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| Friday April 22, 2011 |
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| London 1981 |
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| Tom (sitting on the microphone): "We forget to put the microphone on." Jane: "You gotta keep the equipment warm." Tom: "Now, wait a minute!" |
Jane and Lloyd got into an argument over whether there was a cat in the once-popular Dick and Jane books. Smug Lloyd shot down Jane. Jane stood her ground and (correctly as it turned out) insisted, indeed, there was a cat: Puff. I was nearly two years' Jane's senior, and an anchor at an NBC affiliate in Michigan, knew about Puff --and watched with smug satisfaction.
The word "smackdown" hadn't been invented in 1976, but that's what it was! Jane's "great poise" won over NBC News president Dick Wald. "Nothing rattled her."
She was just 25 and had shot to Chicago's NBC O&O WMAQ from WISH in Indianapolis. Jane got the evening news anchor chair in 1975 next to veteran Floyd Kalber (hired, ironically, in 1976 as Today's news anchor).
In 1975 Chicago Tribune TV critic Gary Deeb infamously dismissed Jane as possessing "the IQ of a cantaloupe." Jane is Stephen Hawking to today's TV news village idiots.
Today peppers this seven-minute segment with old clips, new clips, live interviews, and puzzling music beds My Sharona and Captain and Tennille's Love Will Keep Us Together. I would've unearthed 1976's Squeeze Box by The Who or Afternoon Delight (DC's Starland Vocal Band).
Epilogue: Lloyd Dobyns is 75. Linda Ellerbee, 66. So it goes . . .
I used to like Pauley, and/but then she married Gary Trudeau who has never yet drawn a negative cartoon about Obama. Trudeau's Doonesbury was one of the Cheerleaders in the hate Bush Pogrom.
ReplyDeleteI used to like Pauley, and/but then she married Gary Trudeau who has never yet drawn a negative cartoon about Obama. Trudeau's Doonesbury was one of the Cheerleaders in the hate Bush Pogrom.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I know. I forgive Jane for her liberalism.
ReplyDeleteThe NBC affiliate where I anchored insisted I wear my hair back like Jane's when I was anchoring the 6p news. The station brought in a TV news consultant who paraded around in a Dracula cape. Honest. Al Primo was the consultant. Al who invented Eyewitness News. Dracula was Al's stand-in.
ReplyDeleteDracula had me on the set fooling with my hair and makeup. We had new makeup we were forced to wear. I think I tried the Jane coif just to placate Dracula. This was 1976-77.
It was back in the Happy Talk days (coined by a Chicago guy named Syd or Sid, I think. My memory is fuzzy). Our longer reporter packages were cut to like 45 seconds. Readers or "tells' as they call them these days were no more than 10-15 sweconds. Those were the days!
My train of thought was interrupted by my cell phone. The station atmosphere reminded me, in many ways, of ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY. My male co-anchor wore garish plaid jackets and had longish hair and a Will Farrell moustache. He was an arrogant, sexist prick. I wore my long brown hair in the 1970s style with Diane von Furstenberg wrap dresses (what a concept at a then-rock bottom $99 -- same jersey dreses are $345 now), the round-toed Mary Jane pumps with thick heels. Mine were navy blue.
ReplyDeleteBack then managment wouldn't think of letting us show our leg sans pantyhose. Never saw our legs anyway. Not like today when Katie, Meredith et al go to great lengths to expose great lengths of bare leg.
I was a ballsy babe and rattled the station management time and time again. Rattled my co-anchor. One time there was The War Of The Chairs. He kept cranking up his chair to tower over me. I kept pace raising my chair as high as it would go.
I can't remember where it happened in the news block, but Art lowered his chair as far as it would go until his chin and arms rested on the desk. The shot went out live. So fucking juvenile, but again, those were the days! I had a repo Cadillac (1976 bright green with a white vinyl-padded roof and white leather seats). I called it the Pimpmobile. Another reporter, Mel Serrow, had a pale yellow Cadillac. I fondly recall driving around with Mel on assignment listening to the radio play Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight." The DC band was formerly called Fat City and not only backed up John Denver, but wrote some of his hit songs. Bill Danoff wrote Take Me Home, Country Roads, and more. When I got to DC in 1978 I eventually met Bill and his then-wife, Taffy, who became my good friend. Taffy and hung around in the late '80s, early '90s.
I'm waxing nostalgic and becoming horribly verbose! I'll stop now!
No--keep going!
ReplyDeleteWRITE THE DAMNED BOOK!!
Sport,
ReplyDeleteI never forgave her either - to this day. ( Yes, I know it's sick.)
But I remember when we all young and I thought I would never see anyone else as lovely
as she.
I'm from Indy, I remember when Jane was an anchor and David Letterman did the weather,oh those were the good old days, It's all went down hill unfortunately. Thanks for the memories.
ReplyDeleteJane lasted from 1976 to 1989, I think, when NBC dumped her for Deborah Norville. I think news brass crowned Norville "the future of TV news, NBC News" or something fatuous like that.
ReplyDeleteNorville was not the sharpest knife in the block. I recall she was roundly criticized for doing an interview and somehow the subject of famed photographer Diane Arbus came up and Norville didn't know who she was. Correct me if I've got the details wrong.
Norville looked dumb as a brick.
I think Sid/Syd was a Chicago TV critic.
ReplyDeleteI WILL AND YOU GET FIRST BOOK TOUR DIBS!!!!!! 8-)
ReplyDeleteSorry, Mel. It's Serow. Mel left TV years ago for academia.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.umflint.edu/urel/who-we-are.php
Norville got screwed over by the suits at NBC. I can recall her last affiliate meeting where she collected business cards from GM's and sent each of us a personal note thanking us.
ReplyDeleteI was a sales A/E for the NBC O&O's in New York and remember well when they brought Floyd Kalber and Jane Pauley up to New York to gin up the new anchor team at WMAQ. She looked like a soriety pledge sitting next to the headmaster. You have to remember in those days WMAQ's late news was a HUGE money maker for NBC. It was so strong and popular that advertisers were only allowed to buy one spot per week. We even packaged a spot in a prime orbit.
ReplyDeleteClass will out (Mom, 1969).
ReplyDeleteThanks for the inside stuff, John!
ReplyDeleteJohn, everybody gets screwed sometime in this biz, no?
ReplyDeleteAmen! There's a dearth of class these days -- not ony on TV but everywhere. So sad for those of us who remember the good old days...
ReplyDeleteAl ran his consulting shop out of tony Greenwich, Connecticut. He was in management at WABC TV before that.
ReplyDeleteJim, my mind is whirring with stories from my broadcast news career. Funny stuff, mostly!
ReplyDeleteCorrection: Bill and Taffy were divorced when I met them. Taffy had two children with Bill. Girls. I think she finally left McLean, VA for California.
ReplyDeleteTaffy was co-writer on Country Roads and also John Denver's hit I Guess I'd Rather Be in Colorado...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.billdanoff.com/
Marty, get a small recorder, and talk into it daily, stream of consciousness, recalling your career and favorite stories. Do so whenever you're stuck in traffic, whatever. Within a year, you'll have the book, and you'll only need to organize it.
ReplyDeleteYou got that right Marty.
ReplyDeleteI'll do it, Jim! I've got an old tiny one here. Thanks for the tip!
ReplyDeleteMarty Jimbo is so right you have lived a very awesome life full of many great stories I am sure just from
ReplyDeleteThe short time I have known you my life was just ordinary boring sometimes but happy most times but yours is the kind of life a lot of women dream of and lol thinking of stories of your friendship with Jimbo so write the book for all of us here Who think so much of you sorry got carried away with this iPhone
Sandra! You can get carried away with impunity here! This is your online "family!" Happy Easter!!
ReplyDeleteVia my BlackBerry