May 9, 2023 • 50 mins
EPISODE 197: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The United States of America is under attack by armed right-wing terrorists. The Texas Mall Shooter and every other one bent on killing the enemies living in their own mind might as well be Suicide Bombers, might as well be ISIS. The receipts on the Texas Mall Shooter are a mile long; he was a right wing media addict, he dedicated a hate-filled online rant to the terrorist “Libs Of Tik Tok” twitter account, he posted screenshots from the right-wing troll Tim Pool, a swastika tattoo covered those parts of his body not covered by an SS tattoo, he signed one comment with the name Adolf Hitler, he repeatedly posed in NAZI uniforms, he used a meme that suggested there were only two routes for Latino children: identify as black or become a white supremacist, and his pedigree as a right-wing, MAGA-inspired, neo-Nazi, perpetrator of stochastic terrorism, fueled by every component of Donald Trump and his coalition of hate, could not possibly be more easily discovered, more rapidly verified, more thoroughly self-convicting… and the right completely denies any of it is true.
I do not know what we do about the people in a society who deny any fact that does not serve them. Only once before was the nation faced with a third or more of its citizens believing in things that were did not true and did not exist, and that was before and during the Civil War.
It sounds like madness to ask WHEN we need to consider an Executive Order declaring a State of National Emergency about right-wing terrorism but look at Allen, Texas and imagine the dozens and hundreds and thousands of Mauricio Garcias out there, becoming literally connected to the Proud Boys and a just-slightly-more-evil version of CPAC or MAGA or another Trump front group and then ask yourself what other means EXIST for us to stop a pervasive nation-wide violent suicidal reality-denying cult that looks ahead to November 5th, 2024, and sees opportunity.
B-Block (15:25) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Tucker Carlson's first heavy-hitter, Conservative icon ally in his newly-launched war against Fox is BRETT FAVRE? Was he wearing pants? Junior Trump has never heard of Nick Fuentes? MSNBC took WHOSE money? (18:27) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: One of the great New York newscasters, John Roland, has died at the age of 81. By itself, his career is worthy of remembrance. But to me he in part defines my youth: when I was 19 I was an intern in his newsroom, as I witnessed for the first time the bloody transition from a mandarin of anchors, Bill Jorgensen, to Roland. It's an amazing story from an amazing newscast best remembered for the words with which it began: It's 10 PM. Do you know where your children are?
C-Block (37:30) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS, PART 2: The thing is, to get my one college credit for spending the summer of 1978 working on Channel 5's "The 10 O'Clock News" and a half-hour nightly prototype of SportsCenter called "SportsPage" (with the man who a year later would anchor the first-ever episode OF SportsCenter), I had to write a very long, very blunt paper on my experience. I thought only my supervisor at Channel 5 and my professor would see it. Then, she liked it so much she made 100 copies and distributed it to her staff. Suddenly everybody knew which reporter all the producers called "Ted Baxter" and which talent drank so much that he'd be dead within five years. I still have the paper: I'll read you the highlights.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The
United States of America is under attack by armed right
(00:25):
wing terrorists. The Texas Mall Shooter and every other one
of them bent on killing the enemies living inside their
own minds might as well be suicide bombers, might as
well be isis. The receipts on the Texas Mall shooter
are a mile long. He was a right wing media addict.
He dedicated a hate filled online rant to the appallingly
(00:49):
dangerous libs of TikTok twitter account. He posted screenshots from
the right wing troll Tim Poole. A swastika tattoo covered
those parts of his body not covered by an SS tattoo.
He signed one comment with the name Adolf Hitler. He
repeatedly posed in Nazi uniforms. He used a meme that
suggested there were only two roots for Latino children identify
(01:12):
as black or become a white supremacist. And his pedigree
as a right wing MAGA inspired neo Nazi perpetrator of
stochastic terrorism fueled by every component of Donald Trump and
his coalition of hate could not possibly be more easily
discovered more rapidly verified more thoroughly self convicting, and the
(01:35):
right wing is claiming it is all fake and cy
ops and false flags, and he can't be a white supremacist,
he must be with the Mexican drug cartels because his
name is Mauricio Garcia. And you can't be Latino or
have anything except pasty white skin to be a Nazi
or a white supremacist. And not one of them has
(01:56):
made the tiny intellectual leap from proud Boy leader Enrique
Terario's conviction last week or the neo Nazi white supremacist Nickes.
And I do not know what we do about the
people in a society who deny every fact that does
not serve them. Trump was not the first American to
(02:19):
act this way. He was merely the one who popped
the top of the genie's bottle. Denial and confirmation bias
and rationalizations of the most amazing complexity and effectiveness are
older than the nation itself. But now we have what
twenty percent of the country, thirty percent of the country,
(02:40):
counting those who can turn the rejection of reality on
and off depending on the risk to their fantasy existence.
Forty percent of the country who have reached that Orwellian
point of believing it when the party tells them two
and two make five, to the degree that when you
reference that magical math and you reference or Well, they
(03:01):
will look at you blankly and claim that what you
are doing is Orwellian. I do not know what to
do with them. I do not know how to deprogram them,
or even deprogram enough of them, or even some of them.
(03:23):
I do not know how to begin to suggest how
to do that when the infrastructure that encourages, supports, and
backstops their utter delusions has been built slowly but consistently
for forty years, when that infrastructure is not just unfettered,
(03:45):
but growing even more, and the national government that could
have used these last two years in power to push
back in a thousand small ways just assumed everything would
go back to normal and has all but ignored the
reality that there are manifold men mental health crises in
this country, but the foremost of them is that some
(04:09):
huge percentage of the citizenry is no longer connected in
any way to the reality around them. The Saturday massacre
in Allen, Texas was a right wing terrorist attack, and
those who helped foster it in this creature Garcia and
(04:30):
those who benefited from it divide into two groups, and
two groups only the ones who genuinely believe. He couldn't
have been right wing, He couldn't have been a white supremacist.
He must have been sent by the government agency of
your paranoid choice. He was with the cartels. He would
(04:52):
not have been stopped if we had some control over
assault weapons. It wasn't terrorism, it's not their problem. That's
one group, and the other group is those who don't
really believe any of that, but they say they do
just to influence the others. There was a guy, this
fringe ex actor, I believe his name is Sorbo, who
(05:14):
asserted yesterday that there are no assault weapons, that they
do not exist. We have had people like this in
this country for two and a half centuries. We have
had people like this in this world since we gained
(05:37):
the power of speech. Usually they come in smaller units
like Jim Jones and the People's Temple, or the various
political terrorist groups that demonized specific minority groups throughout our history.
But once before the nation was faced with this situation
where a third or more of its citizens believed in
(05:59):
things that were not true and did not exist, and
that happened before and during the Civil War, And despite
decades of pleading about morals and about monetary realities of agriculture,
and about the indefensibility of owning another human being, and
then years of warnings about what the disparity of the
(06:23):
economies of the North and the South meant, what they
meant was the inevitable outcome of a shooting war. They
began a shooting war anyway, on the premise that the
equations of manpower and production and money were not true,
could not be true, would never be true, and six
hundred thousand Americans died as a result of that. The
(06:48):
United States of America is under attacked by right wing terrorists.
They are not yet fully organized nor coordinated, but they
have countless largely still ad hoc private or nearly private
communication methods. They have access to two hundred dred million
guns or three hundred million guns, or god knows how
many million guns with a capacity to self delude, that
(07:13):
could send shooter after shooter into places like Allen premium outlets,
convinced that they could kill as many as they wanted
and escape alive and elude pursuit forever and become lionized
by right wing media, and they have a superstructure of
influencers and pundits and what are essentially teachers who hone
(07:35):
in them the ability to deny that anything they do
could possibly be wrong. And every day we hesitate to
act against them. Every day our leaders like Chuck Schumer
reveal that their next big response will be a Senate
Democratic caucus to discuss gun violence and the path forward
(08:00):
on gun safety legislation, when there is no such path anymore,
when that is their next response, rather than a slew
of executive orders pulling as many guns out of the
hands of the right wing terrorists as we have time
left to pull, and pulling the communications networks out of
the hands of the right wing terrorists, and pulling the
(08:22):
right wing terrorists out of the country. Every day we
hesitate our ability to defend ourselves against the inevitable day
when they actually organize their terror becomes weaker and weaker
and weaker, and ultimately will become nonexistent. It sounds like
(08:44):
madness to ask when we need to consider an executive
order declaring a state of national emergency because of right
wing terrorism. But look at Allen Texas and the denial
that followed it. And imagine the dozens and the hundreds
(09:06):
and the thousands of Mauricio Garcias out there becoming literally
connected to the Proud Boys or a just slightly more
evil version of Seapack or MAGA or another Trump front
terrorist group, And then ask yourself what other means exist
for us to stop a pervasive, nationwide, violent, suicidal, reality
(09:34):
denying cult that is looking ahead to November fifth, twenty
twenty four and seeing nothing but opportunity still ahead on
(10:00):
this edition of Countdown. So, when Tucker Carlson promised to
reveal where all the bodies are buried at Fox promised
to bring out the heavy hitters to bully Fox into
letting him go to some other outlet somewhere, the first
heavy hitter he meant was Frett Farve, Frett Farv retweeting
(10:21):
Megan Kelly, that's your opening blast. Brett Farv is a
political TV conservative heavy hitter. Was he wearing pants at least?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (10:34):
The President hosts Kevin McCarthy today to say some words
about the debt ceiling. The President's words may include the
validity of public debts clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, followed
by Kevin Surprise buddy. And meanwhile, yes, a quarter of
a million dollars in ads to pressure Biden to cave
to McCarthy are appearing on cable news, including on I
(10:59):
can barely say it. They really did it. They really
sold these guys time to pressure Biden. And it was
my late friend near Norman Lloyd, who lived to be
one hundred and six, and he said, yes, Keith, all
those funerals I go to, they're depressing and they're wrenching.
And on the other hand, he said, if I have
to go to them, I'm still glad that I'm not
(11:19):
the one who's required to stay after the funeral is over.
The problem with being even in your sixties is the
figures of your teens and your twenties are exiting with
horrifying rapidity. The young upcoming news anchor I saw in
a drama that played out when I was a nineteen
year old TV intern has died. The story of John Roland,
(11:43):
Bill Jorgensen, the publication of the internship paper I had
to write for college credit for that summer, and the
famous praise that preceded our newscast every night, it's ten PM.
Do you know where your children are. That's next. This
is countdown.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
You know, this is countdown with you know Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Okay, I'm messing around with the format today postscripts to
the news. Next and the passing of a broadcasting great
who I worked with when I was nineteen years old
and wrote about first time for the daily round up
of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens
who constitute today's worst persons in the world. The Bronze
(12:43):
to the fine folks at my alma mater MSNBC. And
know you were not hallucinating that commercial you saw on
MSNBC insisting that President Biden should cut the Social Safety
Net and gut every government agency because Kevin McCarthy told
him to. That was not some sort of clerical error.
It is a spot produced by a group aligned with
(13:03):
the Pitiful Speaker Macarthy. He called American Action Network, and
that network spent a quarter of million dollars to put
the ads on CNN and ms The CNN part is understandable,
that's probably the first commercial they've sold this year. But
the other part, yes, MSNBC also took the money from
a conservative pack trying to pressure the democratic president of
(13:26):
the United States and put it on a supposedly liberal
network because MSNBC is like CNN, drowning the runner up.
Brett Farv, the disgraced former NFL quarterback, has publicly come
out to defend Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly. He has
retweeted the screeching fascist Kelly's blasting of Fox for, you know,
(13:50):
having the audacity to pay Carlson the thirty million dollars
it owes him. Farv added quote, I'm with Tucker. Time
to boycott Fox until they come to their senses and
let the man speak. So let's see, that's advertise sportscasting
and football as industries that mystify Brett Farb And we
(14:10):
can now add contract law owen Dick picks. We can
add Dick picks. Brett doesn't really understand Dick Picks. But
the winner, the impossibly stupid Junior Trump, speaking for all
the fascists, pushing the line that Alan Texas mall shooter
Mauricio Garcia could not have been a white supremacist because
(14:32):
his name was Mauricio Garcia, ignoring folks like Nick Fuentes
and Enrique Tario, ignoring the mean Garcia posted showing the
only two roots he believed Latino youth have identify as
black or become a white supremacist, ignoring that the hate
that Junior and his father and their cult members spread
(14:54):
is color blind, ignoring all that Junior has written. Quote,
maybe the Mexican national with cartel tats identifies as a
white supremacist, and there we must totally go along with
that narrative. Genius. Plus, remember Donald Trump, Junior, you identify
as a human being, Trump Junior, Today's worse person in
(15:22):
the world. Postscripts to the news some headlines, some updates,
some snarks, some predictions. Dateline North, Miami, Florida. John Rowland,
(15:44):
news anchor at Channel five in New York from nineteen
sixty nine through two thousand and four, died Sunday at
the age of eighty one. I was an intern in
his newsroom when I was nineteen years old, and lately
I had been thinking a lot about that newsroom and
about him, and about the extraordinary array of characters in
that place. When the sad news came about John Roland.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
It's ten pm. Do you know where your children are?
Speaker 1 (16:23):
That's the place the ten o'clock news on Channel five
in New York. It's ten pm. Do you know where
your children are? Or, as it was frequently mocked, it's
ten pm. Do you know what time it is? The
summer I was there, and I split time working on
the news assignment desk and for the sportscaster, the legendary
(16:45):
Bill Mazer. That summer was the time when the newscast
on Channel five here in New York evolved or went backwards,
from a gritty, bareed knuckled, sometimes way too violent, groundbreaking broadcast,
something a little gentler, but still innovative and compelling, just
not you know, shocking every night. The original anchor of
(17:06):
the news was Bill Jorgensen, with his shock of white
hair and his attitude that was like something out of
the movie The Front Page. I'm going to tell you
the news now, and you're gonna listen. And if you
don't want to do it, what are you gonna do
about it? Watch one of those laughing clowns on Channel eleven,
Why I Ought to Pound You. In nineteen sixty seven,
Channel five, which was then owned by the Metromedia Company
(17:27):
and is now owned by Fox, did something unheard of.
Not only did it put on an hour of news
every night. It did so in prime time at ten
o'clock up against the network shows. It did not offer
a rerun or its own local comedy or drama or something.
It did a newscast, and Jorgensen was its centerpiece. He
(17:51):
signed off each program by saying, thanking you for your
time this time till next time. There was no fluff,
there were no features. There was a sportscaster, there was
a movie and play reviewer. There was a weatherman. There
was an anchor, two or three sub anchors, and there
were a dozen reporters sitting at their actual desks in
the actual grubby little newsroom on the second floor of
(18:13):
two hundred and five East sixty seventh Street, Jazz past
Third Avenue in New York. And I walked in in
June of nineteen seventy eight just as they decided that
one of the sub anchors, John Roland, the man who
just died, should start to take over as the main
guy from Bill Jorgensen. John Rowland was from Pittsburgh, but
(18:34):
he had been in LA four years and he was
California cool. I saw him leave his office for the
studio one night in a great three piece suit, or
more correctly two thirds of a three piece suit jacket,
vest and cut off jeans. He must have registered my surprise.
You're gonna make it in this business, he said to me.
Of course he said that to everybody, But just remember,
(18:57):
never take a job where they make you stand up
from behind the anchor desk. Anyway, just before I got there,
Channel five Fat Jorgensen's main sub anchor a man named
George Sharman, and they and Jorgenson agreed that it was
a good time for Jorgensen to take a sabbatical for
a couple of months. He and his wife got into
(19:18):
a motor home and they drove west. And one morning,
not long after my arrival at the internship part of
the assignment desk at Channel five, Bill Jorgenson phoned in
collect from somewhere outside Kansas City, Missouri, and I took
the call, and once again, his voice was so booming,
so urgent, that there sounded like there was no reason
for him to need a phone. If I just opened
(19:41):
the window, I could have heard him from Kansas City.
Bill Jorgenson did not tell me the details of the
problem he had encountered, but he sounded particularly for him
frantic At his request, I transferred him into the news
director's office, and minutes later, out came the news director,
Mark Monsky. We understood he was the only New York
(20:02):
TV news director licensed to carry a gun, and my
new colleagues explained to me that that was because everybody
in the newsroom had thought about killing him. At least once.
Mark Monsky shouted, hey, everybody. Jargonson and his wife were
having breakfast in some diner near Kansas City. While they
were eating, somebody stole their RV and the newsroom erupted
(20:25):
in applause. When it died down, somebody muttered, I hope
everybody here is an ALBI, and only a couple of
people laughed. They began to ease John Roland into Jorgenson's job,
and so that summer was the beginning of an uneasy
transition that ended the next spring. I was told by
my main contact there, a wonderful man named Stanley Pinsley,
(20:48):
who said he was not being my friend, he was
just investing in the time in the future when he
expected I'd be able to hire him at a network.
That by the end of that transition, Bill Jorgensen was
kind of, you know, destabilized by things the way anchormen
sometimes can be, and as a sign of how well
he thought he was taking his slow replacement by John Rowland,
(21:10):
Bill Jorgenson thought it might be funny to show up
in the newsroom carrying a giant box with dynamite written
on the side and saying, if I'm going to go,
I'm gonna take all you bastards with me. But I
never confirmed that story, and honestly, how are you going
to do that? I do know that. A couple of
months later Bill wound up over on Channel eleven and
seemed fine. He anchored there for eight years and they
(21:33):
had a priceless ad campaign for him that began it's
ten pm. Do you know where Bill Jorgenson is? Anyway?
There was a kid next to me on the assignment desk,
another intern, who asked me what kind of course credit
I was getting from Cornell for my summer at Channel five.
And this was a nine to five thing or three
(21:54):
to eleven, five days a week, Suit and tie. Get
on the phone and call the victim's brother and ask
him when the funeral is kind of job? It was work,
And I said I'm getting one hour of credit, and
he laughed at me, and he said, bad luck Penn
State's giving me thirteen. I used to think internships were
(22:14):
the greatest thing in the world for people who wanted
to get into TV or radio, news or sports, even unpaid,
even slave wages, and I used to recommend them. I
have mixed emotions now, after forty five years of slowly
realizing that, you know, g whiz, A lot of people
who have that ambition actually can't afford to go three months,
even at the age of nineteen, without a paycheck. I
(22:35):
mean I had to commute to the job from the
suburbs and all things considered with dry cleaning and everything
else for my suits. For my suits, I probably paid
one thousand dollars over the summer in expenses, to be fair,
between what I learned about TV and the business and
who I met there and who I still know from
there and the contacts they gave me. I was repaid
(22:58):
a thousandfold, but that would not have meant much. If
it had meant that in the summer of nineteen seventy eight,
I didn't have any you know, food or housing. For
my one credit at Cornell, I had to write a
paper about my experience twenty pages minimum. If I recall
correctly and submit it to my professor and to my
supervisor at Channel five. And I still have it, although
(23:21):
one page is missing. And the reason I still have
it is in large part because one day my friend
Stanley Pinsley called me at Cornell in the fall of
my senior year, after my internship had ended, and said,
what did you do? You committed career suicide and your
career hasn't even started yet. I was utterly mystified why
(23:42):
whatever he was talking about, and I told him so
he said, my supervisor, the newsroom comptroller, Christine Tomlinson, had
made one hundred copies of my internship paper and distributed
it to everybody at Channel five News. I had not
anticipated this. I had written freely and openly, include mentioning
(24:05):
which on air person was referred to by all the
producers as Ted Baxter, and which one was apparently having
an affair that his wife didn't know about, and which
one was drinking so heavily that it would kill him.
Not five years later. I called Christine Tomlinson up the
next day and she said, well, yes, I should have
warned you, but you know, last year New York Magazine
(24:26):
did a huge, long story about us five or six pages,
and your paper was better, and it was so much
more interesting than that. Everybody loved it, everybody except Ted Baxter.
I found the New York magazine piece about the Channel
five ten o'clock news recently. It was written by, of
all people, Jeff Greenfield, the same Jeff Greenfield of CNN
(24:49):
and ABC and CBS, twenty four years after he wrote
his piece on Channel five News in nineteen seventy seven.
Twenty four years later, Jeff would have his own nightly
show on CNN, and I wound up being his backup post.
But back to the late Roland, I should mention that
late in my internship there was a night where the
sportscaster Bill Mazer was going to be off and the
(25:11):
regular backup was out of town and his backup was
out of town, and a couple of people, including the
sports producer Cliff Gelb, wanted to put me on at
age nineteen, having never been on television before, and they
tried to get grassroots support for this in the newsroom,
and they went to John Roland, and John Roland looked
at them and then he looked at me and he said,
h sounds great. If they agree let me know. I'll
(25:34):
teach you how to use the teleprompter. Keith. Well, they
didn't agree, but thank you, John, and I think this
is an appropriate time to read you some of that
internship paper that I referenced. I'm going to do it
out of order, because the fun stuff, the anecdotes of
being in a New York City TV newsroom in nineteen
seventy eight, we're in the last few pages, and the
(25:57):
behind the scenes process stuff, which is interesting but not
quite as that interesting. That was all at the beginning,
so it is just in even though I wrote it
in like September nineteen seventy eight vignettes isolated recollections of
a summer at WAWTV New York on the Friday edition
(26:21):
of Sports Page. I was assigned a myriad of tasks,
ranging from keeping the UPI wire updated, to listening to
a Crackley radio in the back of the room for
a ballgame, to watching both the title fight and the
New York Apples tennis match on the TV. The newsroom
was more interested in the fight, obviously enough, why did
you just switch the channel? Sports Page producer Norman Ross queried,
(26:45):
I'm supposed to get the apples score, Norman. I want
to watch the fight, Keith, but you told me to
get the score. Norman. It's not easy doing all these
things at once. I mean, I've got to get this score.
I gotta watch the wire, I gotta watch the fight.
I gotta listen to the radio all at once. I
didn't do all this for my health, you know. Well,
thank God for you, he said again. I'm working sports
(27:08):
and standing at the back of the room, paying off
the Casey's Kitchens delivery boy. Food in hand. I start
munching on an overpriced cheeseburger, and I see the small
presence of the assignment editor, Steve Anderson, marching towards me.
Out he thrusts a sheet of paper. Make me twenty
copies of this please. In the blink of an eye,
(27:28):
I detect the presence of three news interns lounging around
the assignment desk. And remember, I'm doing sports, Steve. I
just got my dinner and all, since you do have
three of your own interns back at the desk, could
I do it after I eat? He just stared blankly
at me. It was as if I had told him
I had shot his mother. He barely said six words
(27:50):
to me the rest of the summer PostScript. Steve Anderson
was fired at summer's end because he didn't get along
well with most staffers. I'm working reception, seated at the
front desk with a large scale phone in front of me.
Out of his office steps the Director of News, Mark bvs. Monsky,
(28:11):
the boss again. I'm eating two slices, two monstrous slices
of Sicilian pizza from the world's greatest pizza parlor, Venice
Pizza on Third Avenue, and that's a plug. Monsky just
stares at me. He is five feet eight if he's lucky,
and yet he looks like the jolly green giant. My
(28:31):
good God, he bellows. The newsroom goes silent. Look at this.
If I had this much food, I'd have to swim
an extra forty minutes every night. God love you. I'm
sorting mail, barely noticing the various names as I stuff letters, cards,
and flyers in the mailboxes. At the door of the newsroom,
(28:53):
suddenly a slew of whatever happened to postcards a promotional
attempt to draw viewer interest in the latest Channel five
news future. I look at them. Whatever happened to Charlie
Chan movies. The next one, hey, whatever became of the
Charlie Chan movies? The next one after that, whatever happened
to the guy who played Charlie Chan werner Oland? And
(29:15):
the last one Charlie Chan again. I'm working reception. When
you work reception, you rarely notice anyone entering the newsroom
from the door at the left of your desk. This
time you notice, could you tell me where Roger Higgle?
Is not an extraordinary question, not from a normal person,
(29:36):
from a six foot two inch man in a pink
and white rabbit suit, though it is an extraordinary question.
His female colleague, shorter but nonetheless similarly dressed, wiggled her
whiskers at me. I let my head fall straight forward
and hit the desk in front of me once more.
I'm at the reception desk. Line three three, five buzzes.
(29:59):
That's reporter Gabe Pressman's private phone. It must be important,
mister Pressman's office. In perfect secretarial tone, how much is it?
The woman at the other end of the line asks, pause,
how much is what, ma'am? The record, the candidly elvis
record you were just advertising? How much is it, ma'am?
(30:19):
You have the news department Okay, how much is it?
You don't understand. We don't sell candidly Elvis records here.
This is a news operation. Oh you don't sell candidly
Elvis albums. No, ma'am. Pause, Then what do you sell?
(30:42):
She had me there, the news director's assistant, Sherry Edell,
and I are talking about the nutty phone calls we get.
See previous example. I once got a call from Jimmy
the Greek Snyder. She noted, Really, I said, didn't know
what to call him? Do you say, mister the Greek?
I'm back at reception. All the good things happen at reception.
(31:06):
A woman calls repeatedly for Stuart Kleine, the reviewer and humorist.
He is never in during her calls, always there in
between them. Finally, she goes beyond a simple message, listen,
can I ask you a personal question about Stu? Well?
I don't see why not. I don't know him all
that well, but I'll try my best. Okay, about Stu,
(31:27):
she asked cautiously, I may be going out with him tonight. Yeah, Well,
have you ever again, she paused, hesitantly, have you ever
seen a wedding ring on his finger? I'm at the
news desk. It's ten to ten minutes before the show
goes on the air. The phone rings. News This is Jorgenson,
(31:54):
announces the voice of God, or at least the voice
of the show's anchor. Bill Jorgensen tell the production people
there's a stuck elevator. They'd better walk up to the
studio or they'll I'll never make it in time. Yes, sir, goodbye. Click.
I raced to the production desk. Bill Jorgensen just called.
He says, there's a stuck elevator, and the associate director
(32:18):
looked up at me, hopefully, Is Jorgensen on it? No,
I say he damn. I have more about the Channel
five newsroom from my internship paper from nineteen seventy eight,
including the man who is still on television in New
(32:39):
York who they all called Ted Baxter and did not
know it until he read what I had written about it.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Next, it's ten pm. Do you know where your children are?
Speaker 1 (33:06):
The ten o'clock news opening from Channel five in New
York in the summer of nineteen seventy eight, when I
was an intern there, splitting my time between the sports
department and sportscaster Bill Maser and the news department and
the incoming news anchor John Roland, who was slowly replacing
the outgoing news anchor Bill Jorgensen. John Rowland, as I mentioned,
(33:27):
died Sunday at the age of eighty one, and he
was always very nice to be. There was a lengthy
internship paper. I thought it was only twenty six or
twenty seven pages. I see the ones in front of
me reading up to like thirty two. Let me finish
with a few more anecdotes that were included in the paper.
I think they're worth your time. Marvin Scott Stanley Pinsley's
(33:48):
Ted Baxter is just back from on assignment in New Jersey,
honoring the infamous famous Amos proprietor of the cookie fortune
making industry. His chocolate chip models are unbelievable, and despite
his fame, he has kept his business offices in laughable
piseic they give him a day, he gives correspondent Scott
a crate of just baked cookies. Hi, guys, Scott yells
(34:13):
to producer Gary Kay and associate producer Frank Chaffey. Look
what I got. Kay and Choffe materialize at the door
of the room where Scott stands. The cookies. Twenty three
of twenty four packages are immediately gone. One remains. It
is on Marvin's desk. Gary kay actual name Gary Krackow,
(34:37):
a huge bearded man without a smidgeon of tact is
on a hunt for more cookies. He and Choffey finally
spot the last bag. They race Marvin Scott to his
own desk. Crackow grabs the bag of cookies, puts it
in one fist, raises it high above his head, squeezes it,
(35:00):
and all the cookies disgorge themselves into Gary Krackou's mouth.
No fare you, guys, says Marvin Scott. The newsroom's reliance
on the Casey's Kitchen's delivery service was incredible. There would
have been no semblance of nutrition had it not been
for their intrepid staff of incompetence marching up the stairs
(35:24):
five to fifteen times a day. This day I call
out for lunch. I bellow the customary, anyone for Case's,
Case's anybody, and I am instructed to order two regular
coffees and a diet coke. I dial the number Casey's.
Can I have a vanilla shake? Two cheeseburgers, fries diet coke,
two regular coffees. This is the newsroom at Channel five. Sorry,
(35:48):
the guy just quit. What the delivery boy just quit?
We set him up there an hour ago with a
turkey sandwich for Danny Meanan. We haven't seen him since
it was his first day on the job. I guess
he couldn't take Channel five. I said, naturally, it can
(36:09):
do that to you. This is from a sub chapter
of the paper called Fun with Norman, Cliff, Bill and Lee.
They were the participants in a program called Sports Page.
This is nineteen seventy eight, and they decided to put
on a half an hour sportscast at eleven o'clock every night.
This anticipated by one year ESPN's Sports Center. It did
(36:33):
not go well in the ratings, but there were a
lot of factors that made that almost to certainty that
it would not do well. And the irony of all
ironies is that Bill Maser's co anchor on this show,
on which I interned, was named Leigh Leonard, and he
was the first Sports Center host, the man who signed
ESPN on to television a year later in nineteen seventy nine.
(36:55):
Fun with Norman, Cliff, Bill and Lee. My responsibilities on
Sports Page were, to say the least very I monitored
the United presid International Sports Wire and culled its contents,
a task that enabled me to do an excellent imitation
of a thermal teletype printer. From four PM on, it
(37:15):
was my responsibility to watch the wire for stories that
might be used on the show, label each of the
three copies of each story, sort each into its proper sport,
and make sure the two anchorman writers Maser and Lee
Leonard got the stories they needed. I worked not only
with Gelb, but with the other associate producer, Marlene Phillips,
and the producer director Norman ross Cliff assigned me the
(37:39):
task of researching and writing the bumper teases, graphics superimpositions
that were aired for about thirty seconds just before each
of the three commercial breaks during the show. Some were
previews of upcoming features, others, as Norman favored, previews of
the availability of city golf courses the next day or
of the upcoming ballgames in the area. Marlene gave me
(38:00):
the thrilling task of typing the rundowns for each show,
the list of items and approximate times, plus which sportscaster
was to read which story for Norman. I tried a
little initiative. The first show I felt missed several important
national stories that Norman simply wasn't aware of. He generally
made up the rundowns off the top of his head.
(38:21):
For the last four days, I voluntarily prepared and presented
him with my list of suggested UPI stories that he
could choose from. By Friday, when I was delayed in
giving him the list on time, Norman was demanding its
delivery and inquiring as to its whereabouts. From Bill and Lee,
the anchors, I was assigned the responsibility of keeping them
up to date on the scores. This very often meant
(38:44):
racing up the two flights of stairs to the studios
with a scribbled score or two. This proved much more
successful than the hit and miss system of Channel five's
inefficient intercom system. Things were going smoothly until Wednesday. I
came in at four as usual, went to the office
and encountered a short, curly haired individual with the first
(39:04):
combination Long Island and Virginia accent I'd ever heard. This
was Michael Berg, the sports intern. In our first conversation,
I discovered he had no intention of a career in
sportscasting as I did, and really was not that hot
on his internship. I fumed. I was there temporarily only
till Michael Berg showed up, and he didn't even want
(39:25):
the job. I went to see Hanita Hirsch, who was
in charge of all internships at Channel five, hoping perseverance
and fortuitous timing would match up with fate. It did not. Finally,
Cliff Gelb came up with a compromise beautiful in its simplicity. Mike,
who had a smattering of experience in news, would alternate
(39:46):
with me between news and sports during the off periods.
The unlucky intern would work news. I was so delighted
I volunteered to take the first two week shift on
news starting on Monday. The plan met with both Christine
Tomlinson's and Nita Hirsch's approval, and Mike and I became friends.
Swarts Page became a success from an interns viewpoint, with
(40:07):
plenty to do and a lot of coordination between the
staff and the recruits. Unfortunately, the program was not a
success from a television viewpoint. Competing with a heavyweight title
fight for local baseball broadcasts and the NBA Championship game,
the experimental series was a ratings failure and the show
was not accepted as a regular feature, so it was
(40:29):
back to news for a while. News and sports. The
typical news day began either at nine am or three pm.
The early shift was probably more rewarding. Not only did
I get to see the news build up from next
to nothing to the scope required to fill an hour
show and fill it well, but I got none of
(40:49):
that sense of coming in halfway through a mystery movie
that always ensued when working the evening shift. There were drawbacks,
of course, as in rush hour traffic. I can remember
one dynamite day of delays on the Penn Central Line
that turned my crowded but acceptable forty minute train ride
in into an hour and a half of standing in
the aisle. But all in all, the morning shift was
(41:13):
particularly enjoyable. The newsroom was dead upon my arrival, cool
and quiet, with a sense of anticipation in the air.
When I would get there, only the assignment editor first,
Mike Lynn, later Joe Mancini, the desk assistant, Danny Meanan,
the managing editor, a brilliant man named Roger Higgle, who's
inside an incredible news reaction made him a wonder even
(41:34):
just to watch, and one reporter with crewe usually Steve Bowman,
cigarette in one hand, coffee cup in the other, were
already in for the day. The early shift was bisected
by a one to two hour ritual called the Mail.
Daily the newsroom received one or two cartons perhaps five
hundred pieces of useful and useless press releases, newspapers, and
(41:59):
letters for individuals and staffers. Sorting the mail usually took
a half an hour. Opening the press releases. The intern's
task two varied in time consumption. It is still amazing
to me that we interns were entrusted with the first
gatekeeping position. We deemed which of the innumerable press releases
and notices were even remotely possible for stories, and who
(42:22):
filed them according to day in the newsroom's daybook file.
Other tasks were the usual lab tracks, to drop off
or pick up film, sundry errands, and of course the
phone calls, those never ending phone calls. As an aside,
here let me read part of this again. Other tasks
were the usual lab tracks, to drop off or pick
(42:44):
up film. I should explain what film was. Television news
until the early nineteen seventies was shot exclusively on film.
I don't remember which millimeter. It could have been eight,
it could have been eighty eight. I was never good
at that, but it was all done on film. Videotape
did not come in until nineteen seventy two or nineteen
(43:06):
seventy three, and in nineteen seventy eight, I believe Channel
five was the last of the New York newsrooms to
use any film at all. Often a reporter would come
in hand the intern me a couple of rolls of film,
and I had to race to the basement laboratory and
sit there while it was rush developed, before they knew
(43:27):
whether they had what they needed to put a story
together or anything at all. They could develop a roll
of film in less than forty minutes, and you could
sit there and get high off the fumes. I may
be the youngest person still in the news business who
actually ran film to and from the lab. Back to
(43:48):
what I wrote in nineteen seventy eight about Channel five,
research was done too, at the direction of the assignment
editor or a particular reporter. Very often we would use
the street and building's index to call friends or neighbors
of a newsmaker. We were unable to reach I remember
trying to try down the number of a mysterious woman
whose phone was unlisted by calling each of forty other
(44:10):
tenants in the same apartment building. The woman had become
noteworthy because her two sons regularly beat her and tied
her to the bed to get money to buy record
albums and rock concert tickets. If you wonder how we
could have had the gall to interrupt people's lives and
urge them to leave notes on other people's doors or
(44:31):
rouse neighbors from their sleep, it was easy. Saying the
caller was from Channel five News not only inspired genuine awe,
but it also gave the caller tremendous confidence. The evening
news shift began during the peak of activity, the hustle
and bustle of three o'clock. The little phone calling was done.
At this point, most story assignments had been made, and
(44:54):
the issues were now execution and logistics. How, for instance,
to get a camera crew that started its day at
noon to a news event at six fifteen. When union
rules were cou wired, they'd get a one hour lunch
within six hours of starting work. Sports was something else.
Entirely tasks were few and far between. Once sports page
(45:15):
was discontinued. The three o'clock starting time for the shift
was woefully inaccurate. Bill Maser himself rarely arrived before four thirty.
He would pound out his evening's copy and then take
a one to two hour lunch. At about five thirty,
the intern me was left to read the New York
Post six or seven times, sit back in Maser's wonderful
(45:37):
reclining chair, and answer the occasional phone call. Most of
the time was occupied by chatting with one of the
film editors, Hank Greenberg or Cliff Gelb, now promoted to
associate producer of the news show. As airtime neared, things
picked up. If there were a televised sporting event that night,
it was down to the second floor videotape room to
(45:57):
watch the first half hour to hour of the game
and select a minute or so or good action for highlights.
A home run or fine defensive play usually filled the
bill nicely. Returning to the newsroom, I usually watched either
the conclusion of that game or a movie with Bill, Stanley, Pinsley,
and whoever else. Had nothing to do all the time
updating Bill's scoreboard, checking with the people in graphics to
(46:20):
make sure they got all the required information, keeping an
eye on the UPI wire for late stories, trading opinions
on the Yankees, or watching amazed as Bill Maser did
a variety of high blood pressure exercises. My dual internship
continued through early August, when I determined I should leave
to give myself a week or two to get my
FCC third Class license and just generally relax after a
(46:43):
busy summer preparatory to returning to school, I decided to
go out with a little class. I shelled out twenty
five bucks for a cake intended to read to the
Channel five newsroom thanks for a great summer. The master
decorators at the nearby bakery butchered the job, and only
(47:04):
a last second and revision saved me from wishing a
fond goodbye to the Chanelle Number five new room. Also,
(47:26):
as I remember, I had to carry that damned cake,
a big sheet cake bigger than me. I had to
carry it about four blocks. The punchline of all punchlines,
as I mentioned before, Channel five in New York was
on East sixty seventh Street in the year two thousand
and seven, so that's what nearly thirty years later, I
bought an apartment on East sixty ninth Street in New
(47:48):
York City, and out my bedroom window as I looked
over the glorious landscape of Manhattan. Out my bedroom window,
I overlooked the place I had been an intern thirty
nine years before. All that travel, and I'd gone block
and a half. I've done all the damage I can do.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
Here.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanel,
where the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by
John Phillip Shanel, Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports
music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and it
(48:29):
was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist
ever Our announcer today was Richard Lewis. Everything else was
pretty much my fault, including the bad math, because two
thousand and seven minus nineteen seventy eight is not thirty
nine years it's twenty nine years. Thank god there was
(48:52):
a job in broadcasting for me to go into. I
may return to this internship paper if time permits, in
the days to come. In the interim. That's countdown for
this the eight hundred and fifty fourth day since Donald
Trump's first attempt to coup against the democratically elected government
of the United States. Don't forget to keep arresting him
while we still can. The next schedule countdown is tomorrow.
(49:13):
Until then, I'm Keith Olran calling from the assignment desk
of Channel five News in New York. Thank you for
your time this time. Until next time, It's Tim Gian.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Do you know where your children are? Hey?
Speaker 1 (50:10):
Millions of Americans from many backgrounds, many lifestyles and a
wide countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The
United States of America is under attack by armed right
(00:25):
wing terrorists. The Texas Mall Shooter and every other one
of them bent on killing the enemies living inside their
own minds might as well be suicide bombers, might as
well be isis. The receipts on the Texas Mall shooter
are a mile long. He was a right wing media addict.
He dedicated a hate filled online rant to the appallingly
(00:49):
dangerous libs of TikTok twitter account. He posted screenshots from
the right wing troll Tim Poole. A swastika tattoo covered
those parts of his body not covered by an SS tattoo.
He signed one comment with the name Adolf Hitler. He
repeatedly posed in Nazi uniforms. He used a meme that
suggested there were only two roots for Latino children identify
(01:12):
as black or become a white supremacist. And his pedigree
as a right wing MAGA inspired neo Nazi perpetrator of
stochastic terrorism fueled by every component of Donald Trump and
his coalition of hate could not possibly be more easily
discovered more rapidly verified more thoroughly self convicting, and the
(01:35):
right wing is claiming it is all fake and cy
ops and false flags, and he can't be a white supremacist,
he must be with the Mexican drug cartels because his
name is Mauricio Garcia. And you can't be Latino or
have anything except pasty white skin to be a Nazi
or a white supremacist. And not one of them has
(01:56):
made the tiny intellectual leap from proud Boy leader Enrique
Terario's conviction last week or the neo Nazi white supremacist Nickes.
And I do not know what we do about the
people in a society who deny every fact that does
not serve them. Trump was not the first American to
(02:19):
act this way. He was merely the one who popped
the top of the genie's bottle. Denial and confirmation bias
and rationalizations of the most amazing complexity and effectiveness are
older than the nation itself. But now we have what
twenty percent of the country, thirty percent of the country,
(02:40):
counting those who can turn the rejection of reality on
and off depending on the risk to their fantasy existence.
Forty percent of the country who have reached that Orwellian
point of believing it when the party tells them two
and two make five, to the degree that when you
reference that magical math and you reference or Well, they
(03:01):
will look at you blankly and claim that what you
are doing is Orwellian. I do not know what to
do with them. I do not know how to deprogram them,
or even deprogram enough of them, or even some of them.
(03:23):
I do not know how to begin to suggest how
to do that when the infrastructure that encourages, supports, and
backstops their utter delusions has been built slowly but consistently
for forty years, when that infrastructure is not just unfettered,
(03:45):
but growing even more, and the national government that could
have used these last two years in power to push
back in a thousand small ways just assumed everything would
go back to normal and has all but ignored the
reality that there are manifold men mental health crises in
this country, but the foremost of them is that some
(04:09):
huge percentage of the citizenry is no longer connected in
any way to the reality around them. The Saturday massacre
in Allen, Texas was a right wing terrorist attack, and
those who helped foster it in this creature Garcia and
(04:30):
those who benefited from it divide into two groups, and
two groups only the ones who genuinely believe. He couldn't
have been right wing, He couldn't have been a white supremacist.
He must have been sent by the government agency of
your paranoid choice. He was with the cartels. He would
(04:52):
not have been stopped if we had some control over
assault weapons. It wasn't terrorism, it's not their problem. That's
one group, and the other group is those who don't
really believe any of that, but they say they do
just to influence the others. There was a guy, this
fringe ex actor, I believe his name is Sorbo, who
(05:14):
asserted yesterday that there are no assault weapons, that they
do not exist. We have had people like this in
this country for two and a half centuries. We have
had people like this in this world since we gained
(05:37):
the power of speech. Usually they come in smaller units
like Jim Jones and the People's Temple, or the various
political terrorist groups that demonized specific minority groups throughout our history.
But once before the nation was faced with this situation
where a third or more of its citizens believed in
(05:59):
things that were not true and did not exist, and
that happened before and during the Civil War, And despite
decades of pleading about morals and about monetary realities of agriculture,
and about the indefensibility of owning another human being, and
then years of warnings about what the disparity of the
(06:23):
economies of the North and the South meant, what they
meant was the inevitable outcome of a shooting war. They
began a shooting war anyway, on the premise that the
equations of manpower and production and money were not true,
could not be true, would never be true, and six
hundred thousand Americans died as a result of that. The
(06:48):
United States of America is under attacked by right wing terrorists.
They are not yet fully organized nor coordinated, but they
have countless largely still ad hoc private or nearly private
communication methods. They have access to two hundred dred million
guns or three hundred million guns, or god knows how
many million guns with a capacity to self delude, that
(07:13):
could send shooter after shooter into places like Allen premium outlets,
convinced that they could kill as many as they wanted
and escape alive and elude pursuit forever and become lionized
by right wing media, and they have a superstructure of
influencers and pundits and what are essentially teachers who hone
(07:35):
in them the ability to deny that anything they do
could possibly be wrong. And every day we hesitate to
act against them. Every day our leaders like Chuck Schumer
reveal that their next big response will be a Senate
Democratic caucus to discuss gun violence and the path forward
(08:00):
on gun safety legislation, when there is no such path anymore,
when that is their next response, rather than a slew
of executive orders pulling as many guns out of the
hands of the right wing terrorists as we have time
left to pull, and pulling the communications networks out of
the hands of the right wing terrorists, and pulling the
(08:22):
right wing terrorists out of the country. Every day we
hesitate our ability to defend ourselves against the inevitable day
when they actually organize their terror becomes weaker and weaker
and weaker, and ultimately will become nonexistent. It sounds like
(08:44):
madness to ask when we need to consider an executive
order declaring a state of national emergency because of right
wing terrorism. But look at Allen Texas and the denial
that followed it. And imagine the dozens and the hundreds
(09:06):
and the thousands of Mauricio Garcias out there becoming literally
connected to the Proud Boys or a just slightly more
evil version of Seapack or MAGA or another Trump front
terrorist group, And then ask yourself what other means exist
for us to stop a pervasive, nationwide, violent, suicidal, reality
(09:34):
denying cult that is looking ahead to November fifth, twenty
twenty four and seeing nothing but opportunity still ahead on
(10:00):
this edition of Countdown. So, when Tucker Carlson promised to
reveal where all the bodies are buried at Fox promised
to bring out the heavy hitters to bully Fox into
letting him go to some other outlet somewhere, the first
heavy hitter he meant was Frett Farve, Frett Farv retweeting
(10:21):
Megan Kelly, that's your opening blast. Brett Farv is a
political TV conservative heavy hitter. Was he wearing pants at least?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (10:34):
The President hosts Kevin McCarthy today to say some words
about the debt ceiling. The President's words may include the
validity of public debts clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, followed
by Kevin Surprise buddy. And meanwhile, yes, a quarter of
a million dollars in ads to pressure Biden to cave
to McCarthy are appearing on cable news, including on I
(10:59):
can barely say it. They really did it. They really
sold these guys time to pressure Biden. And it was
my late friend near Norman Lloyd, who lived to be
one hundred and six, and he said, yes, Keith, all
those funerals I go to, they're depressing and they're wrenching.
And on the other hand, he said, if I have
to go to them, I'm still glad that I'm not
(11:19):
the one who's required to stay after the funeral is over.
The problem with being even in your sixties is the
figures of your teens and your twenties are exiting with
horrifying rapidity. The young upcoming news anchor I saw in
a drama that played out when I was a nineteen
year old TV intern has died. The story of John Roland,
(11:43):
Bill Jorgensen, the publication of the internship paper I had
to write for college credit for that summer, and the
famous praise that preceded our newscast every night, it's ten PM.
Do you know where your children are. That's next. This
is countdown.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
You know, this is countdown with you know Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Okay, I'm messing around with the format today postscripts to
the news. Next and the passing of a broadcasting great
who I worked with when I was nineteen years old
and wrote about first time for the daily round up
of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens
who constitute today's worst persons in the world. The Bronze
(12:43):
to the fine folks at my alma mater MSNBC. And
know you were not hallucinating that commercial you saw on
MSNBC insisting that President Biden should cut the Social Safety
Net and gut every government agency because Kevin McCarthy told
him to. That was not some sort of clerical error.
It is a spot produced by a group aligned with
(13:03):
the Pitiful Speaker Macarthy. He called American Action Network, and
that network spent a quarter of million dollars to put
the ads on CNN and ms The CNN part is understandable,
that's probably the first commercial they've sold this year. But
the other part, yes, MSNBC also took the money from
a conservative pack trying to pressure the democratic president of
(13:26):
the United States and put it on a supposedly liberal
network because MSNBC is like CNN, drowning the runner up.
Brett Farv, the disgraced former NFL quarterback, has publicly come
out to defend Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly. He has
retweeted the screeching fascist Kelly's blasting of Fox for, you know,
(13:50):
having the audacity to pay Carlson the thirty million dollars
it owes him. Farv added quote, I'm with Tucker. Time
to boycott Fox until they come to their senses and
let the man speak. So let's see, that's advertise sportscasting
and football as industries that mystify Brett Farb And we
(14:10):
can now add contract law owen Dick picks. We can
add Dick picks. Brett doesn't really understand Dick Picks. But
the winner, the impossibly stupid Junior Trump, speaking for all
the fascists, pushing the line that Alan Texas mall shooter
Mauricio Garcia could not have been a white supremacist because
(14:32):
his name was Mauricio Garcia, ignoring folks like Nick Fuentes
and Enrique Tario, ignoring the mean Garcia posted showing the
only two roots he believed Latino youth have identify as
black or become a white supremacist, ignoring that the hate
that Junior and his father and their cult members spread
(14:54):
is color blind, ignoring all that Junior has written. Quote,
maybe the Mexican national with cartel tats identifies as a
white supremacist, and there we must totally go along with
that narrative. Genius. Plus, remember Donald Trump, Junior, you identify
as a human being, Trump Junior, Today's worse person in
(15:22):
the world. Postscripts to the news some headlines, some updates,
some snarks, some predictions. Dateline North, Miami, Florida. John Rowland,
(15:44):
news anchor at Channel five in New York from nineteen
sixty nine through two thousand and four, died Sunday at
the age of eighty one. I was an intern in
his newsroom when I was nineteen years old, and lately
I had been thinking a lot about that newsroom and
about him, and about the extraordinary array of characters in
that place. When the sad news came about John Roland.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
It's ten pm. Do you know where your children are?
Speaker 1 (16:23):
That's the place the ten o'clock news on Channel five
in New York. It's ten pm. Do you know where
your children are? Or, as it was frequently mocked, it's
ten pm. Do you know what time it is? The
summer I was there, and I split time working on
the news assignment desk and for the sportscaster, the legendary
(16:45):
Bill Mazer. That summer was the time when the newscast
on Channel five here in New York evolved or went backwards,
from a gritty, bareed knuckled, sometimes way too violent, groundbreaking broadcast,
something a little gentler, but still innovative and compelling, just
not you know, shocking every night. The original anchor of
(17:06):
the news was Bill Jorgensen, with his shock of white
hair and his attitude that was like something out of
the movie The Front Page. I'm going to tell you
the news now, and you're gonna listen. And if you
don't want to do it, what are you gonna do
about it? Watch one of those laughing clowns on Channel eleven,
Why I Ought to Pound You. In nineteen sixty seven,
Channel five, which was then owned by the Metromedia Company
(17:27):
and is now owned by Fox, did something unheard of.
Not only did it put on an hour of news
every night. It did so in prime time at ten
o'clock up against the network shows. It did not offer
a rerun or its own local comedy or drama or something.
It did a newscast, and Jorgensen was its centerpiece. He
(17:51):
signed off each program by saying, thanking you for your
time this time till next time. There was no fluff,
there were no features. There was a sportscaster, there was
a movie and play reviewer. There was a weatherman. There
was an anchor, two or three sub anchors, and there
were a dozen reporters sitting at their actual desks in
the actual grubby little newsroom on the second floor of
(18:13):
two hundred and five East sixty seventh Street, Jazz past
Third Avenue in New York. And I walked in in
June of nineteen seventy eight just as they decided that
one of the sub anchors, John Roland, the man who
just died, should start to take over as the main
guy from Bill Jorgensen. John Rowland was from Pittsburgh, but
(18:34):
he had been in LA four years and he was
California cool. I saw him leave his office for the
studio one night in a great three piece suit, or
more correctly two thirds of a three piece suit jacket,
vest and cut off jeans. He must have registered my surprise.
You're gonna make it in this business, he said to me.
Of course he said that to everybody, But just remember,
(18:57):
never take a job where they make you stand up
from behind the anchor desk. Anyway, just before I got there,
Channel five Fat Jorgensen's main sub anchor a man named
George Sharman, and they and Jorgenson agreed that it was
a good time for Jorgensen to take a sabbatical for
a couple of months. He and his wife got into
(19:18):
a motor home and they drove west. And one morning,
not long after my arrival at the internship part of
the assignment desk at Channel five, Bill Jorgenson phoned in
collect from somewhere outside Kansas City, Missouri, and I took
the call, and once again, his voice was so booming,
so urgent, that there sounded like there was no reason
for him to need a phone. If I just opened
(19:41):
the window, I could have heard him from Kansas City.
Bill Jorgenson did not tell me the details of the
problem he had encountered, but he sounded particularly for him
frantic At his request, I transferred him into the news
director's office, and minutes later, out came the news director,
Mark Monsky. We understood he was the only New York
(20:02):
TV news director licensed to carry a gun, and my
new colleagues explained to me that that was because everybody
in the newsroom had thought about killing him. At least once.
Mark Monsky shouted, hey, everybody. Jargonson and his wife were
having breakfast in some diner near Kansas City. While they
were eating, somebody stole their RV and the newsroom erupted
(20:25):
in applause. When it died down, somebody muttered, I hope
everybody here is an ALBI, and only a couple of
people laughed. They began to ease John Roland into Jorgenson's job,
and so that summer was the beginning of an uneasy
transition that ended the next spring. I was told by
my main contact there, a wonderful man named Stanley Pinsley,
(20:48):
who said he was not being my friend, he was
just investing in the time in the future when he
expected I'd be able to hire him at a network.
That by the end of that transition, Bill Jorgensen was
kind of, you know, destabilized by things the way anchormen
sometimes can be, and as a sign of how well
he thought he was taking his slow replacement by John Rowland,
(21:10):
Bill Jorgenson thought it might be funny to show up
in the newsroom carrying a giant box with dynamite written
on the side and saying, if I'm going to go,
I'm gonna take all you bastards with me. But I
never confirmed that story, and honestly, how are you going
to do that? I do know that. A couple of
months later Bill wound up over on Channel eleven and
seemed fine. He anchored there for eight years and they
(21:33):
had a priceless ad campaign for him that began it's
ten pm. Do you know where Bill Jorgenson is? Anyway?
There was a kid next to me on the assignment desk,
another intern, who asked me what kind of course credit
I was getting from Cornell for my summer at Channel five.
And this was a nine to five thing or three
(21:54):
to eleven, five days a week, Suit and tie. Get
on the phone and call the victim's brother and ask
him when the funeral is kind of job? It was work,
And I said I'm getting one hour of credit, and
he laughed at me, and he said, bad luck Penn
State's giving me thirteen. I used to think internships were
(22:14):
the greatest thing in the world for people who wanted
to get into TV or radio, news or sports, even unpaid,
even slave wages, and I used to recommend them. I
have mixed emotions now, after forty five years of slowly
realizing that, you know, g whiz, A lot of people
who have that ambition actually can't afford to go three months,
even at the age of nineteen, without a paycheck. I
(22:35):
mean I had to commute to the job from the
suburbs and all things considered with dry cleaning and everything
else for my suits. For my suits, I probably paid
one thousand dollars over the summer in expenses, to be fair,
between what I learned about TV and the business and
who I met there and who I still know from
there and the contacts they gave me. I was repaid
(22:58):
a thousandfold, but that would not have meant much. If
it had meant that in the summer of nineteen seventy eight,
I didn't have any you know, food or housing. For
my one credit at Cornell, I had to write a
paper about my experience twenty pages minimum. If I recall
correctly and submit it to my professor and to my
supervisor at Channel five. And I still have it, although
(23:21):
one page is missing. And the reason I still have
it is in large part because one day my friend
Stanley Pinsley called me at Cornell in the fall of
my senior year, after my internship had ended, and said,
what did you do? You committed career suicide and your
career hasn't even started yet. I was utterly mystified why
(23:42):
whatever he was talking about, and I told him so
he said, my supervisor, the newsroom comptroller, Christine Tomlinson, had
made one hundred copies of my internship paper and distributed
it to everybody at Channel five News. I had not
anticipated this. I had written freely and openly, include mentioning
(24:05):
which on air person was referred to by all the
producers as Ted Baxter, and which one was apparently having
an affair that his wife didn't know about, and which
one was drinking so heavily that it would kill him.
Not five years later. I called Christine Tomlinson up the
next day and she said, well, yes, I should have
warned you, but you know, last year New York Magazine
(24:26):
did a huge, long story about us five or six pages,
and your paper was better, and it was so much
more interesting than that. Everybody loved it, everybody except Ted Baxter.
I found the New York magazine piece about the Channel
five ten o'clock news recently. It was written by, of
all people, Jeff Greenfield, the same Jeff Greenfield of CNN
(24:49):
and ABC and CBS, twenty four years after he wrote
his piece on Channel five News in nineteen seventy seven.
Twenty four years later, Jeff would have his own nightly
show on CNN, and I wound up being his backup post.
But back to the late Roland, I should mention that
late in my internship there was a night where the
sportscaster Bill Mazer was going to be off and the
(25:11):
regular backup was out of town and his backup was
out of town, and a couple of people, including the
sports producer Cliff Gelb, wanted to put me on at
age nineteen, having never been on television before, and they
tried to get grassroots support for this in the newsroom,
and they went to John Roland, and John Roland looked
at them and then he looked at me and he said,
h sounds great. If they agree let me know. I'll
(25:34):
teach you how to use the teleprompter. Keith. Well, they
didn't agree, but thank you, John, and I think this
is an appropriate time to read you some of that
internship paper that I referenced. I'm going to do it
out of order, because the fun stuff, the anecdotes of
being in a New York City TV newsroom in nineteen
seventy eight, we're in the last few pages, and the
(25:57):
behind the scenes process stuff, which is interesting but not
quite as that interesting. That was all at the beginning,
so it is just in even though I wrote it
in like September nineteen seventy eight vignettes isolated recollections of
a summer at WAWTV New York on the Friday edition
(26:21):
of Sports Page. I was assigned a myriad of tasks,
ranging from keeping the UPI wire updated, to listening to
a Crackley radio in the back of the room for
a ballgame, to watching both the title fight and the
New York Apples tennis match on the TV. The newsroom
was more interested in the fight, obviously enough, why did
you just switch the channel? Sports Page producer Norman Ross queried,
(26:45):
I'm supposed to get the apples score, Norman. I want
to watch the fight, Keith, but you told me to
get the score. Norman. It's not easy doing all these
things at once. I mean, I've got to get this score.
I gotta watch the wire, I gotta watch the fight.
I gotta listen to the radio all at once. I
didn't do all this for my health, you know. Well,
thank God for you, he said again. I'm working sports
(27:08):
and standing at the back of the room, paying off
the Casey's Kitchens delivery boy. Food in hand. I start
munching on an overpriced cheeseburger, and I see the small
presence of the assignment editor, Steve Anderson, marching towards me.
Out he thrusts a sheet of paper. Make me twenty
copies of this please. In the blink of an eye,
(27:28):
I detect the presence of three news interns lounging around
the assignment desk. And remember, I'm doing sports, Steve. I
just got my dinner and all, since you do have
three of your own interns back at the desk, could
I do it after I eat? He just stared blankly
at me. It was as if I had told him
I had shot his mother. He barely said six words
(27:50):
to me the rest of the summer PostScript. Steve Anderson
was fired at summer's end because he didn't get along
well with most staffers. I'm working reception, seated at the
front desk with a large scale phone in front of me.
Out of his office steps the Director of News, Mark bvs. Monsky,
(28:11):
the boss again. I'm eating two slices, two monstrous slices
of Sicilian pizza from the world's greatest pizza parlor, Venice
Pizza on Third Avenue, and that's a plug. Monsky just
stares at me. He is five feet eight if he's lucky,
and yet he looks like the jolly green giant. My
(28:31):
good God, he bellows. The newsroom goes silent. Look at this.
If I had this much food, I'd have to swim
an extra forty minutes every night. God love you. I'm
sorting mail, barely noticing the various names as I stuff letters, cards,
and flyers in the mailboxes. At the door of the newsroom,
(28:53):
suddenly a slew of whatever happened to postcards a promotional
attempt to draw viewer interest in the latest Channel five
news future. I look at them. Whatever happened to Charlie
Chan movies. The next one, hey, whatever became of the
Charlie Chan movies? The next one after that, whatever happened
to the guy who played Charlie Chan werner Oland? And
(29:15):
the last one Charlie Chan again. I'm working reception. When
you work reception, you rarely notice anyone entering the newsroom
from the door at the left of your desk. This
time you notice, could you tell me where Roger Higgle?
Is not an extraordinary question, not from a normal person,
(29:36):
from a six foot two inch man in a pink
and white rabbit suit, though it is an extraordinary question.
His female colleague, shorter but nonetheless similarly dressed, wiggled her
whiskers at me. I let my head fall straight forward
and hit the desk in front of me once more.
I'm at the reception desk. Line three three, five buzzes.
(29:59):
That's reporter Gabe Pressman's private phone. It must be important,
mister Pressman's office. In perfect secretarial tone, how much is it?
The woman at the other end of the line asks, pause,
how much is what, ma'am? The record, the candidly elvis
record you were just advertising? How much is it, ma'am?
(30:19):
You have the news department Okay, how much is it?
You don't understand. We don't sell candidly Elvis records here.
This is a news operation. Oh you don't sell candidly
Elvis albums. No, ma'am. Pause, Then what do you sell?
(30:42):
She had me there, the news director's assistant, Sherry Edell,
and I are talking about the nutty phone calls we get.
See previous example. I once got a call from Jimmy
the Greek Snyder. She noted, Really, I said, didn't know
what to call him? Do you say, mister the Greek?
I'm back at reception. All the good things happen at reception.
(31:06):
A woman calls repeatedly for Stuart Kleine, the reviewer and humorist.
He is never in during her calls, always there in
between them. Finally, she goes beyond a simple message, listen,
can I ask you a personal question about Stu? Well?
I don't see why not. I don't know him all
that well, but I'll try my best. Okay, about Stu,
(31:27):
she asked cautiously, I may be going out with him tonight. Yeah, Well,
have you ever again, she paused, hesitantly, have you ever
seen a wedding ring on his finger? I'm at the
news desk. It's ten to ten minutes before the show
goes on the air. The phone rings. News This is Jorgenson,
(31:54):
announces the voice of God, or at least the voice
of the show's anchor. Bill Jorgensen tell the production people
there's a stuck elevator. They'd better walk up to the
studio or they'll I'll never make it in time. Yes, sir, goodbye. Click.
I raced to the production desk. Bill Jorgensen just called.
He says, there's a stuck elevator, and the associate director
(32:18):
looked up at me, hopefully, Is Jorgensen on it? No,
I say he damn. I have more about the Channel
five newsroom from my internship paper from nineteen seventy eight,
including the man who is still on television in New
(32:39):
York who they all called Ted Baxter and did not
know it until he read what I had written about it.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Next, it's ten pm. Do you know where your children are?
Speaker 1 (33:06):
The ten o'clock news opening from Channel five in New
York in the summer of nineteen seventy eight, when I
was an intern there, splitting my time between the sports
department and sportscaster Bill Maser and the news department and
the incoming news anchor John Roland, who was slowly replacing
the outgoing news anchor Bill Jorgensen. John Rowland, as I mentioned,
(33:27):
died Sunday at the age of eighty one, and he
was always very nice to be. There was a lengthy
internship paper. I thought it was only twenty six or
twenty seven pages. I see the ones in front of
me reading up to like thirty two. Let me finish
with a few more anecdotes that were included in the paper.
I think they're worth your time. Marvin Scott Stanley Pinsley's
(33:48):
Ted Baxter is just back from on assignment in New Jersey,
honoring the infamous famous Amos proprietor of the cookie fortune
making industry. His chocolate chip models are unbelievable, and despite
his fame, he has kept his business offices in laughable
piseic they give him a day, he gives correspondent Scott
a crate of just baked cookies. Hi, guys, Scott yells
(34:13):
to producer Gary Kay and associate producer Frank Chaffey. Look
what I got. Kay and Choffe materialize at the door
of the room where Scott stands. The cookies. Twenty three
of twenty four packages are immediately gone. One remains. It
is on Marvin's desk. Gary kay actual name Gary Krackow,
(34:37):
a huge bearded man without a smidgeon of tact is
on a hunt for more cookies. He and Choffey finally
spot the last bag. They race Marvin Scott to his
own desk. Crackow grabs the bag of cookies, puts it
in one fist, raises it high above his head, squeezes it,
(35:00):
and all the cookies disgorge themselves into Gary Krackou's mouth.
No fare you, guys, says Marvin Scott. The newsroom's reliance
on the Casey's Kitchen's delivery service was incredible. There would
have been no semblance of nutrition had it not been
for their intrepid staff of incompetence marching up the stairs
(35:24):
five to fifteen times a day. This day I call
out for lunch. I bellow the customary, anyone for Case's,
Case's anybody, and I am instructed to order two regular
coffees and a diet coke. I dial the number Casey's.
Can I have a vanilla shake? Two cheeseburgers, fries diet coke,
two regular coffees. This is the newsroom at Channel five. Sorry,
(35:48):
the guy just quit. What the delivery boy just quit?
We set him up there an hour ago with a
turkey sandwich for Danny Meanan. We haven't seen him since
it was his first day on the job. I guess
he couldn't take Channel five. I said, naturally, it can
(36:09):
do that to you. This is from a sub chapter
of the paper called Fun with Norman, Cliff, Bill and Lee.
They were the participants in a program called Sports Page.
This is nineteen seventy eight, and they decided to put
on a half an hour sportscast at eleven o'clock every night.
This anticipated by one year ESPN's Sports Center. It did
(36:33):
not go well in the ratings, but there were a
lot of factors that made that almost to certainty that
it would not do well. And the irony of all
ironies is that Bill Maser's co anchor on this show,
on which I interned, was named Leigh Leonard, and he
was the first Sports Center host, the man who signed
ESPN on to television a year later in nineteen seventy nine.
(36:55):
Fun with Norman, Cliff, Bill and Lee. My responsibilities on
Sports Page were, to say the least very I monitored
the United presid International Sports Wire and culled its contents,
a task that enabled me to do an excellent imitation
of a thermal teletype printer. From four PM on, it
(37:15):
was my responsibility to watch the wire for stories that
might be used on the show, label each of the
three copies of each story, sort each into its proper sport,
and make sure the two anchorman writers Maser and Lee
Leonard got the stories they needed. I worked not only
with Gelb, but with the other associate producer, Marlene Phillips,
and the producer director Norman ross Cliff assigned me the
(37:39):
task of researching and writing the bumper teases, graphics superimpositions
that were aired for about thirty seconds just before each
of the three commercial breaks during the show. Some were
previews of upcoming features, others, as Norman favored, previews of
the availability of city golf courses the next day or
of the upcoming ballgames in the area. Marlene gave me
(38:00):
the thrilling task of typing the rundowns for each show,
the list of items and approximate times, plus which sportscaster
was to read which story for Norman. I tried a
little initiative. The first show I felt missed several important
national stories that Norman simply wasn't aware of. He generally
made up the rundowns off the top of his head.
(38:21):
For the last four days, I voluntarily prepared and presented
him with my list of suggested UPI stories that he
could choose from. By Friday, when I was delayed in
giving him the list on time, Norman was demanding its
delivery and inquiring as to its whereabouts. From Bill and Lee,
the anchors, I was assigned the responsibility of keeping them
up to date on the scores. This very often meant
(38:44):
racing up the two flights of stairs to the studios
with a scribbled score or two. This proved much more
successful than the hit and miss system of Channel five's
inefficient intercom system. Things were going smoothly until Wednesday. I
came in at four as usual, went to the office
and encountered a short, curly haired individual with the first
(39:04):
combination Long Island and Virginia accent I'd ever heard. This
was Michael Berg, the sports intern. In our first conversation,
I discovered he had no intention of a career in
sportscasting as I did, and really was not that hot
on his internship. I fumed. I was there temporarily only
till Michael Berg showed up, and he didn't even want
(39:25):
the job. I went to see Hanita Hirsch, who was
in charge of all internships at Channel five, hoping perseverance
and fortuitous timing would match up with fate. It did not. Finally,
Cliff Gelb came up with a compromise beautiful in its simplicity. Mike,
who had a smattering of experience in news, would alternate
(39:46):
with me between news and sports during the off periods.
The unlucky intern would work news. I was so delighted
I volunteered to take the first two week shift on
news starting on Monday. The plan met with both Christine
Tomlinson's and Nita Hirsch's approval, and Mike and I became friends.
Swarts Page became a success from an interns viewpoint, with
(40:07):
plenty to do and a lot of coordination between the
staff and the recruits. Unfortunately, the program was not a
success from a television viewpoint. Competing with a heavyweight title
fight for local baseball broadcasts and the NBA Championship game,
the experimental series was a ratings failure and the show
was not accepted as a regular feature, so it was
(40:29):
back to news for a while. News and sports. The
typical news day began either at nine am or three pm.
The early shift was probably more rewarding. Not only did
I get to see the news build up from next
to nothing to the scope required to fill an hour
show and fill it well, but I got none of
(40:49):
that sense of coming in halfway through a mystery movie
that always ensued when working the evening shift. There were drawbacks,
of course, as in rush hour traffic. I can remember
one dynamite day of delays on the Penn Central Line
that turned my crowded but acceptable forty minute train ride
in into an hour and a half of standing in
the aisle. But all in all, the morning shift was
(41:13):
particularly enjoyable. The newsroom was dead upon my arrival, cool
and quiet, with a sense of anticipation in the air.
When I would get there, only the assignment editor first,
Mike Lynn, later Joe Mancini, the desk assistant, Danny Meanan,
the managing editor, a brilliant man named Roger Higgle, who's
inside an incredible news reaction made him a wonder even
(41:34):
just to watch, and one reporter with crewe usually Steve Bowman,
cigarette in one hand, coffee cup in the other, were
already in for the day. The early shift was bisected
by a one to two hour ritual called the Mail.
Daily the newsroom received one or two cartons perhaps five
hundred pieces of useful and useless press releases, newspapers, and
(41:59):
letters for individuals and staffers. Sorting the mail usually took
a half an hour. Opening the press releases. The intern's
task two varied in time consumption. It is still amazing
to me that we interns were entrusted with the first
gatekeeping position. We deemed which of the innumerable press releases
and notices were even remotely possible for stories, and who
(42:22):
filed them according to day in the newsroom's daybook file.
Other tasks were the usual lab tracks, to drop off
or pick up film, sundry errands, and of course the
phone calls, those never ending phone calls. As an aside,
here let me read part of this again. Other tasks
were the usual lab tracks, to drop off or pick
(42:44):
up film. I should explain what film was. Television news
until the early nineteen seventies was shot exclusively on film.
I don't remember which millimeter. It could have been eight,
it could have been eighty eight. I was never good
at that, but it was all done on film. Videotape
did not come in until nineteen seventy two or nineteen
(43:06):
seventy three, and in nineteen seventy eight, I believe Channel
five was the last of the New York newsrooms to
use any film at all. Often a reporter would come
in hand the intern me a couple of rolls of film,
and I had to race to the basement laboratory and
sit there while it was rush developed, before they knew
(43:27):
whether they had what they needed to put a story
together or anything at all. They could develop a roll
of film in less than forty minutes, and you could
sit there and get high off the fumes. I may
be the youngest person still in the news business who
actually ran film to and from the lab. Back to
(43:48):
what I wrote in nineteen seventy eight about Channel five,
research was done too, at the direction of the assignment
editor or a particular reporter. Very often we would use
the street and building's index to call friends or neighbors
of a newsmaker. We were unable to reach I remember
trying to try down the number of a mysterious woman
whose phone was unlisted by calling each of forty other
(44:10):
tenants in the same apartment building. The woman had become
noteworthy because her two sons regularly beat her and tied
her to the bed to get money to buy record
albums and rock concert tickets. If you wonder how we
could have had the gall to interrupt people's lives and
urge them to leave notes on other people's doors or
(44:31):
rouse neighbors from their sleep, it was easy. Saying the
caller was from Channel five News not only inspired genuine awe,
but it also gave the caller tremendous confidence. The evening
news shift began during the peak of activity, the hustle
and bustle of three o'clock. The little phone calling was done.
At this point, most story assignments had been made, and
(44:54):
the issues were now execution and logistics. How, for instance,
to get a camera crew that started its day at
noon to a news event at six fifteen. When union
rules were cou wired, they'd get a one hour lunch
within six hours of starting work. Sports was something else.
Entirely tasks were few and far between. Once sports page
(45:15):
was discontinued. The three o'clock starting time for the shift
was woefully inaccurate. Bill Maser himself rarely arrived before four thirty.
He would pound out his evening's copy and then take
a one to two hour lunch. At about five thirty,
the intern me was left to read the New York
Post six or seven times, sit back in Maser's wonderful
(45:37):
reclining chair, and answer the occasional phone call. Most of
the time was occupied by chatting with one of the
film editors, Hank Greenberg or Cliff Gelb, now promoted to
associate producer of the news show. As airtime neared, things
picked up. If there were a televised sporting event that night,
it was down to the second floor videotape room to
(45:57):
watch the first half hour to hour of the game
and select a minute or so or good action for highlights.
A home run or fine defensive play usually filled the
bill nicely. Returning to the newsroom, I usually watched either
the conclusion of that game or a movie with Bill, Stanley, Pinsley,
and whoever else. Had nothing to do all the time
updating Bill's scoreboard, checking with the people in graphics to
(46:20):
make sure they got all the required information, keeping an
eye on the UPI wire for late stories, trading opinions
on the Yankees, or watching amazed as Bill Maser did
a variety of high blood pressure exercises. My dual internship
continued through early August, when I determined I should leave
to give myself a week or two to get my
FCC third Class license and just generally relax after a
(46:43):
busy summer preparatory to returning to school, I decided to
go out with a little class. I shelled out twenty
five bucks for a cake intended to read to the
Channel five newsroom thanks for a great summer. The master
decorators at the nearby bakery butchered the job, and only
(47:04):
a last second and revision saved me from wishing a
fond goodbye to the Chanelle Number five new room. Also,
(47:26):
as I remember, I had to carry that damned cake,
a big sheet cake bigger than me. I had to
carry it about four blocks. The punchline of all punchlines,
as I mentioned before, Channel five in New York was
on East sixty seventh Street in the year two thousand
and seven, so that's what nearly thirty years later, I
bought an apartment on East sixty ninth Street in New
(47:48):
York City, and out my bedroom window as I looked
over the glorious landscape of Manhattan. Out my bedroom window,
I overlooked the place I had been an intern thirty
nine years before. All that travel, and I'd gone block
and a half. I've done all the damage I can do.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
Here.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Here are the credits. Most of the music was arranged,
produced and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanel,
where the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by
John Phillip Shanel, Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports
music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, and it
(48:29):
was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Musical comments by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist
ever Our announcer today was Richard Lewis. Everything else was
pretty much my fault, including the bad math, because two
thousand and seven minus nineteen seventy eight is not thirty
nine years it's twenty nine years. Thank god there was
(48:52):
a job in broadcasting for me to go into. I
may return to this internship paper if time permits, in
the days to come. In the interim. That's countdown for
this the eight hundred and fifty fourth day since Donald
Trump's first attempt to coup against the democratically elected government
of the United States. Don't forget to keep arresting him
while we still can. The next schedule countdown is tomorrow.
(49:13):
Until then, I'm Keith Olran calling from the assignment desk
of Channel five News in New York. Thank you for
your time this time. Until next time, It's Tim Gian.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Do you know where your children are? Hey?
Speaker 1 (50:10):
Millions of Americans from many backgrounds, many lifestyles and a
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