at the Columbia tv station, KOMU. We worked in pairs and had to get to the station at 5:30 a.m. in order to give a three-minute local newscast during the Today show. I believe our news
went on the air at 7:30 a.m. In the two hours before the newscast, we would rip all the news
stories that had been on the teletype overnight. We kept what we wanted and put the unusable stories on the director's desk. He was also our boss and our instructor. He was very droll and smoked a pipe, always. He had a funny way of laughing and if he started he went on forever, wheezing, coughing and generally turning red.
The students were the only ones at the station at that hour, except for an engineer in the
control room. After the ten o'clock news the night before, the camera man would roll the huge camera over to the area where the morning newscast would be given. He then made sure the lens cap was off and technically at the precise moment, the Today show announcer would say something like now for your local news and "through the magic of television" the technician would switch the camera on and a student would give precisely three minutes of news and then he would say "Now, back to the Today show." It usually went so very smoothly.
We also had the option of using film from the day before, if it was still viable. Of course, we
would have to edit and splice it because some of the film ran at least three minutes on its
own. So, this one particular cold January morning, my partner and I arrived and started to size things up. I didn't think any of the film was important enough to use, but my pal thought there was some footage worth using. I can't even remember what the story was about, but I agreed to splice it because he felt his fingers didn't work right. I didn't mind because I thought
using the reel winder and the the cement was cool.
I put my little white gloves on and began to search for a section we could use. It was going
fine. John worked rewriting the other stories. Rewriting was just a fact of life. If we had
ripped the stories off the the machine and read them as is, we would have big points taken off our semester score And these guys, unlike Sister Marie Michael, really did keep records.
For some reason, I began to have trouble with the splicing. I told John the cement wasn't
working like it usually did. That was my first mistake. He had to see for himself and
the result was the portion of the film we wanted to use was ruined. The film had to be
cut apart and the unused portion had to be hung up and the other two sections had to
be glued together. If the splice took, it would be an almost invincible reattachment. That was
our problem; the splice was not taking. If we were going to use just the film and talk over
it, that was also fairly easy. If the subject on the film was talking you had to make sure
you spliced it at the end of his sentence. So, we had cut away so much of the original it
was becoming more difficult to find a portion to use.
I glanced at the clock. We had been working for almost an hour. I said we should
probably forget the film and he could just read what the man had said. But oh no, that
would have been way to easy. I told him I'd rewrite the overnight stuff and put a written
story on top to replace the film if necessary. While I was rewriting, I could see John at
the film editing table. His face usually turned red when he was frustrated. At this moment
he looked like Mr. Tomato Head with glasses and white gloves. Periodically, I'd call out
to see if he needed help. Eventually, I called out that he would have to give up and not
use the film. He assured me that the cement had taken. He gave it a try on the movieola
and it immediately broke even under that slight pressure. I gave him the rewritten copies
of the stories I had chosen. He tucked the stories under his chin and put on his sport
coat and told me he was going to give the technician the first part of the tape and do a voice over. I expressed extreme relief that he had come to his senses. He had only a few minutes to get in front of the camera, but I knew he could do it; he had done it before several times.. He hustled toward the studio and attempted to open the door. It automatically locks when a camera is on so there are no disturbances. Evidently, the studio clock and the office clock were not synchronized to perfection. We just looked at each other and then looked through
the window into the barely lit studio. The red light on the camera was aglow. We looked at
the monitor. There was a quite acceptable picture of the blue material that John should
have been standing in front of.
Before either of us had a moment to talk or scream, the phone was ringing. We said together,
"Rod!" I told John I'd answer the phone; maybe he would be kinder to me. I answered
with a nonchalant hello and on the other end a mad man shouted and sputtered, "Hoag. Now."
He was yelling so loud that there was no need for a speaker phone. When John tried to tell him what had happened, Rod cut him off. "I don't want to know what happened. I want to tell you what's going to happen if it's your morning on the air and I'm eating breakfast and watching the Today show, and they break for local news, and you are not in front of that camera, you'd better pray that what I do see are flames. That's the only excuse for having three minutes of dead air."
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