The Best Job I Ever Had

The summer of 1993 I made the move to Western Kentucky to become the news director at WPSD.  The station was and still is owned by the Paxton family, which also owns the Paducah Sun and a several other newspapers scattered around the southern parts of the United States.

The station was located in a small city but covered a massive geographic region.  Our signal reached into three other states besides Kentucky.  We covered Northwest Tennessee, Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois.  The station had always promoted from within.  My arrival represented a shift in the approach the Paxton's had to doing business.

Coming into the job I inherited a Vice President of News who wanted nothing to do with the running of the newsroom.  Tom Butler was WPSD at the time.  He wanted to anchor the noon news and 5 p.m. and make sure that certain standards of journalism were followed.  He was a great mentor and a valuable resource in learning how to navigate the politics at the station.

I was lucky to have a veteran staff around me that had a passion for good story telling.  I worked at getting them better resources (which included the first ever newsroom computers) and making them feel that they had ownership in the product we were producing.  We made tremendous strides and were headed in a positive direction despite impediments put on us by the owners in terms of coverage.

WPSD by all rights should be the number 1 station in this split market which includes a CBS station in Cape Girardeau, Missouri and Marion, Illinois.  But the Paxton's lacked the will to put the resources into winning over the viewers in Southern Illinois.  Parochialism ruled the day in our coverage efforts.  They didn't want to hear it from their friends at the country club that WPSD was covering too much news across the river.

I loved what I was doing.  I loved the people I was meeting and the friends that I made in my short time in Paducah.  The highlight came in the winter of 1994 when a massive ice storm followed by a big snow fell on January 16 and 17 in 1994.  It paralyzed the region and left poor Tom Butler stranded at home as his Cadillac was ill-equipped for the conditions.  I ended up running into work and took to the airwaves at 6 a.m. in my running clothes.  Fortunately my weatherman Lew Jetton made the walk into work and we proceeded to make it up as long as we could.  For the next month I couldn't go anywhere in Paducah without being recognized.

The other high point was working with the kids at St. Mary's High School.  I helped John Durbin coach the cross country and track team.  The school was filled with motivated runners and I'd like to think thanks to my input John was able to lead his teams to the first ever state championships for the school.  John and those kids, Brent, Will, Jason and Laura, will always have a very special place in my heart.

I served an all too short eight months at WPSD.  It was a deeply personal decision to leave, but I needed to steer my life in a different direction.  What happened to me during my time there was life changing.  The people I met there and had the privilege to work with I cherish to this day.  Doug Harnice, Andrea Underwood, Mike Spissinger, Ron Beaton, Cathy Crecelius, are just a few of the folks at the station who made me feel at home.  But most importantly there was Lew Jetton, who along with Cathy, let me into their circle, inviting me to go along to a Steely Dan concert in Nashville when I had just arrived.  I never felt more welcome by a community and most importantly a station.

WPSD sets itself apart with an annual locally produced telethon it produces every year.  My lone "Telethon of the Stars" I volunteered to run Chyron in the production truck, which I think confounded the other management team which used the telethon to party like crazy.  It endeared me to the production staff and the other regular folk that worked at the station.  And it gave me a chance to see my weekend weatherman play guitar.  Lew's gotten a lot better over the years.  I think you'll agree.

The Power of Revolution

Mubarack is out and the great unknown not only faces Egypt but the Arab world as well.  Some experts want to look at the Iranian revolution as a guidepost to what's happened in Egypt.  Conservative commentators are blaming President Obama for not doing more to save Mubarack.  They see this as the opening gambit in some great Muslim revolution that will sweep across the Middle East and eventually the rest of the world.

I'm not so sure about that.   I think this is more akin to what happened when the Berlin Wall fell.  What happened on the streets of Cairo could spread across the Middle East just like the events in Berlin spread across Eastern Europe.  If I were the King of Jordan or Saudi Arabia or even Syria's President Assad, I'd be plenty worried.  But I think the fallout will be more like what we saw when the Soviet Empire fell apart than what we happened when the Ayatollah's took control of Iran. 

Doubtless Islamic radicals will try to take advantage of this regime change.  It doesn't bode well for Israel when its only Arab "friend" is dealing with a revolution.  But I don't think the Arab world wants war.  I think they want democracy or something as close as they can get to it.  Unfortunately I don't think Egypt is going to see great reform or anything close to freedom as we know it in the United States.  I suspect some form of strong man rule will eventually take hold there.  Regardless, revolution is in the air and the next two to three weeks could prove very profound.

Anticipation

Readers of this blog know that my musical tastes are pretty well defined.  The Beatles, Dylan, Bruce, Neil and the Dead have been my constant companions for the better part of my life.  Since young adulthood I reluctantly let very few "new" artists infiltrate my musical sphere.  My reason is largely based on the economics of an ever-expanding collection of CD's.  Once I like an artist I buy everything they put out and even the stuff they don't put out.

Eight years ago I went to a Neil Young concert in West Palm Beach, Florida where he kicked off his American tour of the epic "Greendale."  Neil's opening act was a woman singer/songwriter who I had heard of but had never given a listen to.  In 45 minutes Lucinda Williams knocked me out. 

This was just one of the great tunes she performed that night from the album which bares the same name, "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road". She is truly one of the great songwriters that gets very little credit, much like John Hiatt.  Give it a listen or better still listen to one of her other fabulous discs called "Essence."  She's an amazing talent.  Her new album "Blessed" comes out next month and since I rarely write about female artists I thought I should give her a plug.

RITFW

I needed some new ammunition for my Zen so I brought with me from Fort Myers an old CD to add to my music collection.  Because of a recent guitar session with one of photographers Damien Espinoza, I grabbed Neil Young's "Freedom" from the storage cabinet and stuck it in my bag.

Today I finally ripped the tunes from the disc and decided to take some time to listen to the album.  I probably hadn't really given it a good listen in a decade or so.  It brought back a flood of memories.  Given the context of the times when this album came out, it truly is a masterpiece.

Neil had been putting out a lot of pedestrian material through much of the 1980's.  He zig-zagged his way through the decade bouncing from computer music, to country, to rockabilly, and even a big band.  Each album had moments, but none of them delivered, that is until 1989's "Freedom."

The first time I listened to it was on a disc player on headsets while sitting in the back of a minivan driving to St. George, Utah.  The music tore right through my head and my heart, from the epic "Rock in the Free World," to the gritty "No More," to his offbeat cover of "Broadway" and the now classic "Wrecking Ball."  It's a monster album.  It was so good I went out and bought the guitar book for it even though at the time I didn't play the guitar.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew it would come in handy and it took a few years but it did.

"Freedom" heralded a trio of epic studio albums over the next three years.  The unvarnished "Ragged Glory" followed in 1990.  A stunning live album "Arc/Weld" followed in 91 and for many fans the crown jewel came with 92's "Harvest Moon."  From 1980 to 1988 Young's music was uneven at best so it's impossible to fully explain how he could suddenly find his form and create such four incredible albums.  It mirrors to some extent Bob Dylan's lost decade which started in 1986 with the forgettable "Knocked Out Loaded" and ended in 1997 with the his re-emergence thanks to Daniel Lanois and his masterpiece "Time Out of Mind."

Neil's had some epic television performances, especially his Saturday Night Live appearance in 89 when he played "RITFW" and a mind blowing version of "No More."  But I remember having the hairs on my arms stand up when I watched him live on MTV in 1992 when he delivered this gem with Pearl Jam.

By the way, give "Mirror Ball" a listen. Neil and Pearl Jam together were nothing less than amazing.

The Other Shoe Drops

I don't always like it when I'm right.  I was right in June 2005 when I told Patrick Knorr and the Simons family that it would take five to seven years for them to make KTKA a break even operation.  They laughed and shook their heads.  Patrick planned to have the station turning a profit.  I was dumb enough to believe that he could do it.

I wasn't too dumb to stick around to witness the inevitable.  Today KTKA was sold to the company that also owns KSNT in Topeka.  It was a combination of things that led to the station's demise.  What hurt the most was the economic downturn which none of us could have predicted and the demise of newspapers. 

KTKA could have worked if the Simons had been prepared to bleed money for five years.  I could see after five months they had no idea of what it would take to win or at least make money, and I started planning my exit.  They were too worried about tower cams rather than whether we had a working live truck or access to feeds from CNN and ABC News One.  The cuts started coming about six months after I left and never stopped.

I feel bad for the handful of holdovers that I brought to KTKA.  They're good, hardworking, television professionals.  I hope KSNT holds onto a few of them, but in this cut throat business, one never knows.  I also feel bad for the Simons.  They care about northeast Kansas and had a wonderful vision for building a great multi-media empire.  Unfortunately they couldn't see past the elephant in the room; the printing press and all that ink.

Before the Flood

June 1991 I took my first news director's job at KSNT TV in Topeka, Kansas.  I had reached a career goal by becoming a news director before age 34.  Those close to me know how tumultuous my personal life was during this period but when I started particular job I was in a very good place indeed.

My first weekend in the position and historic Hoch Auditorium burned to the ground at K.U.  What a way to start the job.  Six weeks into the job I fired my first employee.  A young man who decided that a cut away of kids waving and smiling was appropriate footage at the scene of a car wreck.  Several years later I saw him on ABC in a story about high living in Las Vegas.  He was working as a butler, go figure.

Perry Chester was my first general manager and he did his best to teach me what it takes to run a television station.  I only had 18 months to learn from him because he took off for a better job in the Quad Cities.  We were on a belt tightening rampage and he forced me to lay off beloved anchor Ron Harbaugh.  I wanted to quit.  Harbaugh was a good anchor who was a real leader in the newsroom.  I decided that if Harbaugh was being jettison than the co-anchor should go too.  I don't think poor Chris Gallagher understood what was happening.  I also shuffled the weather department around until we hired Bill Spencer who was one of the great meteorologists I've ever worked with.

The anchor changes were tough and my first pairing of Art Navarro with Helen Neill never jelled.  Topeka wasn't ready for an Hispanic anchor.  Fortunately when Gary Sotir came aboard as GM the first thing he suggested was bringing back Harbaugh.  He took the words right out of my mouth. 

Gary was a very strange man who I never understood until the end of my tenure.  But he had scared me to the point that by the spring of 1993 I was frantically looking for another job.  Gary liked to come and sit on a stool in the newsroom and just watch what was going on.  I would be sitting in my office and wondering what in the hell is he doing?  It wasn't until the very end that he wasn't spying on us, Gary was just bored.  But by the time I had gotten used to his style I had a job offer from the NBC affiliate in Paducah, Kentucky.

It had come just after the most trying period in terms of work I probably ever experienced.  The summer of 1993 brought the greatest flooding in the modern history of the Midwest.  It was a Saturday morning in mid July and I had come in early to prepare a half hour special on the flooding threatening Manhattan.  Around noon my Chief Met Bill Spencer came in and said we were in for a major night of severe weather.  When the weekend weatherman came in at 2 p.m. and saw Bill in the weather office he came to me to complain about getting big footed.  I fired him on the spot. 

It only got crazier.  The storms began rolling in around 7 p.m., horrendous thunderstorms with tornadoes and torrential rains.  I called in a couple of extra bodies and we covered the heck out of this monster storm.  I remember making a beer run for the crew as a reward for a great 10 p.m. effort and reporter Rick Blum called from the Shawnee County Office of Emergency Management.  It wasn't good.  The sheriff was worried that a levee about five miles from the station was weakening and could collapse flooding a massive part of the valley.

Little did we know that already upstream between St. Mary and Wamego the Kansas River would flood massive sections of farm land.  Sheriff Dave Meneley came out to the station to show me the situation with maps in hand.  I called the chief engineer into work at 1 a.m.  Gary was in El Paso and out of reach.  We had to decided whether to sandbag the station in anticipation of a levee breach. 

At about 2 a.m. I decided to go forward with sandbagging operations.  I had to threaten the state emergency management officials within an inch of their lives for the much needed sand and sand bags.  My retort to their initial refusal was, who do I tell at the Associated Press made the decision to let our station flood during this time of great emergency. 

We called in all of our employees and our sports department called the local high school football coaches.  By 5 a.m. we had sand and sand bags along with plenty of football players and we were working like crazy to build a three foot high wall around the station and our transmitter building.  The work was finished by about two in the afternoon on a sweltering out July Sunday afternoon.  I had been awake for 36 hours and of course the levee never broke.  But our coverage through the rest of the month of the flooding that did hit much of the area was outstanding.

I hated leaving Topeka when I did, but some much needed lessons in life awaited me in Paducah.

Just About Worn Out

I've been MIA because of a quick trip back to sunny Southwest Florida.  I took the red eye back to Fort Myers last Friday which is always a waste because I can never sleep on the jump to Atlanta.  I could have slept most of Saturday away.

The Czarina was desperate for me to visit Fort Myers because she had some Christmas gift cards to restaurants she was dying to use.  One was for a swanky joint on 5th Avenue in Naples.  If you ever make it to Naples you'll understand.  We managed to blow through that 100 dollars with only one cocktail for the Czarina.

I had forgotten how much I could sweat.  Running in Florida is a completely different experience from Sacramento.  My running hat is still drying out from my daily runs.  The Czarina noted that I've packed on a few pounds since St. George and that's when I remarked that she looked like a penguin waddling down the trail.  That didn't go over very well.  I don't understand why women are so sensitive when it comes to issues of weight and age.

The trip wasn't nearly long enough, but I did manage to mow the yard and trim the hedges.  There's no telling how much longer we'll have to endure this enforced separation.  We're both hanging in there and with grand baby number two on the way in April, the Czarina has a trip to her homeland to keep her occupied. 

My trip back to Sacramento was a seven hour grind that took me back through Minneapolis.  The single digit temperatures served as a quick reminder as to why we left Fargo.  Then the flight itself was an adventure with mechanical problems delaying our departure and then a passenger having some sort of seizure which I thought would force us to make a emergency landing somewhere in the frozen Midwest.  Fortunately a doctor on board quickly addressed the issue. 

At least I didn't have to sit next to the weirdo who was carrying a dog in a satchel.  What is it now with idiots carrying pocket dogs onto planes without having them in cages.  Why in the hell do airlines allow this?  Can't wait for someone to get bit!

Don't even get me started on the 12 hour day I put in at work on my first day back.  It's amazing that we can be back to an almost full staff yet we're still short of bodies.  At least one of the other manager's took pity on me and I won't be producing next week, unless of course someone calls in sick!