This throwback Thursday piece won't mean as much to most folks...but this is the Memphis State football team's "Media Day" in August of 1963...just outside of the field house. I'm running camera as WKNO-TV videotapes a "Tiger Media Day" Special. We did it because we could...just run the cables down the concourse from the studio, down the ramp and onto the field. (I skinned my knees many a day running track on that field while at Training School)

UPDATE ON TVA-TENNESSEE RIVER-MISSISSIPPI RIVER

http://www.thedailytimes.com/Local_News/story/TVA-to-continue-releasing-water-at-dams-id-035937

TVA ASKED TO HOLD BACK WATER TO PREVENT FLOODING

http://www.thedailytimes.com/Local_News/story/TVA-asked-to-hold-back-water-to-prevent-flooding-id-035735

SYDNEY WHO?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been in and out of Memphis several times during 1968 in support of striking sanitation department workers.  The “I AM A MAN” signs the strikers wore when protesting had become well known across the country and around the world. 

In the WMC-TV newsroom at 1960 Union Avenue the day-to-day chores of covering, processing and airing the news had taken on new meaning, new structure, and new texture.  But nothing had prepared us for the night of April 4^th. 

Dr. King and some of his assistants had arrived again the day before.  Dr. King had spoken at a strike rally at Mason Temple the night before, delivering his “I’ve been to the mountaintop” address.  I had edited the news film of that address the night before for the 10 PM newscast I was producing.  As it turns out I had, indeed, selected well from photographer Bernie Mintz’ work and had aired the famous portion.
Now, for the 6 PM news April 4^th we had moved forward with the story.  As was usual in those days I watched the 6 PM news from home, taking an hour “lunch” before returning to produce the 10 PM news. News Director Norm Brewer was in the studio anchoring the first 15 minutes of what was, in those days, called the “news strip.”  So was Assistant News Director Don Hickman. Photographer Paul Bateman was in the building.  

About 6:15, just as Norm was exiting the studio from his portion of the newscast Paul met him in the lobby.  Paul had just taken a phone call from Congressman Dan Kuykendall in Washington, D.C.  The congressman had heard Dr. King had been shot.  Paul told Norm, who then rushed to the newsroom, ripped the bulletin from the UPI wire, and took off for the studio. 

Watching at home over my dinner I heard our first “This just in.”  I looked at my wife, threw my fork over my shoulder, and said briskly:  “I don’t know when I’ll be home.”

The newsroom was crazy when I arrived.  Photographers were dispatched to the Lorraine Motel and to St. Joseph’s Hospital where Dr. King had been taken.  Information was sketchy at best.  Then I remembered the station’s production manager (and my former boss) Phil Slavick was in St. Joseph’s Hospital with some minor foot problem.  I called Phil’s room and told him what had happened.  I asked if he could find a way to limp out of his room, go downstairs to the emergency room, and find out what was going on.

Phil tried.  He limped out of his room, down the hall, avoiding all the time the glance of hospital personnel.  He made his way down two flights of stairs to the emergency room.  Just as he opened the door to the ER a big policeman grabbed him and “escorted” him back to his room.

So we continued to do what we could with the story.  Norm and Don would take turns interrupting programming with bulletins.  NBC (our network) would do the same.  As I worked in the newsroom I’d watch all of this on a monitor.  We’d interrupt and then NBC would interrupt.  Each time we’d “return to regular programming already in progress.”  This began to strike me as strange and not at all appropriate.  That’s because our “regular programming” that night was all comedies.  So each time there was a “bulletin” at the end the news person would say: “That’s the latest on the Dr. King assassination and the subsequent unrest.  We now return you to our regular program already in progress.”  The problem was that program was a comedy and the immediate audio following the bulletin was laughter.

I made myself a private promise right then and right there:  “If I’m ever in charge and something awful like this happens I’m taking the “air” and keeping it.”  Later in my career, at CNN, I did just that to a big outcry but also to a big result.  But that’s another story.

It was a trying night for everyone in that news department (and, of course, for millions of people across the nation and around the world).  I had interviewed Dr. King a week earlier and asked him about threats against his life.  He had said at the time he wasn’t afraid to die and that he had “been up on the mountain.”  In retrospect he had been working on his “Mountaintop Speech” then and was trying out some of the lines. 

During the evening the newsroom was swamped with television, radio and network requests for what we in the news business call “Phoners.”  One of us would adlib “the scene” in Memphis to a radio station in Los Angeles, a TV station in New York City, a network in Canada, Europe, etc. All of us were doing that as we could, even the sports director.  It was crazy. 

The only laugh generated during that awful night came during one of those phoners.  Requests for phoners were coming in so rapidly often one or more of us would have 2 of 3 phones in our hands at the same time adlibbing the same report to 3 newsrooms elsewhere.  I even had one where a Canadian network had asked if anyone in our newsroom spoke French.  When I said no an interrupter was put on the line and my live phoner was interrupted in French as I went.  But that only laugh (later…the next day, the next week, the next month) came when I picked up a ringing phone, yelled “News.  Byrd” and heard on the other end:  “Long distance calling. Go ahead.   (pause) Hello, this is Sydney.”  I said rather sharply: “Sidney who?”   It was Sydney, Australia.

The night went on and on and on.  Eventually I was assigned to edit film for the NBC Today Show.  Way back 4 months before, when the sanitation workers strike began; I began saving every inch of film on the story.  In those days so much film was shot and processed we saved only what we aired – the “ins.”  What didn’t air – the “outs” was thrown away.  But I started saving the “outs” of the sanitation workers strike…saving them without bothering to tell anyone else.   I was born and raised in Memphis.  Now I was a journalist in Memphis.  This night had become the biggest news event I could remember in my home town. 

So I began to edit for The Today Show.  I edited scenes from the Lorraine Motel. I edited scenes from St. Joseph’s Hospital.  I edited scenes of the unrest in and around Memphis. I edited “sound bites” from various people.  Then, about 2 AM April 5^th, the morning after, my foot struck one of the boxes of “outs” under my edit bench.  I looked down and suddenly realized what I had.  I yelled out to the newsroom: “Hey, look what I found.”

The assassination story wound down.  The unrest wound down somewhat. James Earl Ray was caught, brought back to Memphis, and admitted his guilt (more on that angle in another story).  The TV station realized what a treasure we had in the “ins” and the “outs” of history on film.  The next year interns from Memphis State University were assigned to the newsroom for about 6 months to help put the “ins” and the “outs” back together in order.  I supervised.  Then all of that regrouped film was sent to the Memphis Public Library where historians, documentary producers and others make use of it.  Whenever I see a documentary on the events surrounding April 4, 1968, I remember those boxes of “outs” under my edit bench.  Many of the documentaries you see today on Dr. King include much of that material....film I saved because it just seemed important despite the rush of work at the time.

A ONE-MAN BAND

Scene: I walked into an empty newsroom 7 pm 1,000 years ago.  The phone rang and it was the mayor with a big, big announcement.   I set the microwave receiver for city hall, loaded the truck, and told master control what was up.  I drove to city hall, set up on the sidewalk out front, and set up the transmitter, camera, a mic, light, and the two-way radio. I got the mayor, stood him in front of the camera, and cued master control by two-way to take the interrupt slide.  I began with “we interrupt this program”  and began to interview the mayor.  I closed the live shot, dropped the mic and told master control to “take net.”  I returned to the newsroom just as the anchor/producer guy was returning from dinner.  I handed him the tape and, said: “Here’s your new lead,” and walked out.

“We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.”

Essie Bowles

There have been many mentors who have molded my life:  broadcasters, ministers, teachers, family, neighbors, friends.  One teacher in particular gave me a repeated lesson in practical match.  This one was the junior high math teacher at what was known “back in the day” as Memphis State Training School, a lab school on the college campus for teaching college students to be teachers.  One in particular, my junior high math teacher, did this:

Essie Bowles "tried" to teach me math. She finally managed to teach me some when I cut her grass one summer. I usually charged $1 per yard. She said she'd pay me 65 cents per hour instead. So I did...and each time she'd time me, have me then sit at her kitchen table, show me how many minutes I worked, and have me figure out how much she owed. And it was always more than $1.

THE DAY CNN LEARNED TO GO WALL-TO-WALL

CNN had assigned me to supervise a 9 am to Noon newscast and have anchors and producers in Atlanta, New York City, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles.  It was a first for the network, a first for me, and a first for me to try out what I had promised myself years before.

I usually left the CNN newsroom on Techwood Drive in Atlanta about 1 pm weekdays, an hour after NewsWatch ended.  On this first day of September in 1983 I paused to look at an “Urgent” from the wire services:  Korean Airlines flight #007 was missing on its trip to Korea from the U.S.  You can imagine CNN gets many “Urgent” messages from the wire services around the world.  But this one seemed particularly interesting to me.  So I stayed in the newsroom for an extra hour or so, forgoing my usual effort to sleep from 2 pm until my kids got home from school.  I could always get more sleep “tomorrow.”

After about an hour and a half of watching the story with no new information I decided to head home.  Once home I kept tuned to CNN for updates.  The original story kept being repeated every half hour or so but no new information was forthcoming.  Normally I’d go to bed about 8 pm only to get up again about 2 am.  That was so I could be at CNN again by 3 am to prepare for the next DayWatch.   This night I stayed up until about 10 pm waiting for more details.  They were few and far between.

I arrived at CNN at my usual 3 am timeslot.  As I prepared for the 4 am arrival of my producers I kept watching for any new details on KAL 007.  There was no substantive update.  The first hour rundown for DayWatch, the 9 am hour, was due to the writers and editors by 7 am.  The 7 am producer was making last minute adjustments to that rundown at 6:45 when another “Urgent” came across the wires:  “KAL 007 had been shot at by Soviet jets.”

Immediately I said to the 9 am producer, the 10:30 am producer, and my producers in NYC and LA: “Drop everything.  We’re going wall-to-wall with 007.”  You must understand that in 1983, 3 years into the life of Cable News Network, top breaking news stories ran at the top and sometimes the bottom of each hour but NEVER wall-to-wall.  There was so much else to put on the air, so much more news to report.

BUT….I also thought of that night in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee; the night Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.  That night in Memphis I was busy in the newsroom producing the 10 pm newscast at WMC-TV, editing news film, and doing “phoners” for TV and radio stations across the U.S. and around the world.  I was also keeping an eye on the program monitor in the newsroom watching what we were reporting about the huge story…both WMC-TV program interrupts and NBC News program interrupts.  But it began to bother me that they were, indeed, interrupts.  That night NBC’s prime time lineup was mostly comedy shows.  So at the end of a local or national interrupt the reporter or anchor would say: “That’s the latest on the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the subsequent unrest.  More as it develops.  WE NOW RETURN YOU TO OUR REGULAR PROGRAMMING ALREADY IN PROGRESS.” 

That ending just seemed wrong to me…the “kid” in the newsroom.  I made myself a promise that night that “if I’m ever in charge and a big, really big story breaks I’m taking air and keeping it…reporting the story on-going.”  And that’s just what I was deciding to do that morning at CNN about KAL 007.

My staff in four cities backed me on the decision and off we went preparing for 3 hours if necessary of updates and repeats of the big story.  As usual at 7:30 am CNN Executive Vice President and to many of us our news mentor Ed Turner arrived.  After looking over the 8 am rundown of the 6am to 9 am newscast (EP John Zarrella…now CNN Miami Bureau Chief and space program reporter) he then moved on to the first hour rundown of DayWatch.  It was there, immediately, that he saw we were going wall-to-wall with KAL 007.  He said rather forcefully:  “Byrd, we don’t do that.”  My immediate reply was:  “Ed, if you don’t like it you can fire me at noon.”  He huffed and puffed for a few seconds, shook his head, and walked off to his office.

At 9 am we told what we knew about the missing plane and the Soviet jets.  We updated the information that one of the passengers the flight was a U.S. congressman from Georgia, Larry McDonald.  We went live to The White House and The State Department.  We went live on the phone to other congressmen already in Korea for a conference and live on the phone to CNN’s Moscow Bureau.  We updated.  We repeated.  But we did not go live to The Pentagon because none of the networks had, as yet, worked out the technical details on daily live reports from there.

At about 9:40 am our DayWatch Atlanta production assistant, Pat Reap, came to me and said: “I’ve got Congressman McDonald’s Rome, Georgia office manager on the phone.  Do you want to put him on live?”  I thanked Pat (and, as it turns out, I could never thank him enough) and rushed the Rome office manager on the air.  Atlanta anchors Dave Walker and Lois Hart, CNN’s first anchor on the air when the network began 3 years before, began asking the interview.  In his first answer the manager told them and a nationwide audience:  “I just got off the phone with The Pentagon.  The plane was shot down and everyone on board is dead.”  This was 9:45 am.

We had our big break in the story.  We rolled forward:  live to The White House (nothing on that yet here), live to The State Department (nothing on that yet here), live to Moscow (we’re beginning to get some rumblings here).  Then we got word The Pentagon had called a news conference for 10 am.  CNN and the other networks sent microwave trucks to The Pentagon “just in case.”  The Pentagon news conference confirming the information that the Soviets had, indeed, shot down the plane and everyone on board was dead.  That news conference didn’t end until about 10:30 am.  That’s when NBC, CBS, ABC and the other news outlets had first news they could report on the story.  By that time we were 45 minute down the road on the details.

We went on with the story up to Noon, when we handed things over to the next program.  I then walked across the newsroom and down the hall to Ed Turner’s office.  I just stood in the door. After a moment Ed looked up and said simply:  “You can keep your job, Byrd.”