20 tonight.  My, has that ever happened before???

It should be pointed out here that it would be the same reporting and emphasis situation if all the weather reporters on TV were men:   their bosses still would use weather as a major news item, even with a sprinkle of rain.  This is because most broadcasting executives are not journalists and want to stay as far away from journalism as they can. 

This also is because TV stations have conducted research of news viewers like you.  They have asked, in effect, why do you turn on the news?  To my chagrin, a most prominent response is to get the weather.   I would have preferred that you tuned in to find out the latest news.  But nowadays, it seems they mostly cover the “safe” stuff like fires and murders.  Their investigative pieces not infrequently are stings… or setups… such as the recent Channel 10 series catching pedophiles.   There are alot of murders in Philadelphia, and Mayor Street says he is concerned about that. 

But anyway, about that newsroom in a studio.  Back in the 1960s’, the Channel 3 sportscaster was Jim Leaming, who sat right behind me in the four tiers of news desks.  Jim was in the last row, I in the third tier.

Whenever I was doing a “cut in” on the six o’clock news, I would be seated at my desk, with Jim behind me.  We were part of the wide shots’ ambience during the newscast. 

Down below us, Bill Kuster would be doing the weather in the weather set portion of the floor level where the newscasters stood in front of a high table (where the late Ernie Kovacs once performed).

It was Jim’s almost nightly routine to whisper to me while Bill Kuster was on.   “Hey John!”

“Hey John!”.   I would turn around and Jim would say:  “Call WE 6-1212″.   And we would laugh.

The first time he had done this, I had asked him why.   

He replied:  “You can find out what he’s (Bill Kuster) talking about in 30 seconds.” WE 6-1212 was the phone number to get the weather forecast.
Now the phone company charges for this service.  I would not be surprised if the reason for the charges in part was because TV and radio people complained that the phone company was competing with them.

It would frustrate Jim that so much time was devoted to the weather, and so little to his sports.   You couldn’t cover the sports in 30 seconds, but frankly, you could take care of the weather with the 30-second forecast. 

When he first started at Channel 3, he was working two blocks down the street at Radio Station WIP where he did the late afternoon sports amidst a disc jockey show.  After his last radio broadcast, he would walk to KYW-TV and do the sports at 6:25 p.m., just before the Huntley-Brinkley Report.

After doing the radio sports in the afternoon, he had most of the sports news in his head, so he didn’t require alot of preparation for his little two-minute bit on TV. 

But this is my point:  most times, the newsroom’s assignment editor would not give Jim a crew so as to film a sports story earlier in the day.  

In other words, even in the 1960′s, the emphasis was to give nearly 10 minutes to the weather, two minutes for sports.  They didn’t want to give sports more time so why waste time and money on film stories that would mean you would have to take time away from the weathercaster.  

  
In a major sports town with major and minor pro sports and five major colleges, two minutes was ridiculous.  (Alas, sometimes even today the sports on the local TV news is a blip.)

Subsequently, Jim Leaming fought for more air time and sometimes got it.  He even got film crews.  One day, he asked me to “sub” for him and go down to the Spectrum (this was 1969)  and interview the new kid on the Flyers who, the night before, had scored his first NHL goal.   I never forgot that interview with Bobby Clarke.  I came back to the studio with the film and Jim came in and asked:  how long is the interview?  I replied it’s one minute and 23 seconds; three questions.   Said Jim:  I’ll use it all.  And he did.

That evening, Jim told the Channel 3 viewers this 19-year-old kid is going to be a big star.

Of course, Jim was right.

I was sad to hear of Jim’s death a few years ago.  I do not have to tell anybody who knew him:   Jim was a gem. 

His material, if he had been given the time, would have been better than one of those Bermuda highs.

As a postscript to all of this, all three local (network-affiliated) stations with early evening Sunday news led with the weather this evening.   I submit this is pathetic.   DANGEROUSLY COLD said Channel 3.   Channel 6 used the wind chill factor to say that it feels like 11 degrees.

Lemme see, now.   Doesn’t it get cold in the winter?

Nowadays, weather has become the lead story on many occasions, both summer and winter and even spring and autumn.  Hot and cold.  It is at the expense of good television journalism.

I submit to you that you are living a dull life if you pay attention to those Bermuda highs.