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)
WRITINGS FROM DICK BYRD
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Thursday, August 14, 2014
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Friday, April 5, 2013
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.
Now, for the 6 PM news April 4th 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.
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 4th.
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 4th 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 5th, 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.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
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.”
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.”
Sunday, December 9, 2012
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.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
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.”
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