Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pat Woodard is retiring after some number of months or
years at KAWA, and.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I've been here for sixteen years on and off.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
But I've been doing this, whether it's radio, TV or print,
for fifty two years.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Wow, let me just say, I want most of this
segment to be you. But let me just say, and
I've mentioned this a time or five times on the air,
I've never I've never met a news guy who had
just so close to the same sense as I have
at what the important stories are and right. So I'll
(00:34):
come in prepared to talk about stuff, and then you
do your newscast between Colorado's Morning News and my show,
and you can only do a very small number of
topics and a short newscast, and often you have two
or three things that you've decided we're important that are
the same that are things that I was going to
talk about. And maybe it's because you and I kind
(00:55):
of come.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
From the world of finance in a bit.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I don't know that i'd say we're kindred spirit it's necessary,
but I think we're we had kindred minds. Yeah, in
a lot of way, we're interested in the same sort
of things. I find a story and I go Oh wow,
I want I want to know more about that. And
a lot of times it just happens to be something
of the lines with something you want to talk about.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
So that's kind of interesting, kind of scary.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Maybe yeah, maybe.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So I'm going to go in no particular order here,
But you said you've been doing this for fifty two years.
What did how did you get into journalism and what
was the first thing you did?
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Well, I didn't really get into journalism as much as
I got into radio, Okay, when I was in high school.
When I was a senior in high school, I wanted
to be a photographer. I wanted to be a nature
photographer Ansel Adams, you know, that's that's kind of what
I wanted to be.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
And I had.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
A I think it was a student teacher in one
of my speech classes who approached me and said, you know,
I know you're interested in photography, but she said, I
think you ought to consider doing something in communications as
particular in particular broadcasting, radio, television, whatever. And so I
started thinking about it and I thought, well, you know,
I do I do kind of like that. And right
(02:04):
out of high school, I didn't go to college. Out
of high school, I went to a trade school, broadcasting
trade school. We've all seen those, Hey, you come down
and you know, And I went to one in Minneapolis
and I was there for about nine or ten months.
Got a job right out of there, and Hastings, Nebraska
was my first job.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
And it was.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
One of those funny little places where you've got the
tower right on site, you know, and the buildings about
the size of this studio and it's old and right
and back of it as a cornfield, you know, and
it was so typical. But I was only there for
about two months, and I think I quit right before
they were going to fire me. Didn't really like what
I was doing there. But that was my first news
(02:44):
job as well, and that involved, you know, you had
to at the time go down to the cop shop
and to the county commission meetings and all of that
kind of stuff that I'm not sure people even do anymore.
But after I did that, I went back home and
got a job at another small radio station where I
could be a DJ, you know, and play the rock
music at night. And it was one of those stations
(03:05):
where it was it was block formatting where in the
morning you'd.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Have polka time, you know, for the year.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
This was in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, and so there were
a lot of German dairy farmers there out there milking
the cows in the morning, so he'd play the polka
music for them in the morning, and then you'd have
time to trade and you had all these different shows
on and at eight o'clock at night is when it
was finally safe to play rock and roll music apparently
wow for three hours until sign off. So that was
(03:33):
my job, but I had other duties to do. What
or no, no, I was I was nineteen yeah, okay,
so I was nineteen years old. But I had a
friend who had gotten a job at Coil Radio in Omaha,
which was a you know, compared to Detroit Lakes, that's
that's a major city.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
That's a pretty big market.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
And I found out through him that they had an
all night news anchor opening coming in at midnight and
do the news every hour until six am. And so
that is what I loved about that job is that
I could sit there, I only had one newscast to
do an hour, and I could work on writing. That
is where I would sit there with all my wire
(04:15):
copy and say, well, I really don't want to read
this because it's awful, and I would work on rewriting
it in a fashion that I thought was more entertaining
and more listenable. And so it was a great training
ground to basically learn how to write for broadcast and
for the people who were listening and didn't want to
hear just the wire copy that was coming down.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
We tend to forget this in the age that we
live in now. But there wasn't always the Internet. And
so you're talking now about the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, this would have been nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Yeah, so you were talking about wire copy. I want
you to get real granular with me here. How did
you get news that you then decided what you wanted
to talk about or rewrite or any of that, Like literally,
what what?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
How did you get the loose? Well, there was a
teletype machine.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
There was a machine in there that was tied to
the United pres International or the Associated Press, and stories
would come over the wire machine and you would do
the rip and read, And that's where that term comes from.
You would rip it off the machine, take it in
and read it, or in my case, I'd sit down
and rewrite it. That is where all of the national
(05:25):
news came from.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Now.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
We did have enough of a news staff there, even
though it was a top forty pop music station, where
we had people going out and getting news as well
for local news content, and so we had that material
as well.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Working overnight.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I didn't do that because nobody's going out covering news,
you know, thanks to.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Say in the morning. Yeah yeah, folks.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
By the way, if you've got if you've got a
question for Pat Woodard, text us at five six six
nine zero. I don't promise to ask every question, but
I will try to ask good questions. And this is
pats last day, and actually he'd be gone already, except
he agreed to stick around and hang out with me.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
I still got a couple of housekeeping things to do
as well for iHeartMedia, you know, for the HR people.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Before I can leave, tell us a little about covering
live aid.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Oh that was so cool.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
I was working, you know, after i'd been in the
business for a little while. I was still fairly young
when when I got hired at CBS News in New York,
I was twenty seven years old, and I'm going into
the newsroom and I'm working shoulders and shoulder with names
like Richard c Hoddlett and Douglas Edwards and all the
Murrow boys who had covered World War Two.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
They were still there. But what had happened was.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
The Democratic Convention in nineteen eighty four was in San Francisco,
and that is where I had worked right before going
to New York, and I knew that we were going
to send somebody to cover the convention, and I thought,
since I was from San Francisco, I was the natural choice.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Turns out we had another guy.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
On staff from San Francisco and they picked him, so
I was pretty frosted.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I really really was looking forward to going to San Francisco.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
I had never covered a political convention before, and I
got a lot of friends in San Francisco I wanted
to hang out with.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Sure didn't get it.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
So a few months later we find out that there's
going to be this big concert in London and a
joint concert Concurrent Concert in Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Live aid. It was called to help address the.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Famine in Ethiopia and turned out to be a pretty
big deal, and I put in for it and I
got picked for it this time, so I got to
spend five days in London, go to Wembley stadium and
sit there and listen to all of the all of
the rock stars at the time, and be there for
the legendary performance from Queen, Queen and Freddie Mercury. I mean,
(07:45):
when you see the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, it's pretty darn
close to what it was like. And I remember at
the time feeling, you know, when Queen got on the stage.
And keep in mind, at this time, Queen was really
several years off their fame. You know, they were not
really that hot a group at the time, but they
(08:05):
were well known, and I don't think anybody expected what
they got because it was just it was electrifying, hard stopping,
almost Wow.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
I can't believe you were there. That's incredible.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Did you to interview any of the rock star?
Speaker 3 (08:18):
In fact, most of the interviews we did were just
with concert goers, with people who were excited to be
there and all that kind of stuff, But we didn't
do any of the celebrity interviews.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Wow, it's still an amazing story, Shannon, you got something
to play for me?
Speaker 4 (08:32):
All right? A little weird al I lost on Jeopardy.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Pat is the only person I know who's ever been
smart enough to get on Jeopardy.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
And we've talked about that on and off quite a
bit over the years.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
But you know, I don't know how many people listening
right now know about your experience with that, So just
talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
The genesis of that goes back to when I was
working at Channel seven here in town and at the time,
Channel seven is where Jeopardy aired, and they were having
a contestant search that came to Denver and I was
assigned or I assigned myself, I don't remember what it
was to go cover it.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
For part of the story.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
I took the test along with this hotel ballroom filled
with other people, and I found out later that I
scored higher than anybody else in the room on the test.
And I can't remember fifty questions something along those lines.
But I couldn't be on the show because I worked
for a station that aired Jeopardy. Not only couldn't I
(09:36):
be on the show, then I was barred from being
on the show for a minimum of three years after
I left the radio that television station.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
So I kind of put that in the back of
my mind and kind of forgot about it. And then
at one point they started the internet got bigger and
they started doing contestant searches online and after the time
it expired, and actually Jeopardy then had moved over I
think to Channel thirty one where it air is now.
(10:05):
So I was in the clear as far as being
eligible to be on the show. So I did a
couple of tests online which were short. I think there
were fifteen questions and they were all multiple choice or
you didn't have to type anything in. But they were timed,
but they never told you how you did. They just said, Okay,
you'll either get picked or you won't, but feel free
(10:27):
to do another one next time if you don't get
picked before then. So I think the next year or
whatever it was, they had another test this time. I
did hear back from them, and they said we are
going to be doing auditions in Denver and it was
at someplace on the sixteenth Street Mall, I can't remember.
It was a hotel, ballroomer or something along those lines.
(10:50):
So I had to go in there and there was
They had sessions both in the morning and the afternoon,
so they had hundreds of people who wanted to do this.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Well.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
I went in and first they gave you a fifty
question test again. Then they had you do a mock
show where they had a set that was up there
and they had one of their producers who was acting
the part of Alex t Rebec and you had to
go up and they gave you the little buzzer thing
and threw you a few questions, and then they did
(11:22):
the big thing. I think that counts a lot is
they do the interview that Alex and now Ken Jennings
does after the first break with the condestans, Hey where
are you from? Tell us about, Hey, you went camping once?
Tell me about that. You know, some really mundane stuff
that you've got to talk about, and they want to
see it, and the course of videotaping at all. They
want to see how you are on video and whether
(11:45):
you can carry on a conversation, whether you freeze up,
that sort of thing. And they still don't tell you
anything about it after that. And it was some weeks,
maybe a month after that, that I got a call
from the show saying we'd like you to be on
the show.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
So that was how that started. I flew out there.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Actually they had to postpone it once because Alex was
having knee surgery and so they had to reschedule it
for another time.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
So I went out there. You pay your own way.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
By the way, they don't pay you to go out
there unless you're in the Tournament of Champions or something
like that, and that all goes back to the old
Paola days. They don't want any whiff of impropriety that
they've paid people to come out there and be on
the show. So I went out there and they had
they taped five shows a day, and so I sat
(12:35):
in the audience for four shows that they taped before me,
and then they finally said you're up for the next show.
And it was great. It was a great experience. I
played well, but I didn't win. The guy that I
was up against, who was the champion, was like a
three or four time champion and was really smart, obviously,
(12:57):
but he also was very good with the buzzer was
I think my downfall is that I just couldn't get in.
And I think, I know I've told you this before.
You can't buzz in until a certain time, and if
you try to buzz in early, you get locked out
for a fraction of a second, and that basically means
you're not going to get.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
A chance to answer that question. So what you try
to do.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
There's a bank of lights on either side of the
screen that you don't see of the board, that you
don't see on the TV screen. You only see that
in person. And those lights will come on when it's
safe to buzz in. And the other indication that it's
safe to buzz in is that the host, whether it's
Ken Jennings or Alex Trebek, has to finish giving the clue,
(13:43):
and so you've got to kind of watch his lips
and see where it's going to go and try to
time it to where you can ring in.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
So we're talking with Pat Ward, who's retiring today after
sixteen years on and off a Kawa and many more
years I'm doing other things of quick listener texts.
Speaker 4 (14:01):
Thank you, Pat, We'll miss hearing you.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Good luck celebrating Pat today, sending so many thanks for
years and years of incredible news reporting, Enjoying today's segments
so much, and wondering what advice Pat would give for
those of us who are still trying to discover our
life's passion because he seems so passionate about what he does.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
I'd love to hear his thoughts.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah, I wish I knew the best answer to that.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
When I first told some of my family and friends
that I was retired, I got a message back from
my cousin who I grew up with lived two houses
down from us, and he said, I still remember in
high school, you knew exactly what you were going to
do for a career, and you did it.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
And I wish I knew the answer to that.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
I got some good advice, as I mentioned, from a
student teacher, but it was something that I apparently had
a facility for and realized that I did at a
pretty early age, and I could pursue it.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Know how you find your passion, I don't know, but once.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
You do, you stick to it and it's not work,
it's fun.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
All right.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I've got two questions, and you can answer either one
or both.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Thinking about interviews you've done in the.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Past, what comes to mind as a time where you
finished an interview with someone and then thought to yourself, Gosh,
I should have asked him or her this question, or
and you could answer both if you want. Gosh, I
should not have asked him or her that question.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
For the first part, where I wish I'd have asked
them something that I didn't. That comes from the interview
that I liked the most because it was one that
I'd never expected I would ever get. I was working
at Como TV in Seattle, this would have been about
nineteen eighty eight, and they had sent me down to
do live shots at Boeing Field, which is one of
(15:55):
the major airports in Seattle. There was a seven forty
seven that was going to do went around the world
flight to set some sort of a record. I can't
remember exactly what it was. I'm down there doing live
shots on the planes behind me, and I do my
do my thing, and then I happened to look over
and I see on the curb this guy's standing there
all by himself.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
And the more I look at him, I know who
that is.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
But and then I realized it's Neil Armstrong, the first
man on the moon, and he's standing there all by himself,
and I've got a photographer here with a camera. I've
got to go talk to him, even though I know
Neil Armstrong is famously a media shy, not someone who
willingly gave interviews to the media. So I've got to
(16:41):
figure out what am I going to do to get
in his good graces to get an interview with him,
knowing that it's going to be probably an interview that
lasts maybe a minute and a half. You know, It's
just it just wasn't you know. There was nothing set
up with the press office or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
He's just so I approached.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Him and almost as with the camera with the cameraman,
and well, he was standing there watching this, so he
knew who I was and what we were doing. So
I approached him and what I did is I said, listen,
I would love to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
I said, what are you doing here?
Speaker 3 (17:13):
He said, well, I just love to fly and I'm
going to be on this flight, this round the world flight.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And I said, well, can I talk to you about that?
Speaker 3 (17:20):
And I said, I I promise I'm not going to
ask you stupid questions like gee, what was it like
to go to the moon, And almost before he said yes,
I was putting the microphone on him, so he was
almost a fade accomplaint And I did ask him what
he was doing.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
There and why do you like to fly so much?
Speaker 3 (17:39):
And I did kind of pull off a little bit
of a white lie by saying, you know, geez, all
the things you've done, and you still want to be
on a flight like that, you know, compare this to
what it's like going on on.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Something you did in the past, like going to the moon.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
And I framed it that way and he was fine,
he was with it, But I wish I'd have had
more time, really, not just to ask him one specific question,
but to talk.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
To him more because we just had a very limited
amount of time.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
What an amazing story. We've got about a minute left.
What are you doing next?
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Well, I have been approached to do a podcast. I mean,
everybody's got a podcast. I think my pets are getting
podcasts too. But I've been approached to do one that
I'll probably if all works out between now and when
we're going to start doing It looks like we may
start recording in a matter of a couple of weeks.
And it's not something that I'm going to do full time.
(18:37):
It's something that is just going to come up. There's
there's five or six episodes that I'll do and then
we'll probably take a break and see if there's another
season after that.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Do you have any hobby or hobbies that you're looking
forward to spending more time on in retirement.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Well, I have a couple.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
I still love photography and I love would you say,
she said, fixing the lawnmowers.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
I went out to moment the other day and the
battery was.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Dead, so I got to get that done. Yeah, I
still love photography. I hike a lot in the Colorado
high Country and I use that as an opportunity for photography,
which is hard to take a bad picture in the
Colorado Mountains. So I do love that. I used to
love fly fishing a lot. I've kind of gotten away
from that. I wouldn't mind picking up that again. And
(19:24):
I hope to do something that is close to what
I've been doing here in terms of writing and communicating.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
And I kind of.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Mentioned that with the podcast, But those are the hobbies
that I think I'd like to do.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
We like to travel, too, so we'll do some more
of that. So at my house, my wife gets the
last word. So why don't we do that here too?
Jump on in, Anna, So what are you most or
least looking forward to in having a retired husband? And
we just got about thirty seconds, so it was your
best shot.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
I can get close to the.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Microphone, I can't tell you that.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
It sounds like all right.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
I think she's uh.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
She posted something this morning online and she found I
have a couple of old kind of vintage forties and
fifties microphones at the house.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
And she put them on the put them on the
table and put my computer open and put the headphones
around him and she posted that passed finally hanging them up,
you know, and then she said, uh, best wishers to
him and good.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Luck to me, and I wrote back, you'll need it.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
That's right, you will. That sounds about right, Pat. It's
been a pleasure and an honor to work with you.
You're just an incredible newsman. Thanks and uh, and we're
gonna miss you.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
I'm going to miss you.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I'm going to miss everyone here and I'm going to
miss you. But I get to listen to you every
day on the radio.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
I hope you do about what her to have a
wonderful retirement. I'm sure i'll see you around town.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Thank you,
Pat Woodard is retiring after some number of months or
years at KAWA, and.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I've been here for sixteen years on and off.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
But I've been doing this, whether it's radio, TV or print,
for fifty two years.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Wow, let me just say, I want most of this
segment to be you. But let me just say, and
I've mentioned this a time or five times on the air,
I've never I've never met a news guy who had
just so close to the same sense as I have
at what the important stories are and right. So I'll
(00:34):
come in prepared to talk about stuff, and then you
do your newscast between Colorado's Morning News and my show,
and you can only do a very small number of
topics and a short newscast, and often you have two
or three things that you've decided we're important that are
the same that are things that I was going to
talk about. And maybe it's because you and I kind
(00:55):
of come.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
From the world of finance in a bit.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I don't know that i'd say we're kindred spirit it's necessary,
but I think we're we had kindred minds. Yeah, in
a lot of way, we're interested in the same sort
of things. I find a story and I go Oh wow,
I want I want to know more about that. And
a lot of times it just happens to be something
of the lines with something you want to talk about.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
So that's kind of interesting, kind of scary.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Maybe yeah, maybe.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So I'm going to go in no particular order here,
But you said you've been doing this for fifty two years.
What did how did you get into journalism and what
was the first thing you did?
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Well, I didn't really get into journalism as much as
I got into radio, Okay, when I was in high school.
When I was a senior in high school, I wanted
to be a photographer. I wanted to be a nature
photographer Ansel Adams, you know, that's that's kind of what
I wanted to be.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
And I had.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
A I think it was a student teacher in one
of my speech classes who approached me and said, you know,
I know you're interested in photography, but she said, I
think you ought to consider doing something in communications as
particular in particular broadcasting, radio, television, whatever. And so I
started thinking about it and I thought, well, you know,
I do I do kind of like that. And right
(02:04):
out of high school, I didn't go to college. Out
of high school, I went to a trade school, broadcasting
trade school. We've all seen those, Hey, you come down
and you know, And I went to one in Minneapolis
and I was there for about nine or ten months.
Got a job right out of there, and Hastings, Nebraska
was my first job.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
And it was.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
One of those funny little places where you've got the
tower right on site, you know, and the buildings about
the size of this studio and it's old and right
and back of it as a cornfield, you know, and
it was so typical. But I was only there for
about two months, and I think I quit right before
they were going to fire me. Didn't really like what
I was doing there. But that was my first news
(02:44):
job as well, and that involved, you know, you had
to at the time go down to the cop shop
and to the county commission meetings and all of that
kind of stuff that I'm not sure people even do anymore.
But after I did that, I went back home and
got a job at another small radio station where I
could be a DJ, you know, and play the rock
music at night. And it was one of those stations
(03:05):
where it was it was block formatting where in the
morning you'd.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Have polka time, you know, for the year.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
This was in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, and so there were
a lot of German dairy farmers there out there milking
the cows in the morning, so he'd play the polka
music for them in the morning, and then you'd have
time to trade and you had all these different shows
on and at eight o'clock at night is when it
was finally safe to play rock and roll music apparently
wow for three hours until sign off. So that was
(03:33):
my job, but I had other duties to do. What
or no, no, I was I was nineteen yeah, okay,
so I was nineteen years old. But I had a
friend who had gotten a job at Coil Radio in Omaha,
which was a you know, compared to Detroit Lakes, that's
that's a major city.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
That's a pretty big market.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
And I found out through him that they had an
all night news anchor opening coming in at midnight and
do the news every hour until six am. And so
that is what I loved about that job is that
I could sit there, I only had one newscast to
do an hour, and I could work on writing. That
is where I would sit there with all my wire
(04:15):
copy and say, well, I really don't want to read
this because it's awful, and I would work on rewriting
it in a fashion that I thought was more entertaining
and more listenable. And so it was a great training
ground to basically learn how to write for broadcast and
for the people who were listening and didn't want to
hear just the wire copy that was coming down.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
We tend to forget this in the age that we
live in now. But there wasn't always the Internet. And
so you're talking now about the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, this would have been nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Yeah, so you were talking about wire copy. I want
you to get real granular with me here. How did
you get news that you then decided what you wanted
to talk about or rewrite or any of that, Like literally,
what what?
Speaker 2 (05:01):
How did you get the loose? Well, there was a
teletype machine.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
There was a machine in there that was tied to
the United pres International or the Associated Press, and stories
would come over the wire machine and you would do
the rip and read, And that's where that term comes from.
You would rip it off the machine, take it in
and read it, or in my case, I'd sit down
and rewrite it. That is where all of the national
(05:25):
news came from.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Now.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
We did have enough of a news staff there, even
though it was a top forty pop music station, where
we had people going out and getting news as well
for local news content, and so we had that material
as well.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Working overnight.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I didn't do that because nobody's going out covering news,
you know, thanks to.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Say in the morning. Yeah yeah, folks.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
By the way, if you've got if you've got a
question for Pat Woodard, text us at five six six
nine zero. I don't promise to ask every question, but
I will try to ask good questions. And this is
pats last day, and actually he'd be gone already, except
he agreed to stick around and hang out with me.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
I still got a couple of housekeeping things to do
as well for iHeartMedia, you know, for the HR people.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Before I can leave, tell us a little about covering
live aid.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Oh that was so cool.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
I was working, you know, after i'd been in the
business for a little while. I was still fairly young
when when I got hired at CBS News in New York,
I was twenty seven years old, and I'm going into
the newsroom and I'm working shoulders and shoulder with names
like Richard c Hoddlett and Douglas Edwards and all the
Murrow boys who had covered World War Two.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
They were still there. But what had happened was.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
The Democratic Convention in nineteen eighty four was in San Francisco,
and that is where I had worked right before going
to New York, and I knew that we were going
to send somebody to cover the convention, and I thought,
since I was from San Francisco, I was the natural choice.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Turns out we had another guy.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
On staff from San Francisco and they picked him, so
I was pretty frosted.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I really really was looking forward to going to San Francisco.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
I had never covered a political convention before, and I
got a lot of friends in San Francisco I wanted
to hang out with.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Sure didn't get it.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
So a few months later we find out that there's
going to be this big concert in London and a
joint concert Concurrent Concert in Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Live aid. It was called to help address the.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Famine in Ethiopia and turned out to be a pretty
big deal, and I put in for it and I
got picked for it this time, so I got to
spend five days in London, go to Wembley stadium and
sit there and listen to all of the all of
the rock stars at the time, and be there for
the legendary performance from Queen, Queen and Freddie Mercury. I mean,
(07:45):
when you see the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, it's pretty darn
close to what it was like. And I remember at
the time feeling, you know, when Queen got on the stage.
And keep in mind, at this time, Queen was really
several years off their fame. You know, they were not
really that hot a group at the time, but they
(08:05):
were well known, and I don't think anybody expected what
they got because it was just it was electrifying, hard stopping,
almost Wow.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
I can't believe you were there. That's incredible.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
Did you to interview any of the rock star?
Speaker 3 (08:18):
In fact, most of the interviews we did were just
with concert goers, with people who were excited to be
there and all that kind of stuff, But we didn't
do any of the celebrity interviews.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Wow, it's still an amazing story, Shannon, you got something
to play for me?
Speaker 4 (08:32):
All right? A little weird al I lost on Jeopardy.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Pat is the only person I know who's ever been
smart enough to get on Jeopardy.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
And we've talked about that on and off quite a
bit over the years.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
But you know, I don't know how many people listening
right now know about your experience with that, So just
talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
The genesis of that goes back to when I was
working at Channel seven here in town and at the time,
Channel seven is where Jeopardy aired, and they were having
a contestant search that came to Denver and I was
assigned or I assigned myself, I don't remember what it
was to go cover it.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
For part of the story.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
I took the test along with this hotel ballroom filled
with other people, and I found out later that I
scored higher than anybody else in the room on the test.
And I can't remember fifty questions something along those lines.
But I couldn't be on the show because I worked
for a station that aired Jeopardy. Not only couldn't I
(09:36):
be on the show, then I was barred from being
on the show for a minimum of three years after
I left the radio that television station.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
So I kind of put that in the back of
my mind and kind of forgot about it. And then
at one point they started the internet got bigger and
they started doing contestant searches online and after the time
it expired, and actually Jeopardy then had moved over I
think to Channel thirty one where it air is now.
(10:05):
So I was in the clear as far as being
eligible to be on the show. So I did a
couple of tests online which were short. I think there
were fifteen questions and they were all multiple choice or
you didn't have to type anything in. But they were timed,
but they never told you how you did. They just said, Okay,
you'll either get picked or you won't, but feel free
(10:27):
to do another one next time if you don't get
picked before then. So I think the next year or
whatever it was, they had another test this time. I
did hear back from them, and they said we are
going to be doing auditions in Denver and it was
at someplace on the sixteenth Street Mall, I can't remember.
It was a hotel, ballroomer or something along those lines.
(10:50):
So I had to go in there and there was
They had sessions both in the morning and the afternoon,
so they had hundreds of people who wanted to do this.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Well.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
I went in and first they gave you a fifty
question test again. Then they had you do a mock
show where they had a set that was up there
and they had one of their producers who was acting
the part of Alex t Rebec and you had to
go up and they gave you the little buzzer thing
and threw you a few questions, and then they did
(11:22):
the big thing. I think that counts a lot is
they do the interview that Alex and now Ken Jennings
does after the first break with the condestans, Hey where
are you from? Tell us about, Hey, you went camping once?
Tell me about that. You know, some really mundane stuff
that you've got to talk about, and they want to
see it, and the course of videotaping at all. They
want to see how you are on video and whether
(11:45):
you can carry on a conversation, whether you freeze up,
that sort of thing. And they still don't tell you
anything about it after that. And it was some weeks,
maybe a month after that, that I got a call
from the show saying we'd like you to be on
the show.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
So that was how that started. I flew out there.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Actually they had to postpone it once because Alex was
having knee surgery and so they had to reschedule it
for another time.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
So I went out there. You pay your own way.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
By the way, they don't pay you to go out
there unless you're in the Tournament of Champions or something
like that, and that all goes back to the old
Paola days. They don't want any whiff of impropriety that
they've paid people to come out there and be on
the show. So I went out there and they had
they taped five shows a day, and so I sat
(12:35):
in the audience for four shows that they taped before me,
and then they finally said you're up for the next show.
And it was great. It was a great experience. I
played well, but I didn't win. The guy that I
was up against, who was the champion, was like a
three or four time champion and was really smart, obviously,
(12:57):
but he also was very good with the buzzer was
I think my downfall is that I just couldn't get in.
And I think, I know I've told you this before.
You can't buzz in until a certain time, and if
you try to buzz in early, you get locked out
for a fraction of a second, and that basically means
you're not going to get.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
A chance to answer that question. So what you try
to do.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
There's a bank of lights on either side of the
screen that you don't see of the board, that you
don't see on the TV screen. You only see that
in person. And those lights will come on when it's
safe to buzz in. And the other indication that it's
safe to buzz in is that the host, whether it's
Ken Jennings or Alex Trebek, has to finish giving the clue,
(13:43):
and so you've got to kind of watch his lips
and see where it's going to go and try to
time it to where you can ring in.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
So we're talking with Pat Ward, who's retiring today after
sixteen years on and off a Kawa and many more
years I'm doing other things of quick listener texts.
Speaker 4 (14:01):
Thank you, Pat, We'll miss hearing you.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Good luck celebrating Pat today, sending so many thanks for
years and years of incredible news reporting, Enjoying today's segments
so much, and wondering what advice Pat would give for
those of us who are still trying to discover our
life's passion because he seems so passionate about what he does.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
I'd love to hear his thoughts.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah, I wish I knew the best answer to that.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
When I first told some of my family and friends
that I was retired, I got a message back from
my cousin who I grew up with lived two houses
down from us, and he said, I still remember in
high school, you knew exactly what you were going to
do for a career, and you did it.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
And I wish I knew the answer to that.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
I got some good advice, as I mentioned, from a
student teacher, but it was something that I apparently had
a facility for and realized that I did at a
pretty early age, and I could pursue it.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Know how you find your passion, I don't know, but once.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
You do, you stick to it and it's not work,
it's fun.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
All right.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I've got two questions, and you can answer either one
or both.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
Thinking about interviews you've done in the.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Past, what comes to mind as a time where you
finished an interview with someone and then thought to yourself, Gosh,
I should have asked him or her this question, or
and you could answer both if you want. Gosh, I
should not have asked him or her that question.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
For the first part, where I wish I'd have asked
them something that I didn't. That comes from the interview
that I liked the most because it was one that
I'd never expected I would ever get. I was working
at Como TV in Seattle, this would have been about
nineteen eighty eight, and they had sent me down to
do live shots at Boeing Field, which is one of
(15:55):
the major airports in Seattle. There was a seven forty
seven that was going to do went around the world
flight to set some sort of a record. I can't
remember exactly what it was. I'm down there doing live
shots on the planes behind me, and I do my
do my thing, and then I happened to look over
and I see on the curb this guy's standing there
all by himself.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
And the more I look at him, I know who
that is.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
But and then I realized it's Neil Armstrong, the first
man on the moon, and he's standing there all by himself,
and I've got a photographer here with a camera. I've
got to go talk to him, even though I know
Neil Armstrong is famously a media shy, not someone who
willingly gave interviews to the media. So I've got to
(16:41):
figure out what am I going to do to get
in his good graces to get an interview with him,
knowing that it's going to be probably an interview that
lasts maybe a minute and a half. You know, It's
just it just wasn't you know. There was nothing set
up with the press office or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
He's just so I approached.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Him and almost as with the camera with the cameraman,
and well, he was standing there watching this, so he
knew who I was and what we were doing. So
I approached him and what I did is I said, listen,
I would love to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
I said, what are you doing here?
Speaker 3 (17:13):
He said, well, I just love to fly and I'm
going to be on this flight, this round the world flight.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And I said, well, can I talk to you about that?
Speaker 3 (17:20):
And I said, I I promise I'm not going to
ask you stupid questions like gee, what was it like
to go to the moon, And almost before he said yes,
I was putting the microphone on him, so he was
almost a fade accomplaint And I did ask him what
he was doing.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
There and why do you like to fly so much?
Speaker 3 (17:39):
And I did kind of pull off a little bit
of a white lie by saying, you know, geez, all
the things you've done, and you still want to be
on a flight like that, you know, compare this to
what it's like going on on.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Something you did in the past, like going to the moon.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
And I framed it that way and he was fine,
he was with it, But I wish I'd have had
more time, really, not just to ask him one specific question,
but to talk.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
To him more because we just had a very limited
amount of time.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
What an amazing story. We've got about a minute left.
What are you doing next?
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Well, I have been approached to do a podcast. I mean,
everybody's got a podcast. I think my pets are getting
podcasts too. But I've been approached to do one that
I'll probably if all works out between now and when
we're going to start doing It looks like we may
start recording in a matter of a couple of weeks.
And it's not something that I'm going to do full time.
(18:37):
It's something that is just going to come up. There's
there's five or six episodes that I'll do and then
we'll probably take a break and see if there's another
season after that.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Do you have any hobby or hobbies that you're looking
forward to spending more time on in retirement.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Well, I have a couple.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
I still love photography and I love would you say,
she said, fixing the lawnmowers.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
I went out to moment the other day and the
battery was.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Dead, so I got to get that done. Yeah, I
still love photography. I hike a lot in the Colorado
high Country and I use that as an opportunity for photography,
which is hard to take a bad picture in the
Colorado Mountains. So I do love that. I used to
love fly fishing a lot. I've kind of gotten away
from that. I wouldn't mind picking up that again. And
(19:24):
I hope to do something that is close to what
I've been doing here in terms of writing and communicating.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
And I kind of.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Mentioned that with the podcast, But those are the hobbies
that I think I'd like to do.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
We like to travel, too, so we'll do some more
of that. So at my house, my wife gets the
last word. So why don't we do that here too?
Jump on in, Anna, So what are you most or
least looking forward to in having a retired husband? And
we just got about thirty seconds, so it was your
best shot.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
I can get close to the.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Microphone, I can't tell you that.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
It sounds like all right.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
I think she's uh.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
She posted something this morning online and she found I
have a couple of old kind of vintage forties and
fifties microphones at the house.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
And she put them on the put them on the
table and put my computer open and put the headphones
around him and she posted that passed finally hanging them up,
you know, and then she said, uh, best wishers to
him and good.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Luck to me, and I wrote back, you'll need it.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
That's right, you will. That sounds about right, Pat. It's
been a pleasure and an honor to work with you.
You're just an incredible newsman. Thanks and uh, and we're
gonna miss you.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
I'm going to miss you.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I'm going to miss everyone here and I'm going to
miss you. But I get to listen to you every
day on the radio.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
I hope you do about what her to have a
wonderful retirement. I'm sure i'll see you around town.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Thank you,
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